McBain ran a finger beneath his stock while he cleared his throat. “Reckon ye best be takin’ up that topic with his lordship when he awakens, lass.”
Ruark heard the swishing of a petticoat first, before he became aware that the soft tread of slippers on carpet was not Mary Duff pacing a rut into the fine weave. Pushing up on his elbows, he gave his trespasser’s back a frown even as he admired her lines and the way her skirts flared from her hips. With his hair falling over his forehead, Ruark could barely see more than shadows and shapes in the darkness, but he would know that enticing silhouette anywhere.
His first inclination was to check his weapons. His second was less refined. Just then, she lifted her head and saw that he was awake. “What the hell hour is it?” he grumbled.
“Late. ’Tis at least seven o’clock.”
Turning her back to him, she stretched out her arms like Moses confronting the Red Sea and threw open the heavy velvet curtains that usually blocked out the light of the day.
Sunlight glared through the lead glass and he winced against the brightness. The master’s chamber, though unmistakably masculine—dark furniture carved from solid oak, jade damask wallpaper, and plum brocade chairs—looked severe in contrast to Rose’s soft, refined presence.
She placed her hands on her hips, giving him her full measure. “I have just come from a visit with McBain.”
Ruark slept naked. The sheet covered the lower halfof his body, but that was all the modesty it afforded him. Her presence in his room had a predictable effect on him. Clearing his throat and turning on his side, he rested his head on his hand and his elbow on his hip, letting his arm hide the obvious. He admired the fit of her bodice. With her hair braided in a thick coronet around her head, she reminded him of a female Thor or the goddess Diana. Leaning slightly to peer over the edge of the bed, he saw that the hem of her skirt only reached her calves, exposing a well-turned ankle. She wore shoes the color of soft butter.
“Did you hear me?”
The glaring heat from those green eyes was enough to hold his attention. That and the hint of a blush staining her cheeks. “And that warrants a visit to my chambers. Why?”
“Youknowmy father.”
Ruark pushed himself into a sitting position against the carved oak backboard, dragging the sheet up with him. He pulled one knee to his chest beneath the sheet. It occurred to him that Mary or Jason would never have allowed her in these chambers. “How did you find my rooms? Have you done away with my staff while I slept?”
“And if I had, would I have spared you?” She raised her chin. “I think not.”
Peering more closely at her attire, he wondered where the hell Mary had procured those garments. They did not belong to his mother. And he was damn sure they did not come from a modiste. “You look like something out of a children’s ditty about lost sheep.” But rather than a shepherd’s staff gripped in her hand, he pictured a bolt of lightning. He almost laughed at the image until the look from her narrowed eyes stopped him.
“Mrs. Duff is in the kitchen,” she said and continuedher limping pace back and forth in front of the window. “Jason is sitting outside my door and probably does not even know I have left the room. As for how I found you, ’twas simple. Mr. McBain said you were asleep, so once outside, I looked for the room with curtains shuttered against the light, and thus through a matter of deductive reasoning and pure luck, I ended here. Yourboundariesbe damned.”
He allowed himself a small smile. It didn’t surprise him that she had found another way out of her room. “And yet I doubt you are here to serve me breakfast.”
She stopped in front of the plum tufted chair beside the bed. “Everyone knows my father served the admiralty before he retired to live at Kirkland Park. You were a privateer for the king. I want to know how you know each other.”
Ruark should not have been surprised that she would have eventually confronted him over the subject. Then suddenly it didn’t matter if she knew.
Scraping his palm over his bristled jaw, he gave her a direct look. “Almost two years ago outside Rotterdam, I came across a ship carrying contraband that Hereford removed off an East Indiaman. I impounded it.”
“You mean you stole it.”
“The wares were already stolen. I merely put it to better use.”
She visibly swallowed. “Why did he never report the theft?”
“What is to report? That I took cargo Hereford had pirated a month earlier from an East Indiamen off the Azores? Cargo he was trying to sell in France, consisting of tea, China silk, and gunpowder. Also a hundred tons of opium, all owned by the venerable John Company. Aye, we know each other personally.” As he began to feel thefaint stirrings of a deep-rooted hatred, Ruark clenched his jaw. “We were well acquainted before he returned to England and accepted an appointment as the English warden.”
Rose sank into the chair. The window framed her like a Holbein portrait. “Why France?” Her quiet tone pulled at him and he looked at her to find her eyes on his face, searching.
“The French are always fighting with the British. They need gunpowder. As for the other wares, Parisians pay a premium to support their vices.”
“What did you do with the goods?”
“I kept the gunpowder. One never knows when it will come in handy. The opium went overboard, into the sea. As for the rest, you would have to ask Tucker. He used it to keep much of the good folk around Castleton and Carlisle from starving last winter.”
Almost self-consciously, she looked at her hands clenched in her lap. “Youaregood friends with Friar Tucker.”
“We were. Until you.”
She smoothed her skirts, an action he noted she did often when uncertain. “My father was bound to have found me eventually,” she said. “There is no sense in holding a grudge with one another ... because of me.”
