“It is merely a scrape,” she said, which was almost true.
His eyes remained on her face. “May I see?”
That was not fair. A man who stole bracelets had no right to ask permission so gently.
His fingers touched her cheek. Very lightly. She did not care to be touched thus. Not by a dangerous man. Not by a man who had no idea how to negotiate even a compliment without turning it into a siege.
Well then, when one was about to be touched by a pirate, one ought to stay very still and look at the hatch and not at the aforementioned pirate’s fingers, moving ever so slowly closer. Yes, all would be well if she didn’t notice his fingers.
But alas, how could she not? They were warm and roughened by work, the pads of them careful against her skin. His palmhovered near her jaw. A pale scar cut across two knuckles. Another marked the base of his thumb. These were not decorative hands, yet against her face, they were gentle enough to undo an alarming portion of her argument.
Lamplight caught the ring on his finger.
Not a pirate’s ring, but heavy gold, darkened in the grooves. Its seal bore a wolf’s head beneath a ducal coronet.
Marguerite drew his hand closer, turning the ring toward the light. The wolf’s head gleamed back at her. Crowned. Ducal. Stormhaven.
The pirate had been on the frigate before she arrived. The pirate wore command as other men wore cologne. The pirate had a ship. The pirate was Stormhaven.
The ambassador was the pirate.
Oh, no.
No, no, no.
She released his wrist as if it had burned her.
He lowered his hand. His gaze held hers.
She had crossed a window, a dock, a rope ladder, and a considerable portion of her own good sense to reach him, and she had never felt farther from Naples.
“I forbid you,” she said, pointing her finger at him. “I forbid you to be the Ambassador to Naples. Do you hear me? I forbid it.”
Chapter five
Tristan stared at the finger pointed at his chest. It was a very small finger. Gloved. Dainty. Ridiculous in its authority. A finger better suited to tracing a dance card or correcting the angle of a flower than forbidding a duke, a captain, and the newly appointed ambassador from being himself.
Should he laugh? Take that finger into his mouth and bite it? Then her lips trembled, and a broken sound escaped her. Something in his chest moved hard and fast, like a gun running out before the order came.
He took one step toward her. Then another. The need to cover her, steady her, put heat back into her bones and stop her from looking so damned cold was too strong. What was he doing? The moon was not something he could simply take and hold. Tristan curled his fingers into his palm until the nails bit so as not to touch her.
Exhaling, he reached for the brandy glass. “Drink, Miss d’Ailes.”
Her lashes flickered, then she took the glass, lifted it with both hands, and swallowed too much. The color returned to her face, and Tristan breathed with less restriction. Not enough to call it relief, but enough to make him hate himself for needing it.
He turned away, giving her a moment to collect herself. The stern windows showed a strip of pale sea and a sky rubbed thin by morning. He heard the tiny shift of the blanket around her shoulders, the soft scrape of glass against wood when she set it down, the measured silence that followed.
Composed again.
Good. Composure restored distance. Distance reminded him of his own rules. Rules he would certainly ignore if she trembled again.
He crossed to the door and opened it. “Come. I will have an officer escort you back to shore.”
The aft passage waited beyond—six yards of dark wood, brass latches, and low beams, hardly wide enough for two people who should remain strangers.
Unfortunately, neither the ship nor Miss d’Ailes appeared inclined to assist him.
She looked at the door, then at him. Her chin lifted by a fraction, and he knew, with the same bleak certainty by which a captain knew the wind had shifted, that she had found her footing.
