Three days later the ship’s bell rang, announcing their arrival in the benign, spectacularly blue bay that eased them into Brest.
The Olivia was anchored among a number of other trading vessels. Looking gay and enigmatic and sleek…apart from her four guns, of course.
The Caridad, due in Brest after sailing from Le Havre, they saw nowhere.
For the three prior days, Violet had astounded Hercules by spending almost the entirety of her time in the galley. He watched, gaping, as she scrubbed it spotless. She ground grain. She peeled and chopped whatever was placed before her to peel and chop. She stitched sails. She’d hoped to exhaust herself from her soul outward so thoroughly that sleep would be a black, dreamless escape.
As it turned out, her body wanted sleep less than it wanted the Earl of Ardmay.
It chose to toss and turn in a fever of resentment and desire, rather than oblige her with soothing dreams.
She wasn’t hiding in the galley, she told herself.
She’d never hidden from anything in her life.
Of course, the moment she saw the Earl of Ardmay she realized this wasn’t true.
The sight of him clubbed her breathless.
But she had to admit, within the past few days he’d begun to look a trifle…disreputable, she decided with critical surprise. He’d missed a minuscule row of whiskers beneath his chin, when usually his face was scraped scrupulously smooth. Blue smudges of fatigue arced beneath his eyes. Perhaps he’d taken to drinking the nights away.
He took a long, long expressionless look at her. She bravely, coolly met this stare, while her knees struggled to hold her up.
He’d clearly decided he needn’t waste words on someone who had told him, quite clearly, to go to the devil. Because he said nothing at all. As they were lowered into the launches, he spoke only to the crew, and only to issue orders: Lavay would row out to The Olivia with Greeber and Cocoran to see if Hardesty were aboard, or whether they could discover anything else of interest about The Olivia or her crew; and then, if possible, they would query sailors on the docks to see if they could learn anything about the owners or crews of the ships that Le Chat had thus far plundered.
He and Miss Redmond would visit Mr. Musgrove, as promised.
From the rowdy dockside inn they sent word via messenger to the merchant of their arrival and the purpose of their visit. Within the hour he’d sent his own landau to take them through Brest’s handsome, crowded streets to a villa of pink stone twice the size of the usual London town house. The least he could do for an earl, and so forth, according to his reply.
And what a cold, silent, albeit mercifully short journey that was. Violet and the earl sat opposite each other and watched a portion of town roll by out of the windows adjacent to their seats, like polite, mute tourists.
Mr. Musgrove himself greeted them at the door, beckoning them in.
“My apologies for the poor quality of the wine I’m about to serve you, Captain Flint. Sent Fenton running off to fetch it. Le Chat sank The Caridad in the Bay of Biscay and stole the beautiful sherry I was expecting just two days ago. You are lately styled an earl, I am to understand? Forgive me. Allow me to congratulate you and make my bow before I complain to you of my own tragedies. I have it all backward, the social niceties, but I have had a traumatic, traumatic time of it indeed.”
They’d been too late to save The Caridad.
The shock of the news landed in her gut.
Followed by an odd thrill, odd because her feelings about it were decidedly mixed: she’d had indeed been right about Brest and about The Caridad.
She glanced sidelong at the earl. His fingers twitched, then flattened hard against his thighs. His profile was granite hard.
Angry likely didn’t go far enough to describe how he felt at arriving too late.
Musgrove didn’t notice. “And who is this young lady?” He belatedly turned to her. She was destined to be an afterthought for everyone today, she thought irritably.
“My ward, Miss Violet Redmond.” Five curt, inflectionless words from the earl.
Ward? Very well. She was his ward, then. She curtsied.
“Ah, your ward?” Mr. Musgrove was clearly too distracted to feel any curiosity about her, and the Redmond name didn’t ring any particular bells for him. “Pleasure, my dear.”
The buttons of Mr. Musgrove’s exquisitely tailored coat strained to hold it closed. Violet stood back warily when he bowed, lest one fly from it like a pistol shot and take out her eye. But he carried his belly before him like a trophy of his success; he strutted.
They followed him.
For quite a long way, as it turned out. The house was large.
From the looks of things, he’d acquired or copied taste, as his home was furnished with pieces doubtlessly purchased from French aristocrats fleeing the guillotine. Everywhere her gaze snagged on gilt and the fancifully turned legs of table and chairs too spindly to hold him. They were trophies, too.
But Mr. Musgrove’s complexion was an unhealthy cherry color and he was sweating like a blacksmith in Hades. He dabbed at the rivulets racing down his forehead with a delicate handkerchief at rhythmic intervals.
It wasn’t very hot in Brest. He was clearly suffering from nerves.
“Your loss is devastating, Mr. Musgrove,” the earl agreed coldly.
“I should say so, Lord Flint! I should say so! Five thousand pounds worth of cargo, easily! I would love to guillotine that bastard Le Chat. It’s the second of my ships he’s captured and sunk. I feel persecuted,” he moaned. “Persecuted! Do you mind if I sit?”
