Page 12 of A Dance with the Wayward Duke
The deck sprang into motion. Sailors moved. The officer swallowed. Marguerite moved away from him at once, smoothing the front of her gown with fingers that still had not agreed to behave. Somewhere below, Elsie was being helped toward the entry port by two sailors.
The pirate turned back to Marguerite. The ghost of amusement returned to his mouth. Without the mask, he was far more dangerous—sun-browned, wind-touched, green-eyed, and so indecently handsome that even her most disciplined thoughts began searching for diplomatic asylum.
“Now, little moon,” he whispered, “the next time I steal something from you, promise you will not try to kill yourself to retrieve it.”
Her spine straightened. “I did not try to kill myself. I attempted to board. Your ladder was inhospitable.”
“My ladder has served men in battle.”
“Then it has never met a lady in wet slippers.”
His lips twitched. Marguerite lifted her chin, recovering dignity by inches and refusing to consider that some of those inches had recently been pressed against him.
“I came to call on the new ambassador,” she said. “Is he in?”
The pirate looked at her strangely. “Yes. He is right here.”
Relief moved through her so swiftly she almost forgave the ladder. “Then, by all means, take me to him.”
Ten minutes later, wrapped in a blanket by the pirate and given a glass of brandy to nurse, Marguerite sat in the ambassador’s cabin.
The pirate, she had to concede, wore a very well-cut naval uniform. Even dressed as an officer, his dark hair tied neatly at his nape, his jaw shaved, his boots polished, and his expression arranged into something almost respectable, he still looked piratical. A man could put on blue wool, brass buttons, and epaulets without altering the essential fact that he had thrown a rear admiral’s wig out of a window and then stolen a lady’s bracelet as if piracy were a form of courtship.
The epaulets, in particular, deserved censure. They were heavy, gold, and aggressively official, with scratchy fringe that had no doubt left marks on her cheek when he had hauled her over the side of the frigate. Her skin still remembered them. Her body, which had proved itself unreliable at every turn since meeting him, also remembered the hard plane of his chest behind her, the steady pressure of his hand at her waist, the low command of his voice near her ear.
He stared at her, arms crossed, a single brow lifted. She stared back. It seemed the only sensible response. Besides, retreat was impossible. The chair was bolted to the floor, the blanket hadswallowed her shoulders, and her slippers were making cold accusations beneath the hem of her gown.
The cabin around her did not improve matters. It was too small for a man of his size and too orderly for a pirate. A narrow stern window admitted a pale strip of Channel light. Charts lay secured beneath brass weights upon the table. A compass sat in its box. A pair of pistols rested in polished brackets. Books lined one wall, wedged tight behind a rail so they could not escape. Everything was bolted, latched, folded, secured, or disciplined into usefulness.
The pirate did not look away, and her cheeks flamed. The brandy was at fault. Or the blanket. Or the violent proximity of death recently endured upon a ladder. There were many rational explanations, and Marguerite intended to use them all.
Thank heaven this man was not the ambassador. She would have had to negotiate with him across a desk, and this man did not belong across desks. He belonged against doors, in storms, behind women on rope ladders, and in every unsuitable corner of a mind trying very hard to remain employed by reason.
She took another sip of brandy, winced only a little, and glanced toward the door. “When will the ambassador arrive?”
The pirate leaned against a cabinet. The movement tugged his coat across him in a manner no government should authorize.
“What do you want with him, Moon?”
“My name is Miss Marguerite d’Ailes,” she said, “and I desire a short audience.”
“How disappointing. I had thought, after the wig and the ladder, we had progressed beyond short audiences.”
“We?” Marguerite set her glass upon the table. “I assure you, sir, the ladder was not an intimacy. It was a logistical emergency.”
“Your arms were around my neck.”
“My arms were around survival. You happened to be nearby.”
His mouth curved.
She looked toward the door again. “Will he take long?”
The curve vanished, and he crossed his arms. “You risked a great deal for a man you have never seen. Why?”
Every instinct she possessed rose to attention. Good heavens. The pirate was jealous, and jealousy made men stupid, and stupidity in tall men often occupied too much room.
“I am afraid, sir, that my business with the Duke of Stormhaven is private.”
