He could tell by her tone that she was laughing at him. “I’m saying that for my sanity, you must not tempt me more than I can bear.”
“I will do my best,” she said, smiling, “although I think the real reason you were staring at those women this morning was because of that pretty one with the fat chest.”
“The—?” He was smiling. “Oh, aye, I do like a fat chest. More to strap into one of those whalebone things you wear.” He glanced at her chest, which though not “fat” was certainly full enough.
“Now who is flirting and teasing?”
“Ah, but you are not tempted
by me,” Angus said. “That is a great difference.” There was a knock on the door and he got up to answer it.
As he walked across the room, all six feet plus of him, she looked at the way the fabric clung to his heavily muscled thighs. She was not tempted by him? Was he insane?
“The captain had me bring these to you,” the officer said. “He thought you might need them.”
Behind him four seamen carried two heavy trunks.
“Put them in that corner,” Edilean said from behind Angus. “And thank you for bringing them.”
The seamen looked at Edilean as though they’d never seen a woman before, and backed out of the room with their caps in their hands.
“I guess if you were a sailor you’d be like those men,” she said as she went to the trunks.
“If I were them and a beautiful woman was on the ship, I’d do what I could to get her to notice me.”
“But not now and not me?” Edilean asked, curious.
Angus gave her a look of great sadness. “Alas, I have come to know you. Knowledge of the lies and betrayals, of the injustice done to you, hinders my advances.”
Edilean couldn’t help laughing. “As if you care! Shall we see what James has stolen for us?” As she said it, they felt the ship move, and for a moment she lost her balance and almost fell, but Angus caught her arm.
“Do you get seasick?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve only been on little boats on lakes that were as still as glass. What about you?”
“I don’t know either,” he said.
Smiling at each other, they turned their attention to the trunks and unfastened the latches. The one she opened had been in the room of James’s wife.
Edilean gasped when she saw that in the bottom were folded what looked to be many dresses, each one more beautiful than the other.
Angus watched as she pulled one dress after another from the trunk and admired it, exclaiming over embroidered silks in beautiful colors of apricot and golden yellow. “These are divine,” she said. “Truly beautiful. I’ve never seen dresses more exquisite than these. They’re—”
She stopped when she saw some papers in the trunk, and as she read them, her face turned angry.
“What is it?”
“Look at this!” She thrust the papers at him.
“I can read the numbers, but I don’t know what it says,” he said stiffly.
“I can tell you what it says. That blasted—may he rot in hell!—James Harcourt charged all his wife’s dresses to me. The name on these bills is mine.”
Angus gave her a one-sided smile. “He thought he’d be gone so you’d have to pay for dresses that you never got, but now he’ll be charged for dresses he doesn’t have.”
For a moment Edilean stared at him, then she started laughing. “That is good! My dressmaker in London said she is so sick of people not paying that she’s hired men with clubs to go after them. I can assure you that I paid her in a very timely manner.”
Angus threw back the lid to the second trunk, and when he looked inside he saw James’s clothes. Digging down through them, he pulled a piece of paper from the bottom and handed it to her.