How to Be a Proper Lady: A Falcon Club Novel Read Free

much choice, swarming aboard my vessel without invitation.”
    He shook his head in astonishment. “You were making to board us. What are you doing sneaking around like pirates in the rain?”
    “Looking for fools bent on glory,” she said with infuriating ease. “What kind of idiot attacks a pirate vessel?”
    The sort that had seen firsthand a man’s feet nailed to planking and other unique freebooter tortures. The sort that had once been as merciless, and now spent his days trying to atone for those sins. He would never again allow a pirate ship to sail free.
    “Anyway”—she shrugged—“it was such fun seeing the mighty Cavalier go down, I couldn’t resist.”
    Red washed across Jin’s vision. He tried to blink it away. His gut hurt. Damn and blast, he wanted a cutlass and pistol more than life at this moment. Or perhaps just a bottle of rum.
    She smirked.
    Two bottles. They said she was a fine sailor for a woman, but no one said she was mad.
    “What will you do with my crew?” His voice sounded uneven now. Damn and blast .
    A single brow arched high again. “What do you think I’ll do with them? Trade them for profit?”
    Jin’s spine stiffened. “You would not. You couldn’t sell more than half, if you did.” The half with brown skin.
    “Of course I won’t, you heathen.” Her tone did not alter from the satin.
    “What then?”
    A gust of breeze blew the misty rain sideways. The ship leaned and the woman widened her stance. She pursed her lips.
    “I’ll put you off tonight when we come into port. They’ll take you into the jail there and the constable will decide what to do with you.”
    “Constable?” Mattie grunted.
    “What, big fellow? Afraid of the law? Do you want to stay aboard?” She cast him a crooked grin. “I could use a brute like you around here. You’re welcome to remain if you wish, and leave Lord Pharaoh here to rot behind bars with the others.”
    Mattie’s cheeks went beet red. Jin’s fist ached to slam right into his helmsman’s meaty jaw. Mattie was a fool about women.
    But he took a measured breath instead. With that speech she had given away all he needed. She had given away proof of her origins.
    In his twenty-nine years Jin had sailed from Madagascar to Barbados. He had drunk with men from Canton to Mexico City, and he had heard nearly every language on earth. No single utterance had ever sounded so sweet to him as Violet la Vile’s West Country long A. The woman was Devonshire born and bred or Jin wasn’t a sailor. It did not matter that he had lost the Cavalier . He had found his quarry.
    His crew believed she was yet another bounty to be collected, a quarry assigned to him through his work for the government. She was not, rather his own private mission. With Viola Carlyle’s return to England, his debt to the man who had saved his life would be repaid at last.
    “Thank you, mum.” Mattie ducked a jerky bow against his bonds. “I’ll be staying with me mates.”
    “Suit yourself.” She eyed Jin. “I suppose you expect me to have you untied, pirate.”
    “I do. Quickly.”
    “Not a pirate no more, miss,” Mattie grunted. “Not for two years now.”
    Her eyes glinted. “It gives me pleasure to call him one.” She lifted a brow. “He doesn’t like it, obviously. He is as arrogant as they say.” She sauntered toward him, halting inches away. She tilted her head back, her hat brim hovering just above his nose as she scanned his face slowly with her squinting eyes. Unusual color. So dark blue they could be called violet. Thus her false name, no doubt.
    Up close her skin shone warm from sun even under the canopy of rainclouds, nothing like an English lady’s delicate pallor. Her mouth was fuller than he had first thought, lips chapped at the bow, a small, flat mole on one side riding the curve of her lower lip. Freckles dusted her pug nose.
    Not pug. Delicate. Almost ladylike.
    He gave her stare for stare.
    She wrinkled the almost ladylike