“Perhaps I’m hard of hearing. Or perhaps I just sank your ship and you are my prisoner.”

A brow lifted. “Kill me then, if you wish.”

“I may.”

“You will not.” He sounded certain.

“How can you know that?”

His voice dipped to a whisper, his gaze slipping to her mouth so close. “You have never killed a soul. You will not begin with me.”

She didn’t respond. How could she? The blackguard was right.

Slowly, he drew his head back. Viola allowed herself a sip of fresh air. His face remained perfectly passive. Her right foot slipped back several inches. Then her left. If he smiled, she would stick him with her dirk and damn him and her vow never to be the kind of sailor her father had been.

As though he knew exactly what she was thinking, his eyes seemed to light again. A wicked glimmer.

She narrowed hers. “You really don’t believe you’ll be behind bars tonight, do you?”

He did not respond.

“Master Jin’s not one for telling fibs, miss,” the hulk offered gruffly, “but I don’t think he wants to be insultin’ you in front of all your men like, you sees.”

“What’s your name, sailor?”

“Matthew, miss.”

“Matthew, keep your lip buttoned or I will button it for you.”

Seton’s perfect mouth slanted into a half smile. Viola’s breathing halted.

She snapped her gaze away and shouted toward the helm. “Becoua, make our course for port.”

“Yes’m, Cap’n!”

“Mr. Crazy,” she called across deck to her lieutenant, “we’ll take everything off these sailors for prize before we give them over to the constable.”

Her lieutenant scuttled up like a crab, all bones and white whiskers beneath leathery skin. “Everything, Cap’n?”

Viola smiled, breathing deep again, and crossed her arms. “Everything.” She tilted her gaze back toward the Pharaoh. “And, Crazy, start with Mr. Seton.”

She realized her mistake immediately. After a long cruise, her crewmen valued good clothing more than firearms and coin, and the sailors from the Cavalier were better clad than most. But she should have let Seton be. He’d been the master of his own ship for years, after all, her equal on the sea. It was common courtesy to treat other captains respectfully.

More to the point, his perfection continued below the mouth.

She could not look away. He held her gaze as a pair of deckhands loosened the ropes and stripped him first of coat, neck cloth, and waistcoat, then shirt and trousers. Through the disrobing, his stare challenged. But after a point, she gave up looking at his face.

Sweet Saint Bridget, he was more god than man.

From broad shoulders glimmering with rain, his chest tapered lean and well muscled to a line of dark hair dipping beneath linen drawers slung low on his hipbones. After years on her father’s ship, Viola had seen plenty of men undressed. Sailors were either wiry from life on the sea or bulky from the work. Jinan Seton was neither. His height rendered his corded arms, chest, and tight belly perfectly aesthetically pleasing.

Her breaths shortened. It had clearly been far too long since she’d seen Aidan.

“Enjoying the view, Captain?” His lips barely moved but his voice was remarkably strong and hard.

Arrogant son of a humpback whale. Well justified, though.

“Enjoying the weather, Seton?” He had to be cold as a Nova Scotian iceberg. His crew too. She’d better get them to shore before they froze to death.

He grinned. “Overly warm for spring, wouldn’t you say?”

Yes. But not on the outside of her skin. Beside him, Matthew shivered, but the Pharaoh remained perfectly still. She should move closer to see if his smooth skin was covered with gooseflesh too. The ship dipped against a swell; he steadied his stance and his muscles flexed-chest, arms, neck, calves. She nearly choked on the shock of heat that went through her.

His grin widened.

Ever so nonchalantly she strolled toward the companionway, putting her back to him, and descended below deck.

In her cabin she unlocked the medicine chest and pulled out powdered root, salve, and a few other bottles, and dropped them into her wide coat pockets along with a pair of shears and a thick roll of linen bandaging. She would be busy until sunset seeing to nicks and gouges, but she hadn’t seen any serious wounds among her men or the sailors from the Cavalier. She added a needle and thread and headed back up top.

She set to tending wounds as she found them, accustomed to the occupation. From the time she was ten and she’d first crossed the ocean in her father’s smuggling brig, he let her take care of this part of his captain’s responsibilities. He had claimed it would make the men appreciate her so they would not mind her aboard.

Most never had, growing accustomed to her quick enough. She made certain of it. The one consolation to losing her family in England, after all, had been the adventure of life at sea. In those days Viola had done everything she could to convince her father to keep her aboard rather than leave her on land with his widowed sister and her three squalling infants. He had rewarded her all spring and summer, each fall setting her ashore to remain in his little house in Boston the rest of the year, to learn her lessons and wait impatiently for his return in April.

Later, when she’d grown up a little, she realized he kept her with him on the ship because she reminded him of her mother. His only love. After she met Aidan Castle, she had finally understood her father’s singular devotion.

The rain let up just as Viola tied off the final bandage and sent the sailor back to work. Her crewmen industriously scrubbed and hammered, tying and splicing and patching. All in all, her ship hadn’t come out too badly. Given her opponent, Viola was astounded they’d come out of the fight at all.

She forced herself to look aft. Still strapped to the mizzen, Seton stood with his eyes closed, his head resting back against the mast. But she wasn’t fooled. A sailor like him wouldn’t sleep while prisoner aboard another’s vessel. He was probably calculating his escape.

He opened his eyes and looked straight at her. This time he didn’t grin.

Viola knew that over the past decade the swift and clever Cavalier had spent most of her time harrying British yachts, and during the struggle with Napoleon she had bested a handful of French men-o’-war. Here and there she had taken American merchant ships selling weapons and supplies to the French colonies, but never a U.S. naval ship. Not many months ago, however, rumor had it the Cavalier sank a Spanish pirate sloop round about Havana. Shortly after, she turned over another buccaneer-a Mexican schooner-to an American naval captain off Trinidad. Good work. Decent work.

