Not looking at her, he said to the first mate, “Red, I’ll take the helm.”
Red said, “Aye, aye, Cap,” and he stepped aside.
Virginia watched Devlin’s large hands close on the helm, firm and assured, neither hard nor gentle, and she was breathless. Blood pumped in places it should avoid. She looked away, taking a huge breath, suddenly faint with the most urgent desire.His hands had been on her like that, almost exactly so.
“I think you should go below,” he said tersely, still refusing to look at her—and it was as if he knew.
“Is that an order?” she asked. But she knew her dazzling insight was right.
He finally turned his head and their gazes locked. He seemed to hesitate. “No.”
“No?”
His jaw was most definitely flexing. “The nights are long.”
She began to smile. “You don’t mind my company.”
“As long as you are quiet.”
Her smile widened—how quickly he could make her heart sing and dance! “You want my company,” she teased.
She thought she saw him hold back a smile. “I hardly said that. But I do not mind it, if you arequiet.” He stressed the last word.
“I promise.” She grinned, and she leaned on the siding, gazing up at the stars. Tendrils of stray hair whipped her face; she loosened her pelisse. “If I were a boy, I could have been a sailor,” she mused.
“No, you couldn’t.”
She turned, leaning her back on the ship, facing him. “You dispute me?” she bantered, praying their conversation would remain light and thrilled with it this far.
“You love the land.” He added thoughtfully, “One might think you are like the sea, a flighty mistress, ebbing one way, then another, forever free, but you are really like the dark, deep earth, solid and immovable.”
She stared. “How wrong you are, Devlin. You are like the earth, not I.”
He started.
“Did you always want to be a sailor?” she asked, aware of the depth of the tension between them. The light conversation, as brief as it was, had not done anything to dispel it.
“No.”
She tilted her head. “No? Do you care to elaborate?”
He seemed to caress the helm, steering the ship.
“Devlin? Has it ever occurred to you that it is easier to converse than to be in a speechless war?”
He sighed. “Askeaton has been in my family for centuries. I thought to do what Sean is doing.”
She became still. Suddenly she realized that she was touching his wrist. Desire crashed over her but she ignored it. “And then your father died and it all changed.”
“My brother has a big mouth. What else did he say?”
“He said you used the navy to become rich, so you could destroy your father’s murderer—my uncle.”
He looked directly at her. “And he is right.”
She stared boldly back. “If you expect me to swoon with hysteria and fear, then you do not know me at all.”
He seemed to smile in the darkness. “I would never expect you to swoon, Virginia,” he murmured.
