She wrinkled the almost lady-like appendage.

"Arrogant." She sighed on a rough whorl of air. "And still disappointing. I'll admit I expected more of the legend."

"I can give you more, if you wish." And he would. As soon he got free of these bonds he would give Viola Carlyle exactly what she should have had fifteen years ago.

He would give her family back again.

Viola chuckled. "Oh can you?"

"I can do you damage even with my hands tied behind my back." His voice was gravelly, ice blue eyes intense.

In all the stories Viola had heard of the infamous pirate-turned-British privateer, no one ever mentioned those eyes. But sailors were a pack of fool men and never noticed details like that. Every member of her crew could tell her the exact direction the wind blew across Nantucket Sound in December, or the difference between a rolling hitch and a double sheet bend. But she wagered none of them could state the color of her hair if she stood hatless before them, and she'd captained them for almost two years and known them fifteen. Most sailors weren't observant in that fashion.

Pity she wasn't most sailors. Jinan Seton was a fine specimen of masculinity.

She grinned. "I'd like to see you try." Taunting a man bound with ropes to a mast wasn't gracious. But it was fun, especially when the man was too handsome for his own scoundrel good.

"Would you like that?" The ice glittered.

"Talk bluster-cock all you want, pirate." Viola ignored her abruptly dry throat, gesturing to the ropes strapped about him. "My boys know how to tie a fine knot."

"I have no doubt they do." His voice was deep. Relaxed. Far too confident. "Are you daring me?"

"Surrounded by sixty of my men, with yours all tied up just like you?" She waggled her brows. "Why not?"

His teeth snapped. Her nose exploded in pain.

She wrenched free and leapt back, slapping a hand to her face.

The hulk roared with laughter. "Guessing you haven't heard all the stories about Cap'n Jin after all. Aye, miss?"

She glared, dropped her hand, and pushed her face up to Seton's again. Whiskers shadowed his jaw, nearly black, all of him wet just like everything aboard her ship. It had been raining for three days, the downpour thick as fog, and she hadn't meant to sneak up on the Cavalier at all. It had just been good luck.

Seton's eyes looked hard as crystal.

Or perhaps not such good luck.

She gritted her teeth. "Don't you dare do anything like that again." She poked her finger into his soaked waistcoat. Muscle beneath. Hard muscle. But that was typical enough for a sailor. "Or I'll have you strapped to the hull in less than an instant."

"You dared, in point of fact. Faulty judgment." The cool blue glimmered now. He was enjoying himself. His gaze, so close, slipped to her throbbing nose, then returned to her eyes. His voice rumbled like a summer storm, low and mildly threatening. "I could have taken off the tip."

"Done it before," the hulk grunted cheerfully. "Earlobes, too. A bloke's finger one time."

Viola couldn't drag her attention from the icy eyes. "I retract the Pharaoh sobriquet. You are an animal."

"And you are standing far too close for your own good." With his dark hair plastered to the bridge of his nose and high cheekbones, his eyes looked preternatural and uncannily knowing. A long nose and a strong jaw lent him an aristocratic air. And he spoke with the accents of an educated man, but with a foreign timbre. He was not fully English. In ports from Boston to Havana, they called him the Pharaoh for good reason.

A gleam of white showed at the crease of his mouth. Teeth. Deceptively sharp teeth. She should move away from them.

She did not-not only because she had never backed down from an opponent in front of her crew. She was, quite frankly, rapt. His lips were perfect, the most decadent dusky shade curving in wonderfully sensuous dips and rises. Flawless masculinity. Viola tried to conjure Aidan's lips in her memory. She couldn't. It'd been months since she last saw him, true, but she was in love with Aidan Castle. Ten years in love. She should surely remember his mouth.

Seton's perfect lips curved into a slow smile. His breath tickled her face, mingling with the rain. Her gaze crept up. He leaned slightly forward and murmured as intimately as though they were lovers sharing a bed, "I will do it again if you do not move away."

"I suspect you will." Her insides shivered, the betrayal of a grown woman too long in command of a bunch of scabrous salties. But her father had always told her she was hot blooded. "But then I would have to kill you, and neither of us want that, do we?"

"Move away, or we will find out."

"Don't tempt me. The dirk at my hip likes the taste of pirate blood."

"Not a pirate no more, miss," the hulk mumbled.

