Thomas had spent the better part of two days trying to discover all he could regarding Corbeau. After Corbeau had been escorted off the ship, Abramson had slipped after him to see where the man slept, ate, gambled, and drank. Abramson had not yet returned to the inn with any intelligence, which worried Thomas. He hoped the man hadn’t run into trouble.

The former cook’s laughter still rang in Thomas’s ears. He was determined to stay alert while remaining in port. He asked Peterson to stay with young Tom. He worried the lad might be a target for his former master.

When he arrived back at the inn after visiting several of the less-reputable establishments near port, he had no messages from Abramson. He did, however, have an invitation to dinner at Colonel Eden’s home. He wanted to decline, but Colonel Eden had helped him make the appropriate trade connections necessary for him to be successful in shipping and cargo. Not attending was not an option.

When he’d arrived and seen Caroline, he’d wished he had declined the invitation. She had barely glanced at him, had refused to speak to him beyond a slight inclination of her head, and, worst of all, she had put her hand on Nicholas Barritt’s arm.

Captain Barritt was the single most undeserving man in all of India, if reputations were to be believed—which Thomas did. He’d checked the man’s reputation as soon as he’d arrived in India, and learned Barritt was the conceited sort of man who would want a pretty woman on his arm. A pretty woman who remained firmly in her place lower than him.

Thomas had planned on leaving as soon as would have been socially polite, but he could not leave without warning Miss Gray that this young man was not worth the trouble of her pretense.

He’d planned on waiting until the card tables were put away; he’d have no chance of speaking privately to Miss Gray during such games. He’d gone out to the balcony for some air, when the lady herself took up a position by the railing, her face turned toward the moon.

He stepped forward before he could stop himself. “I never thought to see something that could compete with the stars at night. But then I saw you standing here.”

She did not startle at his approach, but neither did she turn to face him directly. She merely glanced at him from the corner of her eyes as if to verify it was really him. “That is a dangerously flirtatious thing for you to say to me.”

“To admire beauty is no crime. And it was not a flirtation. It was the truth.”

“There are three sides to every story. There is your side. There is my side. And then there is the truth. What you have said is your side. My side would take it as flirting. The truth . . .”

“And what is the truth?” he asked.

She finally turned to him, her expression unreadable. “I’m surprised you dare ask me such a question since you find my friendship with truth to be so relaxed.”

He breathed out his own frustration with the sarcasm she threw at him.

Despite her apparent anger, she answered his original question. “Truth is somewhere in between, I suppose.”

Strands of her hair had escaped her pins and clung to her neck in the heat of the night. But unlike the other women, she did not constantly wave a fan at her face and neck. She simply bore the heat without complaint. Much as she bore the distance he had imposed upon her before trespassing back into her life.

“I was surprised to see you this evening,” she said. “Are you not heading back to England immediately?”

“No, actually. I will stay for a few weeks while my cargo is acquired and loaded.”

“You’re staying? In Mumbai?” Her disbelief and displeasure was apparent in her rigid posture and tight lips. It looked like she was planning on forcing him back to his ship and sending him straight back to England.

So. She must have taken a liking to the Barritt fellow, or she would not have been so anxious to see him go.

He shouldn’t have cared. He knew that. He should not have given one whit how she felt. Hadn’t he been the one to tell her they had no chance together? Hadn’t he been the one to say there could never be anything between them because she had not been honest at the front?

Yes. But blast, he still hated it.

“So,” he began again. “Nicholas Barritt.”

“Yes.” The word exited her mouth with an abruptness that meant she had anticipated his objections. “He is the one whose mother sent me.”

He fidgeted, a thing he had stopped doing in childhood after his father glared him into standing still. “I don’t think he’s a good match for you.”

Her eyebrows shot up.

He hurried on, saying, “I mean this as a friend when I say that Nicholas Barritt is a man best left avoided. His reputation is one of a gambler and of a man seen in houses of ill repute. I advise you to dispatch your obligation to him quickly and find a more suitable arrangement elsewhere.”

“Tell me. Do you have more suitable suggestions for me? Is there perhaps a list you’ve drawn up of which I am unaware?”

He rocked back on his heels and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “No. I am not renewing our relationship if that is what you mean by more suitable suggestions. I only—”

“I most certainly did not mean for you to renew anything between us. Captain Scott, I am working very hard to make my own way here and to form my own opinions. I would be happy if you respected that.”

“Miss Gray, I only meant you would not be happy with a man for whom you must make yourself absurd.”

“You’re calling me absurd?”

“You’re behaving like a girl at her debut ball.”

Her mouth thinned to a tight slash across her face. “Well. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I am behaving as such.”

He felt the briefest relief that she’d finally seen sense until she added, “But perhaps if I had behaved as such when at my first ball, we would have both been spared a great deal of inconvenience, for I would have had no need to have been a passenger on your ship.”

“The inconvenience did not come from you being a passenger. It came from you not being forthcoming about prior commitments. It came from your estrangement with the truth.” He clamped his mouth closed as soon as the words were out. He hadn’t meant to say them aloud. He felt them, but he should not have said them. Not again.

“I believe I have offered my apologies for that. I would hope you could offer your forgiveness.”

He didn’t respond. He wasn’t even sure how he could.

“Please, Captain Scott,” she said, her tone soft, her eyes dull with something like exhaustion and irritation and hurt. “You are not in a position to make suggestions or recommendations. You’ve made your opinions clear regarding how you feel about me, which makes me no longer your concern.”

