“Fionn nearly always took me along.”

“From the beginning?”

“Yes. Is this an interview, Seton? Should I sit and narrate my life for you here? Or perhaps you could simply read my diaries, although you would no doubt find them too tame for your tastes.”

“I suspect they would be as fascinating as their author.”

Her gaze snapped to him. But there was no scowl on her face, only a bright-eyed wariness. She pivoted and sprang up the steps.

He climbed up behind her, tracing the curve of her hips with his gaze. “Shall I have the men transfer the cargo?”

“Only the fresh water. We’ve sufficient supplies.”

“And the bodies?”

She cast him a quick glance, surprise in the violet. He held her gaze evenly. If she wished to believe him inhumane, at one time she would not have been far off the mark.

“Tell the boys to cut the canvas and line from this ship to wrap them. We’ll bury them at dusk.”

“Aye aye.”

She unstrapped her pistol and cutlass and handed them to Sam. Then she unbuttoned her waistcoat and kicked off her shoes. She went to the rail, testing the draw of the dagger in her sash.

Jin frowned. “What are you doing?”

With a half grin that sent heat straight to his groin, she dove into the sea below.

Chapter 9

Jin lunged forward to grab her, but too late, clutching the rail as she disappeared beneath the gray water.

“What in the blazes-”

“Cap’n’s got a bee in her bonnet, sir, no doubt ’bout that,” Sam said.

“A bee?” His head spun, heart racing. Panic sluiced over him like the waves that had swallowed Viola Carlyle. His gaze pinned the ocean. “What is she doing?”

“Dunno, sir. Must be somethin’ she’s lookin’ for. But she’s got powerful big lungs.”

“To the boat.” He grabbed the ladder.

They were the longest moments he ever lived, including those he had spent bound in iron manacles to the floor of a slaving ship as it crossed the deep Atlantic twenty-two years ago. Two minutes passed. More. He dragged off his coat, readying to dive. Viola’s head bobbed above the sea’s frothy surface, and he pulled in hard breaths.

She swam to the boat, arms cutting above the shifting foam, hair plastered about her head. Not only hair-a rope, caked with blackish sea vegetation that clung to her cheeks, held between her teeth like a bit.

He leaned over the side of the boat and grabbed her, Mr. French on the other side, and in a splashing rush they hauled her aboard. She shed water, gaining her bearings, but Jin did not release his grasp. Pulling the rope from her mouth she swung the object tied to its end around from her back, leaving trails of green slime across her face, neck and the white shirt plastered to her body. Her visibly cold body.

He wrapped her in his coat.

“What ya got thar, Cap’n?”

“A treasure, of course, Ayo.”

Viola grinned at the sailor, waiting for the storm to break at her side. Seton’s hand gripped her arm like a vise. He dragged her to a bench, released her, and her sailors set oars to water. She was glad for their haste, and for his coat. The sea was unforgiving today. She was accustomed to lengthy dives, but she’d been under this time longer than she should. Her teeth made little clicking sounds in her muzzled head.

He didn’t speak or look at her. Settling the small box she’d retrieved from the bottom of the merchant ship on her lap, she flickered a glance at him. A muscle worked in his jaw. She closed her eyes.

In a moment, it seemed, they were at her ship and she was climbing, sodden and cold, to the deck. Behind her Seton gave orders for the men to transfer the merchantman’s stores of water to the April Storm. She moved toward the stairway. He followed but said nothing until they’d moved beyond the sailors clustered about the main deck. She put her foot on the first step and finally he spoke, but in an even, steady voice.

“Pettigrew once told you of that box, I presume.”

She swung down the steps, clutching her hard-won prize tighter. She’d lost her dagger when the final nail binding the box to the hull popped abruptly and the hilt slipped out of her numb hand.

“Obviously.”

“Its contents must be very valuable.” He followed her aft toward her cabin, but his calm tone did not deceive her. “I know something of such prizes. Innocuous containers with valuable contents. I know how one might take foolish chances in order to retrieve such an object.” An edge cut his voice now.

“It was not so foolish. I have stayed below for longer.”

“Sam mentioned that.” He was right behind her. He reached forward and pushed the door of her cabin open, surrounding her for an instant. She ducked out from beneath his arm and moved to the washstand. He entered behind her. “Nevertheless, it was unwise, taking that chance.”

