Tristan caught himself against the stay, shoulder screaming, breath knocked from his lungs. Below, men hauled hard on the lines. The sail steadied. The frigate settled into her course again with a long shudder that traveled through the mast.
He looked at the severed rope in his fist. That was what command required. A man found the dangerous tangle and cut it before the ship paid for his hesitation.
He climbed down more roughly than he had gone up, boots finding ratlines by habit, wind cooling the sweat on his back. By the time he dropped onto the deck, his shirt clung to his spine, his hair was damp at his neck, and tar streaked his gloves and cuffs. The moon had climbed one miserable inch.
He was wiping the back of his wrist across his mouth when the ordinary male noise of work hushed. Tristan turned, still breathing hard, and saw Marguerite step onto the deck.
She wore a plain working gown, sleeves pushed above her wrists, apron smudged. A streak of soot marked one cheek. Her skin shone with perspiration.
The sight hit him like a broadside, hard enough to empty sense from his head. His tired hands had the sudden brutal wish to take her by the waist, carry her back below, and find out whether sweat tasted different on a woman who negotiated like a minister and blushed like sin.
He should have been too tired for desire to burn under his ribs, but apparently no amount of labor could sweat this woman out of a man once she had gotten into his blood.
“Your Grace,” she said, lifting that soot-streaked chin, “I require water. For a bath. But the cabin boy refused to bring me any. He said it was against the captain’s orders.”
His mind supplied the image—Marguerite in a tub, hair undone, skin wet, soap sliding over the line of her throat. Steam rising. Her shoulders slick. Her mouth parted, not in diplomaticprotest but in—Tristan shut the thought down with more force than success.
“Madam, I want many things. A new ship. A crew that obeys before I threaten death, maiming, or additional labor. A post that honors my military achievements instead of burying them beneath paperwork.” He opened his arms, then let them fall. “Did I get any of that?”
She inclined her head, ever the diplomat. Even sweaty.
“I am sorry if matters have not turned out as you wished. I truly am. But I need water to—”
“Miss d’Ailes.” He leaned nearer. “Read my lips. No one takes a bath aboard a warship.”
Her face heated. It was like watching the moon, ever cool, suddenly turn red. The flush began high on her cheeks, then deepened, spreading beneath the little streak of soot until she looked both offended and unbearably touchable. He had the demented desire to put his thumb there, drag soot and blush together, then follow the mark with his mouth.
“Sir,” she said, in a tone that suggested his rank had become insufficient, “I have perspired more this afternoon than I did in my entire career at Covent Garden.”
“Then the navy has broadened your accomplishments.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I have scrubbed your tub.”
“My tub?”
“Yes. Your tub, which I found in a state unfit for diplomacy, Christian burial, or contact with human skin. I have also cleaned the brazier, shifted three trunks, beaten the dust from a blanket that may have been at Trafalgar, and persuaded Elsie not to murder the boy who denied us the bath. I am hot. I am filthy. I require hot water.”
“You may have water to drink.”
“If I do not have water to bathe, there will be no joint operations.”
Tristan closed his eyes for half a second. God save him from strategic women.
When he opened his eyes, her blush had worsened. A lesser woman might have retreated. Marguerite d’Ailes merely drew herself taller, indignation turning her into a small nation with artillery.
His blood surged. “You have no reason to worry. I will not bathe either, and I have been working on deck all day.”
Her gaze moved over him. It began at his hair, damp and pulled loose from its tie, then lowered to his open collar, the shirt plastered to his chest, the dark patches of sweat beneath his arms. Her eyes paused where the linen clung to his stomach.
He felt the look like a touch.
“If you do not bathe,” she said, “you will not set foot in my cabin.”
He stepped closer. “Your cabin?”
Her lashes flickered. “You are being impossible.”
“I have been called worse by better-armed men.”
