Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #2)(14)

She hadn’t had time to assemble a coarser wardrobe, nor even any notion of where the poorer classes shopped.

“I beg your pardon?” Her fingers tightened around the rapidly cooling tankard.

“Money. You do have money, don’t you? You never paid your fare yesterday. It’s six pounds, eight. If you haven’t the coin, I’ll have no choice but to hold you for ransom once we reach Tortola.”

Her fare. Sophia sipped her tea with relief. If Mr. Grayson was this concerned over six pounds, he surely had no idea he was harboring a runaway heiress with nearly one hundred times that amount strapped beneath her stays. She suppressed a nervous laugh. “Yes, of course I can pay my passage. You’ll have your money today, Mr. Grayson.”

“Gray.”

“Mr. Grayson,” she said, her voice and nerves growing thin, “I scarcely think that my moment of … of indisposition gives you leave to make such an intimate request, that I address you by your Christian name. I certainly shall not.”

He clucked softly, wrapping the handkerchief around his fingers. With hypnotic tenderness, he reached out, drawing the fabric across her temple.

“Now, sweetheart—surely my parents can be credited with greater imagination than you imply. Christening me ‘Gray Grayson’?” He chuckled low in his throat. “Everyone aboard this ship calls me Gray. Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s no particular privilege. There’s but one woman on earth permitted to address me by my Christian name.”

“Your mother?”

He grinned again. “No.”

She blinked.

“Oh, now don’t look so disappointed,” he said. “It’s my sister.”

Sophia slanted her gaze to her lap, cursing herself for playing into his charm. If the sight of him drove the wits from her skull, the solution was plain. She mustn’t look.

But then he pressed the handkerchief into her hand, covering her fingers with his own, and Sophia could not retrieve the small, defeated sigh that fell from her lips. His touch devastated her resolve completely. His hand was like the rest of him. Brute strength, neatly groomed. She heartily wished she

’d thought to put on gloves.

He leaned closer, his scent intruding through the pervasive smell of seawater—wholly masculine and faintly spicy, like pomade and rum.

“And sweetheart, if I did make an intimate request of you”—his thumb swept boldly over the delicate skin of her wrist—“you’d know it.”

Sophia sucked in her breath.

“So call me Gray.” He released her hand abruptly.

Disappointment—unbidden, imprudent, unthinkable emotion—cinched in Sophia’s chest. Distance from this man was precisely what she wished. Well, if not precisely what she wished, it was exactly what she needed. He looked at her as though he’d laid all her secrets bare, and her body as well. She pushed the tankard back at him, leaving him no choice but to take it from her hands. “I shall continue to address you as propriety demands, Mr. Grayson.” She cast him a sharp look. “And you certainly are not at liberty to call me ‘sweetheart.’”

He donned an expression of wide-eyed innocence. “That isn’t what it stands for, then?” Teasing the handkerchief from her clenched fist, he ran his thumb over the embroidered monogram.

S.H.

“You see?” He traced each letter with the pad of his finger. “Sweet. Heart. I thought surely that must be it. Because I know your name is Jane Turner.”

His lips curved in that insolent grin. “Unless … don’t tell me. It was a gift?”

At least this time she made it to the rail.

And there Sophia clung, until she was certain she must be casting up remnants of Michaelmas dinner. Until the heavy footfalls of those soiled boots told her that he’d left.

Back in her berth, she dipped a clean, unembroidered handkerchief into a basin of fresh water. Stripped down to her drawers and stockings, she sponged the icy water over her neck and face, then between her br**sts and under her arms. After toweling dry, she dusted her body with scented rice powder.

She still felt filthy.

With trembling fingers, she restrapped the heavy bundle around her ribs. She tugged a clean chemise over her head and cinched up her stays. She still felt exposed.

She brushed out her hair with sharp yanks, as if to punish the feeble mind beneath the tingling scalp. Of all the times and places to go distracted over a man! During her Season, she’d been courted by no fewer than nine of the ton’s most eligible bachelors. No dukes or earls among them, to her parents’ dismay, but she had become engaged to the most coveted catch of the ton—the supremely charming Sir Toby Aldridge. And never, not once, in all those waltzes and garden strolls and coy conversations, had Sophia’s perfect composure been shaken. She knew how to manage attractive men; or rather, she knew how to manage herself around them. She knew nothing. She was an idiot, an imbecile, a simpleton, and a ninny. Boarding a ship under an assumed name, then whipping a monogrammed handkerchief from her cloak?

Sophia yanked and twisted her hair into a severe style, then stabbed the coiled knot with several hairpins.

Foolish, foolish girl. If Mr. Grayson learned about that money, he would know her instantly for a fraud. He could take her purse away, or hold her captive in hopes of extorting more. Worse, he could turn out to be a gentleman after all, and simply return her to her family. Be calm, she bade herself, taking a deep breath. Considering his friendship with the Walthams, Mr. Grayson was bound to discover her deceit eventually. But by the time the ship reached Tortola, she would be just weeks from her twenty-first birthday. Just weeks away from freedom. If Mr. Grayson possessed some shred of gentlemanly honor that might compel him to return a ruined debutante to England—and Sophia doubted he did—it would already be too late. By then, her trust and her future would belong to her alone.