Chapter 19

Flint shifted, uncomfortable.

That was to be expected. But the thing with Fury Fontanelli was, you never knew. The Lord couldn't have been harder on Moses. She might as well have added Thou shalt not shag' to those stone tablets she'd hammered him with.

And what had he just gone and done? Screwed her.

It wasn't even like it was a good screw. In fact, lousy was the word for it. And he hadn't had a screw in months. Months and months. It was something else that had been denied him.

"Here." He stuck a cushion under her feet. "You should keep them raised."

He blamed the bed for the fact he'd screwed her instead of scarpering. It was the one welcoming thing in this whole damned place.

"My feet?"

"No. Your legs."

But it would have been just his luck to get caught flogging her candlesticks. Also these damned jewels of hers looked paste, even if they gleamed around her neck. He'd know for certain if he bit one. But so far, she hadn't let him near enough to sink his teeth into anything.

He'd thought this would be simple. He'd thought all right he'd protested a bit about the screwing. Maybe he wasn't eager. But she opened her legs, and a woman was still a woman. Once he'd gotten in the swing, he reckoned he could do worse.

So it was a great shock him to realize he couldn't. This was as bad as it got.

He should never have risen to her bait. The baggage meant every word she'd said about rotting.

What the hell was she going to do if he kissed her? Or, for that matter, yanked her skirt up and touched her in places he remembered touching? Made her give him her body the way he wanted?

When he'd done that before, she'd been his though, hadn't she? It wasn't about that. It was about his damned boat. If he got in tugs with her how would that work? He'd just have to suffer the various cuts to his pride.

"There now.See? That's the way you've got to lie."

She looked at him as if he were incapable of chivalry, although his generosity was motivated by purely altruistic intentions.

All these terms and conditions and the length of time it might take to make this baby. He wasn't hanging around that long, putting up with it. Putting up with her. He'd get this over with fast. If not today, then tomorrow, provided he hung about that long. He might still see what was worth plundering and scarper before then.

"James, I really must confess "

"Trust me. Do you really think I'm low enough to maneuver you into some fancy position? Where I can screw you better? Not for all the boats in the Caribbean, sweetheart. What would I need to do that for, when I'll be getting more of it later?" Lucky him.

"Well, I don't. I don't trust you. I don't trust you an inch. How can I?"

"Fine. Take the damned cushion away again then. Have it your own damned way. Get up and waltz about if that's what you want. You think I "

"No, leave the cushion. Provided you're not not trying to maneuver me into lying here while you rifle the villa and scarper, it can stay. It just seems you know a lot."

The blush that spread across her face Even that first time, when he'd informed her how he knew she wasn't Celie--and if anyone was bound to know she wasn't, it was him--she hadn't blushed like that. He was sure he'd remember. It was almost infectious, despite the fact she could read his mind like a book.

"I don't say I know it all, but I do know some stuff about this."

"You? James? That's impos "

"You got to lie down with your legs raised. Give the seed a chance to plant. It's what you want, isn't it?"

"It it is. Yes. But I I just don't know how you can know. I didn't think it ever bothered you whether your seeds got planted or not."

"I'm a man. Long as I didn't get the clap was as much as I worried about."

He trailed off at the indignation brimming in her eyes when he'd had her attention there too. All right, maybe that wasn't the thing to say right now. But it was true. So long as he didn't get the clap, what the hell did anything else matter?

The thing was he'd never quite understood what it was about Fury Fontanelli. In seven years he hadn't thought of her, at all. Except perhaps now and again he wouldn't say it was more than that that little moment when he dumped her on Fishside Wharf.

Oh, and just maybe occasionally, like once, twice a year he wouldn't say it was more than that either the first time he'd glimpsed her, standing at the rail of the Calypso. In Celie's frock. At least, he hadn't known it was Celie's frock. Only that Celie had one just like it he'd given her from some French frigate he'd plundered.

Because his attention had been riveted straight off by the knowledge that it clung a hell of a lot tighter to this woman's breasts and hips than it had to Celie's.

Then he had been riveted by the fact that his first mate, Black Hawk Dawkins, said she'd put it around half the crew that she was Celie. Celie, who was dead information he got from Fury eventually, after he'd threatened to make her walk the plank in Celie's pretty shoes, a mile out to sea.

Though quite how she died or how Fury had come by Celie's trunk, her clothes, her identity, he didn't ask. Such interest would have shown Celie meant something. The handful that Fury was though, he'd had suspicions.

He'd wanted revenge for Celie. Hell, how was he meant to spend a voyage with no woman in his bed, warming his nights and his days? And every other moment it needed warming? But even then even now he knew Fury threatened him on some bone-deep level.

It had disturbed him, when it had been meant to be revenge for Celie, that he should enjoy it so much. Not the revenge. Her. Fury Fontanelli. Of course he'd needed to keep her at arm's length. He always did, with specimens he didn't understand. And he'd made damn sure, though she warmed his bed, it was all she warmed. Women and boats didn't mix. Not permanently.

There was always a port with some harlot in it. One he could kiss goodbye to. Although harlots carried risks. Like clap.

"I don't have it, by the way. In case you're worried about this heir. Leastways, I reckon I'd know about it by now if I did have it."

Her green eyes glinted in the shaded light. "How refreshing to know. For a second there, I thought you were going to surprise me."

"Me, sweetheart? This cushion, isn't it a surprise?"

"If you stuck it over your face, perhaps."

"My face?"

What the hell had he gone and said that was wrong now? Until he'd come in here he hadn't realized it was possible for him to say anything that was.

Even as he opened his mouth to say, Your face is as good a resting place as any, he gravitated back to her troubled gaze. His tongue froze. His eyes too. He'd never been more conscious of staring at a woman right on the edge.

Maybe she hated him. But she needed him. And if he walked out now as he was planning on doing, that would leave her stranded. Unless she fell back on Malmesbury.

Maybe it was as well it was a lousy screw. A halfway decent screw with her could conflict him. It wasn't all down to what she had in that cellar that made him unwilling. Gut instinct was whispering. Don't.

She adjusted the pillow. "Don't you worry any about what you might give me."

"Well, I'm "

"Not? So?" She shifted in a rustle of silk. "How long am I meant to lie here? Hmm?"

Listening to his insults? He could be mean, couldn't he? Suppose too, he sat her here while he rifled the house. Except the way she looked that could be hard. Damn her.

"I don't know. Ma always said "

"Ma? What is this, old wives tales now? Next you'll be telling me that if you'd kept your boots on or I stood on my hands in the washbasin there, it would be a boy. Ma. Excuse me, I'm getting "

"She was a midwife, Fury before she was a whore." Her stillness made him wish he hadn't damn well admitted that.