He dropped into a high-backed chair that gave an alarmed squeak and hoisted his feet up onto a plush red stool. Violet noticed his little feet bulged over the tops of his finely stitched shoes.
“Thank you, Fenton,” he said to the be-wigged, dazzlingly liveried footman, silent as a cat, who brought in a bottle and two more glasses and then crept out again.
The earl and Violet settled into their seats slightly more gingerly than their host, because Mr. Musgrove had taken the sturdiest chair, leaving them to the spindly satin-covered ones.
He gazed at them, his thunderous expression and internal chaos distinctly at odds with the need to provide promised hospitality.
Understandably, the smile he finally produced was sickly.
“How do you know for certain it was Le Chat who sank The Caridad?” The earl’s voice was astonishingly calm.
“From what I hear, he lowered the crew of The Caridad into boats after he and his crew soundly trounced mine. Swords and pistols, they used. He wears a bloody mask, did you know?” He made circles of this thumbs and forefingers and held them up to his eyes.
“By way of disguise? Silly, ain’t it? Pirates!” He shook his head in violent disbelief, which sent his hair and jowls swaying spellbindingly. “But my men made it to shore in the launch, parched, starving and their trousers all but pissed in fear. But lived to tell the tale. I want Le Chat’s head! You’ve had a loss recently, too, eh, Lord Flint? Thanks to Le Chat? You were associated with Captain Moreheart?”
Associated with. The earl seemed to consider this as he took a sip of his port.
Violet watched his hands. They shook when he touched me, she thought. Those powerful hands of this powerful man.
She imagined his fingertips skimming her throat.
Her eyes half closed against the shocking onslaught of sensation.
His hands were steady now.
Hers no longer were. She carefully set her glass down.
“Yes. The Steadfast went down. Attributed to Le Chat. The crew hasn’t been found.”
Musgrove clucked, shook his head. “Moreheart was a damn good man, too. Begging your pardon, Miss Redmond. For the ‘damn.’ Oh dear, I beg your pardon once more. I did business with Moreheart, so I know. So we are united, then, in our determination to end this scoundrel’s scourge, and I wish you the best, Lord Flint, for from what I understand, you are certainly the man for the job. Here’s to retrieving Le Chat’s head.”
He raised his glass, and the earl raised his, but Violet sipped at her wine noncommittally, unwilling to toast to the decapitation of her brother, even in pretense.
“Would it be possible to speak to one of your crew about the incident, Mr. Musgrove? Do you know if they’re still in port or whether they’ve hired on to other ships? Do you recall who captained her?”
“The earl could use a cook’s mate,” Violet tried sweetly. “If one is available.”
“But the one I have now works so cheaply even if new to the concept of work, and is so devoted to work they scarcely see the deck anymore,” the earl replied smoothly. Still not looking at her.
He was at least very aware she hadn’t been on deck.
A pathetic thing to cherish. Nevertheless.
Mr. Musgrove was too immersed in his own woes to care about theirs, or notice any byplay.
“I don’t know what became of the crew, sir. Likely they’ve scattered to the four winds and could be on their way to Ecuador by now. Cannot even recall their names. Good luck and Godspeed to you. Wish you’d been earlier.” There wasn’t a shred of accusation in this sentiment. It was bitterly wistful.
“As do I, Mr. Musgrove.”
The earl pulled out his watch and reviewed the time, then slid it back into his coat pocket. “I’m curious—did any of your men get a look at the pirate’s ship? So much of what we know about Le Chat is hearsay.”
Musgrove shook his head and winced at the flavor of the wine. Violet thought it was perfectly acceptable, though she wasn’t tempted to drink it down. Now, if it had been champagne…or sherry…
“’Twas night, of course; there was fog, as this was on the Bay of Biscay. No one could say for certain. It happened very quickly. Very professional,” he said snidely. And gulped down the remainder of his wine, made a face, and slapped the glass down rather too hard on a table that was likely a hundred years older than him.
Then gave them another weak smile. And sighed.
“Mr. Musgrove…” Violet began hesitantly. “You said you did business with Captain Moreheart of The Steadfast.”
The earl tensed almost imperceptibly.
“Yes, Miss Redmond.” Musgrove inspected her closely for the first time, his sharp brown eyes clearly approving everything from her coiffure to her slippers. No doubt tallying up the value of all of it with his mercantile heart, rather than lusting after her other feminine assets.
“Were you part of an investment group? My father is, and often likes to finance ventures such as these,” she said brightly.
“Does he? I’m down two ships now, but not entirely shed of capital. We may wish to have a conversation, your father and I, my dear.” He clearly found it endearing that she should bother her feminine head over business.
She leaned forward like an eager pupil. “Where do you invest your profits?” she asked almost breathlessly. Enjoying her own performance.
Mr. Musgrove poured more wine. Behind him, a clock pendulum swung. Once, twice.
Only three times, but it was enough to convince her he was officially delaying his response.
“Into more cargo, of course, Miss Redmond.” He smiled again. “More wine?”
“No, thank you.”
She glanced at the earl to see if he’d noticed Mr. Musgrove’s hesitance.
