How to Marry a Highlander (16 page)

“A ‘finishing’ governess?”

“It is the height of ill breeding to interrupt a lady, Captain Andrew.”

“I believe you.”

“What?”

“That you are a governess.”

Her eyes flashed—magnificent, wide, expressive eyes the color of wild cornflowers flooded with sunlight.

“A finishing governess,” she said, “teaches a young lady of quality the proper manners and social mores for entering society and leads her through that process during her first season in town until she is established. But I don’t suppose you would know anything about manners or mores. Would you, captain?”

Oh.
No
. Magnificent eyes notwithstanding, he needed a sharp-tongued virginal schoolmistress aboard his ship as much he needed a sword point in his left eye.

He climbed to his feet. “Listen, Miss Whoever-You-Are, I don’t run a public transport ship.”

“What sort of ship is it, then?”

“A merchant vessel.”

“What cargo do you carry?”

“Grain.” To people who could not afford such cargoes themselves. “Now, I haven’t the time for an interrogation. I’ve a vessel to fit out for departure tomorrow.”

With that jaunty tick of her chin, she darted around a chair and moved directly into his path. “You cannot frighten me with your scowl, Captain.”

“I was not attempting to either frighten or scowl. It is this inconvenient affectation, you see.” He tapped his finger to his cheek and stepped toward her.

She remained still but seemed to vibrate upon the balls of her feet now. She was a little slip of a thing, barely reaching his chin yet erect and determined.

He couldn’t resist grinning. “You don’t look any taller to me standing on your toes, you know. I am uncowed.”

Her heels hit the floor. “Perhaps you take pleasure in playing at notoriety with this pirate costume.”

“Again with the pirate accusation.” He shook his head. “You see no hook on my wrist or parrot on my shoulder, do you? And I have all the notoriety I wish without pretending a part.”
Heirs to dukedoms typically did
, even Luc, despite his estrangement from his uncle. But now the latest letter from the duke’s steward sounded desperate; the fortunes of Combe were in jeopardy. However much he wished to help, Luc hadn’t the authority to alter matters there. He was not the duke yet. Given his young aunt’s interesting condition, he might never be.

He closed the space between them. “As to the other matter, I take pleasure in a man’s usual amusements.” He allowed himself to give her a slow perusal. She was bound up snugger than a nun, in truth. But her lips were full, and her eyes . . .

Truly magnificent. Breathtaking. Full of emotion and intelligence he had absolutely no need of in a woman.

“I daresay,” she said. The magnificent cornflowers grew direct. “Name the price I must pay for you to give me passage to Saint-Nazaire and I will double it.”

He scanned the cloak and collar. Pretty, yes. Gently bred, indeed. Governess to society debutantes, possibly. But now she was alone and begging his help to leave Plymouth.

Suspicious
.

“You cannot pay double my price.”

“Name it and I will.”

He named a sum sufficient to sail her to every port along the Breton coast and back three times.

Her cheeks went slightly gray. Then the chin came up again. In the low-beamed tavern packed with scabrous seamen she looked like a slim young sapling in a swamp, and just as defiant. “I will pay it.”

“Will you now?” He was enjoying this probably more than he ought. “With what, little schoolteacher?”

The cornflowers narrowed. “I told you, I am a governess, a very good one, sought after by the most influential families in London. I have sufficient funds.”

With a swift movement he slipped his hand into the fold of cloak about her neck and tugged it open.

She grabbed for the fabric. “What—?”

His other hand clamped about her wrist. Her gown was gray and plain along the bodice and shoulder that he exposed, but fashioned of fine quality fabric and carefully stitched. And hidden beneath the fabric stretched over her throat was a small, round lump.

“Not a little schoolmistress, it seems,” he said.

“As I have said.” For the first time her voice quavered.

“You do look like a governess.” Except for the spectacular eyes. “More’s the pity.”

Her breasts rose upon a quick breath, a soft pressure against his forearm that stirred a very male reaction in him that felt dispiritingly alien and remarkably good.

