Katharine Ashe - How to Be a Proper Lady

In the foyer, she went to the desk and pulled out her purse, motioning Seton into the taproom adjacent. Without comment he went. He would not allow her to escape, she knew, but she had the most peculiar feeling that he trusted her not to try to run away.

Foolish imaginings. Of course she would not run away with her ship at the wharf and most of her crewmen spread about town and probably three sheets to the wind already.

She paid for a private chamber and the innkeeper led her through the public room to a stairway that rose along the wall, then showed her into a modest chamber. Viola unpacked and a maid arrived with a basin of water. She scrubbed her hands and face and drank the remaining contents of the pitcher, reveling in the flavor of fresh water. Then she and the girl set about combing the tangles from her hair and lacing her into the change of clothing. When they finished, she pressed a coin into the maid’s palm and dismissed her.

She stood before the narrow oval mirror and studied their work. Her shoulders slumped. It was always the same. She looked ridiculous.

Her face was brown as a berry, her masses of curls would never be suitably tamed, and she despised the dress. But the dressmaker in Boston had said it was the latest style, with a tight bodice ruched up beneath her breasts and puff sleeves that barely managed to cover her shoulders. At least the color was acceptable, light brown with darker brown pinstripes. The dressmaker had not approved, offering instead an awful pale yellow fabric with tiny orange blossoms embroidered all over it that looked like underclothing. Viola had refused. If she must dress as a woman, she would do so without shaming herself. In any case, she had a shawl to cover it all up, serviceable gray wool Crazy’s wife had knitted for her.

She poked her feet into the thin, uncomfortable slippers her father had given her six years earlier, and stuffed her breeches, shirt, and shoes into her traveling case. Leaving the chamber, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror again and halted.

Probably it was an effect of the heat, or of her hair all pulled away from her face in the arrangement the maid had effected. Her cheeks seemed to glow, and her eyes were peculiarly large and bright.

But she still looked ridiculous.

Seton would laugh. Or he would remain so obviously silent she would know he was comparing her to the real ladies to whom he intended to take her-ladies like her sister, Serena-and finding her coming up pathetically short.

It mattered nothing. She would not go to England with him and she would not be obliged to stand beside those ladies to be unfavorably compared. She would remain here and marry Aidan Castle. Aidan had known her since she was fifteen, on board ship and off, and he never cared whether she wore breeches or skirts. Why had she changed clothes before going to his house?

In a stew of disgruntlement she descended the stairs, searching the taproom and wishing she didn’t care what Aidan Castle or Jinan Seton would think of her now. Wishing she could ignore the need inside her for him to notice that she had changed.

She found him easily. Where other men drank and ate and talked, he stood alone. Shoulders against the wall, arms crossed, eyes closed as though he dozed, he appeared perfectly at ease, as though the possibility of threat or danger never occurred to him. Why should it? From Lisbon to Port-au-Prince to New York, sailors feared the Pharaoh, and respected him. He had nothing to fear.

As though he sensed her regard his eyelids lifted, and beneath a lock of dark hair his crystal gaze came to her. It flickered down her skirts, then up again. His lips parted. His shoulders came away from the wall and he unfolded his arms.

He stared.

At her.

He did not seem displeased.

Viola’s nerves spiraled. Her belly went hot, hands cold. He might say he did not intend to kiss her again. She might insist she did not want it more than air.

But they were both lying.

Her eyes danced. Yet wariness shadowed them, wariness he had not seen there before, that perhaps he had put there.

It ill suited her. The brazen, impish sparkle should not be dimmed.

Yet still she was lovely. From the bird’s nest of hair pinned atop her head and the scuffed toes peeking beneath her hem, to the gown, plain and of a hideous color, her garments were a shambles. But by their shape they revealed the woman, and the woman claimed his breath. Slender and perfectly curved, with the tilt of her chin confident and the column of her throat pale, she appeared the lady she had been born.

She drew notice. Across the taproom men fell silent to watch her descend and walk to him. But her gait was a sailor’s; she trod upon her hem and stumbled. He grasped her elbow.

“Damn,” she muttered, and tugged away.

He smiled.

A little puff of air seemed to escape her, but she said peevishly, “What? Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what? Like a beautiful woman has chosen me amongst all the men in this room to approach and I am enjoying my good fortune?”

