He grinned at her. “We have until breakfast.”
“Show me again how to stand,” she ordered.
He tucked a loose tendril behind her ear. “First, we need to keep your hair out of your eyes.”
“Hester is still asleep,” Désirée admitted. “That’s why it’s just in a knot. I am afraid I don’t have a ‘remède.’”
“I do.” He dipped his fingers into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a dozen hair pins. “Turn around.”
She blinked. “You carry around knives and hair pins?”
“Mmph.” He clamped all but one in his teeth and motioned for her to get into position.
She turned around.
His fingers were as deft in matters of hair as they were deadly in the throwing of knives. He untwisted her knot in order to fashion it more tightly, his touch firm but gentle as he trapped all loose flyaways with an expertly placed pin.
“Nowyou’re ready,” he pronounced. Even the blustery autumn wind could not disrupt his handiwork. “Do you remember how to stand?”
“No,” she said quickly. Too quickly.Touch me again.
The heat in his eyes indicated he saw right through her ruse, but he once again placed his strong, warm hands on her shoulders, her spine, her hips.
She almost forgot to breathe.
He stepped away. “Now throw.”
She threw.
The blade still hit the wrong tree, but higher this time. The knife hit handle first again, but managed to dislodge a tiny bit of bark from the trunk.
Désirée felt like a knife-throwingsavante.
“Is knife-wielding a trick your governess taught you?” she teased.
“Didn’t have one,” he answered. “Everything I know, I learned at my father’s knee. That’s probably why it’s taken me so long to realize my children were ready for more. Now that the war’s over, maybe they’ll grow to be something other than privateers.”
She had forgotten he’d once worked for the government. “Were you a ‘legitimate’ pirate for long?”
“I spent years storming shores and seas in the name of Crown and King. I even received a few souvenirs for my trouble.” He touched the tip of a blade to the jagged scar on his cheek. “This one was actually courtesy of a land battle. Enemy soldiers can be tricky rascals.”
A sick feeling pooled in her stomach. “French soldiers?”
“Dead soldiers,” was all he would say as he launched his knife across the stream.
But he hadn’t denied it.
“You must hate them,” she said softly, her voice scratchy.You must hate us.
“It’s wise not to let one’s guard down with mercenaries who would like to kill you.” He handed her a knife. “And it’s foolish to judge an entire population based on one group or one leader.”
“We are divided amongst ourselves,” she admitted. “That is what started the revolution. The royalists believe God and primogeniture give them status over others. The peasants believe such systemic inequality to be a self-serving evil worth killing to stop.”
Jack’s frown deepened. “Which were you?”
“Most of my family met the wrong end of a guillotine.” Her smile was brittle. “That was then. Napoleon Bonaparte granted most émigrés amnesty many years ago. We would have returned at once, if we had been old enough. Now Uncle Jasper is too old, and we will have to make the trip alone. But there is nothing for him there. He is not French.”
Or a royalistwent unsaid.
