“How soon before we get home?”

“We’ll reach our anchorage after dark,” he replied. His hands lifted again to hold her shoulders and once again fell to his sides. “Will you not tell me what’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter,” Olivia said, moving chess pieces at random, still unable to look at him. “Will my clothes be ready, do you think?”

“Adam was putting the finishing touches a while ago. You slept through breakfast but I came to tell you that we do eat at midday if we’re not otherwise occupied. The table is set on the quarterdeck.”

The words were warm, reminding her of the boarding of the Dona Elena… of that exhilaration… of what it had led to… of how hungry she had been. But she could summon no answering warmth. “Thank you.”

Anthony waited a moment, then said, “Will you come, then?”

“Yes… yes, in a minute.”

Again he hesitated, and the silence stretched, taut as a lute string. He left the cabin, going on deck with a deep frown on his brow. He felt that somehow he had offended. But that was ridiculous.

They had been so in tune, body and soul, each complementing the other. He had felt it and he knew she had too. From the first moment she’d fetched up at his doorstep, he’d felt it. And suddenly it was as if that connection had been abruptly severed.

Was she regretting their loving? Regretting that she was no longer a maid? Was she frightened by the consequences of what had happened and blaming him? It would not be an unusual response, and yet Anthony would have sworn Olivia would not respond in predictable ways.

He climbed to the quarterdeck and stood behind Jethro, looking up at the sails, then across to the hump of the island. The green of its downs, the creamy white of its cliffs, were now faintly visible. He called an order and men swarmed up the rigging, loosening the sheets of the great white topsail, furling it on the yards as it collapsed.

Olivia stood on the lower deck watching the operation. It was all so smooth and neat, each move clearly ordered. It reminded her of finding the solution to a chess problem or working out a particularly satisfying mathematical formula.

The table was laid on the quarterdeck as it had been for their supper, and as she climbed the ladder Anthony left his position at the wheel and came over to her. His face was grave, the light in his eye extinguished.

Olivia sat down at the table. There were boiled eggs in a bowl, wheaten bread and a crock of butter, a jar of honey, a pink ham, a jug of ale. Despite her inner torment she was hungry.

Anthony sat down opposite her. He tilted his face to the sun and the breeze, closing his eyes briefly.

“Why did they bring down that sail?” She tried to keep her voice calm, ordinarily interested, as if there was no reason for there to be constraint between them.

“The tops’l is the first sail to be visible from land,” he told her in neutral tones. “I don’t want to draw attention to our approach.” He picked up the jug and leaned forward to fill her tankard. His eyes lifted, met hers, and Olivia turned from the puzzled question in his gaze.

She took a boiled egg and tapped it on the edge of the table to crack the shell. “Do you want to approach secretly because you’re a pirate or because of the war?” she asked, trying for his own neutral tones.

Anthony shrugged. “Either or neither.”

“But you’re for the king,” she insisted. “You talked of my father as the king’s jailer.”

He regarded her through narrowed eyes. “I have no time for this war. The country has been soaked in blood for close on seven years, brother against brother, father against son. And for what? The dueling ambitions of a king and a Cromwell.” He gave a short, rather ugly laugh. “I’m a pirate, a smuggler, a mercenary. I sell my ship and talents to the highest bidder.”

His bitter tone and the cynical statement chilled her to the marrow. She said almost desperately, “How am I to go home?” Her fingers shook as she peeled the egg and it slipped to the table. She picked it up again, flushing.

“What is it?” he asked quietly, and his eyes were once more soft, the bitterness gone from his expression.

Olivia just shook her head. How could she speak of something that she had held locked inside her for so long? And how to speak of it to the man who had forced the vileness back into her life, now as vivid in memory as it had been in reality during that dreadful year of her childhood?

“If you don’t wish to draw attention to yourself, how am I to go home?” she repeated, removing the last shard of shell from the egg.

Anthony carved ham. Hurt warred with anger, and anger won because for as long as he could remember, he had protected himself from the hurt of rejection. If this was the way she wanted it to be, then he wouldn’t fight for her confidence. He had more important things to concern him. Olivia Granville could come and go in his life and leave barely a trace. So, for once he’d been mistaken. His instincts had been awry. As Adam had said, there was always a first time. He would let the little innocent go back to her calm, privileged life. She’d suffer no untoward consequences, he’d made sure of that.

“May I offer you a slice of ham?” he asked coldly.

“Thank you.”

He laid a slice on her plate, then said in the same cool tone, “One of the crew who has family on the island will take you ashore, where you’ll be met and driven home. The story you will tell will not be far from the truth. You lost your footing on the cliff and fell to the underpath. The farmer, Jake Barker, found you, took you back to his cottage, where they tended you. Mistress Barker has some experience of physicking. She has more children than I’ve ever been able to count.”

A smile flickered in his eyes for a bare instant. Then it was gone and he was continuing in the same cold tone. “You will say that you had no recollection of who you were for several days. When you regained your senses, they drove you home. You will, of course, be suitably grateful to the Barkers for their care and attention, and will, I trust, ensure that Lord Granville rewards them.”

It was as if he were giving her a lesson in noblesse oblige because she couldn’t be trusted to recognize such obligations herself. Olivia flinched at the frigid tones but she could do nothing to change this atmosphere. She couldn’t begin to frame the words. Her skin seemed to have shrunk on her skeleton and become too small for her.

