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Bronwyn didn’t hesitate before jumping into the joyous fray, her smile wide as she paired up for a rousing polka with a sweaty young man with reddish-brown skin, long dark hair, and an open smile. “My lady,” he said with a smart bow.
“It’s just Bee,” she said.
“And I’m Rishi.”
She grinned. “Where are you from?”
“Trinidad.”
She’d heard about the island in the southernmost West Indies. “I’m from London.”
He pulled her into the first skipping turn, drawing a breathless laugh from her as they hopped and then took three swift steps before another spin. “I know who you are.”
Bronwyn frowned a little at that. “Truly?”
“I do some business with your brother, and he speaks quite fondly of you. He showed me a portrait of you once.” Rishi winked. “I have to say, it hardly does you justice, Miss Bee.”
She flushed at the compliment and gave herself over to the wild rush of the polka. The music was different, she noticed. Still at double time, but with the hollow, rhythmic sounds of the guiro, the bongo drums, and the maracas complementing the fiddlers.
After the first rousing round, she thanked Rishi for the dance and guzzled a tumbler full of something fizzy and sweet. Sweat poured off her body, but she’d never felt more energized in her life. Breathing great lungfuls of briny ocean air, she dragged Cora to the side and pulled her into an alcove. “Help me get these off,” she said, reaching underneath for the tapes on her petticoats.
Cora’s eyes rounded. “My lady!”
“It’s much too hot and no one here will care.”
“What if one of the guests notices, like the lady over there?” she asked.
“Then she does. Besides, Lady Finley has her hands full at the moment and doesn’t seem to give a whit about propriety. Neither do the others for that matter. Quickly, Cora, I want to dance without sweating to death.” Her maid grinned and released the ties. As Bronwyn shimmied out of the constricting layers, she whipped off her stockings and air kissed her bare calves. Heaven. She could have done with removing the tight corset as well, but no need to tempt fate. “Loosen the laces if you can.”
Lastly, she pulled the butterfly-and-lily-tipped hairpins from her hair. Laughing with relief, she rejoined the line of dancers, mimicking Rawley’s quick footwork in the country dance and letting the joyous music flow through her body. There were no rules, no expectations, no marriage noose hanging over her neck.
She let that bliss take her far away from reality.
***
Lady Bronwyn Chase was the most glorious thing he had ever seen.
Though she hardly resembled the lady from the ballroom downstairs at the moment. Hair brazenly down, the glossy brown waves skimming rosy shoulders and her flushed bosom with each jubilant bounce, hips swaying like a seasoned dancer, and her face—God, herface—wore an expression of such pleasure and delight it was breathtaking.Thiswasn’t anything like the silly chit from before who simpered and preened. This was a mythical creature in her domain.
Valentine had never seen anything like it.
Likeher.
Mesmerized, he barely took notice of the others on the crowded deck, though he had marked most of the people, both passengers and crew, in his memory over the past days. Upon boarding, he had toured the entire ship, cataloging the faces. It was part of his process—always good to know who was in his space at all times. Finally, he tore his gaze away from the dancing goddess in a blue dress to the man who whirled her in a giddy circle and blinked in utter disbelief.
What thehell?
He was a hardened spy, and Rawley, Ashvale’s man of business and cousin, had eluded his notice all along? What the devil washedoing here? And why was he dancing with Bronwyn? Ignoring the blast of possessiveness that heated his blood, Valentine narrowed his eyes. Ashvale trusted his cousin implicitly, which meant he had to know his marauding sister was onboard this ship. Why Rawley wouldn’t have made his presence known nagged at him, however.
His eyes met Rawley’s and the man showed no surprise to see him there. Sohehad also known that Thornbury was onboard. That realization bothered him even more, but as much as Rawley stood out because of his size, he could be undetectable when he chose to be. Valentine had his suspicions that the man was a covert operative himself, working for the Antiguan government as well as the Americans in the North fighting to abolish slavery.
Noel Rawley’s name had come up in the British War Office with ties to Alexander Augusta, a field surgeon and one of Lincoln’s highest-ranking Black Union officers in the Civil War, as well as Frederick Douglass, a fiercely outspoken activist in the abolitionist cause. The sudden thought of whether Rawley could be the Kestrel hit Valentine, but he dismissed it just as quickly. Rawley didn’t fit the description. The Kestrel was a white English peer.
When the grinning man picked Bronwyn up by her waist and spun her, making her howl with laughter—not the nauseating tinkling sound from earlier but a full, throaty belly-laugh that had Valentine’s jaw gaping loose—he almost started forward, but stuttered to a stop. What was he doing? Why was he reacting like a territorial creature? He had no claim on her, and Rawley cherished her like a sister.
It’s your duty.
His duty to what? Protect her? Rawley was closer to her by a blood connection through the Duke of Ashvale than he was. The man was honorable and trusted by the duke. Rawley was family. It washisduty to look after the chit, not Valentine’s. He should leave. Go back to the ballroom downstairs. Return to his job of finding the Kestrel.