“My employers prefer me to dress modestly to depress the attentions of rapacious men,” she said. “Are you one of those, Captain?” Her raspberry lips were beautifully mobile. He wanted a glimpse of the sharp tongue. If it were half as tempting as her lips, he might just take her on board after all.

“Not lately,” he said. “But I’m open to inspiration.”

The raspberry lips flattened. “Captain, I care nothing for what you believe of me. I only want you to allow me to hire passage on your ship.”

“I don’t want your gold, little governess.”

“Then what payment will you accept?” She sent a frustrated breath through her nose, but her throat did a pretty little dance of nerves.
By God
, she truly was lovely. Not even her indignation could disguise the pure blue of summer blooms, dusky lashes, delicate flare of nostrils, soft swell of lips satiny as Scottish river pearls, and the porcelain curve of her throat. And her scent . . . It made him dizzy. She smelled of sweet East Indian roses and wild Provençal lavender, of Parisian four-poster beds and the comfort of a woman’s bosom clad in satins and lace, all thoroughly at odds with her modest appearance and everything else in this port town.

“I can cook and clean,” she said. “If you prefer labor to coin, I will work for my passage to Saint-Nazaire.” Her voice grew firmer. “But my body is not for sale, Captain.”

Governess and mind reader at once, it seemed.

“I don’t want that,” he lied. His hand slipped along the edge of the linen wrapped about her head. Her eyes were wide but she remained immobile as his fingertips brushed the satiny nape of her neck. Her hair was like silk against his skin, the bundle inside the linen heavy over his knuckles. Long. He liked long hair. It got tangled in all sorts of interesting ways when a woman was least aware of it.

“Then . . .” Her lips parted. Kissable lips. He could imagine those lips, hot and pliant, beneath his.
Upon him
. She would be hot and pliant all over. He could see it in her flashing eyes and in the quick breaths that now pulled her gown tight over her breasts. Cool and controlled she wished to appear, but that was not her true nature.

Her true nature wanted his hands on her. Otherwise she would be halfway across the tavern by now.

“What do you want?” Her words came unsteadily again.

“Aha. Not as starchy as she appears, gentlemen,” he murmured beneath a burst of rough laughter from a table of sailors nearby.

“What do you know of gentlemen?”

Too little. Only those moments during the war when Christos was safely stowed at the château and Luc had been able to enjoy the company of his fellow naval officers, as the lord he had been born to be.

“An expert on the subject, are you?” His fingertips played.

“No. What do you want?” she repeated flatly.

“Perhaps this?” His thumb hooked in the ribbon about her neck. She gasped and tried to break free. He twisted the ribbon up and the pendant popped from the gown’s neck.

Not a pendant. A man’s ring, thick and gold with a ruby the size of a six pence that shimmered like blood.

“
No.
” She slapped her hand over the ring.

Luc released her and stepped back. Lovely, yes indeed. But she did not look like a man’s mistress. She was too plainly dressed and far too slender to please any man with money to spend in bed.

But appearances could deceive. Absalom Fletcher had looked like an angel.

“What is it?” he said. “A gift from an appreciative patron?”

She seemed to recoil. “No.”

“He has poor taste to give you his ring instead of purchasing a piece for a lady. You should have thrown him off much earlier. Or haven’t you? Are you going to him now?”

The cornflowers shuttered. “This ring is none of your business.”

“It is if you intend to carry it aboard my ship. That’s no mean trinket you have there. Where are you going with it?”

She stuffed it back into her dress. “I am traveling to a house near Saint-Nazaire to take up a new position at which I must report before the first of September. And what do you think you’re doing, reaching down a helpless woman’s gown? You should be ashamed of yourself, Captain.”

“If you are helpless, madam, then I’ve something yet to learn about women.”

“Perhaps you should learn generosity and compassion first. Will you take me aboard?”

Beautiful face. Gently bred. Desperate for help. A rich man’s cast-off mistress. Eager to leave Plymouth. Had she stolen the ring?

He didn’t need this sort of trouble.

“No,” he said. “Again.” He headed toward the door.

