6. Chapter 6
Chapter six
The words rang in the passage long after he had finished saying them.
The only position you could assume on this ship is that of my mistress.
She stood very still. She had learned stillness at Covent Garden, in the dark at the side of the stage, waiting for her cue. You did not fidget. You did not let the waiting show in your body.
The ship moved beneath her feet. The lantern swung, illuminating the furious edge of his jaw. He wanted her. In his bed. A maiden would feel outraged and cry to her father or her brother. But Marguerite had no one to return to. Her reputation was hers alone to keep.
Her breath shortened, and her hands found each other and held on.
She was back in the study again, sitting with Karl and his solicitor, as they explained the contract to her.
Karl's voice had been reasonable, almost gentle, as he laid out the terms of an arrangement that she had no power to refuse.
She had sat across from him, nodded, kept her face pleasant, and felt herself grow smaller with every clause.
That was what it felt like, to be reduced to a convenience.
You shrank. You smiled. You hoped for the best.
But the duke was not smiling pleasantly. He was watching her. Waiting. Not breathing.
Her hands stopped clutching each other so tightly. The blood came back prickling into her fingers.
He wanted her. Not her connections. Not the list of Neapolitan factions she could recite in three languages.
Not the access she could provide, the doors she could open, the enemies she could help him avoid.
And he was angry at himself for wanting her.
He had blurted the proposal and was now waiting for her verdict.
Do not falter now, Marguerite. Not after everything you learned about diplomacy. Not when you are, for the first time in your life, the one who holds the cards.
Her hands released each other. The palms were damp. In the face of an insulting proposition, a seasoned diplomat did not slap, shriek, or flee. She assessed her opponent. Ideally, while breathing normally. Marguerite made a valiant attempt.
She looked at his eyes first. Green. Hard. Flashing in a way that made her heart flutter, which was deeply unhelpful. There was no cruelty there, though. No enjoyment of her discomfort.
"Very well," she said. "If we are to discuss this position, then we will discuss it properly."
He shoved a hand over his hair, making a mess of the queue. "Marguerite, this is—"
“By ‘properly,’ I meant seated and soothed by another glass of brandy.”
They returned to the cabin in silence. Once Marguerite had perched again on the bolted chair, she tried very hard to stop her stomach from fluttering.
Her knees pressed together beneath her skirt to contain the ridiculous quiver in them.
No progress there. Still, she watched his back as he poured two glasses of the dark liquid.
Good. Spirits had to be the great solvent of diplomatic stalemates.
Then he turned to her and offered her a glass. She caught it in both hands, thankful for something to hold on to while the rest of her threatened to become vapor.
He leaned back against the table with the contained energy of a man who had not yet decided what to do with his hands, which meant he had not yet decided what to do at all.
He was still angry. She could see it in the line of his shoulders, in the set of his jaw, in the way he was looking at her as if she had aggravated him by saying 'very well' when he had clearly expected something simpler.
She did not have time for his anger to find a new direction.
"I would like to start with the duration of our agreement."
"Agreement." His mouth curled, and he looked like a man who had been asked to negotiate the terms of his own weather.
"Indeed." She kept her voice even. "I propose that the agreement terminate on the day we arrive in Naples."
He moved. Both hands came onto the armrests of her chair, one on either side, and he leaned forward until the lamplight caught the line of his jaw directly above her, and the cabin, which had already been too small, became considerably smaller.
She leaned back a fraction. He was very close.
She could smell the salt on him, the clean wool, the brandy.
Her pulse made an ungoverned decision she chose not to acknowledge, and heat flooded low in her belly, even as the back of her neck prickled.
Her body could not seem to decide whether to flee him or lean closer, and the indecision left her breath stranded halfway up her throat.
"The termination," he said.
"If you will only repeat my words," she managed, "this will be very one-sided."
"No. I have every intention of making this very two-sided." His eyes held hers.
"In my experience, contracts work best when the parties agree in advance on a date to part. It prevents misunderstanding. It protects both parties equally." She kept her hands folded in her lap with some effort. "Naples is a natural terminus. We both have business there."
He caught her wrist. The bare one. His fingers circled it loosely, his thumb finding the inside where the bracelet had been, where the skin was slightly paler than the rest.
“So you will be a prize I take that comes with a return date.”
The piratical metaphor didn't fit well in her diplomatic syllabus, but in the spirit of good faith, she nodded.
A shadow moved across his face and was suppressed so quickly she might have imagined it, except that she had been reading men's faces for four years and she did not imagine such things. His jaw tightened. His mouth opened by a fraction.