Still, with the vessel’s colorful past and the Pharaoh’s reputation, if Viola turned its crew in to the port authorities in Boston, Seton and his men might very well hang.

She glanced over her shoulder at her quartermaster making fast a halyard to the mainmast.

“Crazy, how dishonest would a pirate have to be to keep his identity secret so he wouldn’t be hung?”

“Not dishonest at all, Cap’n.” The old man’s eyes were knowing. Since she was ten, Crazy had taught her half of what she knew about sailing and life. “Wise, I’d say,” he added, casting a quick look at the Cavalier’s master.

“Can our boys keep it quiet, do you think?” She hushed her voice. “Or will they want to brag? It’s not any ship they’ve sunk, after all. They’ve every right to be proud.”

He scoffed. “These boys’d do anything for you.” He said it without sentimentality. Sailors didn’t get teary, no matter how much affection they held for one another. Viola had learned that early on. She had learned to hold her tears like a man.

“Then make it so.” She paused. “But don’t tell Seton or his crew.”

Crazy nodded his white head and went off to see to her orders. Viola’s shoulders relaxed. When they came into port in an hour or so, she would tell a tall tale to the constable of a stranded ship that fired on her accidentally. Of how she had taken the crew aboard and tied them up in case they intended trouble. Of how, still and all, she was convinced they weren’t any harm. Hell, they couldn’t even keep their own vessel afloat. How much of a threat could they be?

The Cavalier’s papers had gone down with her. Without proof of identity her crew would be held overnight. But with Viola’s story they wouldn’t be held any longer than that unless Seton opened up his arrogant mouth and proclaimed his identity and the identity of his ship.

Viola wouldn’t be at fault in his hanging. She would allow the Pharaoh to take care of that all by himself.

Chapter 3

The port constable, an old friend, bought her story hook, line, and sinker. Or pretended he did. The sack of gold she’d taken off a Spanish brigantine two months earlier and slipped into his pocket probably didn’t hurt matters any.

She saw the crew of the Cavalier off her vessel and into the harbor jail, and wiped her hands of them.

“You done the right thing, Miss Violet.” Crazy walked with her along the lantern-lit quay toward the street bustling with sailors, dockworkers, merchants, and the bawdy women who gave them all pleasure. Laughter and raucous amusement tumbled from pub doors, and mist still hung in the night air. “Had myself a chat with some of them boys from the Cavalier. They weren’t none of them a bad lot.”

“Except their captain.”

“Rumor is as rumor does. Some men’s bound to change.”

Viola slanted her quartermaster a narrow look, unwinding her thick cravat and scratching her neck, her legs steadying to land slowly. The ten-week cruise had not wearied her. She would appreciate a hot bath and clothes washed in fresh water, but she was anxious to get back aboard her ship and head south.

To Aidan.

She was nearly five-and-twenty, and she had decided to tell him she was willing to live on land for at least six months every year. This time, he would marry her. He would.

“Think your wife will take you in this time, Crazy?”

He rubbed his hand across scruffy white whiskers. “Said she would when I left last time, but she’s none too consistent, you see.”

“Good luck to you. We’ll pick you up when we return in August.”

“Heading on to Port of Spain, then?”

Viola passed her hand across her brow, shoving back matted hair. Everything was damp, from her coat to-oddly-her anticipation.

“Mm hm.” She stared at the torchlight illuminating the doorways along the street. But she would not find answers there, only in the bright Caribbean sun.

“Haven’t heard from Mr. Castle lately, now, have you?”

“Not since December.”

He cleared his throat. “Them planters gets busy sometimes. And he’s still learnin’ the ropes, mind you. ’Taint every day a sailor sets onto land to farm.”

“It’s hardly a farm, Crazy.” With the money Aidan had saved from six years as lieutenant aboard her father’s ship, he had purchased fifty acres of sugarcane.

His brow frazzled. “You go on down there and see what’s what.”

“Will you check up on my house on your way home? The renters are good folk, but I should see if they’ve need of anything.”

“You won’t be pushing off for another fortnight. Why don’t you take a stop by yourself?”

“Too much work to do here unloading the cargo we took on, and refitting. I won’t have the time.” Or the will.

“Got no fond feelings for that old house, have you?”

“You know about that jail we just sent those boys off to?” She gestured. Crazy nodded. She lifted a brow.

He chuckled. “Never did like to be left there, did you, Miss Violet?”

“No, sir.” But her father had left her there nonetheless, for months on end with her aunt and three baby cousins while he’d gone off smuggling, then in 1812 when the war began, privateering for Massachusetts. Viola had never cared for cooking or washing or sewing. She’d only liked to read the newsprints and, when she could get her hands on them, stories of adventure.

Every spring when he’d taken her back aboard, he swore she was born to it. He couldn’t keep her ashore.

Serena had always said she would take to sea life like a natural. Serena… her beautiful, sweet elder sister who long since believed her dead, just like their mother. Who probably never thought of her at all now. Who would be shocked to see how her little sister had turned out, tanned and uncouth and leading a scruffy band of seamen working for Americans.

For years after her father stole her out from under her sister’s eyes, right off the property of the man she’d always thought was her father, Viola had hoped to return to England. She had written letter after letter, sending them off when her real father wasn’t ashore so he wouldn’t know and be hurt by it. For a hardened sailor, Fionn Daly had a heart of jelly when it came to the females he loved-his widowed sister, Viola, and Viola’s mother, whom he never gave up on despite the fact that she married another man. Right up to the day his extravagant devotion killed her.