How to Be a Proper Lady: A Falcon Club Novel (21 page)

Chapter 17

V
iola grinned, stretched, flinched from the wonderful soreness all over her body, and finally opened her eyes. Sunlight peeked through the draperies, casting the bedchamber in a hazy morning glow.

She sat bolt upright.

Except for her shift draped across a chair and herself in the bed, the place was empty of everything but furniture. The man with whom she had made passionate love mere hours earlier, who had hired this chamber for himself, might never have been there at all.

Viola sat for a moment quite immobile, considering how among the various foolish things she had done in her life, to have practiced this lack of forethought was perhaps the most foolish of all. Unwisely, she had not assumed that the moment the wager ended he would leave her side, no matter the circumstances.

Now the discomforts in her body did not feel so wonderful. Instead she felt rather ill, her stomach tight and all her limbs soggy.

She swiveled, climbed from the bed, and took up her shift. It got stuck going over her hair, knotted strands tangled in the laces. She shoved it down and tied it over her breasts. Her sailor’s blood accustomed to rising with the sun told her it was still early morning, so she might not encounter others in the corridor. But her blood had also told her that Jin Seton would be present when she awoke. So it looked like her blood wasn’t as clever as she’d always thought.

Hand on the doorknob, she paused.

The wager was over. He had left. But that did not necessarily mean she had lost. It could, in fact, mean she’d won. If he fell in love with her, he was to admit to it, then to deed his new ship over to her and leave her alone forever. Even now he could be sailing to Tobago to collect his assets, which would allow him to complete the purchase of the sleek little schooner in Boston. Perhaps he had simply gone to fulfill the terms of the wager.

Or perhaps not.

She went to her chamber, dressed in breeches, shirt, and vest; slung her coat over her shoulder; and took up her bag. Depositing the key with the proprietor, she pressed a coin into the housemaid’s palm, then went out into the sunny morning.

The walk to the wharf was only fifty yards. Sam sat on the dock beside the yawl bobbing in the water, dangling a piece of straw from between his teeth. He sprang up and tugged his cap.

“Morning, Cap’n. How was that hotel? I ain’t never stayed in no hotel before.”

“Good morning, Sam. It was fine, thank you.”

She boarded the little boat and Sam rowed her to her ship, tentative nerves of triumph twisting about her belly now. Jin must be aboard or Sam wouldn’t be waiting for her at the dock.

She climbed the ladder and set her feet on her deck’s solid planking. Her home.

She called down to Sam, “You may have the day now. Take the yawl, but return by midday to bring me ashore.” To negotiate a cargo for her return trip to Boston, as she had told Aidan.

She started across the empty deck. Only old Frenchie dozed on guard duty atop the quarterdeck, another two sailors below on rotation. Otherwise her ship was deserted.

Except for Jin Seton.

He ascended the stairs from the main hatch, and Viola’s heart climbed into her throat. He looked nothing out of the ordinary—simply dressed, sober, handsome. Perfect.

He saw her and paused at the head of the stair. They stared at each other, the deck between them crisscrossed with shadows of spars and lines cutting through morning sunshine. Heart galloping, she went forward and he did as well, and they halted at a distance. Viola’s insides twisted. With what words could she possibly begin this day?

Instead, he began it.

“When can you be ready to leave?”

She could not breathe. His gaze was quite serious.

“I suppose this is your way of telling me you’ve won the wager?” She forced through her closed throat.

His gaze remained steady upon her.

He had made love to her and she had given him some pleasure, but at the wager’s commencement he had promised to tell her the truth of it. So this was the truth: she had not succeeded in making him fall in love with her. And she, her insides howling strangely like a hurricane, must abide by the terms upon which they had agreed.

“I can be ready in a sennight. Less than a fortnight, certainly,” she heard herself say without knowing how the words came. “I will need to conclude negotiations regarding the cargo my ship will carry to Boston. And arrange matters with the men, of course. Becoua will captain the
April
back to Boston and put it into Crazy’s care.”

“I regret that I must return you home against your will,” he finally said. “I wish it were otherwise.” He spoke with a gentle sincerity that actually hurt in the pit of Viola’s gut like someone was driving a pole into her. “Viola, I am . . .” He paused. “I am sorry.”

He was sorry for her. Sorry that she had lost the wager. Sorry that she had not succeeded in making him love her.

In this, however, she trumped him. Because she was a great deal sorrier than he. A very great deal. For now the truth slammed into her like a jib boom swinging in a crosswind. It had been many days since she wished to win for the reason she had given him—that she did not want to return to England. In truth, she had wished to win because it would have meant that he loved her, and she wanted that. She wanted him. He filled her longing, stretching the loneliness that made her ache at sunset through her like a storm that only he could calm. She was in love with him. She knew now that she had given herself to him the night of the fire not because she needed comfort, but because she was in love. She had been in love with him long before her ship docked at Port of Spain.

She had played a very foolish game, and lost.

“I won’t back down on my part of the wager, if that’s your concern.”

“I know you will not.” It might be pity he felt, but the distance in his crystal gaze struck her even more forcefully now.

And quite swiftly, her anger rose. Perhaps so swiftly because she had anticipated this outcome. In her heart she had known even last night when she went to seduce him that she would lose. Yet she had gone anyway.

“I have hired a sloop,” he said. “I will sail for Tobago this morning to visit my bank to pay the fine on the
April
, and I will purchase a ship to take us east. I’ve been told there is a suitable vessel for sale at port in Scarborough.”

“I suspected you wouldn’t want to wait to collect your schooner in Boston first.” She didn’t truly care whether they sailed in a yawl or a hundred-gun frigate across the Atlantic. She didn’t care about anything except berating herself for the fool she’d always been.

