His lip curled and he raise his hand, then dropped it. A first for him. Something must have changed to make him resist. He threw the soap and hairbrush into the straw in front of her.
‘Once you’re finished, the illustrious Lord Flint wants to see you in his cabin while we get to clean up the mess you’ve made.’ Something which clearly disgruntled the old sea dog immensely. ‘Don’t try any funny business! There’s another guard up there with a loaded musket and orders to kill if you don’t do as you’re told. Bath. Dress. And be swift about it.’ Threat issued, they retreated up the narrow steps to the main deck and the tiny hatch slammed closed once again.
Lord Flint.
So that was his name? It made sense he was an aristocrat. Every aspect of his being—from the inscrutable expression on his handsome face, the arrogant stance and the impeccably tailored coat he filled so well—all pointed to as much. His obvious physical attributes aside, the privileged, pampered English male was always the same no matter what magnificent shape or size they came in. Cold, detached and uninterested in any opinions which contradicted their own.
Jess hadn’t been exaggerating when she had warned he was in danger. Saint-Aubin would have them both torn limb from limb and their entrails fed to the dogs in a heartbeat, yet Lord Flint had brushed off her concerns with rude indifference. She hated that.
She remembered her father’s same indifference all those years ago when her mother declared her intention to leave him and take their only daughter with her. Like the arrogant Lord Flint, he hadn’t believed a word of it and lived to rue the day. Or more likely, as it turned out, he had simply been glad to be shot of her and hadn’t rued it at all. The manner of her leaving had certainly given him a valid excuse to dissolve the marriage with impressive haste, disown his only daughter and rapidly find a new wife to finally give him his longed-for son. Cold, detached and uninterested peers of the realm were so at odds with her experience of their French aristocratic counterparts. Saint-Aubin had been hot-headed, suspicious and terminally cruel. While she might have been fleetingly attracted to the man, Lord Flint’s staid, emotionless demeanour had been reassuringly familiar.
He hadn’t bothered introducing himself, not that she’d really given him much chance to or cared overmuch who he was. It wasn’t as if she intended to spend much time in his company. Jess had ranted and raved for all she was worth. If one of Saint-Aubin’s men were on this ship—and she wouldn’t put that past him because he had his poisonous tentacles everywhere—then Jess needed to appear outraged and afraid at being captured rather than relieved. It was relief tinged with a healthy dose of raw terror, but again that emotion was so familiar nowadays, always lurking menacingly in the background, that she had ruthlessly trained herself to ignore it unless absolutely necessary. Right now, while she was bobbing in the middle of the English Channel, it wasn’t necessary.
If they came in little boats in the dead of night to fetch her and drag her back, her only chance at living to see another sunrise depended on her fighting her new captors tooth and nail while lying through her teeth. Once she set foot on English soil, Jess was a dead woman walking. Saint-Aubin or the Boss would have highly paid assassins waiting to eventually erase her from the world unless she outwitted them first.
Until—if—that happened, she could console herself with one not insignificant achievement. Her trail of crumbs had been followed and she was out. That alone was cause for celebration.
Allowing herself a small smile of satisfaction, she rose and dragged the tub to a position which she hoped afforded her the most privacy and emptied the steaming buckets in. It was a meagre bath by normal standards, the water merely a few inches deep, but it was hot and wet and the first proper bath she had been allowed in months. Even conditions in this dank and humid brig were a considerable improvement on her rat-infested prison in Cherbourg or the same, compact four walls in Saint-Aubin’s claustrophobic and oppressive chateau.
All in all, things were looking up. Jess would not weep today. If she was destined to die in the coming few days, then she would take whatever small pleasures she could in the interim. Jess closed her eyes, inhaled slowly and deeply, tucking the constant fear into the little box in her mind where she stored all the bad things, then stripped off her filthy dress, kicking it back into the cell. It was the last vestige of Saint-Aubin and she was done with all that.
From this moment on she was in control of her destiny and nothing and nobody was ever going to get in her way again. The call of freedom and survival was too strong. She took a moment to inhale the sweet, fresh scent of the soap before she gratefully stepped in the tub and lowered herself into the water, revelling in the glorious sensation of soothing, clean water enveloping her skin.
Délicieux!
Paradise.
It was the little things, the things people took for granted, that she had missed the most. The hot meals, the heady aroma of fresh air, this warm bath. The unfamiliar sound of her first language spoken once again and the odd yet comforting way it felt coming from her own lips after all these years. Everyday luxuries she would rejoice in until she gasped her last breath because she was tired of hating herself and determined to begin her life afresh.
The handsome Lord Flint and his aristocratic arrogance could wait until her bath chilled and her skin shrivelled before she deigned to grace him with her presence. If he was to be the latest in her long line of temporary gaolers, it was best he found out early that Jess had never been partial to following orders.
The harridan had made him wait two hours already. No doubt she would have made him wait two more had he not dispatched someone to go fetch her. He would allow her that petty victory. He’d used the time constructively, going over the prearranged route to London and writing messages to send to every fashionably busy inn along the way, cheerfully appraising them, and anyone else who intercepted the missives, of the exact dates and times he expected to arrive at their establishment. Lord Flint and Lady Jessamine would require two rooms next door to one another, but not a private dining room. The more witnesses who saw her pretty face, the better.
The rap at his cabin door had him pausing mid-sentence. He kept his head bent and his pen hovering as the guards shepherded Lady Jessamine in, ignoring the way his body seemed to sense her.
‘The prisoner, sir. Would you like me to attach the manacles?’
‘That won’t be necessary.’ Flint didn’t do her the courtesy of looking up. He could play silly games, too. Till the cows came home if need be. ‘Leave us.’
Both guards hesitated, then let go of her elbows. ‘As you wish, sir. We’ll be outside.’
He scratched out another few words, then dipped his quill in the inkstand before continuing to write, leaving Lady Jessamine standing like a naughty student at his desk. In his peripheral vision he took in the sight. Bare feet, clean this time, and several inches of shapely, naked female calf poked out from beneath the striped sailor’s breeches she had been issued. The over-large linen shirt had been gathered to one side and tied in a jaunty knot, cinching the masculine garment tightly around her slim waist and displaying the obvious feminine shape of her rounded hips and bottom to the world. The collar was undone, the graceful curve of her neck and delicate collarbone yet another reminder of her sex—not that one was needed. Her long, tousled, jet-black hair was completely loose and tumbling down her back and around her shoulders. A beautiful, dark-haired temptress who might have been expressly designed by God to specifically appeal to his particular taste in women—damn her.
She looked scandalous, sultry and, to his shame, Flint’s body had never wanted a woman more. But he wouldn’t be waylaid by the physical. Beneath the perfect veneer, the wood was rotten. He gripped his pen so firmly as he formed the next letters, it would take a miracle to prevent the crew hearing the sound of it squeaking against the parchment up in the crow’s nest. Sheer pride made him grit his