Across a Moonlit Sea by Marsha Canham Page B

surprise that he would even think so. “In fact, I shall strive to be as useless to you as possible for as long as possible.”
    “You are already that, mam’selle,” he countered evenly.
    “Then we have nothing more to discuss.”
    He looked at her, hard. “I am not happy with the way this has turned out. I have no quarrel with your father or his crew, nor do I have any nefarious designs on your ship.”
    She merely stared back, her face a study in abject contempt.
    He drummed his long fingers silently on the top of the desk. “Your father mentioned you have been at sea for eight months.” When she neither confirmed nor denied it, he asked, “Should I assume this was your first voyage?”
    “Why would you assume that?”
    “Your hands are too soft, for one thing, your skin is too fresh: You don’t exactly have the look of a weathered tar about you.”
    “For your information, I have been at sea since I was twelve,” she snapped.
    “A whole year?” He cocked his head in mock surprise. “I am impressed.”
    “Eight years, thank you very much.”
    From the instant sparks that had flared in her eyes, he guessed he had touched upon a tender subject. She hadobviously met his brand of sarcasm before, both about her choice of lifestyle and the fact that she did, indeed, have the smooth, round face of a youthling—when she wasn’t scowling, that is.
    His brief victory did not taste as sweet as it should have, for his reaction was stalled somewhere between satisfaction and grudging admiration. Eight years was a long time. The sea offered no easy life and was merciless to anyone who showed the slightest weakness.
    Beau was no better off. He angered her, irritated her, made her furious with his smug arrogance, but he was also an enigma. He was, after all, Simon Dante, an aristocrat, a member of the nobility with vast estates in England as well as France. He had spent the last half of his—what? thirty years? plaguing the Spanish shipping lines. For his most recent outlandish adventure he admitted to having raided Veracruz, and had fought a pitched battle with six Spanish galleons—a feat of daring and courage that normally would have had her perched on the edge of her chair, hanging on his every word.
    She couldn’t ask him about any of it, of course. She couldn’t even look interested.
    So she looked instead at the clutter of books littering the floor. “You can read,” she said, inflecting her voice with the same patronizing tones he had used. “I’m impressed.”
    His long fingers ceased their drumming. The golden cat’s eyes were scanning the volumes haphazardly when they came to a sudden stop at one in particular. They widened slightly and an exquisite tension seemed to ripple the length of her body. He tried to follow her gaze to the book that had so riveted her attention, but when she saw what he was about she turned her head and let the mask of indifference settle over her features again.
    “If you have seen something you want, by all means help yourself. They will only end up on the bottom of the ocean.”
    “What I want”—her eyes shot back—“is to return to the Egret.”
    “And so you shall,” he said solicitously. “Just as soon as all these charts and maps are rolled and packed away in a chest.”
    Beau surged to her feet, abruptly enough to send Dante’s hand an inch or so in the direction of the pistol.
    “Where is the damned chest?” she demanded.
    His hand relaxed—rather, it flattened in an attempt to appear as though the movement had been unintentional, not that either one of them was fooled.
    “Behind you. Empty the clothing out of the big one and stow as much of this paperwork in it as you can. My ship, too, if you please,” he added, his voice softening unexpectedly as he ran a hand lovingly over the gold replica of the
Virago.
“Perhaps if one survives, the other will not be forgotten too soon.”
    “It is a … beautiful ship,” she was compelled to