He had. And was clever enough to follow it with one of his own questions.
“Where was The Caridad bound after she delivered her goods here in Brest?” he tried.
“I’d planned to send her on to Cádiz on a mission to purchase sherry, you know. Amontillado. Marvelous stuff. Another of our investors will send a ship from La Rochelle instead. The Prosperar.”
“What kinds of cargo do you usually invest in?” she asked. It was an excellent question.
“It varies, my dear.” He leveled upon Violet a look reminiscent of Isaiah Redmond. Disciplinary and indulgent. She hadn’t missed those looks in the least for the past week or so, she realized. “I imagine you’re interested in the latest silks, and that’s why you ask?”
“Of course,” she decided to say. She gave a little laugh and lowered her eyes, pretending to be abashed.
Charmed, he smiled benevolently.
At least the earl was looking at her at last. The look was decidedly bemused, but he was looking at her, nevertheless.
He spoke. “I’m curious, Mr. Musgrove. Have you spoken with Mr. Hardesty whilst he’s in port? We were to dine with him in Le Havre but we unfortunately missed each other, and we’ve business to discuss.”
“Ah, Hardesty.” Musgrove leaned back in his chair. “Apparently if you want to see Hardesty all you have to do is look for your best friend’s wife, and he’ll be alongside her in bed.” He chuckled richly, then gave a start when he remembered Violet. “Good heavens, begging your pardon, Miss Redmond. A man has difficulty minding what he says, you know, when he’s lost five thousand pounds and a ship! It’s a shock,” he murmured. “A shock.” He dabbed at his forehead, as more sweat beads popped. “It’s all hearsay regarding Hardesty, too, and his, shall we say, amorous conquests. Begging your pardon, Miss Redmond. But I’ve heard of women weeping and rending their garments over him. Friend of Hardesty’s, are you, Captain Flint?” He said his as though it were unlikely indeed.
“Acquaintance. I dined with Comte Hebert in Le Havre and we’d hope to discuss a particular matter of trade with Mr. Hardesty, but he sent his regrets. Was otherwise detained. I’d hoped to pass on a message from the viscomte to him in port.”
“Try the pubs. Or row on out to The Olivia. Someone’s bound to know where he’s got to. You now, I’ve met him but the once. No devil should be allowed to possess looks like his. What choice does he have but to break hearts? What man’s wife or daughter is safe? Women are only women after all. Begging your pardon, Miss Redmond. Again. Though he certainly is a worthy competitor when it comes to trade. Has four guns aboard The Olivia. Fast ship, that one. He’ll outrace Le Chat for certain.”
“She is quick, indeed,” the earl said ironically.
And Violet knew the “she” encompassed her, too, and was unsure whether to be flattered or uneasy.
The earl slammed his beaver hat down on his head as they departed in Musgrove’s landau.
That was her first clue that he was angrier than she’d originally thought.
The next came immediately thereafter.
“What aren’t you telling me, Miss Redmond? What else do you know? I do not appreciate being made a fool.”
She was speechless in the face of his anger.
Ah, so it hadn’t been silence so much as it had been a gathering storm that had now broken. He was so coldly furious that he seemed to increase to twice his size.
“Speak, or I will leave you here in the port if you don’t tell me now.”
“Come now, Lord Flint. Are you angry at me, or are you angry at your failure to get here in time?”
Oh God. Why, why, why did she taunt him? She never, never could help herself.
He didn’t like this at all. His eyes narrowed. He issued what sounded like a feral growl.
“If you’ve withheld anything from me that might have helped in any way…” He let the threat dangle.
Enough. Temper was an indulgence. No one spoke to a Redmond that way.
“I’m telling you all I know, you bloody arrogant man, and you should be grateful that I have. I swear to you on my family that I have—will that suit you? I’m not happy that The Caridad was sunk. Or to think my brother may have been involved. But I was right about Brest. Shouldn’t that alone tell you something of my honesty? And furthermore, Lord Flint, as I said before, I know my brother. And it’s not as simple as you would like it to be. You heard that hesitation in Musgrove’s voice, didn’t you, when I asked him about cargo? He’s hiding something!”
She realized then that at some point he’d stopped truly listening to her words and had simply begun watching her. His thoughts clearly divided.
“Didn’t you?” she demanded, a little more weakly. Damn blue eyes.
He was still studying her. “Miss Redmond?”
“What is it?” she snapped.
“You look horrible.” His voice was brutally cold and censorious.
She recoiled as though he’d struck her.
Her first thought was, “That’s impossible.” She was Violet Redmond, after all.
He began to enumerate her flaws on his fingers. “You’ve dark shadows beneath your eyes. Which are red, by the way. You look pale. Nearly haggard. Almost as if you haven’t slept for days. I wonder why that is? Could it be that something is preying upon your mind?”
She stared at him through eyes slit with fury.
“But your hair is perfect,” he concluded snidely.
Scoundrel!
“My conscience is not tormenting me over something I’m not telling you regarding Le Chat, if that’s what you’re implying.” Her words were taut.
“I know it isn’t. It’s not what I’m implying.”
