None of this explained why a woman of her beauty and spirit was yet unwed. Unless she was unfit to wed a respectable man. Unless she was not in fact a virgin.

Her glorious hair, draped across the bolster, was still damp and tangled. She wore no cap. She would catch a chill and perish because he was too much of a coward to see that she dried her hair by a proper fire. He should bring wood for the grate, wake her, find her a comb and make her dry that hair.

But he could not wake her. In sleep, her cinnamon lashes hid the sparks in her eyes. She was less beautiful asleep. Not beautiful, in fact, merely a too-thin maiden past the bloom of youth, or perhaps only scored by the trials of servile life.

But he could not cease staring. She did not feign sleep, this much was clear, and he knew himself to be the only real fool between them, wakeful and wanting still.

On the bedside table, he deposited the coins he owed her from his self-inflicted torture episode and went out. In the stairwell, he pressed his back against the wall and felt the heaviness of his limbs, the dizzy imbalance of his legs on land, made worse by the narrowed field of his vision.

In the darkness, he strode from the building toward the beach. Scaling the woody ridge, he tore off his coat and waistcoat. His neck cloth caught on the wind, which blew harder now, and it fluttered for several yards before it came to unsteady rest on the sand. His boots went next. The crashing of the waves drowned out his curses at the crescent of the moon, which even so shone too brightly for him now, and more curses at the white froth of waves that seemed to illuminate the beach in a holy glow.

Stripped to his drawers, he threw away the black kerchief that he never went without now and walked into the ocean. The water was icy. He strode to his waist then dove into a breaker.

It hit him in his face and across his shoulders. The scar hollered, and he dove again, then deeper, farther from the shore and docks and ships and civilization. He turned away from the moon to the south, his arms commanding the current. He closed his eye. His chest grew tight, his breathing hard, the taste of cold sea in his mouth and the scent and sound of it everywhere, and always the current urging him away from the beach. He let it carry him.

After a time he turned onto his back, filled his lungs and stared at the stars.

“Blast and damn,” he cursed at the moon again, for the sheer pleasure of cursing aloud. The water lapped about him, rough at the estuary, submerging him in swells then laying him level. He could no longer see the shore; it was too distant and the shimmer of the water overtook all else. But he knew where it was. The stars and moon would not abandon him.

With slow, measured strokes he began the journey back. The current caught at his arms and legs, pulling him out, but he fought it now.

When his feet finally touched land and the waves knocked him about, he dragged himself from the surf and onto the rough sand, and he went to his knees. Exhausted, he bent forward and his hand brushed cloth.

He opened his eye and laughed. Hooking his thumb around the kerchief, he lifted it and returned it to its rightful place over his ruined face. Then he turned onto his back on the sand that still embraced the warmth of the day’s sun.

For the first time in months he slept until daylight.

WHEN SHE AWOKE, Arabella discovered beside her bed five gold coins emblazoned with the French king’s profile.

She rose, and with skin covered in gooseflesh, dressed in her chemise, stockings, stays, petticoat, and wrinkled gown. She tied on her boots, donned her cloak, and went downstairs and out of the inn. The morning was so new that the mists clung to the street, and she pulled her cloak tighter, willing the sun to rise from pinkish uncertainty to gold. In the sunshine, she might be able to forget the night and moonlight in the stable and how he had made her feel.

The shutters were opening over the front of a bakery. The baker greeted her with a smile and a curt, “Bonjour, mademoiselle.” She chose two hot rolls and a twist of pastry laced with preserves, paid the man, and walked swiftly back to the inn. A man pulling a cart laden with trinkets passed her and tipped his cap. A boy sitting in a crevice of a wall stared at her food. She gave him a roll, tucked her cloak tighter about her, and went toward the beach. She would not give the innkeepers the pleasure of seeing her breakfast like a peasant.

The pastry beckoned to her. She stared at it with eyes like the captain’s staring at her last night. As perhaps she had stared back at him.

She mustn’t think of it. She mustn’t admit it to herself. After breakfast she must simply hide in her bedchamber until the festival was over. Then she would hire the only witnesses to her shame and their carriage for the drive to Saint-Reveé-des-Beaux.

Through the trees, the barest hint of sunlight cast the sand in layers of pale gold and shadow. Tiny blue crabs skittered about, rushing forth from their burrows then darting back, and gulls circled overhead, searching for breakfast. In the center of the beach a naked man lay on his back on the sand.

Arabella halted, consumed in confusion.

The captain’s arm moved at his side, and he covered his face with his hand.

She should leave. She should run away. Now.

She could not make her feet move.

He sat up. His back was broad and golden brown in the dawn rays, sand clinging to it and his arms. He brushed it off absently, watching the ocean.

She must leave. He would stand up and she would see . . .

He drew up his knees and propped his elbows on them, and her nerves collapsed in a quivering heap. He wore drawers. She was safe.

She drew in a shaking breath.

He could not have heard her; the crashing of the waves drowned out all else. But he turned, and she understood that she was not safe. Not in the least. She had never known a live man could be so beautiful. The shift of his muscles as he twisted around to see her, his evident strength in even this slightest movement, rooted her feet to the sand now.

Words from the Reverend’s sermons—words like girded loins—came to her, and she drew in an unsteady breath. He had seen her. She must be courageous. She could not run away.

He climbed to his feet and she nearly lost courage. But she must return some of the coins, for he had certainly given her too many. And, quite simply, she could not walk away, or run, or even crawl on wobbling legs. She could go to the inn, wait until he dressed, and speak with him then. But she might never see a man like this again. She would never see this man again.

He walked toward her.

She made herself go forward to meet him as though it were nothing unusual for her to meet a half-naked man on the beach at dawn, regretting her earlier wish for sunlight. Newborn gold illumined his skin, casting the muscles into breathtaking contours. She had the most frightful urge to touch him. She had never before wanted to touch a man except him, and certainly not a man’s unclothed body. She tried not to stare. She failed.

But when she thought he would halt several feet away, he did not.

She stumbled back and thrust out her hand. “Stop! Keep your distance.”

He grasped her hand and pulled her to within inches of his bare chest. “If you wished distance you might have gone already.” He gripped her fingers with little effort, and his skin was warm. How he could be so warm when he was nearly naked, she could not fathom. He had shaved off his piratical whiskers the night before, but now his jaw was again shadowed.

Arabella tugged at her hand and he released it.

“I . . .” With her feet sunk deep in the sand and the sunlight dancing across his cheek, she felt wretchedly out of control. She knew she mustn’t look away from his face, but his attention dipped to her mouth, and yearning curled through her.