Holding up his hand, he warded off further speculative admonishments. “I know my place and hers. Note that I am placing this matter in your hands. My mind will be eased by your assistance, allowing me to return my focus to affairs falling within my purview.”

A white-capped maid appeared in the open doorway, and Elspeth ordered a tea service. Then she returned to her former seat, straightening her skirts as she sat. “Your widely gazetted boxing match against Regmont suddenly takes on new meaning. I thought it wasn’t at all like the new man you’ve become to risk censure from the magistrates. I was actually hopeful it was a sign of the old Michael returning.”

“You are seeing motives that aren’t there. And it isn’t a match, which—as you pointed out—would be frowned upon by the magistrates. We’ve simply agreed to practice the sport together.”

She shot him a mother’s exasperated look. “You cannot tell me I don’t see how you fidget with the fob of your pocket watch, or tap your right foot against the floor. Those are long-standing habits of yours, which you have managed to suppress in the last year. Yet thinking of and talking about Lady Regmont reawakens those dormant tendencies. She has a profound effect on you.”

Michael scrubbed a hand over his face. “Why do women insist on ascribing deep meaning to random events?”

“Because we take note of life’s details, which men fail to do. That is why women are cleverer than men.” She bared her pristinely white teeth in an overly sweet smile.

He grew wary due to familiarity with that particular smile and the mischief it portended.

“I will see to Hester for you,” she said in a honeyed tone. “For a price.”

Right. He knew it. “What will it cost me?”

“You must allow me to introduce you to some suitable young ladies.”

“Bloody hell,” he snapped. “Can you not simply act out of the kindness of your heart?”

“Kindness for you. You are overworked, overtired, and underappreciated. Not surprisingly, you find yourself drawn to someone who is familiar and comfortable.”

Realizing that arguing against her points would only work against him, Michael kept his mouth shut and pushed to his feet. Tea was most definitely not going to be sufficient for him. Benedict’s cognac in the bookcase behind the desk was far more appealing. He approached the wall of books and bent to open one of the carved wooden cabinet doors lining the bottom row.

“Good that you aren’t speaking,” she went on, “because you should be listening. I married a Sinclair male and raised two more; I know precisely how you are built.”

He’d stopped pouring at the halfway point, but decided to continue to the rim. “We are built differently from other men?”

“Some men choose their mates with their reason, weighing the benefits and detriments in a purely analytical manner. Others—like your friend Alistair Caulfield—respond to physical attractions. But Sinclair men choose from here”—she tapped her chest above her heart—“and once the choice is made, they are hard to dissuade.”

Michael tossed back the contents of his glass in two gulps.

Elspeth made a chastising clucking noise with her tongue. “It was years before your grandmother truly accepted me. She thought I was too hardheaded and intractable for a woman, but your father would not be denied his choice.”

“I wonder why she thought that.”

“And Jessica … I love her as if she was my own child, but I had reservations about her in the beginning. She is the type of individual one can never truly know well, but Benedict would not be gainsaid.”

“And he was very content.”

“Was he? Why then was he still making such grand efforts, like the bequeathment, to reveal a deeper side of her? It is the nature of love to wish to possess the other person completely—body and soul. I think it likely that he would have eventually grown resentful of her inability to share herself. Regardless, their match is no longer a concern. You are the one who is attached to an inappropriate love interest. You are the one who requires a new object of affection. It is the best way to recover from unrequited love.”

“I have larger issues to address.”

“Perhaps you could have remained a bachelor previously, but no longer.”

Michael stared down at the tumbler in his hand, tilting it to and fro to catch the light from the large window to his left. Of all the duties he’d acquired along with the Tarley title, it was the need to wed and bed a suitable spouse that most pained him. He would be tying himself into a fraud he would have to perpetuate for the rest of his life. Just the thought of it was disheartening and exhausting.

