“Ladies do not wish for their cutlass to cut off the bottom six inches of their dress either, or to tear a space to breathe in their stays, I suspect.”

“Oo, la!” Madame Roche laughed. “Miss Carlyle, she is vraiment charmant, no?”

“I daresay,” Mr. Yale said with perfect equanimity. Serena chuckled. From Lady Fiona at the pianoforte came a delighted ripple of notes. Even Lady Emily sitting removed from the dancing with a book cracked a smile. Warm breeze drifted in through long windows open to the late-summer afternoon, billowing the draperies out like Viola’s skirts, and she could not be unhappy. There was great joy to be had in her new friends’ company, great challenge to overcome in mastering new skills, and great comfort in which to revel in her sister’s beautiful home. To feel this persistent emptiness inside, despite all, seemed ridiculously contrary. She should have become accustomed to it by now.

Lady Fiona set her fingers to the keyboard again and Viola set to dancing with renewed application. Turning about, she came to face the drawing room door, and there he stood. Jin. Without warning. Perfectly handsome as always, and watching her.

Quite abruptly she knew that she would never become accustomed to the emptiness inside her, not even were she to try to distract herself from it by sailing all seven seas in a leaking ship. Nothing on earth existed that could distract sufficiently. For there was no more dangerous venture than loving Jin Seton and not being loved by him in return.

Chapter 22

He could not look away from her. He knew he ought. But as she stumbled through the set, tangling her feet in her hem and her partners’ steps and generally making a hash out of the dance, the knot that had taken up residence in Jin’s chest during the past month loosened. She was beautiful-as beautiful groomed like a lady as she had been garbed like a sailor. She moved about the floor smiling and laughing, her pleasure and occasional uncertainty unrehearsed and unrestrained. As she captained her ship and bewitched her crewmen, she danced with all her heart, if not with all her limbs in concert.

Finally her gaze came to him, her eyes widened, and the breath went out of him. She tripped again.

“Jinan, you have returned!” Lady Savege clapped. Her husband swiveled about, a smile crossing his face. He came forward in long strides. Hand outstretched, he took Jin’s.

“I shall not embrace you here before these others,” the earl said quietly, roughly, his grip hard. “I’ve no doubt you would knife me for the indignity. But know that could I, I would.”

Jin allowed himself a slight grin, the mountain of purpose he had carried slipping finally from his heart. The debt of life that had bound him to this man, his friend, for twenty years was now paid.

Alex shook his head and laughed. “So that is where you were all those months when we heard nothing from you? Looking for a girl everyone believed dead?”

“It seemed as good a task to pursue as any.” He released his friend’s hand.

“And how is my ship? Your ship, that is.”

“At the bottom of the sea, Alex.”

“You say? How? By whom?”

“By a lady.” His gaze flickered over Alex’s shoulder to Viola once more. Alex followed, then came back to him, open eyed. “Yes.” Jin smiled. “She is… remarkable.”

The others waited for their host’s cue, curious. But the lady whose dark eyes he saw in his dreams each night averted her face from him now.

Serena came to them. “Welcome back, Jinan. Allow me to introduce you to the others. Lady Emily-”

“We are already known to one another from a brief encounter at my parents’ house nearly two years ago,” Lady Emily said from her chair with a nod at him. “How do you do, Mr. Seton. I don’t suppose you will take Mr. Yale away with you when you go this time, will you?”

“The lady is all charm, as always,” the Welshman drawled. “How was town, Seton?”

“Well, thank you.” Empty of the one person he wished to see, who still did not look at him. “Lady Emily, it is a pleasure to meet you again. I am afraid, though, that I haven’t any plans to depart soon.”

Then Viola glanced, a flicker of her violet eyes in his direction, her lips parted. He had not known his intentions until he spoke them, and he had spoken them entirely to draw her gaze.

Panic slid through him again. He should not have come. But he had been drawn and now it was too late. Willing himself steady, he turned to Lady Emily’s companion and bowed.

“Madame Roche, j’espère que vous allez bien.”

“Je vais très bien, monsieur. Merçi.” She curtsied, then gestured to the girl standing by the piano. “But you know Mademoiselle Fione, the sister of your good friend, the Lord Blackwood, I think?”

He bowed. She curtsied, a flutter of lashes over dark brown eyes.