This brought her up short. She began to frown. Then stopped immediately, smoothing fingers across her forehead.
“You are not precisely the picture of radiant health, Captain. Speaking of sallow complexions and dark shadows and the like. You look quite…quite…disreputable, in fact.”
He dropped his mouth open in mock horror. “Surely not disreputable!”
“Worse than that.” Still, she could not bring herself to say savage.
His voice went frighteningly gentle.
“Ah, but do you know what my trouble is, Violet?” Very ironic. “Because I do. Here it is: I am the captain of The Fortuna. I have a great responsibility to my men and now to the bloody King of England. My fortunes are dwindling. My reputation and my entire future rest upon my success in capturing this pirate for bounty. And yet…”
And he leaned toward her slowly, slowly, confidingly, hands folded casually folded on his knees, his hat dangling from one of them. The more forward he leaned the more backward she leaned, until she was pressed back against the admittedly very comfortable seat of the landau.
He dropped each syllable heavily, wearily, ironically.
“…and yet I cannot sleep at night for wanting you.”
No lawyer had ever made an accusation sound quite so egregious. And yet it was infused with a sort of desperate wryness.
Her breath left her in a tiny shocked gust.
She stared at him. And then pressed her hands involuntarily against her eyes, like a child, wanting to hide from her own frustration and from the weary yet ferocious, wry and very determined desire she saw in his face.
And because she feared his will was more powerful than her own, and acknowledging this was a concession on her part indeed.
And then she pulled her hands away from her eyes so she could glare her feigned indifference properly.
“Tell me you don’t want me,” he said the moment she did. A quick low demand.
Her hands sought and found each other, folded tightly together in disciplinary solidarity in her lap. No: you will not touch him.
He shifted farther forward and spoke in a low, hard, persuasive rush. “Tell me you haven’t lain awake each night imagining nothing else but my hands on your body. And my mouth on your breasts. And my cock inside you, Violet.”
Her lips parted on a shocked oh. Heat roared over her body.
He knew precisely what he was doing to her. She’d been nearly savage in his arms, after all. He knew what she wanted, and how wildly she responded.
“I don’t think of your cock in precisely those terms,” she said tightly.
She’d never said such a word aloud in her life. It was desperately coarse and erotic and as thrilling as brandishing a loaded weapon. Then again, he’d handed the weapon to her.
So to speak.
It had the desired effect of shocking him. His eyes flared wide. She’d momentarily thrown him. He was not so impervious, then, as he seemed. He was not invulnerable. She was reminded again of her power over him. It was a power that baffled and tormented him, and perversely made her want to protect him. As she’d always wanted to protect him.
I don’t want you like this, she thought desperately.
But she didn’t know how she wanted him.
“Well, then,” he drawled softly, pensively. “Why don’t you share with me which of my parts you do think about when you’re alone? I might find it instructive. I might even put them to use for your pleasure. I know so very, very much about pleasure, Violet. And I know you enjoy an adventure.”
You would think by now you would have learned not to toy with him, her conscience told her, shaking its head wearily.
She could hear her own breath now, shallow and ragged with fury. And frankly, feral want.
He was enjoying this. He was also clearly in hell. Then again, he was eminently adaptable, and had managed to make a sort of heaven from hell many times in his life.
She was new at this.
He gave her a small, tight smile.
“Go on, Violet. Say you don’t want me. Make me believe it.”
“Unfair,” she muttered.
“Unfair?” He sounded genuinely astonished, almost disappointed that she could only come up with that pallid word. “Fair? What the bloody hell does ‘fair’ have to do with…any of this?” His knuckles were white, so hard were his hands clenching the brim of his hat.
Any of this. Meaning desire. Pirates. His diminishing fortune. The fact that they could not be more at cross-purposes regarding Lyon Redmond’s fate.
“It isn’t my fault,” she tried desperately. I’m suffering, too.
“Like. Hell,” he disagreed evenly.
Well. So American he sounded then. And hardly gallant. He did have a point, however. It was somewhat her fault. She’d rather courted it all from the beginning.
“All I ask is that you look in my eyes and say it, Violet. And make me believe it.”
Bastard.
She bravely looked into his eyes. Felt her heart constrict when she saw again those shadows ringing them, fatigue deepening the lines about them. His face was taut with emotion that she knew was equal parts frustration and something he would never admit to, something that was frightening and startlingly new to both of them, and had a good deal to do with why he’d saved that jasmine blossom in the book.
But desire was so much simpler to understand, and so desire is what they called it.
She leaned forward a little, matching his posture.
“I. Don’t. Want. You.”
Rivers had flowed uphill with more ease than she’d uttered that sentence.
Once she’d done it, she felt utterly spent. In saying it, she’d won. I have no more lies in me, she thought. If he asked me to say it again, I simply couldn’t. He could take me now. Her limbs were weak.
He blinked.
And before her eyes the ferocity slowly went out of him. Blood returned to the knuckles. His hand loosened on his hat. He laid it delicately on the seat next to him. And studied her quietly.
