“Do not mistake me, Viola,” he forced across his tongue. “I do only that which serves my interests.”

The grin slipped from her lips.

“Then you’d better accompany me to the harbormaster’s office shortly or you’ll be tossed into jail with the rest of us. That, I’ll wager, would not serve your interests in the least.” She moved across the deck away from him. “But first I will doctor that wound. That is an order, Lieutenant.”

Chest tight, he stared at her disappearing down the companionway. Around him the ship rested peculiarly quiet. Sailors were motionless at their work, watching him.

“Hands at the lines!” he shouted. “Ready to make way.” He swung up the stairs to the helm. At the wheel Mattie met him with a scowl and a shake of his head.

“What’d you say to put her back up, so short on last night and the loss o’ them low-dunnits?”

“Nothing of your concern. Make for those mangroves, fifty yards to portside. We will drop anchor there.”

“Saying something she don’t like? Or doing something? Something you shouldn’t be doing. Teasing her?”

“You are a besotted fool like the rest of them.”

Mattie’s thick brow lowered. “Don’t like to see a lady treated poor.” His gruff tone warned. “And this one, she don’t deserve it.”

Jin fixed his helmsman with a hard stare. “Decide now if you wish to aid or hinder me in this, Matt. But at this late date, if you choose to make trouble for me, take care to wear your knife close when you sleep at night.”

The hulk’s weathered face paled. “Got us fifteen years between us, you and me. You’d never.”

“Watch me.”

Jin descended to the main deck, then to the companionway, black anger boiling beneath his skin. Threats now, to a man he had known since he was a lad. But Mattie knew better than anyone of what Jin was truly capable. Mattie had seen it with his own eyes. Such images did not fade from a man’s memory. Ever. Nor were such acts ever erased from a man’s soul.

The ship rocked in the rough harbor like an old nag in the traces, reluctantly getting under way. Jin passed through the short corridor to the shipmaster’s open cabin door. The chamber was empty, its accoutrements tidy, the bed in which he had taken his pleasure in a woman of aristocratic blood now neatly made. The sextant no longer graced the writing table, in its place a wooden medicine chest, its drawers carefully labeled, with folded squares of cotton beside it.

He took up a bottle of wine from beside the chest, uncorked it, and doused the cravat, then unwrapped the stained linen and flexed his hand. Blood oozed from the wound anew. He closed his fist, and his eyes, and breathed in her scent, all about him now-the scent of spiced roses and damnable woman.

“Afraid it’ll sting?” Like water rippling over a rocky beach, her laughter came from the doorway. Her hat dangled in her hand.

He pressed the cravat to his palm. “Afraid you will swoon at the sight of blood?”

She moved to him. “I’ve been a woman for thirteen years, Seton. I’ve seen more blood than probably even you.”

“Charming.” He worked the alcohol into the slash, the pain nothing to him. “You may wish to curtail some of this delightful frankness when you again reside in your father’s house in Devonshire.”

She hesitated only a moment. “My father’s house now belongs to me and it is in Massachusetts.”

With each pass of the cravat the blood flowed afresh.

“Incompetent man.” She grabbed up a scrap of cotton and trapped his palm between hers, lifting it and pressing down hard. “You’ve been master of your own ship for years and you don’t even know how to treat a wound?”

He did. Perfectly well, of course. He had tended more sailors’ injuries than he cared to count. But he had no desire to stanch this wound yet. Today he wished to bleed.

Brow taut, she took up a vial of root powder and dusted the cotton then replaced it against his palm, her movements deft and competent and her slender fingers strong upon him, as when she had clasped him to her in the moonlight.

“Do you truly care nothing for it? For them?” He watched her face as she concentrated on her task. “Does it not affect you that those who call you sister and daughter still hope for your return? That they yet consider you one of theirs?”

She opened another drawer in the chest and withdrew a small pot corked with wax. “You know nothing of it.”

“I do.”

She worked quickly, adept at this as she was at twining her crewmen about her will. With gentle application she spread the oily salve across his palm, then pressed a layer of cloth to it and bound it with a strip of linen. She tied it off and released him, then wiped her hands and closed the medicines in the chest. She slipped the key into her pocket and set her hands on her hips.

