15. Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
“Astroll along the deck will make you feel better in no time,” Marguerite said, and swallowed her guilt.
She had, after all, brought Elsie up here under false pretenses. Or at least . . . incomplete ones. This was an errand. It simply happened to require fresh air, daylight, and proximity to a certain pirate duke.
She pressed the folded paper more firmly into her palm, feeling the reassuring crease of it against her skin.
She was here to acknowledge a kindness. It was indeed a simple courtesy and a necessary diplomatic gesture.
She had slept. Truly slept. For the first time in too long, she had woken without cold in her bones.
Without having to calculate, before opening her eyes, which creditor, patron, landlord, rumor, or consequence would require management first.
Her scalp still tingled when she remembered the weight of his hands. The careful pressure of his fingers. As if care could be given without immediately presenting its account.
“Why,” Elsie said carefully, “are you wearing your hair down?”
Marguerite did not break stride.
“I am not wearing it down,” she replied with composure. “It simply happens to be unpinned.”
“You never let it ‘happen,’” Elsie said. “You braid it. You pin it. You threaten it with exile if it misbehaves.”
“This is a ship,” Marguerite said evenly. “Practical considerations apply.”
Elsie’s gaze flicked meaningfully to the loose length brushing Marguerite’s back, catching the light as the breeze toyed with it.
“Since when,” Elsie asked, “is that practical?”
Since Tristan had marveled at her hair. She needed more of that feeling. Foolish? Certainly. Practical? Somehow. Off the top of her head, she could not have named why, but it felt so to her.
Marguerite lifted her chin. “There was no one available to assist me this morning. My maid happened to be horizontal and making concerning promises to the sea.”
Elsie’s eyes narrowed. “Is this about the captain?”
“Please, Elsie,” Marguerite said, adjusting her gloves with unnecessary care. “You are imagining motives where none exist.”
Elsie took a long breath through her nose—the sort usually reserved for offensive smells or willful stupidity.
“I am imagining indeed,” she said, “a six-foot-two motive with long black hair and green eyes, who went into your cabin last night and came out grinning like a fool.”
Marguerite’s heart, traitor that it was, gave a leap. “He was—” She stopped herself. Cleared her throat. “—grinning?”
Elsie fixed her with a glare. “That, or he was suffering from a digestive disorder. It’s hard to tell when one is casting up one’s crumpet for the seventh time.
I knew it. You are having feelings for the Brit.
And it is against your rules. You vowed that if you were ever to develop feelings again, it would be for a man with hot blood. ”
Yes . . . The Italian husband. One who would be jealous of her. Who would argue with his hands and make peace with his mouth. One who would not turn every disagreement into a treaty draft, or every feeling into a clause to be debated. One who would not believe love could be reassigned.
The passage narrowed ahead, turning darker where the morning light from the companionway did not reach.
Marguerite took two more steps before realizing the footsteps behind her had ceased. She turned back.
Elsie turned pale. “Oh, the floor’s doin’ it again.”
“We have only just left the cabin.”
“And I already miss it as if it were my childhood home.”
“Elsie, I need to find His Grace.”
“And I need to keep my breakfast from becoming public.”
“Go back,” Marguerite said. “Lie down. Do not expire on the rug. It has only just been introduced to civilization.”
Elsie swallowed. “If I die, tell Naples I tried.”
Marguerite continued alone. The way narrowed ahead. The ship breathed around her in creaks and groans, ropes straining somewhere above, water dragging against the hull with a steady whisper. Marguerite lifted one hand to keep her balance against the wall.
A man stepped into the passage. His coat was rough, his jaw unshaved, and the sour warmth of rum reached her before his smile did. Not an officer, then. His gaze fixed first on her face, then her mouth, then the fall of hair over her shoulder with a slow astonishment that made her skin tighten.
“Well, now,” he said. “Captain kept the prettiest cargo below decks.”
The passage narrowed around her at once. Wood at her back, wall at her side, him before her. No Elsie now. No open deck. No witness. No graceful retreat.
“How fortunate, then, that cargo does not speak,” she said, giving him a cool smile that cost more than it showed. “I am a passenger, and you are a gentleman who will no doubt step aside and allow me to pass.”
His smile widened. “Gentleman, am I?”
“For the moment.” Her pulse hammered at the base of her throat. “I find men often improve when one gives them a title to live up to.”
He laughed and came close enough for the sour heat of rum to touch her face. Her palms dampened inside her gloves. Only half a step, she told herself. In a ballroom, it would have been nothing. Here, it stole her air.
Before she could retreat, his hand lifted and caught a strand of her hair between thumb and forefinger.
“That all yours?” he murmured.
Her scalp prickled where he held it. Cold opened beneath her ribs. The touch was light, and that was what made it worse. Light was how men began when they wished to discover whether a woman would make a fuss.
“It is a wig,” Marguerite said at once, too brightly. “And infested.”
His fingers paused. Confusion entered his face. It lasted only a second, and then his grin returned, slower and uglier.
“Don’t look infested to me.”
He let the strand slide through his fingers, then planted both hands against the bulkhead on either side of her head.
His body crowded the passage, his sleeve scraping rough wool across her cheek, his rum-soured breath stinging her throat until she swallowed against a gag.
Marguerite’s back struck the bulkhead, and her lungs seized.
“Give us a kiss, pretty bird,” he said.
