“So that I can torment men like you with it, which I have also already told you. Really, you don’t pay attention to a word I say, do you?” She tucked final strands beneath the linen.

How much money would he be obliged to part with to convince her to loose all that hair again? Just once. Once so that he could run his fingers through it and feel the surge of pure, uncomplicated lust. He could make her an offer that would render her compensation from Reiner laughable.

The notion intrigued.

He would add a bonus if she agreed to wash it.

“Every word,” he murmured. “As though they were pearls.”

She cut him an inscrutable glance, then swung her legs over the side of the cot. The hem of her chemise poked out from the blanket, the dullest white linen without ornament. It was an astoundingly prim garment from which a glimpse of her calves and feet emerged. Luc’s mouth went dry.

“If I allow my ankles to dangle in your sight for a bit,” she said, “will you forget about my hair?”

“Probably not, despite how comely those ankles are.” Like the rest of her, a wrinkled and rumpled governess and none too clean yet still breathtaking. A beautiful servant on her way to his castle. “How will you travel to Saint-Reveé-des-Beaux, duchess?”

“I will hire a coach, though I hardly see how that is your concern.”

Rather, entirely his concern. “If I choose to follow you, will you call the gendarmes down upon me?”

Her delicate brow dipped, the cornflowers wary once more. “Why would you follow me?”

“My brother lives nearby.” In the chateau. He could tell her. He should tell her. “It is on my route.”

“If you remain at a distance, I don’t care if you follow me the length of the continent and back again.”

“That is a comfort to hear.” He stood and offered his hand.

Her shoulders stiffened. She climbed off the side of the cot without his assistance and pulled the blanket tight about her again. “I must find Mr. Miles and retrieve my clothes. When will we arrive at Saint-Nazaire?”

“Tomorrow if the wind holds. And Mr. Miles will bring your clothing when it is dry. Today you must remain here.”

“In your cabin?” Her cheeks flushed. “Your bed?”

He allowed himself a slight smile. “Yes, but alas, without me in it. I have work to do elsewhere today.”

Her quick breath of relief caught him. She had not expected to have a choice in the matter. A servant with her beauty . . .

He felt like a fool for teasing her. Worse, a scoundrel. He should have known. Other men did not always accept no as an answer.

Other men had not lived through the hell he had.

Luc reached for his hat hanging on a peg. “Last night you asked after the character of my men? Why? Has someone bothered you?”

“No. But there is one young man . . .” She chewed on the inside of her lip, a habit she had to which he was developing something of an addiction.

“Tell me,” he said. “Now.”

The cornflowers flashed anew. “You are remarkably autocratic.”

“It comes with the ship.” He allowed himself a moment’s satisfaction. The duchess was back. “Tell me.”

“The other day he visited Dr. Stewart’s infirmary and claimed a toothache, but he was lying.”

“How do you know he lied? Did Dr. Stewart suspect him?”

“No. But . . . I felt it. Whatever it is that sailor wishes from Dr. Stewart’s medicine chest, I believe he has ill intentions.” She spoke with confidence again, uncowed by his anger and unafraid of his authority. He had never known a woman of such beauty that was both modest and vulnerable, yet assured and resilient. She astounded him. He could not look away from her, but he could not speak.

“I felt it,” she repeated earnestly.

“How did you feel it, little duchess?” he said, and lifted a hand to her chin. “As you feel—”

She jerked away from his fingertips. “Don’t touch me again.”

Luc stepped back.

On his eleventh birthday, pointing a pistol with a shaking hand, he had said those words to Absalom Fletcher. So Fletcher had found another victim. A younger victim.

He turned to the door. “I will take your warning under advisement.”

He left her then to his bedchamber alone. Having stolen his peace and sanity, yet offering him nothing with which to remedy those losses, she did not protest his departure.

HOWEVER MUCH SHE needed the sleep, Arabella could not remain in his bed. Only one wicked temptation might have enticed her to linger: the opportunity to fill her senses with his scent that made her a little dizzy. But the bed linens bore only the mild scent of soap.

She had shared beds with her sisters enough to know that the scent of a person clung. She loved curling up in the sage-smelling warmth Eleanor left on the pillows when she rose at dawn to study and write. Ravenna’s spot in the bed was always tangled and crumpled, strands of wild, Gypsy-dark hair mingled with Beast’s silky black hairs and occasionally a mangled rope toy lost in the coverlets. Many times alone upon her plain cot in the servants’ quarters of whatever house she had served, Arabella had imagined being cuddled beneath the old four-poster with her sisters, keeping warm from the winter and laughing. Always laughing, even in the depths of poverty and want, for that was love.

She had slept in Captain Andrew’s bed, yet his scent was absent.

Mr. Miles served her breakfast in the day cabin but informed her that due to the rain her clothing was not yet dry. When he left, she bound herself up in the coat he had offered her the night before and carried her aching head to the infirmary. Sailors cast her curious glances as she went. She hurried by. They’d all no doubt seen considerably more than the hem of a woman’s chemise. I am a sailor, Miss Caulfield.

None of the sailors would bother her. The captain would not allow it.

Only he posed a threat. Everything he did and said made her feel confused and out of control. For the first time in years of determination and work, she was behaving recklessly, standing in the rain, drinking brandy, and sleeping in a man’s bed—and wanting to do it all.

She did not want him to touch her again. He was autocratic and arrogant and he made her uncomfortably hot all over when he looked at her. Always before, men’s attentions had repulsed her. But when she had awoken to his caress, she wanted to turn into his touch.

The cabin boy Joshua had left off his vigil, and she went alone down the companionway and along the orlop deck to the infirmary. The door was open a crack. She pushed it wide and halted.

The skinny youth from three days earlier stood above the medicine cabinet. The drawers were open. His hand was clutched around a brown bottle prominently marked with skull and crossbones.

She moved toward him. “What do you have there?”

He tucked the bottle into his pocket. “Begging your pardon, miss. Doc said I was to take this medicine—”

“He could not have meant for you to dispense it yourself, or for you to take that bottle in particular.”

The youth looked hard at her, his attention dropping to her chest.

The ring. She had not thought to tuck it away. She had only been thinking of her ridiculous infatuation.

“Set down the bottle,” she said.

“Give me that ring, then, miss, and I’ll give you this bottle.” His attention darted to the door. No one had been on the orlop deck when she came, and the winds blew especially hard today. The ship creaked furiously and the animals in the hold were restless and noisy. If she screamed it was entirely possible no one would hear her.

“I’ll leave the bottle, I promise,” he said. “I don’t mean any harm, miss. Just gimme the ring.” His eyes looked wild above his sunken cheeks. Perhaps he was ill. Perhaps he was merely starving. Perhaps desperation drove him to this.

She understood desperation.