Too drained to do anything else, she looked helplessly, wordlessly back at him.
Then he sat back and transferred a brooding stare out the carriage window.
And was silent the rest of the way to the inn.
She couldn’t help but note that brooding suited him every bit as much as…
Every single other thing he did.
Lavay was the jarringly sunny opposite of the earl. They found him easily, as his hair shone like a polished doubloon in the raucous smoke-filled murk of the inn. He was lounging with long legs outstretched, managing to make the scarred table and sturdy battered chair he occupied look like a throne. In his hand was a tankard of ale and over him bent the barmaid who’d brought it to him, as though she was about to ease herself into his lap. From the surly, resentful faces of the men at the tables surrounding him and the condition of their pint glasses—nearly empty—she’d been lingering with Lavay for longer than was practical.
“Ah! Sit, my friends, sit,” he greeted them cheerily. “Polly will bring each of you an ale, won’t you dear?”
Polly straightened with apparent reluctance to take a look at Lavay’s friends. Her bosom shifted tectonically in her bodice and continued quivering for some time after she stopped moving. Corkscrews of red hair sprung from beneath the edges of her white cap and she’d a veritable galaxy of freckles over skin fairer even than Violet’s, and her brows and lashes were nearly invisibly fair.
She took the swift measure of the large thunderous earl. Her round face became comically fulsome with appreciation.
“I will bring you anything you want, monsieur,” she vowed on a purr. “Ma grandpére Ned, ’e brew the finest in all of Brest.”
Her hand went up over her own breast as if by way of illustration, and the earl followed it there with his eyes.
“I’ll have a whiskey,” Violet told Polly coolly. “And seven pints of ale.”
Three pairs of eyes turned on her in astonishment.
Because that’s what it will take to even begin to take the edge off my nerves and temper.
But something wriggled into her awareness beneath the nerves and temper. She began to frown. The barmaid’s name was Polly. And her grandfather Ned? Polly was the name of Ned Hawthorne’s daughter. She served the patrons at the Pig & Thistle and had had been moony every since Colin Eversea’s marriage.
Ned Hawthorne owned the Pig & Thistle pub in Pennyroyal Green!
Polly and Ned were hardly French names.
“Bring a pint of dark, Polly, merci,” the earl said, unabashedly, overtly enjoying the view of the barmaid’s bosom the way one might admire any natural wonder. She was clearly accustomed to it. “And our friend here was jesting about whiskey. She will have one light ale.”
He yanked out a chair for Violet with the other, and motioned for her to sit without looking at her.
Lavay deigned to reel in his legs so the earl could sit in the chair next to him.
Polly and Ned. Her spine was almost stinging with portent. Breathless now, Violet ducked her head and surreptitiously scanned the room. All around her were drinking sailors: it was evident from the weathered bristly faces, knotted neck cloths, dirty, turned-up sleeves on striped or dingy linen shirts. A scattering of men dressed very like the earl in casually elegant clothes seemed to be biding their time over ale while waiting to board ships leaving port. Myriad languages and accents rose and fell.
And, of course, she saw Lyon nowhere.
She closed her eyes in weary frustration. Thanks to Lyon’s cryptic note she was clearly now doomed to see portent everywhere. She was generally accustomed to causing surprises, but her nerves hadn’t yet become inured to enduring them again and again and again.
Getting her eyes open again proved to be surprisingly difficult. Exhaustion was wrestling with her will. You wanted variety, she thought wryly.
She got them open again. And saw the earl’s eyes darting from her face. He’d been watching her.
His knee shifted, brushing hers beneath the table as he turned to look about the room, perhaps wondering what she was looking for.
He might as well have drawn a finger up her bare thigh, such was the jolt of sensation. Violet felt her knees begin to yearningly drift apart beneath the table.
She clapped them shut with considerable effort.
He was all too willing to fight dirty. Lavay had said this about the earl. She really doubted the knee brush had been an accident, as much as she doubted he was innocent of the effect it had on her.
One of the earl’s eyebrows twitched in feigned puzzlement when he noticed himself framed in her fixed, accusatory gaze. He casually craned his head again, and looked visibly relieved to see Polly wending through the crowd with his ale.
Lavay, for his part, seemed entirely unaffected by the moods of his companions, but then he’d had a head start on the ale. “Well, I should tell you that I rowed out to The Olivia with Corcoran and Greeber. We were greeted by a few polite and quite closemouthed crew members, all of whom, I should say, were enormous, well-spoken and positively bristling with weapons. Would do our own crew proud, Captain. No, Mr. Hardesty wasn’t aboard. He was ashore. No, they didn’t know where he’d got to. He was likely in a meeting in Le Havre, as he was a Very Important Trader, and so forth. And as we could hardly demand to search the ship on circumstantial evidence…well, naturally we rowed back out again. BUT…”
He leaned back, and drummed his fingers, and looked decidedly pleased with himself.
“What?” Flint was in no mood for suspense.
“…not before I issued an invitation for Mr. Hardesty to dine with me, Captain Flint, and Captain Flint’s doxie, Violet Redmond, aboard The Fortuna tonight.”
