Chapter 4

"You." She jerked up her chin and swung around, the candle flame sputtering.

Imagine, indeed.

Flint. Not just a voice in her ear. A voice from that place she'd locked it-locked him-and thrown away the key. A voice from memory's dark swamp.

As if it were yesterday, he stepped toward her and she fought the swell of panic. She couldn't help it. She parted her lips in shock.

"No. Don't scream." He held up a warning hand.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't."

She had had seven years of pretending this man didn't exist. She didn't want to see him now. Not when she stood on Malmesbury's doorstep, on the very trembling edge of this. Go away, she nearly hissed. In fact she nearly hissed worse. She must be mistaken. He couldn't be here. It wasn't possible.

"Because with what you got sitting down in your cellar, I doubt you want your guests out their chambers any more than I do right now, sweetheart."

She almost dropped the candlestick.He was definitely here.

"Did no one ever tell you it's rude to go poking your nose around in other people's houses? No. I think they forgot. Of course, you never had a father. As for the cat being a better mother "

"You always did have an answer for everything, Fury." He creased his all-too-sensuous lips into a smile. "But after that little business you got up to in Jamaica, I'd watch my tongue."

Jamaica?She straightened, steadying herself. Wasn't he just mean enough to remember that. And the damned place she wished she'd never seen, let alone been born in.

"How did you " Find me, were the wrong words to use. James Flint Blackmoore wasn't a man to look. "What do you want?"

His crystal-blue gaze slid over her face and neck. Looking at the jewels. What else? She'd never exactly interested him.

"A moment of your time."

That was nothing, she supposed. A great deal less than he'd demanded the last time she'd asked him that question. But it would still be a huge mistake to give that moment here. Malmesbury might have been fifty, but his hearing was sharp as a new pin. Sharper.

They could go to her bedroom. With Susan in it, it would be safe. But it wasn't just that Flint wore no cravat he wasn't gentlemanly enough to ever do that. No bedroom was safe with Flint Blackmoore in it. There was also the matter of her book of secrets. As for the cellar, she couldn't possibly take him there.

"Downstairs. And hurry up. I don't have all night."

"Now isn't that an offer a man might find hard to refuse?"

She regretted speaking so unpleasantly. Not because he was Flint Blackmoore. No. Those feelings had long departed her heart. She'd rather spit on him than butter him. But he'd been in the cellar and seen Thomas. Although quite how he had? He must have opened the box.

"This way." Reaching the foot of the staircase, she threw open the doors to the sitting room.

She swept inside and smiled. Why not?

Flint didn't look remotely like she remembered him. Certainly not now the first shock had passed and she could take in the details. Tall? Yes. The lean limbs, easy gait, and sloping shoulders that had so beguiled her? Yes. But his sharp-angled face? That was more lined than before. The corn-colored hair framing it was tidier and therefore lanker than when he'd stood on the deck of the Calypso with a sea breeze ruffling it. He'd never been one for elaborate garments indeed it was part of his then charm but just look at the starkness of the worn corded breeches. As for the state of his tricorne hat Had it met with a hurricane?

"Sit down, won't you?"

"Is it safe?"

Ignoring him, she lit the candles beneath the hanging of Salome. How apt to stand there. She'd always understood the strength of these women far better than most. The villa was only the second she and Thomas had looked at when they arrived overland from France, and it sat further from the center of the town than Susan liked. A place at the mercy of cicadas and church bells. But the hanging of the white-gowned, barefoot Salome had decided Fury.

Thank God. Along with the crimson opulence of the room, the frowning portraits of nameless contessas ensured there wasn't a better place to face this man and show him just how well she was doing. Imagine? As if the whole thing was preordained and the villa had always known he'd stand here.

It wasn't exactly the kind of room the poor soul would blend in to. Rather the kind to highlight the poverty-stricken nature of his scruffy breeches and the worn boots that stretched to his thighs. How good was that?

"So, James." Knowing how much it was always Captain Flint with him, she said it deliberately. She smiled too. "What brings you here?"

As if she couldn't guess. There was only one thing he could want. It began with M. and ended in Y. Money. Well, she hoped he thought he was getting any--that way, he would be even more disappointed. What a shame.

Removing his hat, he eased down into the satin-upholstered chair. Of course, he wasn't going to look anything other than ridiculously uncomfortable on that, with his long legs. Flint Blackmoore and cream satin. It was probably why his sigh came all the way from his bones.

"What do you think? I'm Malmesbury's valet." He adjusted his beige coat.

"What?" She'd wondered about his valet, hadn't she?

"Yes. I "

"But how "

"I lost the Calypso."

"The Calypso?" His pride and joy. The thing he loved best in the whole world. The only thing.

For an instant she couldn't speak, thinking how that creaking hulk was his whole life and how he'd have died to defend it. An instant only.

"That still doesn't explain why you're a valet."

He shifted uncomfortably and gritted through his teeth. "He bought me, right? Privateer's life, sweetheart. Of course, I should never have listened to De Wolfe. I know that now."

"But you said sailing under a United States flag gave you work."

"Eight years ago, sweetheart. Before I met you. I thought it was enough to tell you that much at the time, anyway."

"And the British deserved everything they damn well got."

"Sure they did. It was war, wasn't it? But that was then. This is now. Now, what we got is hunted down. Stopped from bringing our booty into ports. I got captured for trying. Among other things."

How like him to hedge around the specifics. Even when she'd first known him, the only person he'd served was himself. In fact she was never clear whose side he was on, apart from his own.

"That's how I got wind of this little scheme of yours."