How to Be a Proper Lady: A Falcon Club Novel by Katharine Ashe

so that the space between them nearly disappeared and he was looking down at her upturned face.
    “See here, you spoiled minx, I may be under your command but I am not required to accept—”
    “Spoiled minx? Minx? ” she exclaimed. “I don’t think a man has ever dared call me that.”
    “Maybe if one had, you wouldn’t be so damned—”
    “How could you possibly know whether I am spoiled or not?”
    “I can see it well enough in your men’s behavior.”
    “I warned you, you wouldn’t like it.”
    “Would not like what?” Her flashing eyes? Her full lips? The wavy lock of hair tumbling over her brow, obscuring the perfection and rendering her yet more enticing?
    “Serving under me.”
    Under. Atop. Any way she liked it. And with a fiery temper like hers, he suspected he would like it quite a bit. Given all, the notion appealed more than it ought. The sparkle of challenge in her eyes went straight to his cock.
    “You can’t bear it, you conceited excuse for a respectable privateer.” Her mouth curved into a satisfied grin. “Aha. That’s got a rise out of you.”
    In a manner of speaking.
    He sucked in breath slowly, battening down on his temper and arousal at once. “I am not an excuse for a respectable privateer. I am one.”
    “You think that simply because you have a commission from your British government you no longer have the instincts of pirate scum?”
    The rise abruptly fell, a bucket of ice dashed on his unwelcome ardor.
    “I do.”
    “Prove it.”
    He grasped her hand, found it clenched, and peeled her fingers apart. He placed the telescope in her palm and closed her hand around it.
    “I do not take that which is not mine by right.” He released her.
    Her big eyes were in a tumult, her breaths fast. The reaction seemed excessive, but it suited Jin. It was closer to fear than her earlier attitude.
    “It’s because I am a woman.” A quaver threaded through her satin voice. “Some men cannot accept orders from a woman.”
    “It is because you are a harpy. And I am not some men .”
    He left. If he remained in that damned corridor for another minute he might be tempted to tell her the truth.
    It was not because she was a woman, a remarkably pretty one with ripe lips he could imagine performing all sorts of tasks other than spewing insults. It was not because he had been a pirate for much of his life. It was not even because he had promised himself to see her to England come hell or high water. It was because sometime over the past two years searching for a girl stolen from her home at a tender age, Jin had realized something profoundly disturbing. Something he rarely allowed himself to ponder.
    She had a home to return to. She had a family. That she denied that now, even after so many years, living her life as though the family who cherished her did not exist, infuriated him.
    He felt fury. Toward a woman he barely knew.
    In his youth, anger had consumed him. For over a decade now, however, he had trained himself to turn that anger toward useful occupation. But this time it stared him in the face in the form of a willful woman who did not understand that the gift she threw away was everything some people— he —ever dreamed of possessing.

Chapter 5
     
    “G lum today, mum? On account of the weather, I wager.”
    Viola slanted her cabin boy a scowl, then regretted it when his freckled face fell. He wasn’t but seven, full of good cheer and excitement about everything, much as she’d been when her father first brought her aboard his ship. Her ship for nearly two years now. The ship she called home, currently on its way to a man she hoped to also call home someday.
    She ruffled Gui’s carroty hair and his grin resurfaced, making him look a great deal like his grandfather, Frenchie. He jumped off the quarterdeck rail onto the planks and slapped his little thigh, the wind ruffling his disordered locks further.
    “I know what’ll pick up your spirits, Cap’n. A bite of Little