He was going to object.
She waited.
He closed his mouth. Looked down at her wrist. His thumb stilled.
Then he released her, straightened, moved back to the table and leaned against it, arms folding.
"Works for me," he said.
She smoothed her skirt with both palms and reminded herself that the first clause was always the hardest.
"Now," she said. "The matter of my reputation. This arrangement cannot be public. Not to your crew and certainly not upon arrival in Naples."
"I will tell my crew that you are a passenger of honor. You will stay in the captain's cabin alone."
Her eyes lifted at that, and her shoulders lowered a fraction.
"I will visit you every night. Between midnight and three."
She startled. "You will sleep only three hours a night?"
"Who said we would be sleeping?"
Heat rushed up her throat, and her skin warmed everywhere his gaze landed—throat, cheeks, the curve beneath her ear. She looked away at once, furious with herself for the betrayal.
"I will bunk with the officers," he went on, untroubled. "If anyone asks, the cabin is yours. Will that suffice for your reputation?"
She nodded. That went well. Better than expected, really. "There is one further matter. About…the joint operations."
Her cheeks burned, and she glanced up from beneath her lashes. He was a virile man. She was not under any illusion that he sought a mistress for intellectual diversion. Nor was she an innocent. But neither would she embark on that particular aspect of their arrangement without terms clearly drawn.
A corner of his mouth twitched. "Just so we are entirely clear, you mean the sex."
"Yes. How often do you anticipate commencing such operations?" Her toes curled inside her shoes, and she kept her face composed through an act of diplomatic violence.
His brows rose, just a fraction. "More than twice in a night and I imagine the secrecy clause would be rather difficult to maintain."
She nodded at once, as though this were a perfectly ordinary logistical observation. "Of course. Discretion is essential. There is also the matter of consequence."
That wiped the humor from his expression entirely.
"I will not accept an arrangement that leaves my future… complicated," she said quietly. "Precautions must be taken. Without exception."
His jaw tightened. For a heartbeat, she thought he might bristle.
Instead, he exhaled through his teeth. "I have no intention of leaving bastards behind."
His bluntness startled her—then steadied her.
"Very well. I have only one last clause, and then you can put forth your own concerns," she said, but he didn't seem to be listening.
After staring at her face for a few seconds, he crossed to the small cabinet beside the stern window. She watched as he returned with a square of linen, damp at one corner.
"I think we must agree beforehand to avoid any unnecessary emotional entanglement," she stammered.
Frowning, he paused before her. Then he leaned forward and touched the cloth to her cheek. The coolness soothed the chafed skin. She had forgotten it entirely.
But apparently, her pirate duke did not. He was so close, his shoulder within arm’s reach.
Sighing, she touched his golden epaulet. "Your Grace, can we speak about the emotional part of—"
His eyes dropped to her hand. "I won't wear them."
He had lowered the cloth from her cheek and was looking at her with that flat, serious expression that gave nothing away and somehow gave everything away.
"When I come to the cabin," he said. "I won't wear the epaulets."
Marguerite opened her mouth. Closed it. Warmth bathed her chest, as if he had lit a coal there, small and hot and improbable, and she had to resist the urge to press her hand against it. Still, the coal warmed her from the inside until it reached the bottom of her ribs.
He settled back on his heels, his green eyes hooded, watching her.
"You were saying something about emotions," he said, taking her hand in his.
Only then did she realize her fingers were curled into her palms. He pried them loose one by one.
Each finger gave way as if he were opening some hidden part of her that she had meant to keep closed.
Her palm tingled in the air between them, exposed.
There it was again, the dratted warmth, rising under her ribs like a tide she had not authorized.
"Yes, emotions are an unnecessary encumbrance, aren't they?" she whispered.
He made a sound in his throat. She had to take it as a yes, and perhaps even a reassurance. In the spirit of good faith, one had to hope for the best.
She swallowed. "Do you have any clauses you would like to propose, Your Grace?"
For one terrible moment, he did not answer.
Air remained available in the cabin, but her lungs declined to use it.
His eyes held hers across the small table, unreadable now, the amusement gone from his mouth, and her mind began supplying possibilities with the efficiency of a clerk emptying a drawer onto the floor.
Would he demand obedience? Distance? Submission? She should not have asked. One never invited a pirate duke to draft amendments unless one had first secured the exits, the witnesses, and possibly a priest.
"Call me Tristan and bring warm underwear," he said, pushing to his feet.
"I beg your pardon?"
"You are always cold, Marguerite, and when I touch you, I want to know you are shivering because of me and not because you are freezing."