The dismissal was clear, but Ruby found herself hesitating. She forced herself to recollect that she was no dewy-eyed miss, easily swayed by a comely ship’s captain who laughed and paid for her wine and smelled of the sea.
She had entered this inn for a reason. She tried to recall it.
“Tell me,” she said, before she could lose her nerve, “have you heard of any new sightings these last days?”
Mrs. Enys’s brows rose. “Sightings?”
“Yes,” Ruby said. “Of the Scourge of St. Petroc’s.”
Archer’s arm around her shoulders went fromcozy familiaritytoiron bar. He spun her about, pointing her toward the door. “Time to be off!” he said. “I’ll be back later, Flossie.”
Ruby tried to look back to ascertain Mrs. Enys’s response and caught Captain Archer as he mouthed some words over her head.
Drunk as a lord, she thought it might have been.
She hopped a little, trying to catch his gaze. “What did you say?”
He grinned down at her, his face all unrepentant dimples and plaster dust. “Nothing, my darling little barmaid. Come now. Let me take you home and I’ll fetch you another bottle of wine.”
She stopped dead, and he hauled her back into motion, the implacable strength of his arm keeping her on her feet. “If you call medarlingagain I shall—”
“Farewell!” he called over his shoulder to Mrs. Enys, drowning out Ruby’s protest.
“You are a scoundrel,” she muttered into his shirt as he dragged her down the street. “A rogue and a liar. I don’t believe a word you’ve ever said to me.”
For just a moment, his steps faltered.
Ruby looked up.
“That’s probably wise,” he said. For the space of a heartbeat, he looked almost pained. But then his summer-blue eyes fell back to her, and they crinkled at the corners as he smiled. “Though if we’re cataloging crimes, pet,you’rethe one who stole the wine. Not me.”
And then—horrid,horridman. He winked.
Chapter 11
Archer shoved the final barrel deep into the shadows of the cliffside cave with a grunt.
It was heading to dusk, and he was covered in sweat and sand. It had taken him a solid two hours to move the smuggled casks into a larger cave, where he could first decant the Rhenish wine and then begin the process of selling, profiting, and enthusiastically hoping not to get arrested. Wall had offered to come with him, but Archer had refused.
He wanted to think.
More properly—yes, he could admit it, at least in the privacy of his own mind—he wanted to brood. The cove was an excellent place for brooding.
He’d hustled Lady Ruby out of the inn before she could do any significant damage. He’d reiterated his warnings about slavering beasts who ate crucial bodily organs, but even as he’d said it, he’d known it was hopeless.
The Scourge story had not worked, and neither had the bugs or the food or any of their other schemes. They’d made no discernible progress in ridding the house of three ladies-in-waiting, and worse,farworse—
He liked Lady Ruby Ballimore. A lot.
He liked sparring with her. He was astonished by the changes she’d wrought in the mansion and impressed despite himself by her stubborn persistence. He admired her loyalty and her eyes and all that stubborn, heart-wrenching bravura, and he dreamed—God help him, he couldn’t seem tostopdreaming—about the way she’d felt pressed against his body.
It was a bad stroke. The precise opposite of what he ought to feel. He was not meant to enjoy every moment he spent in her company, and he should not,should nothope that she was enjoying it too.
When Benji Woon had laughed behind his hand in the inn’s public room, Ruby had supposed it directed at her. Archer had thought so for a moment as well—he’d seen Ruby flinch, and his gaze had snapped to Benji.
Benji hadn’t been laughing at Ruby. He’d been laughing at Floss’s tiny, angry kitten, fleeing through the front door with a pigeon twice her size. But in that moment—in a bright, blazing, impossible-to-ignore revelation—it had occurred to Archer that if someone had laughed at Ruby, he would’ve killed them on the spot.
That did not seem to bode well.