“Not much of a chance.” She swiped a cloth across her cheeks and brow, smelling the thick brine of the sea. “I knew what I was looking for and retrieved it quickly. My men know-”

He grabbed her shoulder and spun her around.

“I am not one of your men and I did not know that you are likely to hurl yourself into a rough sea.” His crystal eyes glittered in the pale light, fingertips digging into her flesh.

She shrugged out of his hold, her skin hot where he’d touched her.

“You sound like a hen-wife, Seton. Go nag someone else.”

His gaze, intense and hard, scanned her face. But there was something else in the blue, something seeking. Quite abruptly her knees weakened.

Her knees weakened?

She clutched the washstand. “Go away.”

“Goddamn it.” His voice was low. “You behave as though possessed sometimes.”

“Possessed by the rapidly increasing regret that I signed you on?”

“What is in the box, Viola?”

Viola. Only Viola. Not Miss Carlyle. Not Captain.

The air petered out of her lungs. Perhaps she was insane. At the very least, a fool. The mere sound of only her given name upon his lips, that simple familiarity, turned the remainder of her joints liquid. No man had called her by her real name in fifteen years. Not even her father.

“A letter.”

“What letter?”

“If I knew that, would I have swum under the belly of a ship in a freezing ocean to get it?”

“Viola.”

“A letter to his wife and children.” She shrugged. “Nothing, really. He’d told me he always nailed a box to the underside of his ship whenever he was making ready to set off on a journey. That way if brigands took his boat and threw him overboard someone might someday find the letter and send it to his family. As a final good-bye of sorts.”

His chest jerked in a sharp inhalation but he said nothing.

“I told him that was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard.” She waved it off, but her motion was unnatural. “What pirates would send a letter to the wife of the man they killed? And there was every chance it might end up at the bottom of the sea, in any case, or just rot away no matter how finely soldered the box. But he said that if there was even one small chance it might reach…” Her voice faltered beneath his regard and she was shaking now, soaked to the bone. “I mean to say, it didn’t seem very logical for him to…”

His lips parted as though he might speak, but still he did not.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she snapped.

“You risked your life to retrieve a dead man’s last letter to his family?”

“I already told you there was no risk in-”

He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her close, knocking a gasp from her. He bent his head, his breath filtering over her chilled skin. She fought not to close her eyes, not to wish for what she was wishing.

“Going to bite my nose again like a ten-year-old, Seton?” Her voice quavered.

“No.”

At that moment Viola discovered that the perfect mouth felt even more perfect than it looked. He kissed her, and quite abruptly the question of whether she would allow it became instead how long she could make it last.

It was not a short or simple kiss. Not from the moment it began. They met, fully, and they held, immobile. Far too long. Far too close. Far too intimate. Far too much like he might have been wanting to kiss her as much as she had been wanting to kiss him and now if they were to move or part even slightly the reality of it might scamper away. As though he were imprinting the feel of her upon him. Aidan had never kissed her like this. Aidan kissed her like he could step away at any moment, like kissing her was something he bestowed upon her as a favor and he might cease easily enough.

This was different. This was possession. It was relief and certainty at once. It was a need to be close and remain so for as long as possible without breathing. To underscore the impossible intimacy of it, his hand scooped behind her head and held her still, attached to his mouth, where she was quite willing to remain in any case and he needn’t bother trapping her. But so help her God she liked being trapped. He was heat and strength and she needn’t ever breathe again if he would not release her.

He did finally, but only to drag in air as she did, then cover her mouth again with his.

Now it became clear that this was not only a man who could dazzle a girl into suffocation. He was also a man with an impressive knowledge of what sort of kiss turned a woman to pure desire. In an instant, unsettling intimacy gave way to drugging sensuality.

He tasted her, it seemed, his attention first on her lower lip and the tender inside edge of it, then the upper edge, and she got hot everywhere. She opened her lips and let him have her. Tilting her head back, he played with her hunger, unbearably, caressing slowly until she was leaning up into him for more. She pressed onto her tiptoes. With the tip of his tongue he traced her lips, urging them apart with the lightest caress. Her body flushed with pleasure.