Cutler was only a single threat. But he was the strongest, most powerful of them all, and I didn’t have an inkling what he meant to do with me.
At the cabin door, a blue-coated soldier stood rigidly at attention. Armed to the teeth with pistols and blades, he was assigned to guard the life of the most valuable man on the ship.
“Sergeant Smithley.” Cutler gripped my elbow and yanked me against his side. “This prisoner will be staying in my quarters. She’s under my protection, and at no time will you thwart her actions or engage with her in any way. Do I make myself clear?”
Tingling jolts hit my circulation. From the heat of his hand on my arm? Or was it the unexpected order he gave his sergeant? Surely, he didn’t expect me to behave just because he’d rescued me from Madwulf?
Staring straight ahead, the guard didn’t shift his gaze. Didn’t choke in surprise. Didn’t move anything except his lips. “Yes, my lord.”
None of this made sense.
“What if I attack him? Would he not defend himself?” I jerked my arm from Cutler’s grip.
He released me. “If you harm a single hair on any of my men, you’ll return to the hold with your friends.”
“Yes. Right. Let’s discuss that. Your timing down there was—”
Cutler entered his quarters, leaving me standing there talking to myself.
Outrageous.
I charged after him and staggered into a huge, moonlit dining cabin. Already dusk?
An adjoining day cabin and sleeping chamber lay just aft. I craned my neck, taking in the three spaces that made up the commodore’s private domain, which took over the entire stern of HMS Blitz’s upper deck.
I knew royal quarters like this existed but had never seen one. I tried not to be impressed.
He lit a lantern, then several more, illuminating charts and maps and papers stacked neatly on the table. The room said so much about him. And nothing interesting.
He liked maps. He liked to read. He lived to work. Did his dullness never cease?
I didn’t see bottles of rum, tobacco, whips and chains, or trunks filled with showy, impractical finery. Though he must have an elaborate wardrobe somewhere in here with large doors and drawers to store his embroidered coats and buckled footwear.
“As I was saying…” I ambled around the table, absently picking through the papers. “Your timing in the hold was impeccable. Deliberate. You waited until the very last moment to…”
He put toe to heel and slipped off his shoes, kicking them aside.
I blinked in confusion. “Were you watching the cage from around the corner? Waiting for that animal to put something other than his fingers inside me?”
His blue frock and white shirt came off next. He draped both over a nearby chair.
Muscles? Yes, he had bricks of them. He wasn’t as thickly built as Priest, but sharp outlines and flat hairless surfaces fashioned his masculine form as if hewn with a chisel.
I ate him up with my eyes, heating with female appreciation, clenching my hands, and losing my train of thought.
“You’re staring.” He removed his weapons—two blades he used on Madwulf—and set them on the table.
“Why did you put me in the hold with them if you knew what would happen?”
“I wanted you to know what would happen. Let it serve as a warning. Next time, I won’t intervene.”
Next time.
My pulse accelerated. There was no mistaking his meaning.
I was on probation. If I made him angry, he would throw me back in the hold with forty hot-blooded pirates who now blamed me for their captain’s embarrassment.
Good thing I chose the beard.
Cutler’s eyes—darker and deeper blue than mine—roamed over me, cutting, calculating. “You’re tougher than you look.”
Seeing him shirtless and shoeless in all his godlike beauty, a woman could misconstrue that statement.
But he wasn’t Priest. He wasn’t vulgar in mind. Wasn’t trying to charm his way between my legs. I guessed he wasn’t even thinking about fornication.
“What are you saying?” I crossed my arms.
“I’ve never met a siren, but you must be of the same ilk or nature. Unchristian, mysterious, dangerously enticing… If you think to lure me with those eyes and enchant me to shipwreck, you have the wrong sailor.”
My eyes? I blinked them slowly, stunned speechless. Perhaps I didn’t know his mind after all.
Sirens were carnal, sensual, beautiful beings. How could he possibly compare me to…? Wait. Sirens weren’t even real.
I glanced at his snug-fitting breeches, the only thing he still wore. My stomach flipped. “Why did you remove your clothes?”
“I know things. I know them before anyone else. What I don’t know, I figure out.”
What an evasive, baffling response. And what did he know exactly?
Did he know about Priest? Or my plan to escape? Or my father’s compass? No, he didn’t know the important things.
My gaze snagged on the bowl of apples on the table, prompting my stomach to growl. I should have eaten the orange I’d rubbed on my chest this morning.
Mother of God, that seemed like so long ago. Even longer since I’d had a meal.
“So…” I leaned against the wall behind me, attempting a casual pose. “What do you know, Cutler?”
“You were born in the colonies, but England is in your blood.”
My breath hitched. “Lots of people are English.”
“Perhaps. But the blood that flows in your veins is beau monde. It’s in your speech, your bone structure, the regal beauty you try so hard to conceal beneath sun-freckled skin and a wild mane of uncombed hair.” He bent over the opposite side of the table, hands braced on the surface, head cocked, studying me too closely. “Nobility has been trained into your bearing, the way you hold your shoulders, your spine…” His gaze centered on my mouth before dipping just beneath it. “The lift of your chin.”
I forced my expression to remain as blank as his, despite the panic pounding beneath my skin.
“As a twenty-year-old lady of breeding,” he said, “you understand the importance of addressing me by my military rank and ennobled title.”
“I’m twenty and one.” I squinted at him. “And I’ll call your thirty-year-old arse whatever I damn well please.”
“I’m four years past thirty.” He regarded the large fit of Priest’s shirt on my body. “You have a husband.”
Ice hit my veins. He guessed this by what I wore? Or had someone exposed my secret?
“Wrong.” My throat constricted and relaxed.
“A lover, then.”
“I have many.”
“Whore.” He spat the word while somehow maintaining his stoic mien.
“Don’t shame me for being liberated. I’m a sexually transgressive woman, doing just as a man does. It’s my prerogative to do it with whomever I like as often as I like.”
That used to be my habit. Then I met Priest. After two lonely dry years, it was about time I started enjoying life again. But not here, and not with Lord Prude.
“Where I come from,” he said, “you’re a ruined woman.”
“Are you married?”
“No.”
“Have you ever sheathed yourself inside a woman?”