“Of course, I needn’t introduce you to my sister.” Serena beamed as she took Viola’s arm snugly. “Now, shall we have tea? All that dancing has given me a dreadful thirst.”

“My dear,” Alex said, “if you will excuse us, I will take the gentleman to seek out stronger refreshment. Seton, Yale, Lucas, shall we?”

“Superb suggestion,” Yale murmured and, casting Jin a grinning glance, moved toward the door. Jin bowed to the ladies and followed willingly. It was one thing to dream of a woman’s eyes and lips and touch from hundreds of miles away, and to regret the distance from her. It was another entirely to remain in the same room with her, his blood spinning with need and that hot thread of alarm, and to remain any saner than she.

He had returned. Just like that. Viola had no warning of it, no announcement even of his name by the servants who seemed to otherwise declare it each time a member of the company of ladies and gentlemen at the Park yawned or blinked.

Not this time. In the midst of the minuet he had appeared, standing at the threshold to the drawing room as though he had been watching the spirited group romping about the floor for ages and was perfectly content to remain there indefinitely. And now as the party gathered in the drawing room before dinner, he again enjoyed a comfortable position, this time by the piano. Lady Fiona flashed her pretty dark lashes at him, showing him her sheet music. Madame Roche stood nearby, but the thrice-widowed Frenchwoman of indeterminate age and a remarkable froth of black organza did not bother Viola, despite her sharp eyes and elegant looks. Only the lovely, highly maidenly Fiona mattered, the girl she had come to like very much and felt absolutely wretched envying now. Lady Fiona had his attention, and it made her sick to her stomach.

He wore a dark coat, buff trousers, and white linen, as though he had not come from the road only that afternoon. But so he had always appeared aboard ship, in command of himself and of everyone else he encountered. Including his very foolish captain.

She found it difficult to breathe properly and she felt like a ninny. Violet la Vile was most certainly not a ninny.

She would best this. This time, she would not allow him to affect her. Now she had her family around her-the affection of her sister and the baron, and new friends, however grand they all seemed at times. Moreover, she had the strength to resist him. In Trinidad, her feelings had blindsided her. But now she knew the danger in which she stood. Even without her pistol and dirk, she would fight it. And if that didn’t work, she was not averse to digging her weapons out of her traveling trunk and threatening him to depart at dagger’s point.

Beside her, Serena and Mr. Yale discussed potted plants or piquet or something equally mysterious, she hadn’t an idea. But the baron’s stepdaughter, Diantha Lucas, apparently did.

“Lord Abernathy and Lord Drake played for prize orchids, but it ended in a draw.” Her wild chestnut curls bobbed, obscuring a pair of blue eyes shaded with curling lashes. “I read it in the gossip column in The Times.”

“How eccentric of them.” Serena chuckled.

Mr. Yale’s mouth slipped into a grin Viola had come to recognize. That grin said, I have consumed a bottle of brandy this afternoon and cannot be moved by anything, even foolish lords playing cards for hundreds of pounds over exotic plants. But he only said, “How admirable that you read the paper, Miss Lucas.”

Beneath a liberal sprinkling of spots no young lady could like, Diantha’s cheeks and chin clung firmly to the roundness of childhood, and then some. But her regard remained bright. “Papa does not like the paper, but I learned to enjoy it at the Bailey Academy, of course.”

“Of course.” His silvery eyes glistened.

“Mr. Yale, you should drink less and read the paper more often.”

“Diantha!”

“I am only saying, Serena, that handsome young men ought not to ruin their lives in this manner. There are ever so many alternatives to depravity, you know.”

“For a lady of-” He broke off, his brow creasing. “What is your age, if I may be so brash as to inquire, Miss Lucas?”

“Sixteen and nearly three quarters.”

“For a lady of sixteen and nearly three quarters, Miss Lucas, you have a remarkable quantity of opinion.”

Her face opened in innocent surprise. “Why shouldn’t I?”

His brows quirked up. “Why shouldn’t you, indeed? It is admirable.”

“A moment ago you thought it impertinent.”

“Never. Or if I did I must have forgotten myself for an instant. I beg your forgiveness.”

Her lips screwed up into a skeptical frown. “You are not sincere.”

“Nearly always. But I do indeed find an informed mind admirable, Miss Lucas, even when paired with impertinence.” With a slight grin, he unfolded from his chair and stood, bowed to each of them, and moved off.