“Doxie?” Violet choked.
The earl pointedly did not look at her.
Lavay seemed mildly puzzled. “Well, but of course, Miss Redmond. Didn’t you agree to be the earl’s—”
“It’s perfect,” the earl interjected smoothly. “Lavay knows that we agreed early on, Miss Redmond, that your brother would, shall we say, object to the thought of you being defiled by the likes of me, which would make you very effective bait. Hence his stratagem. I commend it.”
He took a little too much wicked, dark relish in the word defiled. With his eyes he warned her, and not kindly, to compose herself. Lavay was not stupid, and he was studying her with those cool gray eyes, and would draw conclusions about her and the earl she disliked.
They were going to lure Lyon into a trap, using her as bait.
Her hands turned to ice.
“It’s the point of you continuing with us, isn’t it? You agreed to be bait?” the earl said with intolerable calm.
Lavay had more to say. “I might have also put it about that the doxie Violet Redmond had been very reluctant to submit to the earl’s attentions at first, but that the earl actually preferred a bit of a battle every time, so he considered this an asset. And that he would be happy to share her with Mr. Hardesty if he was in need of a little fiery feminine companionship.” Lavay was proud of himself.
“Good God. Very good work, Lavay,” the earl approved admiringly.
Violet was horrified by the plan’s brilliance. “But…It will kill Lyon to hear it. He won’t be able to bear hearing it. He’ll be determined to…kill you.”
“That is the point,” Lavay said a little too happily and bloodthirstily. “But no killing will take place if we can help it. We’ll simply apprehend him then.”
The earl’s knee shifted ever so slightly again against hers as he turned to greet the barmaid like a long lost friend.
This time Violet had no trouble jerking it away from him. Appalled, in that instant to be touching him.
With what in God’s name had she been thinking?
She hadn’t been thinking with her brain.
Of course these men were deadly serious in their intent to capture Lyon. As the earl had said earlier in the landau, his entire future depended upon bringing him to justice. “Justice” in England was entirely too often synonymous with “hanging by the neck until dead.”
Violet went silent. There was nothing like envisioning her brother dancing at the end of a rope or helpless at the point of a pistol to kill desire.
Polly the barmaid seemed to have suddenly sprouted eight arms and each one was carrying a foaming pint of ale. She crouched to begin plunking theirs down on the table.
“’ere you are, monsieur, the fine dark ye asked for and I hope you enjoy it, and for mademois—OH!”
She dumped the entirety of a light ale down Violet’s bodice.
Violet gasped and shot backward, toppling her chair, scrambling to her feet, sending the now empty tankard rolling the length of her shins to land on the floor with a clank.
She flung out her arms, staring down at the sodden bodice. Ale had all but glued it to her.
Violet stared pure evil at the barmaid.
The men began to stand warily.
Polly began babbling inconsolably. “Mon dieu, mademoiselle, I am so, so clumsy! I am horrified! You must—”
Without preamble she seized Violet’s arm with shockingly strong hands and dragged her through the chuckling, ogling crowd to the bar. She seized a rag and began scrubbing at her bodice and rattling rapid-fire unaccented, hushed and very aristocratic English at her.
“Quiet. Quickly. Short answers. Are you or are you not the earl’s doxie?”
Violet’s heart stopped.
“Quickly! Yes or no?”
“No. You work for—”
“Yes. For God’s sake, don’t say his name,” she hissed.
“Is your name really Polly?” Clever Lyon!
“I’m asking the questions. Are you with the earl voluntarily?”
“This is silk. Have a care. Yes.”
Polly became a bit less vigorous with the scrubbing. “Why?”
“To try to find Lyon. The earl wants to capture him. I want to find him. I am to be bait.”
Dab dab dab Polly went at her bodice. “Are you truly well and safe?”
The questions and answers were swift, under-breath, staccato.
“The earl will not harm me. He is a good man. He has been charged by the king with capturing Le Chat.”
He will test my will, he will haunt my dreams, he’ll make me peel potatoes, he’ll make me crave his touch with a mere glance, but no. He will not harm me.
And why do I feel like a traitor to that bastard even now?
Polly dabbed once more, giving up, and flung the rag over the bar.
“Another two pint of ze dark and light,” she bellowed.
Violet put her hand on Polly’s arm. “What the hell is Lyon doing? Why is he doing it? Please tell him to come home. Why can’t I see him? Please. Please tell me.”
“He has more work to do,” Polly said shortly. “Hush now. Hush.”
“Where is he going next? What does ‘two more’ mean? Tell me that at least! Is it ships?”
“Enough.” Polly’s lips clamped closed. “We are finished. Go sit down. I’ll bring you another ale. Say nothing of this.”
Violet drifted back to the table, damp, stunned, happy, furious, and utterly unmindful of the drinkers leering at her bodice, which was still clinging to her absurdly provocatively.
Her chair had been righted; she sat, still dazed. She felt the earl’s eyes bore into her. She didn’t meet them.