"It seems to me, madam-" Seton bent his head, tilting it so that those perfect lips hovered a mere sliver of damp air above hers- "that you are ignoring an important message here."

He smelled of salt, rain, and wind. And something else. Musky and male, but not filthy sweaty male sailor. Rather, male man. A scent that ran right through her like a little flame.

Viola willfully shut off her nostrils.

"Perhaps I'm hard of hearing. Or perhaps I just sank your ship and you are my prisoner."

A brow lifted. "Kill me then, if you wish."

"I may."

"You will not." He sounded certain.

"How can you know that?"

His voice dipped to a whisper, his gaze slipping to her mouth so close. "You have never killed a soul. You will not begin with me."

She didn't respond. How could she? The blackguard was right.

Slowly, he drew his head back. Viola allowed herself a sip of fresh air. His face remained perfectly passive. Her right foot slipped back several inches. Then her left. If he smiled, she would stick him with her dirk and damn him and her vow never to be the kind of sailor her father had been.

As though he knew exactly what she was thinking, his eyes seemed to light again. A wicked glimmer.

She narrowed hers. "You really don't believe you'll be behind bars tonight, do you?"

He did not respond.

"Master Jin's not one for telling fibs, miss," the hulk offered gruffly, "but I don't think he wants to be insultin' you in front of all your men like, you sees."

"What's your name, sailor?"

"Matthew, miss."

"Matthew, keep your lip buttoned or I will button it for you."

Seton's perfect mouth slanted into a half-smile. Viola's breathing halted.

She snapped her gaze away and shouted toward the helm. "Becoua, make our course for port."

"Yes'm, Cap'n!"

"Mr. Crazy," she called across deck to her lieutenant, "we'll take everything off these sailors for prize before we give them over to the port officer."

Her lieutenant scuttled up like a crab, all bones and white whiskers beneath leathery skin. "Everything, Cap'n?"

Viola smiled, breathing deep again, and crossed her arms. "Everything." She tilted her gaze back toward the Pharaoh. "And, Crazy, start with Mr. Seton."

She realized her mistake immediately. After a long cruise, her crewmen valued good clothing more than firearms and coin, and the sailors from the Cavalier were better clad than most. But she should have let Seton be. He'd been the master of his own ship for years, after all, her equal on the sea. It was common courtesy to treat other captains respectfully.

More to the point, his perfection continued below the mouth.

She could not look away. He held her gaze as a pair of deck hands loosened the ropes and stripped him first of coat, neck cloth and waistcoat, then shirt and trousers. Through the disrobing, his stare challenged. But after a point, she gave up looking at his face.

Sweet Saint Bridget, he was more god than man.

From broad shoulders glimmering with rain, his chest tapered lean and well muscled to a line of dark hair dipping beneath linen drawers slung low on his hipbones. After years on her father's ship, Viola had seen plenty of men undressed. Sailors were either wiry from life on the sea or bulky from the work. Jinan Seton was neither. His height rendered his corded arms, chest, and tight belly perfectly aesthetically pleasing.

Her breaths shortened. It had clearly been far too long since she'd seen Aidan.

"Enjoying the view, captain?" His lips barely moved but his voice was remarkably strong and hard.

Arrogant son of a humpback whale. Well-justified, though.

"Enjoying the weather, Seton?" He had to be cold as a Nova Scotian iceberg. His crew, too. She'd better get them to shore before they froze to death.

He grinned. "Overly warm for spring, wouldn't you say?"

Yes. But not on the outside of her skin. Beside him, Matthew shivered, but the Pharaoh remained perfectly still. She should move closer to see if his smooth skin was covered with gooseflesh too. The ship dipped against a swell, he steadied his stance and his muscles flexed-chest, arms, neck, calves. She nearly choked on the shock of heat that went through her.

His grin widened.

Must . . . get . . . to . . . the . . . stable.

Somewhere in a chamber abovestairs a girl screamed.

Not a girl. A woman. Throaty voice, inebriated, a scream of pleasure. The girl's scream was in his head only. As always.

Get to the stable.

Rescue the lady.

Wyn pried his eyelids open. The parlor tilted. But he was standing. In a corner, against the wall. Nevertheless, standing. Far better situation than his host, who was lying unconscious over the threshold, bottle clutched in one hand, a woman's naked ankle clutched in the other. The remainder of the woman lay in the corridor beyond, similarly indisposed.