Her lashes fanned wide, the violets springing to warmth. Then she frowned, marring the lovely cast of her features.

“Save your flattery for giddy females, Seton. I won’t be flummoxed.”

“I did not intend flummoxing.”

“Apparently you don’t intend plenty that you do.”

“You are talking around yourself. Are you flummoxed or not?”

“In your dreams.” She twisted up her sweet, full lips that tasted like honey, and he sought steadiness. But it eluded him. In his dreams of late she gave him those lips to please. In his dreams she drew him between her thighs and gave him all of her.

“Where, I wonder, has gone the perfumed ingénue from aboard ship,” he murmured.

Her eyes flashed wide again for an instant, perfectly candid. “Not far. Why? Was she having an effect?”

He laughed. “How many women do you have in that body, Viola Carlyle?”

Her brow pleated. “Only the one, as I’ve been trying to convince you.”

“What is the occasion?” He gestured to her gown. He did not again allow himself to glance at her breasts barely concealed by a strip of fabric tucked into her bodice, or he would commence slavering like the rest of the fellows in the place.

She tugged an ugly gray shawl about her shoulders.

“I am a woman, Seton. A woman is permitted to wear a skirt without particular occasion.”

He lifted a single brow. “What happened to making your sex irrelevant?”

“I still am.”

He glanced about at the dozen men in the taproom who clearly would not agree.

“Hm.” He returned his gaze to her, to her lips. He could pass his tongue over the spot of beauty riding the curve of her lower lip, then elsewhere-the soft gully of her throat, the firm tips of her breasts. He could do only that for an entire night and be satisfied. Nearly. “That scowl is taking, you know, but it does not quite suit your current fashion. Perhaps you should change clothes again.”

“Perhaps you should leap off a gangplank into a nest of hungry sharks.” She brushed past him, the caress of her arm grounding him in sudden, complete heat. For a moment, Jin could not move, every muscle strained against his nature.

Perhaps she intended it. But if she intended it, she would be slipping him demure smiles as she had aboard ship. Perhaps, instead, she hadn’t any idea that a lady did not touch a man even in such an accidental manner. Perhaps despite fifteen years living among sailors, she truly did not know what happened to a man when a beautiful woman touched him.

“Sharks are always hungry, Miss Carlyle,” he uttered, and turned to follow, but she pivoted back to him.

“Don’t call me that here,” she whispered, “or when we arrive at the farm. Please.” Her eyes were dark, unsettling vulnerability coloring them as before on her ship. “Please promise me you won’t.” Her gaze searched his, anxious.

“It is that important to you?”

“I have nothing to bind you to a promise, I realize. But I know that if you give me your word you won’t break it.”

“How can you be so certain of that?”

She blinked, a swift shuttering of her expressive eyes. “I simply am.”

Jin nodded. “I give you my word.”

Her lashes flickered again, then she turned and made her way from the inn.

During the drive along the coastal road then into the island’s interior, she hid her face behind the brim of a plain straw bonnet and said nothing. He studied her, the tight set of her shoulders beneath the thick shawl she wore like armor despite the midafternoon heat, her slender, callused fingers twisted about one another.

She was a woman transformed-not so much in clothing as in attitude. As the ocean disappeared behind hills and palms and the calls of tropical birds and scents of soil and green, growing things became stronger, she grew stiller and stiller. But this was not the stillness of her sunset vigils on the April Storm’s quarterdeck.

She wished silence, and he gave it to her, content to await an explanation.

The coachman turned the carriage along a narrow drive flanked by enormous yucca trees, and their destination appeared before them. It was no mere farm. The drive was not long but the house was sizable enough, two stories, elegantly English in style, gleaming and whitewashed with a veranda wrapping about three sides. Fields of sugarcane stretched out along slopes with the perfection of a painted landscape.

Viola’s head came up and a gasp escaped her lips. She stared at the house, fingers gripping the carriage’s dusty edge.

Finally he spoke. “Whose estate is this?”

“It belongs to Aidan Castle. He was once a clerk in Boston, then worked on my father’s ship for several years before purchasing this land.” Her gaze traveled with reluctant greed over the house and outbuildings, not in any obvious pleasure. “The last time I visited, he hadn’t yet built the house. It’s impressive,” she added in a subdued voice.