“See to Lady Regmont,” he said grimly. “Give her whatever counsel or sympathetic ear she may need, for as long as she may need it. In return, I will make myself available to your matchmaking.”

Elspeth’s mouth curved. “Done.”

Chapter 12

Jess strolled along the deck with her arm linked with Beth’s. The ocean breeze was strong, filling the sails and hurtling the ship toward its destination. Still, the pace was not swift enough for the abigail.

“I grow weary of the ocean and this vessel,” Beth grumbled. “And we ’ave weeks yet to endure.”

“Oh, it’s not so odious as that.”

The brunette looked at her with a mischievous smile. “You ’ave a ’andsom distraction to ’asten the journey.”

Jess attempted to look innocent. “Not that I would ever admit to such.”

Through her interactions with Alistair, she’d come to a new understanding of the pervasive infatuation most young women experienced in adolescence. Jess had never experienced it herself until now. She thought about Alistair with alarming regularity, both awake and while dreaming.

“Remind me of your fellow in Jamaica,” Jess said, hoping for a respite from her fascination.

“Ah … my ’arry. A sweet and randy man. The best kind, I say.”

Jess laughed. “How naughty you are!”

“At times,” Beth agreed, unabashed.

“Sweet and randy, you say? No one told me to esteem such qualities.”

“You were told well enough to catch yerself the comeliest gentlemen I’ve ever seen,” the abigail shot back. “O’course the prettier they are, the ’arder it is for their women.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

“They are treated differently. More is expected of them, yet less is expected of them. They are excused from some things and ’eld to a ’igher standard for others.” Beth looked at her. “No disrespect intended, milady, but you should know.”

Jess nodded. She did know.

“So what you ’ave,” Beth explained, “are men who know greater freedom with fewer consequences. They are forgiven more often than not. And we women cannot seem to stop caring for them anyway, which ’urts. If I’ve a choice between men—one ’andsome and charming, one sweet and randy—I’d choose the sweet one. I know I’d be much ’appier.”

“You are a wise woman, Beth.”

Beth shrugged. “Lessons ’ard won. But I’m grateful for them all the same. Although, to tell the truth, I’d likely break that rule o’ mine for Mr. Caulfield. There’s ’andsome and then there’s men who make yer toes curl. Something to be said for that.”

“Yes, he does do that, does he not?” Which made it so deucedly hard to resist him and the consequences that would assuredly follow a liaison with him. She had yet to find suitable justification for such risk. A few hours of pleasure seemed too flimsy.

“You needn’t frown so, milady. Yer safe enough.”

Feeling far from safe, Jess looked at the abigail curiously. “In what way?”

“It’s too soon for you. Yer still grieving. When the ’eart is still ’ealing, we find someone who ’elps us forget it hurts. But one day we don’t want to forget any longer and we let ’em go. When that time comes for you, you’ll say farewell to Mr. Caulfield with gratitude and no regrets. It’s the way we women survive the passing of our men.”

“Truly?” Jess was taken with the notion of being immune to deep attachment to Alistair. The prospect was both astonishing … and a relief.

“Well … there’s no pain for the one ’ealing, because in the process, the ’eart forms a shell like a clam. Until it’s strong enough to love again.” Squeezing Jess’s arm, Beth said, “And I wouldn’t worry too much on Mr. Caulfield’s account, milady. There’s a particular way about ’im. In my experience, men who ’ave that way ’ave been building their own shell for a long time. They like it in there, and they ’ave no intention o’ coming out.”

A child ran across the aftcastle. The unexpected sight so startled Jess, she lost track of what she’d been about to say. The lad looked to be no more than ten and one, with a mop of blond curls and cheeks that were still chubby. He was racing toward the helmsman when a booted foot was thrust into his way. The boy tripped, crashing into the deck with a pained cry.

Horrified by the cruelty of the act, Jess was further infuriated when the responsible seaman yanked the boy upright and cuffed his ears, then proceeded to scold the child with words coarse enough to burn her ears. As the child cowered in the face of such vitriolic rage, his small chin lifted with white-faced courage.

