“Oh, it’s …”
“Shut up,” she said, going up on her toes and leaning so close, her nose was almost at his throat. “Oh, my God. That is amazing. You smell like… like marzipan and Christmas.”
“Ruby,” he said, his cheeks heating for some stupid reason as he gave a hapless shrug and took a stumbling step backward, all his extremities suddenly tingling. “She got me.”
“She did get you,” Libba agreed, looking a little dazed, her pupils flared out like dinner plates. “Give me another sniff, then, come on.”
“No!” he said, shooting his arm out to hold her shoulder, his heart crashing against his ribs in an absolute panic at the idea of her putting her face up against his neck again. He held her steady and even took a step backward for good measure, locking his elbow. “Focus! Who told you the ship was here?”
Her head turned toward where he’d dabbed more of the scent at his wrists, her long, curled lashes batting several times. “Oh,” she said, sounding suddenly sedate. “It’s the word around the wharf. Spotted off the lighthouse, I think.”
“Libba!” he screeched, using the hand on her shoulder to shake her. And himself. Christ. “We aren’t ready!”
“‘We’? ‘We’ aren’t ready?” she repeated, sharpening immediately as she flicked his hand off her with her fingernails, somehow dislodging the whole, locked-in stance he’d taken with nothing more than a light graze of manicured ovals. “Perhapsyouaren’t. I can be at the dock in thirty minutes if necessary. So, why don’t you scuttle off and find out what our schedule needs to be?”
He frowned, opening his mouth, closing it, then opening it again, the heat on his face growing warmer with every second. “Give me a scarf,” he barked at last.
“What?” she said, drifting closer again, sniffing suspiciously at the air. “Hm?”
“A scarf,” he snapped, dancing backward with panic in his throat at how she looked just now, half-lidded and shiny-lipped as her tongue darted out over her mouth. “So I have one when I go back out there.”
“Oh,” she said, still very soft, her eyes traveling over his throat and down to his wrists. “All right, in just a moment.”
“Christ, you’re like a cat in heat!” he declared, knowing it would put her back up.
“Oh, he’s a dreamer,” she replied with a high-pitched laugh that relaxed some of the primal,run the hell awayinstincts that were clamoring in his ribcage. “Maybe I shall pick up a frangipane on the way home. Hmm. Or Bakewell.”
“Libba!” he cried, desperate.
She rolled her eyes at him. “Scarf. Right. Just a moment.”
And then it seemed to him that he blinked and found himself propelled back off the stage and into Malcolm’s orbit, clutching a scrap of alien fabric that was apparently his scarf.
Rhys was staring at it with a glint in his eye that made Jasper suspect it would no longer be his scarf by night’s end.
“What if we went to the Crow’s Nest tonight instead of the Cauldron?” he suggested as they stepped out into the earlyautumn air. “I heard the Templeton-Rath ship was spotted and wanted to confirm.”
Malcolm made a soft, little grunting noise. “If we must. That place is not my preference.”
“Why’s that?” Rhys asked, grinning and shoving his hands in his pockets as he fell in next to them. “You don’t like the flavor that the patina of grime adds to your ale?”
Mal made the noise again.
But it got a chuckle out of Jasper, which was much needed, what with the level of tension in his shoulders.
And besides, the Crow’s Nest was a shorter walk than the Cauldron.
‘Grime’ is a good word for the overall aura of the place, Jasper thought as they walked through the entry and toward the bar. It was full of sailors, so he supposed that was unavoidable at worst and perhaps even preferable at best.
It gave the place a sort of authenticity to the temporary porters, he reckoned.
He sent Mal off to find them a table in the crowded saloon while Jasper and Rhys shouldered up to the barman in an effort to find both repast and information.
“Oh, yes, she’s blowing in slow, though,” the barman told him, nodding. “Probably will arrive at the niner. It’s them Ceylonese traders, isn’t it? Heard we’re getting a new parcel office. Hope it’s near.”
“‘Another one’?” one of the jack tar lads, floaters day by day for whichever shipping company would hire them, said with a moan from the corner of the bar as Rhys motioned to the hoppiest ale they had. “It’s already getting crowded. Them quarry deliveries are ruining my mornings and bloody Stockton keeps blaming the new partner but won’t hire us out to make up for it.”
“Lennox,” another jack said with a chortle. “Just saw him come in here, but he scurried to the back. Likely after a barrel of forgetting juice like his sire.”