Wyn cast his gaze about the chamber strewn with glasses and smoke. A ruined neck cloth decorated a bookshelf, and a pair of ladies' stockings-sans lady-straddled the arms of a chair with suggestively vigorous intent. A snapped billiards cue protruded from a lamp top, and the butts of any number of cigars dug black holes in the carpet.

He squeezed his eyes shut. "Are we having fun yet?"

Then commenced the burning in his gut.

Ah. Awake a mere twenty seconds this time before the torture began; his most reliable nemesis had grown insistent of late. He'd no memory of eating since arriving at the country house three days earlier. Food quieted the torture in his belly. No time for that now. He'd been here too long already. If the others were in the same state as his host, he must take his leave with haste.

"Off to the races, then." Focusing on the doorway, he pushed away from the wall.

"Wha's that you say, Yale?"

Had he spoken aloud? Good God.

Carefully, so carefully, he shifted his gaze in the direction of the voice. He never hurried. Hurrying led to mistakes. Wyn Yale, agent of the Falcon Club and consummate gentleman from his sparkling boots to his neatly tied cravat, never made mistakes. He never fell. Never tripped. Never revealed a thing, not even when he could not make the sounds to pronounce his own name. Then he simply remained silent.

Pride did not drive this perfection. His father and elder brothers used to criticize him for his pride. They'd had no idea.

But apparently now he spoke aloud when he did not intend it. He was, perhaps, finally slipping. A shame. Rational precision was all he had left, after all, and of course the damned fireball that lived in his midsection.

"Wha' races?" The other guest sprawled on the divan, this one without a woman at present, perhaps due to his waistcoat soaked in wine. Rule #3: Ladies expected a gentleman to maintain his accoutrements. Even demi-reps. Wyn's great-aunt had insisted on that.

"Who's racing?" the slovenly gentleman slurred. "I'll lay ten guineas on you over any of'em. Clever son of a-"

"No race." With deliberate steps Wyn moved to the sideboard and sloshed wine into a glass. Blinking hard to steady himself, he pivoted, carried the glass over, and curled the fellow's hand around it. Warm. Human sinew and flesh. Strange that he should notice this. But it had been an age since he'd felt another human's skin, touched another person. "Merely seeing to my horse."

The sot quaffed, dribbling wine from the corner of his mouth. "He's a pretty goer. Sell him?"

"No." Wyn had one loyal companion in addition to the burn in his gut: the sleek black thoroughbred in the stable that deserved a great deal better than him.

The man waved his hand, brushing away the refusal in that happy haze of alcohol saturation that Wyn himself had not experienced in years. Not happiness, no.

"S'just as well. Wife'd skin me alive if I spent that sort of blunt."

"Far better to spend it on drink and whores, of course," Wyn murmured, focusing on the door again. It tilted to one side, then the other.

"Din' know you had that sort of blunt either."

"Not lately, old chap." But he'd bought Galahad five years ago, before his funds ran dry.

The man slurped from the glass then again slumped into a snore. Wyn made his way over the prone bodies at the door and along the corridor. In the butler's closet he sought his coat. Had he brought a coat? The month? September.

He pulled his topcoat from a hook. Best to make certain it was his. He fished in the pocket for the one item he suspected only he would carry to a country bacchanalia. His fingers slipped around the knife's sheath. His pistol, of course, was still in the saddlebag. No need for a firearm at this sort of friendly gathering of wastrels. He'd brought it for the road, and because to be without it was to be a great fool.

For all his sins, he was not a great fool. Not even a minor one.

He left the house and the men and women inside, locked in a revelry they all enjoyed because they knew nothing more satisfying, and made his way across the muddy drive. Within the stable all was damp straw and the musky warmth of horses. Galahad had his own stall because he deserved it, not because his temper did not allow for company; the thoroughbred was gelded, much like his master at this gathering-temporarily. No women while working. No drink usually either. But this assignment had called for it. Thus the horse's four eyes now. And four nostrils, and four ears.

Wyn reached for both of Galahad's muzzles, each satin black marked with a blaze. He grasped either side of the animal's face and the two heads became one. A quiet-natured fellow, Galahad did not protest.

"Can you bear her company, my friend?" Against the horse's coat, his breath was heavy with brandy. "She is very pretty, after all."

Galahad stared at him with eyes the color of earth and bumped his nose into his chest.