In that moment, Jess remembered vividly what it felt like to be standing in his place. She was taken back to that place where fear and rising panic assailed her along with the dreadful waiting for the next blow. Because there was always a next blow. The sick fury that gripped men such as her father and this man fed on itself, escalating until only sheer physical exhaustion prevented them from inflicting further abuse.

Unable to turn a blind eye, Jess unlinked her arm from Beth’s and strode forward. “You, sir!”

The sailor was so involved in his tirade, he failed to hear her. She called out again, louder, attracting the notice of a crewmember next to him who shoved at his shoulder to gain his attention.

She drew to a halt in front of them. “Sir, I cannot abide such treatment of children. There are more effective ways to discipline.”

The man eyed her with cold, dark eyes. “This isn’t any business of yers.”

“Mind yer manners with ’er ladyship,” Beth scolded, which earned her a dark glower.

Jess knew that look well. His blood was hot with spite and the need to vent it. It was a sad fact that there were many men like her father, men who lacked the sense or willpower to purge what ailed them in noninjurious ways. They only knew how to spew their hatred on others and were so morally afflicted, they drew pleasure from doing so.

“You don’t know ’ow to run a ship, yer ladyship,” he said with a derisive curl to his mouth. “And until you do, you’d best leave the learnin’ of how to survive on one to me.”

Other men slowly closed in around them, exacerbating her growing anxiety.

“Teaching,” she corrected, struggling against nervous tension so fierce her shoulders and neck ached with it, “—if that is what you presume to call it, is equally applicable to all trades. You are going about it poorly in any case.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels, smiling through a reddish bushy beard in a chilling manner. “When a sailor is told to fetch something, ’e best not forget what it was ’e was sent to fetch or that ’e was sent to fetch it!”

“He is a c-child!” she argued. The cracking of her voice struck her like a whiplash. She took a step backward without volition.

Something within her broke at the realization that her prized and hard-won equanimity was so easily assailable. She’d convinced herself if she were ever faced with another abusive individual in her adulthood, she would be capable of controlling the interaction in a way she hadn’t as a child. She had believed she would be stronger and could say all the cutting words she’d imagined in her youth. Yet here she stood with her stomach knotted and spine rigid, her entire frame riddled with vibrating tension.

“The boy is a seaman first.” He reached out and caught the little one by the hair, yanking hard. The child stumbled into him with a low cry. “And ’e ’as to earn ’is keep and not get in the way.”

She swallowed past her fear. “From what I witnessed, it was your foot that was misplaced in his way.”

“Lady Tarley.”

At the sound of Alistair’s voice, Jess turned.

The loitering sailors parted for him as he drew near, and silence spread in his wake. The mere manner of his bearing commanded attention and respect. Her clenched fists relaxed, then tightened again when frustration rose anew. She should not need another individual to feel settled, but it seemed she did and that made her feel very weak and helpless. “Yes, Mr. Caulfield?”

His gaze was intent on her face. “Is my assistance desired?”

Jess debated her answer for a moment, then said, “Could we speak privately?”

“Of course.” He raked their audience with a sweeping glance. “Carry on.”

The sailors quickly dispersed.

Alistair pointed at the man who’d so angered Jess. “You.”

The man pulled off his worn cap. “Aye, Mr. Caulfield?”

The change that swept over Alistair was astonishing. The blue of his irises took on a marked chill, causing Jess to shiver. She remembered that cool detachment from their youth, the icy ruthlessness that had lured women and reckless gamblers alike.

“Consider your treatment of that young sailor carefully,” he warned in a biting tone. “I do not tolerate the maltreatment of children on my ship.”

A potent rush of admiration and pleasure flowed through Jess. Alistair must have seen enough during his approach to discern a problem, and his position on the subject meant a great deal to her.