A
great stone seemed to press on Arabella’s lungs. It could not end like this, rejected in a seedy tavern by a man who looked like a pirate, and all because she had been foolish enough to miss her ship.

But she could not have left those children alone, the little one no more than three and his brothers trying so valiantly to be brave while frightened. The eldest, dark and serious, reminded her of Taliesin years ago, the reverend’s student and the closest to a brother she had ever known. She could not have abandoned the children like their mother did, even if she had known it would cause her to miss her ship.

The ship that would take her to a prince.

He would not remain at the château long. The letter of hire said the royal family would depart for their winter palace on the first of September. If she arrived after that, she must find her own way.

She always sent all her spare funds to Eleanor; she had no money to spend on more travel. And she simply must make an excellent impression. She would prepare the princess for her London season. Then perhaps—if she were very lucky and dreams came true—the prince would come to admire her. It would not be the first time one of her employers had turned his attention toward her, liking the pretty governess a bit too much. Not the first by far.

This time, however, she would welcome it.

She twisted her way through the crowded tavern in the captain’s wake. His back was broad, his stride confident, and men made way for him.

“I beg you to reconsider, Captain,” she called to him as he passed through the door to the street. Her fists balled, squeezing away panic. “I must reach the château before the first of September or I will lose my new position.”

He halted. “Why didn’t you book passage on a passenger ferry?”

“I did. I missed my ship.” She chewed the inside of her lip, the only bad habit from childhood that she had not been able to quell. The public coach from London had rattled her bones into a jumbled heap. But anticipating the sea voyage proved so much worse. For two decades her nightmares had been filled with swirling waters, jagged lightning, and walls of flame. She’d been tucked in a corner of the posting inn’s taproom, struggling to control her trembling, when the call for her ship’s departure sounded. She had forced herself to her feet and out the door by sheer desperation to know once and for all who she really was.

Then, in the inn yard, she encountered the children.

“I had a matter of some importance to see to,” she evaded.

Lamplight cast unsteady shadows across the captain’s face. Probably it had been a very handsome face before the scar disfigured it, with a strong jaw shadowed now with whiskers and a single deep green eye lined with thick lashes. His dark hair caressed his collar and tumbled over the strip of cloth tied about his head.

“A matter of more importance than your new position at a
château
?”

He did not believe her.

“If you must know,” she said carefully, “I have three children I must take to their father this evening before I travel to France.”

He looked blankly at her. “Children.”

“Yes.” She turned and gestured to the curb beneath the eave of the tavern. Three little bodies huddled against the wall, their eyes fixed anxiously upon him. “Their father awaits them across the city. While I was attempting to contact him, my ship departed without me,” taking with it her traveling trunk, another trouble she could not think about until she solved her first problem. But the daily cruelties of the foundling home had taught her resourcefulness, and working for spoiled debutantes had taught her endurance. She would succeed.

“I am relieved—” Captain Andrew’s fingers crushed his hat brim, the sinews of his large hand pronounced. “I am relieved to learn that you take pride in your progeny even as you abandon them.”

“You have mistaken it, Captain,” she said above the clatter of a passing cart, making herself speak as calmly as though she were sitting in an elegant home in Grosvenor Square recommending white muslin over blush silk. “They are not my children. I encountered them only in the posting inn yard. Their mother had abandoned them, so I determined to find their father for them.”

The captain turned toward her fully then, his wide shoulders limned in amber from the setting sun that lightened his hair with strands of bronze. In his tousled, intense manner, he was not commonly handsome, but harshly beautiful and strangely mythic. His dark gaze made her feel peculiar inside.
Unsolid
.

His lips parted but he said nothing, and for a moment he seemed not godly but boylike. Vulnerable.

She tilted her head and made herself smile slightly. “I can see that I have surprised you, Captain. You must reevaluate matters now, naturally. But while you are doing so I do hope you will reconsider the plausibility of me being mother to a twelve-year-old boy.” She paused. “For the sake of my vanity.”

He grinned, an easy tilt of one side of his mouth that rendered a pair of masculine lips devastatingly at the command of a grown man indeed.