She was tired of loving men who could not love her back. Aidan never had. He spoke the words and even made the gestures. But he did not treat her with love. She saw this now more clearly than she had seen anything before. She saw it perhaps because the man standing before her had never spoken the words or made the gestures, and she wanted him more than she had ever wanted Aidan.

It infuriated her—her weakness. Her hardheadedness. Her blind foolishness. Beginning now, she would never again love a man until he loved her first. Never. To not be loved in return hurt far too much. Her insides felt as though someone had scooped them out with a galley ladle.

“We should depart before the storm season commences,” he replied. “It is best we not delay.”

“Of course.” She would write to Mrs. Digby and her renters and Crazy and let them know she would be gone for an extended absence. She would negotiate a cargo so her crew would be able to carry back home at least some gold in their pockets. She had much to do and no practical reason to stand around mourning a misguided attachment except that her body seemed to want to remain near his as though he were a pole and she a pathetic little compass needle. She wiped her damp palms on her breeches. “I should get to business if all is to be ready by the time you return from Tobago,” she said briskly. “You’ll be gone a sennight or so?”

“Yes.” His eyes were quite cool now.

“All right.” She nodded. “Until then, Seton.” She passed him and strode aft toward the companionway on which he had made love to her. She knew he watched her as she went below, and hoped he felt buckets of guilt for forcing her to do what she didn’t wish to do. But he was not stupid and they both knew the truth of it. He had always known this would be the outcome. As he said from the beginning, her wager had been a child’s game.

And she had lost.

She had lost him before she ever had him. No amount of anger would ease the pain of that.

“M
r. Julius Smythe?”

Jin swung his gaze up from the glass of rum gripped in his fist.

“The very one.” His voice sounded dull. But most everything did in this palm-frond-and-plywood excuse for a rum house along Tobago’s least traveled byway. The pub was so close to the breakers crashing against the rocks twenty feet below, little else could be heard. Occasionally a gull’s cry. More frequently the protests of his own conscience.

He studied the man as though seeing him for the first time. Spare of frame and height, with curly brown hair, skin the color of oakwood and quick eyes—English, African, East Indian, Spanish—he appeared an unremarkable specimen of humanity. A mestizo. Not a man of distinction. No one of note. Which made him particularly good at the living he pursued. And particularly useful to Jin since they’d first met years ago.

Joshua Bose extended his hand, a charade they enacted on each encounter in the event that any interested party might be watching.

“I am Gisel Gupta,” Joshua said, East Indian this time, apparently. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, sir.”

Jin gestured him to the chair across the table.

“You will have a glass with me, Gupta?”

“Thank you, sir.” Joshua sat almost daintily, straight-backed on the edge of his seat. He placed a thin leather satchel on the table, then his palms flat on the satchel. “I hope your journey to Tobago was a smooth one.”

“It was fine.” Brief, the sloop he had hired at Port of Spain a fair enough vessel.

“Mr. Smythe, at the time of our previous meeting I had been misinformed as to the whereabouts of the object which you seek.”

Jin revealed none of his surprise, or disappointment. He had hoped that this time Joshua would bring him the box. He had, in fact, prayed. But prayer from a man like him did not take God’s attention, only right actions. Of late, Jin’s actions had nothing of rightness about them. But perhaps God simply did not exist, which would explain a great deal.

“Ah,” he only said.

“The information I received from my contact in Rio did not satisfy me, you see. He indicated that the object had changed hands in Caracas in October of 1812, when in fact from the itinerary with which I supplied you last August, it seemed impossible that its courier
at that time
would have been anywhere in that region. He was, in fact, in Bombay.”

“Bombay, hm?” Jin nodded thoughtfully. He cared nothing for this minutia. But Joshua would insist on relating it; he relished the details of his work, and he could not share it with any other. Jin only wanted the contents of that box, if after sixteen years its contents yet remained within. He was fairly certain of that impossibility. Nevertheless, he played this game. He had become quite adept at playing such games, like the game he had played with Viola Carlyle three days earlier on the deck of the
April Storm
before he left Trinidad.

The barkeep dropped a smudged tumbler on the table and glanced at Jin’s full measure of rum. He wrinkled his nose, then thumped the bottle down and moved off.

Joshua reached into the pocket of his paisley waistcoat and withdrew a kerchief. With precise care he wiped the glass clean, refolded the linen and returned it to his pocket, and set his glass forward for Jin to fill. He took one sip, then placed the glass on the table.

“As I said, I was unsatisfied with this information. So I went to Rio to pursue that avenue personally.” His smile flashed. “I am happy to report that in Rio I discovered that which we have all along sought.”

Jin’s heart tripped. His fingers slipped across the glass in his palm ever so slightly.

“Did you?”

Joshua’s narrow nostrils flared, his mouth curving into a smile now.

“I did. And may I say, sir, how happy I am to now offer you the information which you hired me to find three years ago?”

“You may.”

A wave hurled itself against shore, sending white vapor into the pristine blue sky. Wind whipped at the heavy palm fronds about the pub’s roof, the heat of the sun bearing down all around the shaded canopy. Because of this moment, whatever the outcome of his quest, he would remember this place clearly. His curse was remembering that which would be best forgotten—like the woman he had called mother, and the last thing she said to him before she allowed her husband to take him to be sold at the slave market.

“Where is it, Gupta?”

“It is in the possession of His Excellency Bishop Frederick Baldwin of the Church of England.” He fairly wiggled on the chair, growing taller as his spine stretched in pride. “In his house in London, sir. It has been there for several years as part of a collection of treasures from the East.”