Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #2)

“Captain Grayson—”

“Miss. Jane. Turner.” His voice grew thin with impatience. “You waste your breath, appealing to my sense of honor and decency. Any gentleman in my place would send you off at once.”

“Yes, but you’re no gentleman.” She gripped his arm again and looked him square in the eye. “Are you?”

He froze. All that muscle rippling with energy, the rugged profile animated by insolence—for an instant, it all turned to stone. Sophia held her breath, knowing she’d just wagered her future on this, the last remaining card in her hand.

But this was so much more thrilling than whist.

“No,” he said finally. “No, I’m not. I’m a tradesman, and I need to turn a profit. So long as you’ve silver to pay your passage, the brig Aphrodite has a waiting berth.”

Relief sighed through her body. “Thank you.”

“Have you trunks?”

“Two. Outside with a porter.”

“Very well.” His mouth curved in a slow, devilish smile. A conspiratorial smile. The sort of smile a young lady of fine breeding didn’t acknowledge, let alone return.

So naturally, wicked thing that she was, Sophia smiled back.

“Well,” he murmured, “this is going to be a challenge.”

“What is?” she asked, feeling suddenly disinclined to put up much of a fight.

“Retrieving your trunks, with you clinging to my arm.”

“Oh.” Yes, she was still clinging to his arm, wasn’t she? Drat. And yet—she wasn’t quite ready to let it go.

Maybe it was the lingering desperation from her episode with Bains, or the flood of profound relief that accompanied her rescue. Perhaps it was a perverse fascination with this enigma of a man, who possessed the brute strength to toss grown men around, and just enough charm to be truly dangerous. Or maybe it was simply the feel of his rock-hard muscles beneath her hand, and the knowledge that she’d made them flex. Sophia couldn’t say. But touching him made her feel exhilarated. Powerful and alive. Everything she’d been waiting her whole life to feel. Everything she’d been prepared to travel halfway across the globe to find. In running away, she had made the decision to embrace infamy. And lo, here he was.

The girl really needed to let him go.

This was the voyage Gray went respectable. And it was off to a very bad start.

It was all her fault—this delicate wisp of a governess, with that porcelain complexion and her big, round eyes tilting up at him like Wedgwood teacups. She looked as if she might break if he breathed on her wrong, and those eyes kept beseeching him, imploring him, making demands. Please,rescue me from this pawing brute. Please, take me on your ship andaway to Tortola. Please, strip me out of this revolting gown and initiateme in the pleasures of the flesh right here on the barstool. Well, innocent miss that she was, she might have lacked words to voice the third quite that way. But, worldly man that he was, Gray could interpret the silent petition quite clearly. He only wished he could discourage his body’s instinctive, affirmative response.

He didn’t know what to do with the girl. He ought to do the respectable thing, seeing as how this voyage marked the beginning of his respectable career. But Miss Turner had him pegged. He was no kind of gentleman, and damned if he knew the respectable thing. Allowing a young, unmarried, winsome lady to travel unaccompanied probably wasn’t it. But then, if he refused her, who was to say she wouldn’t end up in an even worse situation? The chit couldn’t handle herself for five minutes in a tavern. Was he truly going to turn her loose on the Gravesend quay? What would he tell George Waltham then?

Damn it. After years of aimless carousing, Gray had reached the point in his life where, for one reason and another, he actually wanted to behave in an honorable fashion. The trouble was, somewhere in all those years of aimless carousing, he’d mislaid his sense of honor. He could sail through a cyclone and not lose his course. He could navigate a woman’s body in the dark. But his moral compass had grown rusted with disuse. However … he never lost sight of the bottom line. And so, with this governess putting him to the test, Gray reverted to his usual method of making decisions—he opted for profit. Miss Jane Turner was a passenger. He had a ship with empty berths. The decision was simple. He was a tradesman, and this was business. Strictly business.

He had no business studying the exquisite alabaster sweep of her cheekbone.

And she had no business clutching his arm.

“Miss Turner,” he said sternly, in the same voice he gave orders to his crew.

“Yes?”

“Let me go now.”

She released his arm, blushing fetchingly as she did so and looking up at him through trembling lashes. Gray sighed. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.