No! The word formed inside her and found no road out. He was leaning closer. Shutting her eyes, she jerked her head away.
Just then, a hard impact struck the passage beside her. The sailor’s breath vanished from her face. Wood cracked. A rough cry broke off in a grunt, and Marguerite’s eyes flew open.
Tristan slammed the sailor into the opposite bulkhead, then drove his forearm across the man’s chest and pinned him there, high against the wall, feet nearly leaving the floor.
She dragged one breath into her lungs.
“Lorenzo,” Tristan said, without taking his eyes from the sailor.
“Yes, Captain.” Lorenzo appeared behind him.
“Put this bastard in irons.”
The sailor sagged. “Sir—”
“Now.”
Lorenzo seized the man’s arm and hauled him away with a look so cold and un-Italian that Marguerite almost failed to recognize him.
Then Marguerite was alone with Tristan. He touched the nape of her neck and, with his other hand, lifted her chin. His gaze swept over her as he searched her face.
“Are you hurt?” he demanded.
His voice was thunder. She swallowed. He was angry. Of course, he was angry. She should have known better. She had stepped out of her cabin in daylight with her hair unpinned, her dress too fine. She had caused disruption. A scene.
Last night’s quiet came rushing back. The warm water. His careful hands. The way he had held her hair as if it were the nicest thing he had ever seen. The unfamiliar sensation of receiving care instead of giving . . . well, everything. All of it would be gone now.
Do not be ridiculous, Marguerite. A woman who survived on wit and negotiation did not bare her feelings in a corridor like laundry. She had made a miscalculation. One apologized, corrected course, and moved on.
“I merely wished to see you,” she said, and hated the faint tremor in her voice. “And to give you this.”
She reached into her bodice and drew out the folded paper, its edges softened from having been handled too often. She held it out to him like a peace offering.
He stared at it. Would he refuse to take it? Tell her that such gestures were unnecessary, and that she would see him from midnight to three? Just because he had offered care once didn’t mean their bargain had changed.
He took the paper. Unfolded it slowly, as though it mattered how it was opened. Then his eyes moved over the page, brow drawing down.
“What is this?” he asked.
She swallowed. “Everything I know about the Neapolitan court. Names. Houses. Eighteen months of research. The place is . . . intricate.” She lifted her chin. “I thought it might be useful.”
He read in silence. The ship creaked around them. Somewhere above, a sail snapped in the wind. In the passage beyond, Lorenzo’s voice barked an order, stripped of all music.
Tristan folded the paper once, then again, too neatly, then tucked it away in his breast pocket.
Marguerite waited for the necessary reprimand. For the reassembly of walls. For the moment in which she learned, as adult women learned repeatedly, that tenderness given at night did not always survive daylight.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
His gaze cut to hers.
Her voice trembled despite every effort to discipline it. “It was not my intention to cause difficulty. I was very close to negotiating my way past the sailor, but he was being a very tough—”
“He was tough? He was caging you against the bulkhead.”
“I was managing it,” she said. She had negotiated rooms since she was thirteen. Negotiated exits. Smiles. Hands. Bills. Roles. Patronage. Silence. Safety. Every space had a price, every kindness a hook, every man a possible border crossing. “I have been managing things for a very long time and I—”
“I forbid you to manage things on my ship.”
“Forbid? I do not think this is—”
“You come and go at will. You owe no payment, no apology, no smile. If you are afraid, you call me. If a man blocks your path, you call me. If you forget every other order I ever give you, remember this one.”
“I am not one of your sailors.”
“No.” His hand caught her waist, pulling her into him before she could form another argument. “You are the reason I am trying not to kill one.”
Whatever had been fueling her indignation deflated, and instead, heat licked over her arms and legs. She stared at him, panting. When had he come so close?
His eyes moved over her face rapidly, and then he took a lock of her hair and coiled it around his wrist. “If you don’t want to be kissed now, shake your head no.”
Did she even have a head? If someone had presented it to her, she would scarcely have recognized it.
Dizzy, she closed her eyes, and when she felt his hand circle her waist, she leaned toward his warmth.
He breathed her in, his nose brushing against her cheek, and then his lips were there, at the corner of her mouth.
Dry and fever-hot, the contact singed her.
She gasped, and he pushed impossibly closer, hands framing her face, his eyelashes tickling her cheeks.
Pressed against the bulkhead, she felt delicate and precious and at risk of combusting from so much warmth.
He nibbled her lips. “Open for me, Marguerite.”
She did. Heaven help her, she did.
He sucked her bottom lip and then pushed his tongue inside her mouth.
The pirate’s kiss robbed her air, unseated every argument she had prepared, and sent a disorienting rush through her limbs that left her swaying helplessly against him.
She clutched his shirt, the warm linen, slightly damp at the throat, his body hard beneath it, as the world narrowed to heat and pressure and the undeniable truth of being wanted.
When he drew back, her knees nearly gave way.
He stayed close, his forehead resting against hers.
“While you are under my protection, no one will touch you.” His thumb pressed lightly at her waist, grounding. “No one will harm you. You do not have to negotiate your way out of danger. You call my name.”
Then he stepped back and walked away, leaving her shaking.
She pressed her palm to the bulkhead and watched his back retreat. Then she managed to breathe. Her fingers went to her hair, still loose over her shoulders, then to her mouth, still warm from his.
“Thank you,” she murmured to the empty space he had left behind, her voice still unsteady. “For washing my hair.”