Lavay and the earl had been joined by a raw-boned, florid man who wore his shaggy blond hair pushed behind his ears. His black coat was well tailored, apart from the slash in the sleeve. As though he’d recently been in a knife or sword battle. A battered beaver hat sat in his lap.
“Miss Redmond, this is Captain William Gullickson, lately of The Caridad. Lavay met him this afternoon and invited him to join us here.”
Ah. The captain of the ship they’d been too late to save.
Gullickson half stood and performed an awkward nodded to her. “A pleasure, Miss Redmond.”
The voice was drink-and-smoke-roughened but the accent hinted at a formal English education somewhere in his distant past. He slicked a hand through his hair self-consciously. The hair was dirty. His nails were dirty. She was careful not to take too deep of a breath, because she was certain he bathed indifferently.
“I’m not certain whether this is a conversation a…lady…should hear.” He glanced up at Violet, then almost shyly glanced away. Too long at sea, too roughened to feel comfortable in a presence as refined as hers.
Polly appeared and plopped two ales onto the tabletop. “No charge, monsieur, due to my mishap.”
She winked at the earl and ignored Violet utterly.
“Miss Redmond has a sturdy constitution,” the earl assured Captain Gullickson. “You may speak before her.”
She realized her bodice was still damp, and she shivered with it. She glanced down, and saw that her nipples were alert and staring directly at the earl.
He followed her gaze. His knuckles immediately went white around the tankard of ale he was gripping. He stared. He toasted her ironically, shook his head slightly, lifted the tankard and drank most of it down in one long anaesthetizing gulp.
She watched his throat move. And then she forced her eyes to her lap. Breathed in, breathed out. Lyon would be safe from the earl and Lavay for now.
He has more work to do. But what work was Lyon doing?
She was heartily sick of all the men in her life at the moment.
“You want to know how it happened?” Gullickson began. “With Le Chat. They came on in the fog, so we couldn’t see his ship. Surprised us, they did. Came over the sides, quiet as cats. Le Chat, indeed.” He shook his head bitterly. “Came in launches, from what we saw later. Had us surrounded almost before we could draw swords or pistols, and then they fought like devils. Swords. The pistols were for later, when they forced us into the boats. Honorable.” He laughed shortly and spat abruptly on the ground, and Violet jumped.
“The whole lot of them in masks. Like something out of a nightmare it was.” He looked up for sympathy and got it in the form of nods from Lavay and Flint. “But he was a gentleman. No disguising that, is there?” Another of those ugly laughs. “I’ll never forget it. He said, ‘It’s for the good of all, Captain Gullickson.’” Gullickson mimicked an absurdly refined drawl. “How the bloody hell could that be true, I ask you? Robbing and sinking ships? How did he know it was my ship? And then I hear the guns, and The Caridad…well, I watched her sink with my own eyes. I’ve been drinking ever since.”
He drained his pint and banged it on the table for another, craning his head in vain for the barmaid. Flint didn’t look eager to buy him another one. Violet suspected the captain had been drinking long before The Caridad sank and rather enjoyed the excuse to continue drinking.
“Did you see what Le Chat looked like?” Flint asked with cool detachment. “Any details would be helpful.”
“Nay. Was dark. Foggy. He was tall, near tall as you, Lord Flint. Lean. Hair was dark. Saw that. Not long. Clean-shaven. Quite the dandy. Apart from the ridiculous mask.”
She still had trouble picturing Lyon wearing a mask. How Jonathan would laugh.
“Earrings? Tattoos? Scars?”
Parrots? Violet wanted to ask, remembering Jonathan’s fit of mirth.
He shrugged. “Saw none of those things. But ’twas dark, as I said. Lit only by ship’s lamps.”
“How did he get you into the launches?” Lavay prompted.
“He had a crew relieve us of our cargo right quick. And then they got us over the side at sword and pistol point. I’d no doubt he would have shot us if any of us had said boo. We bobbed out there like a load of bloody apples, set loose without a compass. Was picked up by The Lilibeth sailing into Brest, else we would have all perished.”
The earl’s long fingers tapped against the side of his now empty tankard. “It fits with all the other accounts we’ve heard so far of Le Chat. He isn’t unnecessarily brutal, he isn’t ugly, he’s polite, and the blighter steals everything and then sinks the ships. So we can likely trust the accounts we’ve heard.”
“You can trust mine. Good luck catching the bastard. He has nine lives. Like a cat.”
“For whom do you sail, Captain Gullickson?” Violet asked this suddenly. “Who is your employer?”
She saw all the heads turning toward her, surprised.
He was still diffident. He turned part of the way; he didn’t meet her eyes when he answered. It struck her that he behaved like a man who’d done things he wasn’t entirely proud of, or perhaps he was being careful of her modesty, as her bodice was still damp.
“When I return from a voyage, I’m paid by draft drawn on an account held by an English firm in La Rochelle. Up the coast a ways, as you’ll know. The Drejeck Company, they’re called. A group of investors, I’m to understand. Dined with one of them here in Brest last night—Mr. Musgrove. Perhaps you know him? Right upset, he is. He lost thousands of pounds. I nearly didn’t get paid. But I would have made the man walk the plank if I hadn’t been.” He smiled nastily.
