“Who said that? And when?”
“At some ball I was dragged along to with Anthony. I heard them say that with my freckles and tanned skin and wildness, I was undesirable.”
“Ah, I think I see.”
She glared sharply at him, ready to slap him if he even for one moment agreed with those dogs. Not that his opinions mattered that much to her, she reminded herself.
“They weren’t saying you were undesirable. They must have called you an undesirable. As in, not good for a wife.”
Her cheeks burned with humiliation and she was suddenly sorry she’d raised the subject. “And why not? How is that any better?”
“You don’t understand how it works in London. A man takes a docile wife. He wants her to be obedient and efficient and quiet. She runs the household and bears the heirs. She does not sell her virginity or ride astride in the park. She doesn’t challenge gentlemen to duels or swim naked in the moonlight.”
She wished he would forget that particular night ever happened. “I know all of that and anyway I don’t want to be some staid man’s even more staid wife.”
“I’m afraid that is how it works, Daniella. You can’t break so many years of tradition or thinking.”
“So you are going to go home after you retrieve your items and find yourself a lap dog?”
He shook his head, donned a patronizing glare and folded his hands over his knee. “I am going to find a woman who will make me smile at the breakfast table and who can run my house and birth the children who will carry on my name. It is what titled men do. I am the last of my line so it is what I must do.”
“And before you were titled? What did you want to do then?”
She saw it in his eyes. Whether he meant to show it or not, regret flitted over his face, and she knew this hadn’t always been his future. Once upon a time he probably would have had it all figured out, the second son. How many men walked around thinking their older brothers would die young?
“It doesn’t matter what I wanted. This is the way it has to be.”
“Says who?”
“Says society. Says my sister, who must make a good marriage. Says my mother, who wishes for nothing more than to bounce a grandchild on her knee. Says the House of Lords, who need the titled to make fair and just decisions about the future of the empire and her people. I have responsibilities. I cannot shirk them just because I saw it turning out differently.”
Trelissick sighed then. Mostly with resignation. “Let us get this done so we can warm ourselves by the fire.”
Darkness shrouded them and, as it did, the temperature dropped. She would not like to grow too cold lest she never warm up again.
“Let me see then.”
She’d left her petticoats on so she wasn’t worried about him seeing more than he should. When she’d spoken of nakedness, she had only been trying to irk him into backing down about her scratch. It did not need this level of attention. Even the time she had stepped on her own dagger by accident it hadn’t warranted this level of concern.
“That is more than a scratch,” he commented upon seeing the scrape on her side.
“It is not.” She tried to pull the dress back on, having fulfilled her part of the bargain they had struck, but he had other ideas.
“You need to remove this.” He tugged on the linen of her shift, moving her entire torso. “The area must be cleaned properly.”
“I will be fine.”
“I am not asking you, Daniella. Take it off.”
“No.”
Trelissick’s nostrils flared and Daniella almost backed away from the sound his teeth made as they ground together.
“We can do this the difficult way, or you can make it easy for yourself and remove it,” he said.
“I won’t do it. It isn’t decent.”
“Not decent? You wouldn’t know decent if it bit you on the buttocks. Take it off now, or I will do it for you.”
She hadn’t noticed her discarded dagger in his hands. Not for one second did she doubt he would cut her out of her dress. Her new dress, and the only one she had left. She didn’t hurry but she did remove the dress. “I’ll need a blanket.”
Since they sat on the same seat, Trelissick leaned forwards and removed a blanket from beneath the seat where she had sat all day. He had every necessity in those small spaces. He threw the blanket at her and then turned his head once again.
“Why do you have to be so stubborn all the time? Can you not see when the people around you know better?”
Her fists balled in the coarse fabric. “Better for whom? You? Anthony? My father? What is actually good for me isn’t what you might think. You’ve never experienced freedom the way I have, only to have it snatched from your grasp.”
“If society did more than speculate how deeply you were involved with pirates, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. If your father had ever been captured red-handed rather than taunting and eluding, you would be in prison, already dead or on your way to the colonies. You curse your brother yet his knighthood protects you now.”
With one last tug, she was free of all of her clothing, naked as the day she was born, the blanket itching against her skin. Her cheeks began to heat but she lifted her chin and pushed aside embarrassment. So far, James Trelissick had treated her somewhere between a sibling and a problem. Even in the dress shop, he had pulled away from her as though she carried a disease. He wasn’t likely to ravish her in his carriage with his men just outside.
Securing the blanket beneath her armpits with one arm, she maneuvered the rest
