“I don’t like it, Nathan. Can’t you get rid of it?”
He went to the table and began unloading the tray, setting two places. There were orange slices, biscuits, butter and honey, link sausages, and hard-boiled eggs. “Did you take a good look at the men on this ship last night, Lydia? We’re not taking a voyage to do the Grand Tour of Europe, remember. This is a trader’s vessel and there are only six other paying passengers on board. Besides the missionary’s wife, you’re the only woman. Mrs. Wilson, by the way, is nearing sixty, hatchet-faced, and skinny as a sixpence standing on edge.” He poured black coffee into two mugs while focusing most of his attention on Lydia. “You understand what I’m saying? We’llkeepthe derringer.”
“All right,” she said. Picking and choosing her battles, this was not one she cared to fight. And there was also the matter of breakfast. Nathan held out a chair for her and she sat down, thanking him. She waited until he was seated opposite her to begin eating, unfolding her napkin first and smoothing it on her lap. After the first few bites of his food, she noticed Nathan did the same. The napkin was an afterthought.
“How is that a convict on Van Dieman’s Land knows the niceties of laying a table?” she asked. “I wouldn’t think that sort of life was conducive to refinement or such fastidiousness.”
“It wasn’t. And don’t start thinking I was the scion of some titled family in Britain, or the bastard son of a landed lord before I was transported.” Her expressive eyes, wide and startled now, gave her away. “Before I was named a murderer I was a sneaksman.”
“Sneaksman?”
“A thief. You’ll learn the language. Most of the men you’ll meet at Ballaburn were thieves of one sort or another. Star-glazers. Till friskers. Area sneaks. Some were poachers, poor sods down on their luck and trying to feed their families.”
“And your employer? What sort of thief was he?”
“Mad Irish?” Nathan paused in buttering his biscuit. “None at all. He was a political prisoner in the early forties, hence the moniker. He served out a sentence in Sydney, struck gold on the banks of the Turon River, in an outcropping not much above one hundred and fifty miles from where he had labored for his crimes, and bought the land at Ballaburn. His station is ten times larger than the estate that was confiscated from him in Ireland. Mad Irish appreciates the irony.”
Nathan broke off a piece of his biscuit and put it in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “But you were asking about my manners, weren’t you? All Mad Irish’s doing. He’s one for a plan. Plotting runs in his blood, I think, and he saw something in me he that either liked or thought he could use. I was as rough and ill-bred as a dingo before he took me in.” He held Lydia’s fascinated glance and said softly, “And I still haven’t smoothed all the edges.”
She smiled, understanding that it was his apology for this morning.
“God, Liddy. When you look at me like that...” Like he was adored. Worshiped. It took his breath away, and it made him want to sweep the table clean and take her right there.
Lydia’s glance dropped away from his darkening one, but she felt her nipples harden as if he had brushed them with his thumbs, and between her thighs the ache was insistent. Her fingers trembled ever so slightly as she began to peel her orange.
“What sort of things did Mad Irish teach you?” she asked.
“More reading than I knew. Writing. Enough ciphering so I couldn’t be cheated by the freemen traders. I learned how to talk to the aristocracy without revealing my stain, and how to converse with a woman who wasn’t a whore. He taught me how to dance, though I never took to it well.”
“Perhaps Mad Irish wasn’t the right partner.”
“I’ve danced with you,” he said. “I didn’t do well then either.”
Lydia’s features tensed as she tried to remember. “It’s no good,” she said finally. “I can’t bring it to mind.”
Nathan reached across the table and took the orange from her fingers. Lifting her hand as he stood, Nathan skirted the table and drew Lydia into his arms. “There are memories best left in the past, I think,” he said. His smile was beautiful, and when Lydia’s gaze dropped to his mouth he knew she was looking for his dimples. He did not think he disappointed. “But some things you have to learn for yourself. You choose the tune.”
Lydia began humming a waltz, unwittingly the last melody she and Nathan had danced to at the Newberrys. She was sublimely unaware of the floodgate of memories she had opened for Nathan as he turned her in elegant circles about their cabin. He was remembering a certain beaded blue dress with a bodice that cut across her breasts at an almost indecent depth. She had mesmerized him wearing that gown. Blinking, lifting the veil of the past from his eyes, Nathan realized she had captured him again wearing one of Madame Simone’s severest creations. He was glad he had gone to the salon and picked up the gowns she had ordered; it was well worth the risk to be able to look at her now and bask in the warmth of the artless smile.
“You lied to me, Nathan,” she said, interrupting her humming.
He was momentarily disoriented. He had told so many lies. Which one was she going to take him to task for? “Lied?” he asked.
“You dance beautifully.”
His steps faltered and she trod on his toes.
“Or at least you did,” she said.
She was laughing at him and Nathan surprised himself by not minding. He pulled her closer and bent his head. “You have a mouth that should be kissed thoroughly and often, Liddy.”
“I’m glad you think so.” Her arms went around his neck and she pressed her body flush to his. She raised her face and felt the warmth of his breath. “I’m very glad you think so.”
His kiss was a heady nectar of coffee and honey, a bittersweet taste that Lydia savored and held precious among her new memories. The breakfast kiss, she called it, and the thought made her smile because of all the breakfasts they would share and all the kisses just like this they would exchange.
It might have become something more if it hadn’t been for the knock that intruded on their privacy. Nathan broke the embrace reluctantly and set Lydia from him.
“That will be Mrs. Wilson,” he told her. “The hatchet-faced missionary’s wife. She’s come to take her morning constitutional with you.” He couldn’t help but be flattered by her disappointment. “I didn’t know you intended to ravish me after breakfast,” he said. “I would have told Mrs. Wilson to wait until lunch.”