Violet began to frown. Then stopped instantly as a flash from the earl’s eyes warned her not to react.
Because Musgrove had told them earlier he couldn’t remember the name of the captain or any of the crew.
And yet Gullickson and Musgrove had dined together just last night.
And Musgrove had said they’d be sending a ship, The Prosperar, from La Rochelle, to take up the task of purchasing sherry now that The Caridad had been sunk.
“Are you acquainted with a Mr. Hardesty, Mr. Gullickson? Another very successful trader? Captains The Olivia.” Lavay asked this.
“Met him a year or so ago in this very pub. I was just back from America then. So was Mr. Hardesty. We shared a tale or two.”
So Lyon had been in America? Good God. Where else had he been?
Gullickson banged his empty pint again, making her jump.
Violet suddenly looked about for Polly. She was gone as if she’d never been in the pub at all.
“What ship did you captain then?” The earl’s question. Mild, almost abstracted. He asked it as he peered out the window toward the harbor, as if thinking of his own ship.
A hesitation from Gullickson.
“Large cargo, sir.” And he smiled. He refrained from answering any other part of the question. And didn’t volunteer the name of the ship.
Flint and Lavay exchanged a fleeting enigmatic glance.
Gullickson fixed his eyes on the earl now. The red veins mapping his eyes matched the highway of veins hatching his cheeks.
And Violet understood that this was not a pleasant man.
“La Rochelle is about two days up the coast, if the weather is fair,” Flint said casually. “Lovely journey, if it is. Thank you for your time and good luck on your voyage…Captain.”
Gullickson looked longingly for the barmaid, and understood he would not be watered with any more free ale tonight courtesy of the earl.
“On the contrary, thank you for the ale and the conversation with a fellow seafarer, Lord Flint, Lord Lavay.” Gullickson slid his chair back, got upright, and bowed to them. But he departed at a slight stagger.
“Flint…” Lavay’s voice was strange. “Drejeck means ‘triangle’ in German.”
“I know.” Flint was grim.
“Why is ‘triangle’ significant?” Violet demanded.
Lavay glanced at the earl. The earl nodded, giving Lavay permission to answer her question.
“Have you heard of the Triangle Trade, Miss Redmond?”
“I have, in fact. I read about it in one of those pamphlets Olivia Eversea left in the Pig & Thistle.” I must have been truly bored that evening to read the pamphlet, she thought. “It has to do with slavery, doesn’t it?”
The two men said nothing. Sipped at their ales.
When she began to understand, a cold knot of horror settled in her stomach.
Slavery.
The Drejeck Group. They were treading the edges of something sinister here.
“But what does it mean?”
“I don’t know yet.” The earl’s voice was clipped. He was clearly tired of not knowing things.
He looked at his ale, realized he’d drained it, fussed with the tankard instead.
The sun was lowering into the sea. The sunset was of the gaudy citrus colored variety. The sky looked incongruously cheerful, like a circus tent.
“Miss Redmond?” the earl asked suddenly.
She looked up at him expectantly.
“What did the barmaid say to you when she took you away?”
Bloody hell.
Lavay rotated his head slowly toward the earl in surprise. Then toward her. She was confronted with two pairs of suspicious, unsympathetic, unyielding eyes.
“Apart from ‘mon dieu’ and ‘je regrette’?” she said lightly.
But he knew. He must have known. So happy, he’d said to her in the garden. Almost wistfully. Anyone could see it. And likely he’d seen her face light up again when Polly spoke to her of Lyon.
What use am I to Lyon if I can’t remain inscrutable?
She remained tight-lipped. She could do that much for Lyon.
“Your brother no longer fears you’re my doxie, does he, Miss Redmond?” He sounded almost ironically amused. But there wasn’t a shred of warmth in his voice.
She didn’t answer. Lavay looked from one to the other. Clearly disappointed there would be no grand pantomime or ambush this evening.
“No,” she admitted weakly.
“But perhaps we ought to go to La Rochelle,” she added, when it was clear Flint and Lavay were only going to stare at her with cold and faintly surprised eyes. They were remembering that, despite her plethora of charms, she was essentially the enemy.
And still she couldn’t resist making a point.
“You may be forced to consider, Lord Flint, that it’s not just robbing and sinking. That maybe he has a plan that isn’t entirely sinister.”
They stared at her.
“And…how would that matter to our mission, Miss Redmond?” Lavay asked politely, finally.
She saw the earl’s mouth twitch at the corner in appreciation.
She fell silent again.
Something shifted in the earl’s expression. She suspected he was forcibly recalibrating his own sanity. Perhaps he wondered how on earth he could lose sleep over desiring a woman who was determined to free a murderous pirate. The straightening of his spine was a way to impose a subtle distance.
And then we are agreed on the distance, Captain, she thought. Relieved.
Odd that relief should feel so bleak, however.
“Of course we shall go to La Rochelle.” He ironically lifted his empty tankard to her.
He sounded like a man determined to win no matter the cost.