“Gentlemen tr-treat ladies better,” she said.

“So I hear.”

“Some gentlemen.”

He leaned forward, his knees coming around hers. “Not all?”

“Not . . . most.” She lifted her attention from their knees locked together.

Hungry.

His gaze upon her was hungry. Like the wolf looking upon the lamb.

He stood abruptly, the chair scraping back, and swiped his hand around the back of his neck. “Not this one, apparently.”

She got to her feet and the blanket drooped open. But she was warm finally. Her teeth clacked but deep inside her swirled heady heat. The lamplight threw his good eye into shadow, but she saw the confused desire there. He was both unsteady and authoritarian and he looked at her like no man ever had before, like he wanted her but did not understand that he did.

“I think you should go to bed, Miss Caulfield.” His voice was low. “Now.”

She could not think. The brandy stole her reason. Her head spun. Dr. Stewart was right: she was intrigued. More than that. She was infatuated. Upon so brief an acquaintance. Like a schoolgirl. Like the schoolgirl she had never really been because even then she had been serious, learning to be a lady despite all. When the other girls at school nursed tendres for the dancing master, she did not. She had remained directed and determined, waiting for a prince to come along and tell her the destiny that was just out of her grasp.

Now, with only two glasses of spirits, a piratical shipmaster threw her into foolish infatuation.

It was ridiculous.

She must halt it before it got out of hand.

“Why d-did you order Joshua to follow me about ship?” She said it like an accusation.

“So that I would know where you are.”

“D-Doctor Stewart s-said—”

“What did he say?” He stood so close she could feel the heat from his body.

She was having difficulty breathing. “He said I would not be the first.”

The door swung open. “Captain, I have hung the lady’s garments in the warmest location aboard. Shall I make up the bed?”

The captain stepped back from her and nodded, turning his head away. “Do.”

His steward went to the little cabin off the captain’s day cabin. A dart of panic shot through Arabella. On wobbly knees she moved toward the door.

“No escaping, duchess.” The captain stepped forward and swept her up into his arms. “Not this time.” He carried her into his bedchamber. To his bed. She could not catch breath. His arms gave her no quarter. Thrillingly muscular arms. And hard chest. She was touching his chest. A man was carrying her to his bed, a man with desire in his eyes who smelled of salt and sea and heat and power, and she was frightened because the drunken part of her wanted him to carry her.

“No.” She struggled. “You must n—”

He dropped her onto the mattress and backed out the door. “Rest well, duchess.” He disappeared.

She pressed her burning face into the pillow while Mr. Miles tucked the blankets around her and made clucking sounds like a nurse settling an infant into a cradle.

“Dr. Stewart will be in within an hour to see that you haven’t taken a fever,” he said. He left. No key sounded in the door, nothing trapping her except the softest mattress she’d slept on in years and a cocoon of warmth bearing her into sleep.

HE SHOULD NOT have drunk a drop. He should have remained sober so that when the magnificent cornflowers grew hazy then wild then caressed him like a touch, he would not have started imagining peeling the blanket off her to reveal the woman beneath.

With nothing to conceal it, the ruby ring had dangled from its modest ribbon where the blanket gaped at her breast as though it weren’t worth five hundred guineas and she had no cause to hide it. Only the sight of that ring, and some remnant of gentlemanly honor his father and the Royal Navy had drummed into him, had restrained him from doing as he imagined.

She claimed she did not belong to any man. Except for her saucy tongue, she responded to his decidedly ungentlemanly teasing as predictably as any virginal governess.

But that ring told another story. Unlike his rakish cousin the Earl of Bedwyr, however, Luc preferred his women unentangled. Also, not shivering. Or tinged blue.

He climbed the companionway to the main deck. The rain had let up while he’d been below fantasizing about undressing a woman while she sat before him. Wind sheared off the ocean to port cold and fresh. Within two days they would make harbor at Saint-Nazaire and his passenger would set off toward the castle, his castle to which he himself had not been in many months but where his brother, Christos, and his friend, Reiner of Sensaire, were now in residence.

She was going to his house—his chateau that had come to him from his mother’s family, the mother who abandoned her young sons upon the sudden death of her husband, to then cast herself into the hands of revolutionaries in her home country. Now, a beautiful little English governess had sought him out to take her there so she could work for his friend.

What were the odds? Luc wasn’t much of a wagering man, but he suspected they were pretty damn slim.

The sea spread out around him, and the solid boards of his ship and the bleached sails above were peace. With a turn of his head he could see in every direction. He passed the remainder of the night as he usually did, watching the stars. Though he would have liked his hands around the ship’s wheel, he had drunk too much brandy, and while seven months ago that wouldn’t have much affected his ability to steer his vessel, he wasn’t so much of a fool that he believed he could steer both foxed and one-eyed.

A pirate. He laughed. The One-Eyed Captain they would have called him if he had remained in the navy. Now when he returned to London he would be the One-Eyed Heir. And someday, perhaps, the One-Eyed Duke.

That one-eyed duke would require an heir.

He tried to imagine the society debutantes he had been introduced to in his youth before he escaped to war. The only face he could conjure was hers. Even pale and shivering, she was stunning. And she was not as disinterested in the company of a man as she said. Brandy had revealed a longing in her eyes that had gone straight to his groin.

He didn’t need that sort of trouble. There would be women to spare in Saint-Nazaire who could satisfy his needs quite satisfactorily.

If he could endure two more days of not touching her.

Her hair bound up beneath that linen was driving him mad. Each time he’d glimpsed her across deck he nearly ordered her locked in the bilge so he wouldn’t be tempted to accost her and strip that damn turban off. She had to know that binding any part of her tightly away from sight made her all the more tempting. Especially that hair.

It was glorious. Golden-red. The linen had slipped while she drank his brandy, and a crest of luxurious color showed above her brow. Like spun copper. He’d drunk with her to avoid snatching that turban away and seeing all of it. Then he had thrown her into his bed, despite her protests. That he had removed himself from the bedchamber was a miracle he was still too foxed to fathom.

He reached up and pressed his fingertips into his right eye. A spark flashed, a tiny thread of lightning across the black, like his memories, fleeting yet devastating.

As the first stirrings of gray crept onto the horizon, Luc got to his feet and—carefully, as he did everything now—made his way to the companionway and below. The dawn crew had stowed their hammocks, and sailors cupped tins of tea and biscuits in their palms. They nodded. A few nostalgic fools even saluted as he walked by and entered his cabin. He drew open the door to his bedchamber.

In a chair propped against the wall, Gavin came awake with a start. He shook his head free of slumber. “How much brandy did ye give her, lad? She’s been out cold the nicht.”