“My father is not at home.” But they would have sent for him, she thought. As soon as she had disappeared, Phoebe would have sent for him, so he could be there now. And however difficult it was going to be to face him and to deceive him, nothing could be worse than being with the pirate now.

Olivia had no knowledge of this man. The master of Wind Dancer was once again transformed. She couldn’t imagine this man laughing. Showing tenderness. His face had changed, the skin drawn tight over his cheekbones and around his jaw. That golden hair, caught once more in the ribbon at his neck, threw his face into harsh relief under the bright sun. There was no softness in this man. No laughter.

“Well, I trust you or his wife will honor his obligations in his absence.” Anthony lifted his tankard to his lips.

His tone was so insulting, Olivia wanted to dash the contents of her own tankard into his cold, sardonic face. She pushed back her chair and stood up. “Excuse me.” She stalked off the quarterdeck, her head high, her cheeks flushed with anger.

Anthony gazed out over the railing towards the island. It was taking greater shape now, and he thought he could distinguish the vicious rocks of the Needles at its farthest western point. They were approaching the maelstrom around St. Catherine’s Point, but on a brilliant summer day there was no threat from those hidden rocks.

He had an appointment in the Anchor with the brain behind the wreckers. He took a slow sip from his tankard. Was it a brain or just a vicious, greedy man who had struck lucky?

A cynical smile touched his lips. If the man was a greedy fool, then he’d be easy to outwit. A sharp brain… that was another matter.

Olivia no longer interested him. She had failed him. Or he had failed her. It had ceased to matter. Interludes, however pleasant, could not be allowed to influence decisions.

“I’ve finished the dress. Not quite up to me usual standard.” Adam interrupted his master’s reverie, holding up Olivia’s gown. He gave a disdainful flick at the work he didn’t consider satisfactory. “Not much else t‘ do wi’ it, though.”

“I’m sure Lady Olivia will be suitably grateful,” Anthony said distantly.

“Oh, so that’s the way it is.” Adam regarded Anthony with a knowing eye. “So what ‘appened, then? Thought all was sweetness an’ light wi‘ the lady.”

“Take her her clothes, Adam.”

There was a weariness to the instruction that Adam recognized. Recognized and hated to hear. He hesitated. “What’s amiss?”

“I wish I knew.” Anthony stared across at the island. Then he shrugged. “What does it matter? I thought… but I was wrong.” He gave a short laugh. “There’s always a first time, isn’t that right, Adam?”

“If’n you say so.”

“I thought that was what you said,” Anthony declared savagely. But he made the declaration to empty air. Adam was already climbing down the ladder to the main deck.

Olivia stood over the chart table. She puzzled over the notations Anthony had made beside the charts, trying to make sense of them. They related to the sextant and the compasses, that much she knew. The island was there on the charts, as were other bodies of land that didn’t mean anything to her. And the water was in different shades of blue marked with numbers. She lost herself in the puzzle. It was safe, clean, numbing. When the door opened, she was so absorbed she didn’t notice immediately.

“Did what I could wi‘ yer clothes.”

Olivia turned from the chart table, saying with as much warmth as she could muster, “Oh, I’m sure they’re perfect, Adam.”

“Doubt ye’ll think that when you look at ‘em.” He laid her gown and petticoats on the bed.

Olivia went over to look at them. “They do seem rather short,” she said doubtfully.

“By the time ye’d finished yer tumblin‘, there wasn’t much left to work wi’.”

Olivia heard his disappointment and picked up the sadly reduced garments. “No, of c-course not. You’ve done wonders, Adam. At least I’ll be able to go home looking halfway decent.” She gave him a brilliant smile.

Adam nodded. He didn’t like that smile. The girl was at some edge and it wouldn’t take much to push her over. She hadn’t been on that brink before. Probably explained Anthony’s dark expression. The master of Wind Dancer hadn’t looked like that in quite some time.

“Well, put ‘em on an’ see ‘ow they do,” he said, turning to one of the bulkhead cupboards.

“How long before we land, Adam?”

“Bless ye, we don’t land.” He turned back with the shoes she had been wearing at the time of her fall. “These’ll still do, but the stockin’s were in shreds. Reckon ye’ll ‘ave to manage wi’out.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Olivia said impatiently, taking them from him. “Why won’t we land?”

Adam regarded her in silence. He didn’t know how much Anthony had told her of the chine where Wind Dancer had safe haven, and he wasn’t about to blurt out their secrets.

Of course, Anthony had said that she would be taken ashore, Olivia remembered. “Is there a cove, then?” she pressed.

“Not fer me to say.” He gave her a nod and left.

Olivia, once more alone, knelt on the window seat watching as the island grew clearer. She would never see the pirate again once she’d left Wind Dancer. It was as it must be. As she wanted it to be. As she needed it to be.

She got off the window seat and went to the bed to examine her mended clothes. They would do. Once out of the pirate’s nightshirt, clothed in her own garments, she would feel like herself again. This thing that had happened between herself and the pirate would cease to exist.

And then she began to shiver. Once before she had tried to make a thing that had happened cease to exist.

She threw off the nightshirt and scrambled into her clothes. Gown and petticoat ended at midcalf, but Adam’s needle was skilled and the rents were almost invisible. She thrust her bare feet into her shoes. They felt strange, unnatural almost, after the time she’d spent barefoot… so carefree, so lost in entrancement.