“Don’t make a fist if you mustn’t. And don’t use it for anything but the most innocuous tasks.” Her lashes flickered, as though a not-so-innocuous task his hand might perform occurred to her. “If you mustn’t,” she repeated somewhat airily.

Beauty, bravado, and maidenlike confusion all wrapped into one. For the first time all day, Jin found himself smiling and he said unwisely, “And if I must?”

Her gaze snapped away. “Then I know a superb blacksmith who could have a hook ready for you in less than a sennight.” She hefted the medicine chest and set it on the floor at the foot of the bunk. Despite the shapeless coat that concealed her curves, he could not draw his gaze from her. He could watch her move, watch her grin or swagger or sit in perfect stillness upon the bow of her ship with her hair tangling in the wind… endlessly.

Heat washed through him-this heat entirely foreign, insistent, not desire. His heart raced, a reckless pulse he’d only ever felt once, twenty years earlier. That time he had run, evaded his keepers, and escaped through the dusty cane fields. As they gained on him, his limbs weak from starvation and bare feet bloodied by the dry stalks, his heart had raced thus. And when they had caught him, he’d fought.

He made himself speak.

“Why do you resist returning home, Viola? You cannot wish to live the remainder of your days in this manner.” He did not need to gesture about him at the worn walls and narrow window of her tiny cabin, the shabby furnishings she maintained so neatly without the help of a steward, only a seven-year-old cabin boy. “You could have so much more. You were born to have more.”

“Did Mr. Castle come here while I was at the harbormaster’s office?” Her lovely face was immobile.

He had his answer, then, the answer he suspected despite the previous night.

“No.”

She moved to the door, tugging on her hat. “I heard news of the fire in town. Apparently it spread to a second field, but no one knows if it reached the house. I hope they are all well.” She went ahead onto the gun deck. Her sailors tipped their caps and she cast them smiles as ever, but distracted. Her mind was elsewhere. And, apparently, still her heart. With Aidan Castle.

“I sent Matouba on horseback,” he said. “He should return shortly with news.”

She darted him a glance, then climbed the stairs to the main deck. Round the capstan sailors pulled at long poles, chanting an old rhythm as they released the anchor one yard of massive chain at a time. Jin called for a boat to be lowered and passed orders to Becoua to have the sails furled and other chores completed. Ignoring Mattie’s glare, he followed the master of the April Storm off her ship and across the harbor to town.

The harbormaster came around his desk and extended a hand.

“If I had known who you were last night, Mr. Seton, I should have insisted on your company for lunch today. But it shall have to be dinner tonight instead, and of course Miss Daly as well. Pity you’ve just missed Captain Eccles. He has gone on to Havana but will be sorry to have passed you by so narrowly.”

“I don’t believe I am acquainted with Captain Eccles, sir.”

“Of course you are.” The port master pulled a chair forward for Viola and gestured for her to sit. She did so gingerly, her violet eyes wide.

The harbormaster settled into his. “According to Eccles, when last you encountered one another he was not yet master of his own ship, but under the command of Captain Halloway.”

“Ah. Halloway’s lieutenant aboard the Command.”

“That nasty business with that pirate Redstone and the earl, whatever his name was. Poole?” The port official waved it away, rummaging in his desk drawer. “An excellent story, though. My wife and I found it enormously diverting. Eccles gave me this to pass on to you if you should happen through port. Remarkable that you should do so not a sennight since his sojourn here.” He extended a sealed envelope across the desk. Jin tucked it into his waistcoat.

“I thank you for the invitation to dine with you tonight, sir. But what of this fine on the April Storm? Will you give me leave to collect the sum from Miss Daly’s banker on Tobago and return it to you within the sennight?”

“Of course, of course. We ain’t savages here.” He chortled comfortably, and stood. “But not until tomorrow, after you have supped on my wife’s pork pie and jelly. A man hasn’t lived until he’s had a mouthful of that pork pie.” He patted his belly, then ushered them affably to the door.

“By the by, Seton, I must thank you belatedly for apprehending the Estella last winter. Those Cuban pirates absconded with at least two loaded merchant vessels out of this port and I suspect a third that went missing and we never heard of again. Brutal fellows. Brutal, I tell you, from the stories I got from the few men who survived. Though there weren’t many of those, of course.” He shook his head, then clapped Jin on the shoulder. “It is a fine thing to have a ship like the Cavalier in these waters. Where is that quick little schooner now?”