flicked the tip of her nose with the end of her plait and stepped back. She swayed and threw out her hands to grip the edge of the table to keep from falling
‘As always, I will do my best to keep you out of trouble, Dita my dear.’ He sauntered to the head of the companionway leading down to the lower deck and the Great Cabin and paused at the top. ‘The stewards are on their way, Dita. What are you waiting for?’
What am I waiting for? A kiss? An apology? The strength to walk over there and slap that beautiful, assured, sardonic face? Whatever it was, she was not going to let him see how shaken she felt, how close she was to reaching for him. Dita blinked back angry tears, furious with herself and with Alistair.
‘Waiting for? Why, nothing.’ It was quite a creditable laugh and really should have been accompanied by the flutter of a fan. ‘I had thought you might have wanted a reward for your gallant rescue just now, but obviously you are not as predictable as I thought you were.’ The door to the roundhouse was mercifully close. ‘I will see you at breakfast perhaps, my lord.’
Something showed in his face, just for a second. Admiration? Regret? Dita got safely through the door and ran, her hand pressed against her mouth to stifle the furious sob that was struggling to emerge.
‘Dita!’ Averil’s startled cry stopped her dead in her tracks. ‘What on earth are you doing dressed like that?’
Dita pushed back the canvas flap of her own cabin and pulled her friend inside. ‘Shh!’ The walls were the merest curtains, enough for an illusion of privacy only. She pulled Averil down to sit beside her on the bed. ‘I have been climbing the rigging,’ she muttered.
‘No! Like that?’ Averil whispered back.
‘Of course, like this. I could hardly do it in a gown, now could I?’
‘No. I suppose not. I was going to come and see if you were ready for a walk before breakfast. I thought if the other ladies weren’t out there we could walk faster and stretch our legs.’
‘Without having to stop every minute to exclaim over an undone bonnet ribbon or bat our eyelashes at a man?’ Dita stood up to pull off the kurta and Averil modestly looked away as she tugged off the trousers. ‘Pass my chemise, would you? Thank you.’ Her stomach was churning with what she could only suppose was a mixture of unsatisfied desire and sheer temper.
‘Did you really climb up? All the way? What if someone had seen you?’ Averil clasped her hands together in horror.
‘Someone did.’ Dita unrolled a pair of stockings and began to pull them on. She had to tell someone, pour it all out, and Averil was the only person she could trust. ‘Alistair Lyndon. And he climbed up after me and made me come down.’
‘How awful!’ Averil got up to help lace Dita’s light stays.
‘I was glad to see him, if truth be told,’ she admitted, prepared to be reasonable now that Averil was aghast. ‘Or, rather, I was glad when he came after me. My first instinct when he told me to come down was to climb higher and then I wished I hadn’t! It is much harder work than I realised and my legs were beginning to shake and when I looked down everything seemed to go round and round in circles.’
‘What did he say when you reached the deck again? Was he angry? I would have sunk with mortification, but then you are much braver than I am.’ Averil bit her lip in the silence as Dita, words to describe what had happened next completely deserting her, shook out her petticoats. ‘It was rather romantic and dashing of Lord Lyndon, don’t you think?’
It was and she would have died rather than admit it, even if what had happened next was anything but romantic. ‘He lectured me,’ Dita said, her head buried in her skirts as she pulled her sprig muslin gown on. Instinct was telling her to dress as modestly as she could. ‘He thinks of me as a younger sister,’ she added as she pinned a demure fichu over what bare skin the simple gown exposed. ‘Someone to keep out of trouble.’
And that’s a lie. That teasing near-kiss and the feeling of Alistair’s hard, aroused body pressed against her had told her quite clearly that whatever his feelings were, they were not brotherly. He had felt magnificent and just thinking about it made her ache with desire. What would he have done just now if she had bent her head and kissed his bare throat, trailed her tongue down over the salty skin to where she could just glimpse a curl of dark hair?
She remembered the taste of him, the scent of his skin. But there had not been so much hair on his chest eight years ago. He’s a man now, she reminded herself. What if she had reached out and cupped her hand wantonly over the front of his trousers where his desire was so very obvious?
‘What a pity,’ Averil surprised her by murmuring as she stood up to tie the broad ribbon sash. ‘Perhaps he’ll change his mind. It is a long voyage.’
‘He will do no such thing,’ Dita said. ‘He knows about my elopement. Bother, I must have an eyelash in my eye—it is watering. Oh, thank you.’ She dabbed her eyes with Averil’s handkerchief. ‘That’s better.’ I am not going to weep over him, not again. Not ever.
‘But you are Lady Perdita Brooke,’ Averil protested. ‘An earl’s daughter.’
‘And Alistair is about to become a marquis, if he isn’t one already. He can look as high as he likes for a wife and he won’t have to consider someone with a shady reputation. If we were passionately in love, then I expect he would throw such considerations to the wind. But we are not, of course.’ Merely in lust. ‘Not that I want him, of course,’ she lied. Marriage isn’t what either of us wants; sin is.
‘I can’t imagine why not,’ Averil said with devastating honesty. ‘I would think any unattached woman would be attracted to him. He might fall in love with you,’ she persisted with an unusual lack of tact. Or perhaps Dita was being better at covering up her feelings than she feared.
‘Love?’ Dita laughed; if Averil noticed how brittle it was, she did not show it. ‘Well, he had plenty of opportunity when we were younger.’ She brushed out her hair and twisted it up into a simple knot at her nape.
Not that it had occurred to her that what she felt for him was more than childish affection, not until that night when he had been so bitterly unhappy and she had reached out to him, offering comfort that had become so much more. But now she realised that he had hardly cared who he was with, let alone been concerned about her feelings, whatever endearments he had murmured as he had caressed the clothes from her body. If he had, he would never have rejected her so hurtfully afterwards.
It was a blessing that he had not understood, simply seen the innocent love that burned in her eyes, the trust that had taken her into his arms.
She could still feel the violence with which Alistair had put her from him that last day, the rejection with which he had turned his face from her. He had been upset about something, desperately, wordlessly upset, and he had been drinking alone, something that she had never seen him do before, and her embrace had been meant only to comfort, just as the eight-year-old Dita would hug her idol when he fell and cut his head. But it had turned into something else, something the sixteen-year-old Dita could not control.
He had yanked her into his arms, met her upturned lips in a kiss
