Louise Allen - Seduced by the Scoundrel

‘I can’t do this any more,’ she said the moment they were alone. ‘I cannot. I don’t understand how it makes me feel. I am not wanton, I am not a flirt. I don’t even like you! You are big and ugly and violent and—’

‘Ugly?’ Luke stopped sorting through the heap of linen in the corner and raised an eyebrow. Nothing else she had said appeared to have made the slightest impression on him.

‘Your nose is too big.’

‘It balances my jaw. I inherited it from my father.’ He tossed the tangle of clothing on to the table. ‘There is some soap on the shelf.’

‘Did you not hear a word I said just now?’ Averil demanded, standing in his path, hands on hips.

‘I heard,’ Luke said as he dragged her back into his arms and kissed her with such ruthless efficiency that she tottered backwards and sat down on the bed with a thump when he released her. ‘I just do not intend to take any notice of you losing your nerve.

‘You’ll get over it. Make sure the collars and cuffs are well scrubbed. You can dry them on the bushes on the far side of the rise. Just make certain you keep the hut between you and the line of sight from the sea.’

Averil stared at the unresponsive door as it closed behind him and wished she had listened and taken note when she had overheard the sailors swearing on board the Bengal Queen. It would be very satisfying to let rip with a stream of oaths, she was quite certain.

Castration, disembowelling and the application of hot tar to parts of a certain gentleman—if he deserved the name—would be even more satisfying. She visualised it for a moment. Then, seized with the need to do something physical, if throttling Luke was not an option, Averil shrugged out of the leather waistcoat, rolled up her sleeves and went to find the soap. It was just a pity there was no starch or she would make sure he couldn’t sit down for a week, his drawers would be so rigid.

She began to sort the clothing, muttering vengefully as she did so. None of it was very dirty—the captain was obviously fastidious about his linen. It also smelled of him, which was disconcerting. Was it normal to feel so flustered by a man that even his shirts made one think of the body that had worn them?

Averil searched for marks, rubbed them with the soap, then dropped those garments in the hot water. How long did they have to soak? She wished she had paid more attention to the women doing their washing in the rivers in India; they seemed to get everything spotless even when the water was muddy. And it was cold, of course.

She was scrubbing briskly at the wristbands of one shirt before she caught herself. What was she doing, offering comfort to the enemy like this? Let him launder his own linen—or do whatever he would have done if she hadn’t been conveniently washed up to do it for him. But then, she was clad in his shirt and he said he had no clean ones, so if she did not do it, goodness knew when she would get a change of linen herself.

Her fingers were as wrinkled as they had been when she had come out of the sea, and she had rubbed a sore spot on two knuckles, but the clothes were clean and rinsed at last. Wringing them dry was a task beyond her strength, she found, so she dumped the dirty water outside on the shingle, filled the buckets with the wet clothes and trudged up the slope towards the camp fire.

The buckets were heavy and she was panting by the time she could put them down. ‘Would someone who has clean hands help me to—?’ Luke was nowhere in sight and she was facing eight men, with Dawkins in the middle.

‘Aye, darlin’, I can help you,’ he drawled, getting to his feet.

‘Leave it out, Harry.’ Potts looked up from a half-skinned rabbit. ‘She’s the Cap’n’s woman and we can do without you getting the man riled up. He’s got a nasty temper when he’s not happy and then he’ll shoot you and then we’ll have more work to do with one man less. Besides …’ he winked at Averil who was measuring the distance to his cooking knives and trying not to panic ‘.the lady likes my cooking.’ He lifted one knife, the long blade sharpened to a lethal degree, and examined it with studious care.

‘Just joking, Potts.’ Dawkins sat down again, his brown eyes sliding round to the knife. The cook stuck it into the turf close to his hand and went back to pulling the skin off the rabbit as the whole group relaxed. Averil began to breathe again.

‘I’ll wring ‘em, ma’m.’ A big man with an eyepatch got to his feet and shambled over. ‘I’m Tom the Patch, ma’am, and me ‘ands are clean.’ He held up his great calloused paws for inspection like a child. ‘Where do you want ‘em?’

‘I’ll drape them over those bushes.’ Averil let out the breath she had been holding and pointed halfway up the slope.

‘Not there,’ Potts said. ‘They’ll see you.’

‘Who will?’

‘Anyone in a ship looking this way. Or on Tresco. Put ‘em there.’ He waved a bloody hand at the thinner bushes close to the fire. Potts, she was beginning to realise, had either more intelligence, or more sense of responsibility, than the other men. Perhaps he had been a petty officer of some kind once.

‘Why don’t you want anyone to know you are here?’ Averil asked as Tom twisted the shirts and the water poured out.

‘Hasn’t the Cap’n said?’ He dropped one shirt into the bucket and picked up another.

‘We haven’t had much time to talk,’ she said and then blushed as the whole group burst into guffaws of laughter.

‘Why not share the joke?’ Luke strolled out from behind one of the tumbledown stone walls. He had his coat hooked over one finger and hanging down his back, his shirt collar was open, his neckcloth was loose and he gave every indication of just coming back from a relaxing stroll around the island. Averil suspected that he had been behind the wall ever since she had approached the men, waiting to see what happened, testing their mood.

‘I said that we had not talked much.’ She hefted the bucket with the wrung linen and walked towards the bushes. Any gentleman would have taken the heavy pail from her, but Luke let her walk right past him.

‘No, we have not,’ he said to her back as she shook out each item with a snap and spread it on the prickly gorse. ‘I’ll tell you over dinner.’

‘Tell ‘er all about it, will you, Frenchy?’ Dawkins said and the whole group went quiet.

Frenchy? Averil spun round. He was French? And that made the men … what? Not just deserters—turncoats and traitors.

‘You call me Captain, Dawkins,’ Luke said and she saw he had the pistol in his hand, loose by his side. ‘Or the next time I will shoot your bloody ear off. Nothing to stop you rowing, you understand, just enough to make sure you spend what is left of your miserable life maimed. Comprends-tu?’

The man might not have understood the insult in the way he had just been addressed, but Averil did. And her French was good enough to recognise in those two words not the pure accent of someone carefully taught as she had been, but a touch of originality, a hint of a regional inflection. The man was French. But we are at war with France, she thought, stupid with shock.

‘Aye, Cap’n,’ Dawkins said, his face sullen. ‘Just me little joke.’

‘Go back to the hut, Miss Heydon,’ Luke said over his shoulder. ‘I will join you at dinner time.’

‘I do not want to go to the hut. I want an explanation. Now.’ It was madness to challenge him in front of the men; she realised it as soon as she spoke. If he would not take insubordination from Dawkins, he was most certainly not going to tolerate it from a woman.

‘You get what I choose to give you, when I choose,’ Luke said, his back still turned. ‘Go, now, unless you wish to be turned over my knee and taught to obey orders in front of the men.’