Chapter 7

"Now, gentlemen, sorry to bring you out your rooms like this, but Miss Fury here has something to tell you all. And if she can't, then I will."

The words weren't encouraging. In fact, they were as damned discouraging as Flint could make them.

Was it any wonder? Only consider the way she'd rather rot in everlasting hell than help him out, when he was damned desperate enough to have begged her on his bended knees. Him a man who hadn't even known it was possible his knees could do anything so elastic, twelve short months ago.

Hell. It wasn't as though he even wanted to sleep with her. The damn trouble she'd always been. Still was. Look at the favor he was doing her here.

But, for now he needed to swallow his first urge, which was to throttle her with his bare hands. When it came to cards, she never ever knew when she held the ace. Like now, for instance.

Now he'd gotten her potential lovers in this raving-lunatic scheme of hers exactly where he wanted them, he needed to keep the pressure on. The last thing he wanted was to wind up dangling from a yard arm in Jamaica.

He tilted his jaw. "Well, isn't that so, Miss Fury?"

"Well... "

He could tell by the way she lowered her eyelashes, she intended to bolt out the front door. Then he'd never get his boat back. He'd be dusting frock coats and spitting on shoe buckles for the rest of his life.

At least he'd be doing it till he could think of something else.

Nothing in his situation so far had presented an escape route. Seeing her, then seeing what she had in that box in the cellar, was his first sliver of hope in months. He was damned glad he hadn't resisted the urge to stay out of that trunk.

Gut instinct said she was bound to be up to her neck in trouble. She always was.

Gut instinct was right.

"So then, you want to come up here and do it, or are you happy where you are?" He kept his gaze locked on her.

"I'm fine here. Thank you, James."

Oh, that was good. James.

The manners were different from how he remembered them. In fact a lot was. His eyes roamed her curled, tinted coiffure. In the old days she'd worn her hair long and straight, with a thick fringe framing her heart-shaped face. And it had been darker then. Ebony. Whereas now? Did she tint it?

She was still the same bother though, despite her polished air, and the elegant indigo dress that set off her pale skin to perfection her slender figure too, for all that the gown flowed loosely to the floor.

The same? She was more. Already he'd had to raise his game higher than the yard arm to deal with her.

"All right, then Miss Fury "

"Milss Fury?" The man who thought himself the lucky one lucky? Easy seeing he'd no damned notion of what lay stone dead in that cellar fumbled in his coat pocket. "What is this Milss Fury? Hic. Who is this damned ingrate, if you please?" He pulled out a handkerchief and held it against his mouth.

Flint just hoped it wasn't because he noticed the smell of decomposition. But he'd been very careful to put the lid back on the box and close the cellar door behind him.

"Only my valet, sir," Malmesbury said.

"Your valet? Then he should know the correct form of address hic. I, for one, have never heard such a confounded, damn affront. It's Layldy Fury. You hear, you damned peasant? Let's hear it."

"Layldy Fury, then." There was little point losing this on a point of etiquette. Now was there?

"And a bow. Hic."

"A bow?" Before her? The way she utterly failed to accommodate his wishes and said she'd rather rot in everlasting hell than sleep with him? He bent his head, seeking to ignore the way her eyes brimmed with disbelief and she tightened her mouth as if he were being ungracious.

"Fine."

"Valet? He don't look like no damned valet to me. Hic," the lucky one sneered.

For God's sake, what was she thinking, considering buffoons like this?

"Malmsie, old boy, are you sure he hasn't just wandered in here off the streets and intends getting his feet under our table? Hic. Well?"

"My valet will be beaten for his impertinence. Let me assure you of that."

"Fine, fine." Flint jerked up his head. "You beat me all you like. Just so long as you save something in the stick for our Lady Fury there. The little secrets she's hiding."

"Secrets? I say. Hic. Secrets? Extraordinary. You, Fury?"

"Pay no attention to him." She met Flint's eyes with admirable coolness. "He's joking."

"I think we agreed that the joke could be on you, and hell's not a nice resting place, sweetheart."

With difficulty he fought the vague frisson in his blood.

He'd bedded her before, because that was what he did. And he'd do it now, because that was what he'd need to do. But the frisson He didn't need the distraction of frissons when he stood on this cold, unforgiving staircase, fighting for his existence. How could she live in a place like this either?

"Sweetheart? Hic. How confounded outrageous is that? What do you think this is hic a brothel? With yourself as keeper?"

Flint wondered if she intended to prevaricate. All right, he'd left her on that quay, but how could she have thought it was ever any more than a one-way ticket? Getting set, she was, to take over his cabin with all her damned folderols. The parasol. The fancy cream coat.

The parakeet in the gilded cage he'd heard screeching from the other end of the dock had been the last, the final straw. Never mind the pile of boxes five laborers had carried in her wake, like she was some Nile queen. He'd had to do something.

He didn't want a woman in his life. He especially didn't want her.

Unless memory lied though, she'd never refused him before. No matter what mood he was in. And he couldn't think of the reason for it now. Unless she was aware of her hand? He was outnumbered, after all. What did she hope for? Him to give the whole game away by behaving like Captain Flint? Holding a knife to Malmesbury's throat? Swinging from the chandelier? So she didn't need to play that hand.

"I wouldn't call it a house of pure repute. Not with what's been going on here." He held up a warning hand. "Your call, Miss Fury."

"You you mean the signora has made her mind up? Finally?" Vellagio piped up.

"She has indeed. And depending on who it is, two of you might just get a small guided tour of this house, with all its many attractions, from me."

"Attractions? You mean zere are more than Signora Furee?"

"Oh, there are plenty more. Isn't that so, Fury?"