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

tried to conjure Aidan’s lips in her memory. She couldn’t. It’d been months since she last saw him, true, but she was in love with Aidan Castle. Ten years in love. She should surely remember his mouth.
    Seton’s perfect lips curved into a slow smile. His breath tickled her face, mingling with the rain. Her gaze crept up. He leaned slightly forward and murmured as intimately as though they were lovers sharing a bed, “I will do it again if you do not move away.”
    “I suspect you will.” Her insides shivered, the betrayal of a grown woman too long in command of a bunch of scabrous salties. But her father had always told her she was hot-blooded. “But then I would have to kill you, and neither of us want that, do we?”
    “Move away, or we will find out.”
    “Don’t tempt me. The dirk at my hip likes the taste of pirate blood.”
    “Not a pirate no more, miss,” the hulk mumbled.
    “It seems to me, madam”—Seton bent his head, tilting it so that those perfect lips hovered a mere sliver of damp air above hers—“that you are ignoring an important message here.”
    He smelled of salt, rain, and wind. And something else. Musky and male, but not filthy, sweaty male sailor. Rather, male man . A scent that ran right through her like a little flame.
    Viola willfully shut off her nostrils.
    “Perhaps I’m hard of hearing. Or perhaps I just sank your ship and you are my prisoner.”
    A brow lifted. “Kill me then, if you wish.”
    “I may.”
    “You will not.” He sounded certain.
    “How can you know that?”
    His voice dipped to a whisper, his gaze slipping to her mouth so close. “You have never killed a soul. You will not begin with me.”
    She didn’t respond. How could she? The blackguard was right.
    Slowly, he drew his head back. Viola allowed herself a sip of fresh air. His face remained perfectly passive. Her right foot slipped back several inches. Then her left. If he smiled, she would stick him with her dirk and damn him and her vow never to be the kind of sailor her father had been.
    As though he knew exactly what she was thinking, his eyes seemed to light again. A wicked glimmer.
    She narrowed hers. “You really don’t believe you’ll be behind bars tonight, do you?”
    He did not respond.
    “Master Jin’s not one for telling fibs, miss,” the hulk offered gruffly, “but I don’t think he wants to be insultin’ you in front of all your men like, you sees.”
    “What’s your name, sailor?”
    “Matthew, miss.”
    “Matthew, keep your lip buttoned or I will button it for you.”
    Seton’s perfect mouth slanted into a half smile. Viola’s breathing halted.
    She snapped her gaze away and shouted toward the helm. “Becoua, make our course for port.”
    “Yes’m, Cap’n!”
    “Mr. Crazy,” she called across deck to her lieutenant, “we’ll take everything off these sailors for prize before we give them over to the constable.”
    Her lieutenant scuttled up like a crab, all bones and white whiskers beneath leathery skin. “Everything, Cap’n?”
    Viola smiled, breathing deep again, and crossed her arms. “Everything.” She tilted her gaze back toward the Pharaoh. “And, Crazy, start with Mr. Seton.”
    She realized her mistake immediately. After a long cruise, her crewmen valued good clothing more than firearms and coin, and the sailors from the Cavalier were better clad than most. But she should have let Seton be. He’d been the master of his own ship for years, after all, her equal on the sea. It was common courtesy to treat other captains respectfully.
    More to the point, his perfection continued below the mouth.
    She could not look away. He held her gaze as a pair of deckhands loosened the ropes and stripped him first of coat, neck cloth, and waistcoat, then shirt and trousers. Through the disrobing, his stare challenged. But after a point, she gave up looking at his face.
    Sweet Saint Bridget, he was more god than man.
    From broad shoulders glimmering with rain, his