“Alice’s puppy.”
“Oh well, if you’ve a puppy then—” He broke off, his eyes narrowing. “Whatare you looking at?”
“Nothing!” she said, which was a lie. She’d been staring at the open window and wondering if it was large enough for a recently postcoital adult to exit from.
“Is something about to leap through that window and attack me?”
“No!” She paused. “I hope not. I was wondering if—ah. If that’s where your companion departed from. The window, I mean.”
“Mycompanion?” he repeated. He looked her up and down. “Are youdrunk?”
“I beg your pardon,” Ruby said frostily and then realized she had gestured to the window with the wine bottle.
“Foxed. Fuddled. Three sheets to the wind.”
“Of course not. I was downstairs with Alice and Tamsin and the puppy, and then I was... upstairs. Coincidentally.”
“I can’t believe this,” he said. “You’re positively soaked.”
“I most certainly am not. And you ought not cast stones, Captain Archer. Shouldn’t you be attending to your duties at the manor? Not... not...”
“Not what?” His eyes gleamed with suppressed mirth. “Don’t leave me in suspense.”
“Whatever it was that you were doing!” Her mind kept providing remarkably vivid illustrations, most of which had been inspired by a book calledAristotle’s Masterpiecethat Ruby had borrowed from Belvoir’s Library last year and that had not, it turned out, been about Aristotle.
“I am trying,” Archer said, “to hang these four hammocks for Mrs. Enys.”
Ruby blinked. Surely the second, third, and fourth hammocks were superfluous. “Mrs. Enys?”
“Floss Enys,” he clarified. “The innkeeper, ever since her husband died. She has four sons and only the one spare bedroom during the high season. She can’t squeeze four beds in here, and the boys have grown too tall to share, so I told her I could try affixing hammocks to the beams. It’s how we slept on—my ship.”
Four hammocks. For a widow’s four growing sons.
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Ruby said. “You must be joking.”
She’d spent the last four days building a thorough case against him in her mind—ever since she’d looked at his handsome face and flushed cheeks andknownhe’d bought the book for her.
He was a rake. A pirate. A liar.
A rakish lying pirate who had, apparently, come all the way down to St. Petroc’s to help a widowed mother of four.
Her heart performed some acrobatics in her chest, which she did not appreciate. It had absolutely no right to involve itself in her feelings about Captain Archer, who was a dreadful flirt and expert dissembler and—God help her—loyal and inventive and kind.
No.No.This was a disaster.
“Well,” she said, “best of luck with your ropes.” She gestured with the wine bottle again. Goodness, the scent emanating from it was certainly pungent. “I’ll be going now.”
He did the thing again with his arms and his chest. Ruby forced herself to look at his plaster-dusted hair instead.
“Absolutely not.”
“No?” She raised her brows. “Do you mean to tie me up?”
Astonishingly, his throat went pink at her words. “I told you. It’s dangerous to be alone.Especiallyhere in St. Petroc’s. I will escort you home.”
“I have Alice and Tamsin—”
He yanked open the door and thrust her back out into the corridor. “I’ll escort all three of you then. You should not be in the village at all.”