He had not expected that. He should have, but he hadn’t. He had also not expected his own anger. “Don’t be foolish and discard solid information merely because it wounds your vanity. You cannot pretend to appreciate illumination and then insist on sitting in the darkness out of sheer stubborn pride.”

The hurt in her eyes melted into fury. He expected to be thrashed about by her response when a voice from the doorway called out. “There you are!”

They both turned to where Nicholas Barritt stood. He leaned against the doorframe and appeared casual, but the captain had heard enough rumors to believe Barritt was incapable of casual behavior toward anything he was set on acquiring. And from the look in the man’s eyes as they settled on Miss Gray, he was very much set on acquiring a bride.

She gave him a playful tilt of her head. “Why, I’m flattered you were looking for me.”

“I would imagine all of England has been looking for you from the moment you stepped onto the ship that brought you here.”

For pity’s sake, how could any woman with any degree of sense fall for such a ridiculous line? It wasn’t even that clever. Not that his line of comparing her to the stars had been so original, but it was not so ridiculous either. He glanced at Miss Gray to verify she had seen through the man’s absurdity, but she’d begun walking toward Barritt.

He wanted to call her back, but she had already told him that she believed herself no longer his concern. She was wrong, of course. Just because he felt he could not marry her did not mean he wished for her to go to the likes of a man like Barritt.

She reached Barritt’s side and took his outstretched arm.

As they went inside together, he heard Barritt say with a laugh, “It sounded like you were arguing.”

Thomas’s fists clenched.

She did not laugh. “No,” she said. “We were merely saying goodbye.” She looked back at him, her expression one of painful determination.

It bothered him that she did not take his advice. It bothered him that he felt so keen to give advice. He groaned at his own foolishness and followed them into the house. It was time to bid farewell to Colonel Eden and get back to the inn. Perhaps Abramson had returned. Even if he hadn’t, Thomas had no desire to stay and watch Miss Gray make herself ridiculous to a man who was not worth the trouble.

Back at the inn, Abramson sat in the common room with a drink in his hand and a rag to his forehead. His split lip seeped blood down his chin, and his purpled eye swelled.

“You look like I feel,” Thomas said. “What happened?”

“I was jumped from behind at some squalid little inn not too far from the docks. Actually, I cannot know for certain that it was an inn. More likely it was a brothel that permits long-term guests. I wasn’t sure Corbeau was there before, but I’m quite sure now.”

“How do you know this isn’t the work of street thugs?” Thomas indicated the battered face.

“As they tackled me, one of them called out to a third to tell Corbeau he was being followed.”

“Blast!”

Abramson smiled and then winced as his cut in his lip widened. “Are you really worried that he reached Corbeau to relay the message?”

Warily, Thomas said, “Did he not?”

“I’m offended, sir. Do you not remember that I can kill a man three different ways with my bare hands?”

“Did you?”

Abramson lifted a shoulder as he tossed back his drink. “Of course not. One doesn’t have to kill a man to render him inoperable. They are all snug in a cell and unlikely to see the light of day until we are well out to sea.”

“And Corbeau? What of him?”

Abramson’s grin turned to a grimace. “We know where he is. And we know he is up to mischief or else he wouldn’t need to be concerned with being followed. What we don’t know is whether that mischief involves you or something else equally nefarious. I will keep a watch on him.”

“Are you in any condition to continue your duties?”

“I think the bruises give me a more devil-may-care look. I’m sure to be the favorite of all the balls, which is why I shall stay away from them. I would hate to give the rest of you such fierce competition for the ladies’ affections.”

His comment made Thomas sigh.

Abramson grunted and slid his glass to Thomas. “That bad, is it?”

“Ladies are notoriously bad for a sailor. Remind me of that the next time I allow my gaze to linger too long on one.”

“Are we speaking of a particular lady who happened to have been a passenger recently?”

Thomas’s small smile faltered. “She’s with Nicholas Barritt tonight.”

“No! Not really? And he’s interested?”

Thomas swirled the golden liquid around in the glass. “I would say more than interested. He was a man at market and ready to buy.”

“I daresay Barritt has no idea what he’s getting himself into. Of course, I have seen India take the fight out of a woman—maybe it’s the heat or the insects—but I’ve seen it put the fight into a woman, as well. We’ll see which sort of woman Miss Gray is next time we’re in Mumbai.”

Next time they were in Mumbai.

Abramson meant when they returned and Thomas found Miss Gray either married and docile or married and kicking against the pricks. Peterson would not have let her go so easily. Peterson would have told him to go to her, fling her over his shoulder, and cart her back to his ship like a Viking warrior of old.

But how could he? A pretty face and a keen mind were admirable, but they were not enough. Trust. Loyalty. Faithfulness. Those were the things that made a marriage.

No. He’d made the right choice. He even wished her well in whatever life-altering choice she must make in her near future. For it would be her near future—Barritt wouldn’t want to wait long before claiming his prize.

Thomas turned the conversation back to Corbeau as he and his lieutenant tried to guess what the man could be up to. With supplies coming from the subcontinent, he worried for the safety of his future cargo and the men bringing it to him. He had cloth, indigo, and a variety of spices that he’d already spent a fair amount of money acquiring because he had a buyer in England who was willing to pay top prices for the goods.

To lose this particular shipment would be to lose everything he had worked so hard to achieve.

He drained the rest of Abramson’s glass. He needed to get his ship loaded and leave the trouble of mutiny and women behind. The sooner the better.