Seduced by the Scoundrel (Danger and Desire 2)

‘I can row,’ Dawkins said. The others had hauled him to his feet again and he stood propped between Tubbs and Tom Patch, his slab of a face creased with anxiety. ‘I can reload and guard the boat when you’re boarding. I can shoot from the brig. Gawd, Cap’n, I’ve got to go or they’ll say I haven’t earned me pardon!’

‘You haven’t,’ Luc said. ‘You know damn well that the most dangerous part, the part I need the men for, is boarding the brigs and you go and fool around and have an accident—if it is an accident.’

‘Tell ‘im, Miss!’ Dawkins turned to Averil, all trace of the blustering bully gone. ‘Tell ‘im it was an accident. Could ‘ave ‘appened to anyone!’

‘It was an accident,’ Averil confirmed. ‘Honestly it was, Captain d’Aunay. He wasn’t doing anything that the others weren’t.’

There was a stinging silence while Luc contemplated Dawkins’s sweaty face and the men seemed to hold their breath. ‘Miss Heydon is remarkably forgiving, considering the disrespectful way you have behaved to her,’ he said at last.

‘Yes, Cap’n. She’s a real lady and I’m sorry, miss.’

Watching him, Averil thought he probably was genuinely regretful. He was a bully who was used to being kept at a distance; her unforced help seemed to have shocked him.

‘Very well. I accept that. If we are successful, then you will get your pardon like the rest. Now go and lie down and stop hopping about like a damned rabbit.’

‘Er … miss?’ Tubbs was eyeing her like a hopeful jackdaw after a scrap of meat. ‘You’ve got the thing we found, miss. Rightfully mine, that is. Finder’s keepers.’

‘Yes, it would be, Tubbs,’ Averil said. ‘But it belongs to me.’ It was a lie, but she wasn’t allowing the only thing she had left of her friends to fall into Tubb’s greasy fingers. ‘Look, I’ll prove it to you. What do you think is inside?’

‘Dunno, miss.’ He was looking more intrigued than resentful. Some of the others who were not helping Dawkins back to his shelter stopped to listen. ‘Snuff? Money?’

‘Tiny carved animals,’ Averil said, slipping the box out of her pocket. ‘A Noah’s Ark. I couldn’t have guessed that, could I? If you can find a flat rock out of the wind, I’ll show you.’

She opened the lid and there they all were, the minute ivory animals, the ark, Noah himself—the gift Lady Perdita Brooke had bought for Alistair, Viscount Lyndon, in Cape Town. Her hand shook a little as she set them out on the rock with the men crouched down beside her or hanging over her shoulder to look. Where had it been when the ship struck—in Alistair’s cabin or on his person? Was it a good omen or a sign that he and Dita were gone?

Averil took herself to task for superstition. It was chance, no more, no less, that this small object should have been washed up on this beach for her to recognise.

‘Lovely workmanship,’ Luc said behind her as he reached over her shoulder to pick up one of the camels, as small as his little fingernail. ‘But very fragile for a child’s toy.’

‘It isn’t a toy,’ she said, as she blew grains of sand out of the box before she packed the pieces in again. The men drifted away, back to the beach or the fire, leaving them alone. ‘It was a gift. A birthday gift from someone very special to me.’ Dita had been her closest female friend and she had loved her like a sister. I do love her, she corrected herself. She is alive, I know she is alive. ‘They bought it in Cape Town,’ she added, thinking to explain the craftsmanship.

‘I see,’ Luc said. ‘Lord Bradon would be interested to hear about that, I imagine.’

‘You think I had a lover on board? Someone I met on the voyage?’ she demanded, shocked and yet curiously gratified. Was he jealous? Not that she wanted him to be, of course, that would presuppose she actually had any feelings for the man, other than a grudging admiration for his leadership and sympathy for the fate that had brought him here.

‘I know you did not,’ he said. ‘At least, if you did, he hadn’t kissed you.’

Averil glared. ‘It was a gift from a woman, my best friend. Just because you appear to place little importance on fidelity there is no need to assume everyone else is the same.’

‘I am always faithful,’ Luc protested, all injured innocence, she thought resentfully as he cocked a hip on the rock and made himself comfortable to watch her fiddle the pieces back into place.

‘Serial fidelity to a succession of mistresses, I presume?’ She could imagine Luc selecting a mistress, negotiating—he would be reasonably generous, she guessed—then … Enjoying her, she supposed, was the phrase. She would not let her imagination go there.

‘Exactly.’

‘Disgraceful!’ She secured the lid of the box and stood up.

‘How so? I am generous, I provide well for the woman when the liaison is over, she appears satisfied with the arrangement.’

‘There is no need to be smug about your sins,’ Averil snapped. Even to her own ears she sounded irritable and stuffy. ‘I hope you are not going to tell me you are married and keeping a string of mistresses.’

‘A succession, not a string,’ he said. He appeared to find it mildly amusing, curse the man. ‘And, no, I am not married. If I get my head out of this noose then I shall devote myself to finding a well bred, virtuous young lady of an émigré family.’

‘Really?’ Distracted from her anxieties, Averil turned back. ‘Not an Englishwoman? You intend to go back to France one day?’

‘Of course.’ He stared at her as if she had suggested he go to New South Wales instead. ‘I have responsibilities in France—that is where my title comes from, where my lands are. Obviously I need a wife who understands that. Once the war is over there will be nothing for me here.’

‘Oh. I see. It is just that … you seem so English.’ But he did not, somehow. Despite the completely perfect pronunciation there was something under the veneer of the English gentleman and officer, something foreign and unsettling and different.