Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #2)(4)

The girl really needed to let him go.

This was the voyage Gray went respectable. And it was off to a very bad start.

It was all her fault—this delicate wisp of a governess, with that porcelain complexion and her big, round eyes tilting up at him like Wedgwood teacups. She looked as if she might break if he breathed on her wrong, and those eyes kept beseeching him, imploring him, making demands. Please,rescue me from this pawing brute. Please, take me on your ship andaway to Tortola. Please, strip me out of this revolting gown and initiateme in the pleasures of the flesh right here on the barstool. Well, innocent miss that she was, she might have lacked words to voice the third quite that way. But, worldly man that he was, Gray could interpret the silent petition quite clearly. He only wished he could discourage his body’s instinctive, affirmative response.

He didn’t know what to do with the girl. He ought to do the respectable thing, seeing as how this voyage marked the beginning of his respectable career. But Miss Turner had him pegged. He was no kind of gentleman, and damned if he knew the respectable thing. Allowing a young, unmarried, winsome lady to travel unaccompanied probably wasn’t it. But then, if he refused her, who was to say she wouldn’t end up in an even worse situation? The chit couldn’t handle herself for five minutes in a tavern. Was he truly going to turn her loose on the Gravesend quay? What would he tell George Waltham then?

Damn it. After years of aimless carousing, Gray had reached the point in his life where, for one reason and another, he actually wanted to behave in an honorable fashion. The trouble was, somewhere in all those years of aimless carousing, he’d mislaid his sense of honor. He could sail through a cyclone and not lose his course. He could navigate a woman’s body in the dark. But his moral compass had grown rusted with disuse. However … he never lost sight of the bottom line. And so, with this governess putting him to the test, Gray reverted to his usual method of making decisions—he opted for profit. Miss Jane Turner was a passenger. He had a ship with empty berths. The decision was simple. He was a tradesman, and this was business. Strictly business.

He had no business studying the exquisite alabaster sweep of her cheekbone.

And she had no business clutching his arm.

“Miss Turner,” he said sternly, in the same voice he gave orders to his crew.

“Yes?”

“Let me go now.”

She released his arm, blushing fetchingly as she did so and looking up at him through trembling lashes. Gray sighed. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.

“I’ve one last piece of business, then. Stay here.”

With that imperious command, he crossed the tavern. Bains sat at a table, hunkered over a fresh tankard of ale. Gray clapped a hand on his shoulder and leaned over to speak in his unwashed ear. A few more stern words, a few coins, and there was one more quandary resolved to his profit.

“Now then, Miss Turner. We can be on our way.” Grasping her firmly by the elbow, he whisked her out the tavern door.

“You gave him money?” Struggling under his grip, she twisted to look back toward Bains. “After what he did to me, what you did to him … You paid him?”

Ignoring her question, he caught the porter’s eye. “The lady’s belongings,” he commanded briskly.

The porter wrapped beefy forearms around the larger of her two trunks.

Gray reached for the smaller one, hefting it onto his shoulder and holding it balanced there with one hand. He took three paces before he realized she wasn’t following.

He paused long enough to toss a comment over his shoulder. “Come along, then. I’ll take you out to the Aphrodite. You’ll be wanting to meet the captain.”

CHAPTER TWO

The captain?

Sophia stood staring numbly after him. Had he just said he’d introduce her to the captain? If someone else was the captain, then who on earth was this man?

One thing was clear. Whoever he was, he had her trunks.

And he was walking away.

Cursing under her breath, Sophia picked up her skirts and trotted after him, dodging boatmen and barrels and coils of tarred rope as she pursued him down the quay. A forest of tall masts loomed overhead, striping the dock with shadow.

Breathless, she regained his side just as he neared the dock’s edge. “But… aren’t you Captain Grayson?”

“I,” he said, pitching her smaller trunk into a waiting rowboat, “am Mr. Grayson, owner of the Aphrodite and principal investor in her cargo.”

The owner. Well, that was some relief. The tavern-keeper must have been confused.

The porter deposited her larger trunk alongside the first, and Mr. Grayson dismissed him with a word and a coin. He plunked one polished Hessian on the rowboat’s seat and shifted his weight to it, straddling the gap between boat and dock. Hand outstretched, he beckoned her with an impatient twitch of his fingers. “Miss Turner?”

Sophia inched closer to the dock’s edge and reached one gloved hand toward his, considering how best to board the bobbing craft without losing her dignity overboard.

The moment her fingers grazed his palm, his grip tightened over her hand. He pulled swiftly, wrenching her feet from the dock and a gasp from her throat. A moment of weightlessness—and then she was aboard. Somehow his arm had whipped around her waist, binding her to his solid chest. He released her just as quickly, but a lilt of the rowboat pitched Sophia back into his arms.