Luc cupped his palm around the back of his stiff neck, remembering her distress at the tavern in Plymouth, knowing her sleeplessness on board. “I think it is entirely possible that she hadn’t slept in days before this.”

“Aye.” Gavin nodded. “So ye put her to sleep.”

“It seemed the swiftest solution.”

Gavin took up his satchel and patted Luc on the shoulder. It was a familiar gesture, banal, and yet Luc felt the affection as though it were the wool blanket that cocooned the woman in his bed.

“She’s no taken fever. Ye’ve done guid, lad. As ye always do.”

He stepped back to allow Gavin through the door. Then he entered his bed cabin and sought out her form in the dimness. Miles—the old mother hen—had wrapped her in his own favorite blue wool blanket and tucked it around her neck. Her breaths were deep, her mouth open slightly.

“When you examined her,” he said over his shoulder, “you touched her face.”

“Aye.”

“What did her skin feel like?”

The Scot’s grin rolled through his words. “Fancy the lass after all?”

“No, damn you.” The inevitable pause. “Yes.” He shrugged. “She took those children upon herself at no thought to her own disadvantage.” And she was a servant to society debutantes. So he, heir to a dukedom, might as well lose his head over her.

“Ye’ve got a weakness for a soft cheek, lad.”

“And you have a weakness for dancing girls. Hang me for my vice and choke on the rope, old friend.”

Gavin chortled and went across the day cabin. “Ye’ll have to dose her wi’ drink again to settle her belly. Take a dram yerself while yer at it, lad. Ye look like ye coud use it.”

Luc turned to the sleeping woman.

Wrapped in the fine wool, she barely made a dent in his cot. He knew she’d taken little to eat aboard; Miles and Joshua had both reported to him. But she looked like she hadn’t eaten well in weeks. In the dimness of dawn stealing in through the shutter, her lips were dry and pale, her cheeks slightly sunken, and her skin less silken than he had been fantasizing, rather more like sailcloth. When she awoke, those brilliant cornflowers would open wide with surprise, or flash with indignation or warm with feeling she could not entirely conceal. But for now only the triangle of orange hair at her brow relieved the severity of her face.

He acted next purely from desire and without hesitation: he reached over and tugged the linen head covering back.

A halo of satin fire hugged her skull like a knit cap. Not orange or red. Flame, burning hot toward white. Like polished copper.

He pulled the covering entirely off, freeing a length of fiery beauty that caught his breath in his throat with awe that sank straight to his groin. There was so much of it. It would reach to her waist when she stood. It was impossible not to imagine her above him, the shining tresses cascading over her bared shoulders and breasts and draped across his chest. Or spread upon white sheets, his hands tangled in her glory as he worked his way into her.

He stifled the groan rising in his chest. He should move away.

He went to his knees beside the cot and touched his fingertips to her brow. He had felt the satin before at the nape of her neck. Now he turned his knuckles against her skin, teasing himself only, and drew them through the straight, heavy strands, closing his eye and feeling the caress deep in his body, then deeper.

It felt good. “Dear God.” Too good.

Her breath stirred against his skin. “Praying, Captain?”

Chapter 4

The Servant

Luc withdrew his hand and sat back on his heels. “Always, duchess. A man like me needs all the help he can muster.”

The summer blooms trained upon him were wary and rimmed with red. He stood, went into his day cabin and returned with a cup.

“You wish me to be drunk today too? Perhaps so that you can fondle my hair a bit more?”

He did not withhold his smile. A servant she might be, but she certainly didn’t seem to know it. “Water with a splash of brandy. Doctor’s orders.”

She frowned, but drew her arms free of the blanket and pushed herself up to sit. She accepted the cup. The gold and ruby ring winked against her skin where the blanket gaped. Her arm was like cream, untouched by sun and supple from shoulder to wrist.

“My physician says you have avoided taking fever.” He spoke to prevent himself from staring. The short, unadorned sleeve of her chemise showed at her shoulder. The gown she’d worn aboard was simple too. Her beauty and character demanded silk and lace. But on her, even the plainest linen seduced. “Congratulations, duchess, on possessing a hardy constitution.”

“Not hardy enough to retain my clothing, it seems. Where is it?”

“Oh, somewhere about.” He waved vaguely.

“Do not let my calm suggest to you, Captain, that I am comfortable sitting before you in this state,” she said with perfect composure. “I assure you, I am not.”

He withheld a grin. How this woman had been born into the servile class he could not fathom. “You mustn’t allow it to bother you,” he said. “Sailors routinely lose their garments to the elements. Or thieves. Brigands. Pirates. You know how it goes.”

She returned the empty cup to him. Her hair spilled down her back like a waterfall. “You have had your clothing taken too, I am to guess?”

“Only the eye.”

“You should not have done it.”

“I didn’t. The other fellow did.”

“You should not have gotten me drunk. A dram would have sufficed.”

He leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms loosely. “Is it magical? Do you keep it bound up to preserve its mystical properties?”

“Foolishness again.” She turned her face away. “Don’t you mind being foolish?”

“Good God. The ladies used to call it charming. But I suppose Napoleon soured everyone on charm. Charm is so French, after all.”

“You said you would not take advantage of me,” she said quietly but firmly.

“Our terminologies are clearly not in accord. For I am most certain I would remember having taken advantage of you last night if I had.”

She did not respond but remained with her head bent and face averted.

“Samson,” he murmured.

“Samson what?” she replied.

“Wasn’t he the one with the hair that gave him strength? Or was that David? Forgive me, I forget my catechism at moments like this.”

“Moments like what?”

“Moments in which a beautiful woman reclines upon my bed and I find myself not reclining with her.”

She finally faced him again. Luc’s breath slid away. A single drop of moisture rested on her pale cheek, its trail like silver.

She lifted a hand and passed her fingertips beneath her eyes, but not to rub away the tear. It was as though she did not know it was there.

“Are there dark smudges?” she asked.

“Barely,” he managed to utter. “Beautiful, recall? I speak only truths, you know.”

“I told you, I don’t know anything about you.”

Which was nearly true, after all.

She took up the linen neck cloth and, as he sat entirely bemused and wholly aroused, she twisted the mass of spun copper into a knot and secured it beneath the covering.

“Have you regained your strength now, Lady Samson?”

“Have you tamed your piratical manners, Captain Andrew?”

“Is it vanity?”

“Your arrogance?” Her brow went up, a spark lighting her eyes again that he felt in his chest. “Most certainly, I imagine.”

He smiled. “If you don’t like it to be seen, why don’t you have it cut?”