foot appeared, the other vanished.
‘What are you doing, boy?’
‘Buckle’s tight,’ she mumbled.
‘Need any help?’
‘No!’ It came out as a strangled squawk. Thank goodness, he was going into the privy cupboard. As the door closed Clemence hauled off her trousers and dived under the sheet, yanking it up over her nose.
The door creaked. He was coming out. Clemence pulled the sheet up higher and pretended to be asleep. Drawn by some demon of curiosity, she opened her eyes a fraction and looked through her lashes. Stanier was stark naked, his breeches grasped in one hand. She bit her tongue as she stifled a gasp. He tossed the clothes on to a chair, then stood, running one hand through his hair, apparently deep in thought.
She should close her eyes, she knew that, but still she stared into the shifting shadows, mesmerised. Long legs, defined muscles, slim hips, flat stomach bisected by the arrow of hair running down from his chest. Clemence’s eyes followed it, down to the impressively unequivocal evidence that she was sharing a cabin with a man. She had known that, she told herself. Of course she had. It was just seeing him like this, so close, so male, made it very difficult to breathe.
It was not as though she was ignorant, either. She had swum with her childhood playmates in the pools below the waterfalls, but this was no pre-pubescent boy. In a slave-owning society you saw naked adults, too, but you averted your eyes from the humiliating treatment of another human being. She shouldn’t be staring now, but Stanier seemed so comfortable with his own body, so relaxed in his nudity, that she doubted he would dive for his breeches if he realised she was awake. Only, he did not know she was a woman, of course.
‘Asleep, boy?’ he asked softly.
Clemence screwed her eyes shut, mumbled and turned over, hunching her shoulders. Behind, she heard his amused chuckle. ‘You’d better not snore.’
Nathan eyed the bunk. The lad had made it up tidily enough, but sleep did not beckon. In fact, he felt uncomfortably awake, which was a damnable nuisance, given that he was going to need to be alert and on his guard at daybreak to take Sea Scorpion out of harbour and on to whatever course McTiernan wanted. Knowing the man’s reputation, he would set something tricky, as a test.
He found the thick notebook in his old leather satchel and climbed into bed with it. From the opposite bunk came the sound of soft breathing. And what the hell was he doing, acquiring someone else to take care of when he had his own skin to worry about?
Nathan set himself to study the notes he had made on the area a hundred miles around Jamaica. He had not been bragging when he had told McTiernan that he was the best navigator in these waters: he probably was. In theory.
He did not underestimate his own strengths, his depth of knowledge, his experience in most of the great oceans of the world. The problem was, the Caribbean was not one of them and he knew that two months spent weaving through their treacherous waters making endless notes was not enough. Not nearly enough. At which point he became aware of the nagging heaviness in his groin and finally realised just why he was so restless.
What the hell was that about? And why? He had more than enough on his mind to drive any thought of women from it, and in any case, he’d hardly seen a female all evening, so there should be no inconvenient image in the back of his mind to surface and tease him.
The flash of dark eyes and black hair, the remembered lush curves of his late wife, presented themselves irresistibly to his mind. Nathan shifted impatiently. He thought he had learned not to think about Julietta; besides, lust was no longer the emotion those thoughts brought with them.
The recollection of Clem’s slim, ink-stained fingers gripping his thigh rose up to replace that of Julietta’s hands caressing down his body. Nathan shifted abruptly in the bed in reflexive rejection. For God’s sake! He was as bad as this crew, if that was the cause of his discomfort.
From across the cabin came an odd sound—Clem was grinding his teeth in his sleep. Nathan grinned, contemplating hefting a shoe at the sleeping boy. No, he could acquit himself of that particular inclination—it must simply be an odd reaction to finding himself in the most dangerous situation in all his thirty years. The thought of straightforward danger was somehow soothing. Nathan put the book under his pillow, extinguished the lantern and fell asleep.
Chapter Three
‘Wake up!’
Clemence blinked into the gloom of the cabin, momentarily confused. Where…? Memory came back like a blow and she scrabbled at the sheet twisted around her legs. It was, thankfully, still covering her from the waist down and her shirt shrouded the rest of her.
Stanier was tucking his shirt into his breeches. She felt the colour flood up into her face at the memory of last night, then found herself watching as his bare chest vanished as he did up the buttons, long brown fingers dextrous despite his speed. As if she was not in enough trouble without finding herself physically drawn to the man! She had never felt that before, but then she had never been rescued by a tough, attractive man before either, which probably accounted for it. Whatever the explanation, it was not a comfortable sensation. Surprising areas of her insides seemed to be involved in the reaction.
‘Come on, look lively!’ So, now she had to get out of bed, find her breeches and get into the cubby hole, all under Stanier’s, admittedly uninterested, gaze. She tugged at the shirt, which came to just above her knees, slid out from under the sheet, scooped up her trousers and edged round the table.
‘You are far too thin.’
She whisked into the cupboard and shut the door. Enough light came through the porthole to see the bucket, but of course, there was still no water to wash in. ‘Things were difficult since my father died,’ she said through the thin panels, fumbling with the fastenings on her trousers and tightening her belt. Thinking about her father, she felt reality hit her. Pirates had taken Raven Duchess, killing her father as surely as if they had knifed him, and now here she was, not only in their hands, but feeling grateful to a man who was as good as one himself. She’d had some excuse last night, she had hardly been herself. Now, after a night’s sleep, she should face reality.
He was a pirate. She had seen him accept the position with her own eyes, heard him state his terms to McTiernan. So he was just as bad as the rest of the crew and deserved a fate as severe as theirs should be. Clemence opened the door and stepped out, jaw set.
‘I’m sorry about your father.’ Stanier was coatless, a long jerkin, not unlike her own waistcoat, pulled on over his shirt. ‘Do you know which ship it was that attacked his?’
Clemence shrugged, combing her hair into some sort of order with her fingers. They had never discovered who had been responsible. The one survivor, found clinging to a spar, was too far gone to communicate, even if his tongue had not been cut out.
Her face felt greasy, she was sticky and sweaty under the linen bindings around her chest and there was grit between her toes. ‘Could have been this one for all I know,’ she said, having no trouble sounding like a sulky boy.
‘I hope not,’ Stanier said.
‘Why should you care? You’re one of them,’ she pointed out, too angry with him and his casual sympathy to be cautious.
‘True.’ She had expected anger in return, even a cuff for her insolence, but he looked
