Read Online How to Be a Proper Lady: A Falcon Club Novel by Katharine Ashe - Free Book Online Page B

not.” She broadened her stance and set her fists on her hips. The pose cut the edge from her agitation and made her feel nearly at home again. In her own place. A place that suited her.
    “You belong there.” He spoke as though certain.
    She laughed, but it sounded forced. “I belong here aboard my ship with my men. Accustom yourself to the idea, Seton.” She pivoted and strode to the stair and down, snapping commands as she went. But she felt his gaze on her, and inside she was a welter of confusion.
    If she belonged here on her ship with her men, why was she so determined to settle down to life with Aidan Castle on his farm in the tropics, even for part of the year? She loved him, of course. She had loved him since he clerked in that Boston merchant’s office and her father brought him home to dinner one night. The night Viola discovered her woman’s heart.
    She’d been but fifteen, still hoping someday to return to England but not knowing if it could be done. Her mother was dead; without that tie, Viola was nothing to Charles Carlyle. And Fionn always insisted she meant everything to him. His only child. His best little sailor. And someday, he hinted, Mrs. Aidan Castle.
    He’d often left them alone. He loaned Aidan the funds to help him purchase the farm, even when his ship barely had sufficient canvas for sails. Clearly he regretted what he’d taken from Viola, a life of stable respectability, and he wanted better for her someday. He had seen better in Aidan Castle, self-made man, born in England like Viola, cousin to British gentry but now as American as Fionn. Like Viola. Her father had provided her at a tender age with the perfect match. And she had not disobliged him in falling in love.
    Then why did the notion of meeting Aidan in mere weeks no longer fill her with anticipation? She was no fool. He hadn’t written to her in ages. But when he saw her again they would be as they were before, and he would ask her to marry him, as he had hinted for so many years. She should be happy.
    Images of Seton standing so close in her cabin doorway steered her away from that refuge. She descended instead into the hold. Every crack in the wood, every sagging beam and worn plank loomed in her vision as her feet met the lowest deck. Stacked with barrels and crates and cloth-wrapped furniture, it looked like a merchant ship. The sailor guarding the powder magazine and his companion tipped their caps. She nodded, scanning the cargo.
    Why was she carrying mercantile goods to Trinidad? She was a privateer, for pity’s sake. She ought to be searching out ne’er-do-wells, not carting flour across the Atlantic.
    She breathed in the thick, close air and hated her unsettled thoughts. Seton was to blame. Everything had been perfectly fine until he boarded her ship. She could make a stop on Bermuda as the men wished, and put him ashore there. She didn’t need him to sail her ship for her.
    She didn’t need him for anything.
    “Sam!”
    The sailor chatting with the guard at the powder magazine jumped to attention. “Cap’n?”
    “Go tell Mr. Seton we will double our pace to Trinidad. I want to make port in sixteen days.”
    “Aye aye, Cap’n.” He leaped to the stair. Viola stared blankly at the floor of her ship covered with another man’s property, and for the first time in her life felt trapped upon the sea.
    “C ap’n Jin?” Little Billy slopped a ladle of a runny stew into a bowl and proffered it. “I been thinking.”
    Jin settled with the bowl at the tiny table at the edge of the mess. The cabin that passed for a kitchen wasn’t five feet square, but it was one place he had never seen Viola Carlyle on her ship.
    He needn’t make an effort to avoid her; she was seeing to that well enough. For four days she had passed every order to him through her sailors. His revelation had made an impression on her. Now he only needed time to determine how to make that impression serve him. And to control his temper. Her