How to Be a Proper Lady: A Falcon Club Novel by Katharine Ashe

stopped middeck, surveying the scene.
    “Damned pirates,” she muttered.
    Jin moved to a prone figure and knelt. Dried blood matted the man’s hair and stained his shirtfront burned with pistol fire, and blood caked the blade of the sword trapped in his waxy grip. He straightened. “Three days at most. No carrion birds as yet.”
    “Too far from land.” She crossed herself, her lips moving in a silent prayer, then said aloud, “No one is looking for them.”
    “Don’t be a fool.” Prickling heat stroked at his shoulders. “Someone is always looking.”
    “Why didn’t they scuttle her or take her for parts?”
    “Because they are hiding below until the ideal moment when they will spring forth and kill us all and seize your ship? Just a guess.”
    “Coward.”
    He simply stared at her.
    She grinned. Unremarkably, and despite circumstances, it went straight to his groin. She was, apparently, quite fearless. And quite beautiful when she smiled with impish challenge.
    “Boys,” her rich alto cajoled her men, “who wants to go below with me and see what these poor souls were cooking for dinner before the good Lord took them to fairer fields?”
    Jin moved toward the companionway, the others remaining motionless—wisely. She came behind him.
    “Not too skittish to take a peek now, hm, Seton?” She was right at his back, their footsteps echoing into the deck below.
    “Call me a coward again, Miss Carlyle, and I will shoot you myself and endure the earl’s chastisements.”
    She laughed, a full-throated, musical chortle. She was brazen, he must give her that. And entirely unafraid.
    Ducking their heads, they came onto the gun deck. The air in the narrow space was oppressively close, the gunwales shut tight, and no sign of the cannons having been fired. No bodies were anywhere in sight here, but a stack of empty cages gaped open at the base of the bowsprit.
    “They took the live animals but not all the cargo, and none of the rigging or canvas. Not even the water.”
    He nodded. “In a hurry. Moving on to another goal, perhaps.”
    “Then you don’t believe any longer that they’re waiting to jump out at us like ghouls? I am so sorry for your disappointment.”
    A grin tugged at his lips. “Perhaps I will have to kill you myself after all.”
    “You try it.” She swung around the rail and continued down into the hold. Jin found himself following again.
    “Not interested in checking the master’s cabin?”
    “Don’t need to. He was on deck.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “I knew him.”
    Forcing his gaze away from the fall of satin hair down her back, he scanned the broad space only half-filled with barrels and canvas sacks, some broken open and their contents scattered. No humans here, either. “Who was he?”
    “Jason Pettigrew. A friend of my father.” She set her fists on her hips. “Fionn captained a brig for him—not this one—right before the war. Jason always said—” She broke off and lines appeared between her eyes.
    “Were you aboard that ship?” he said to encourage her to continue.
    “Fionn nearly always took me along.”
    “From the beginning?”
    “Yes. Is this an interview, Seton? Should I sit and narrate my life for you here? Or perhaps you could simply read my diaries, although you would no doubt find them too tame for your tastes.”
    “I suspect they would be as fascinating as their author.”
    Her gaze snapped to him. But there was no scowl on her face, only a bright-eyed wariness. She pivoted and sprang up the steps.
    He climbed up behind her, tracing the curve of her hips with his gaze. “Shall I have the men transfer the cargo?”
    “Only the fresh water. We’ve sufficient supplies.”
    “And the bodies?”
    She cast him a quick glance, surprise in the violet. He held her gaze evenly. If she wished to believe him inhumane, at one time she would not have been far off the mark.
    “Tell the boys to cut the canvas and line from this ship to wrap them. We’ll