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said as she gathered up her skirts to climb the narrow steps, “though when I’m done, he might well wish I hadn’t.”
    Muttering crossly to herself, Dianna followed the boy aft to where the Prosperity’s few cabins were.
    Without thinking she ran her palms across her hair to smooth it before she caught herself in the gesture and pulled her hands away. What did she care how she looked before a man like Christopher Sparhawk?
    She tipped her head forward and with angry fingers tousled and raffled her hair and then tossed it back, Satisfied that now he wouldn’t think she’d primped for him.
    They stopped before a narrow louvered door. Isaac knocked twice, shoved the door open for Dianna and then abandoned her at the doorway. Tentatively she peeked inside. The cabin was much smaller than she expected, low and cramped, and when Christopher Sparhawk rose from the single chair, he seemed to fill it.
    Lord, how had she forgotten the man’s size, his height and the breadth of his shoulders? Yet it was more than that that made the tiny space seem smaller:
    there was an air about him of strength and confidence that would have filled a ballroom. Although he was dressed like a gentleman, his skin was burnished dark as a common laborer’s, and his hands were worn like workman’s hands, the long, tapered fingers scarred and callused. Instead of a wig, he wore his own hair, dark near his jaw, but streaked to pale gold near the crown. Around his eyes and mouth the sun had etched fine, pale lines that would, she suspected, crinkle with amusement when he laughed.
    But there was no laughter in his eyes now.
    “So it is you,” he said coldly, with no further greeting.
    “Come in, then, and close the door. I don’t want what’s said between us becoming gossip for the seamen’s supper.”
    Dianna drew herself up sharply, refusing to be intimidated by his rudeness.
    “Why do you wish to see me? So you can laugh or gloat at my change of fortune?
    Was that part of the bargain you struck with my uncle? You are a merchant, I’m told, so perhaps such transactions are common to you.” She couldn’t resist letting her gaze sweep past him, around the cabin.
    “A merchant, yes, but not a very successful one, if these axe the accommodations you can buy yourself.”
    For a long moment Kit stared at her in silence.
    She stood as straight and tall as such a diminutive creature could, her whole person radiating the same pride and defiance as she had during her trial. But she was much changed from the elegant lady in the defendant’s box. Her silk bombazine gown was crushed and salt-stained. Gone were the cuffs and collar of Alengn lace, and gone, too, were the dangling ear bobs of pearls and onyx, and the jeweled rings that had decorated half her fingers. The wind off the Channel had brought a rosy color to her cheeks, and her hair was wild and loose, tumbling down over her shoulders and breasts as though she’d just risen from her bed. It was easy now for Kit to recall her as she had been that first night, and the memory of how neatly she’d played him for a fool returned as well.
    “Oh, your tongue’s tart enough now, isn’t it, when there’s nothing to be gained by honeyed words,” he said softly.
    “The only transaction that’s brought you here is between you and your dear uncle.”
    “Why should I believe you? I know Sir Henry paid Captain Welles to take me on board. Why should you be any different?”
    “Because I am different.” He remembered how Welles had sputtered and squirmed when confronted about this one special passenger.
    “Likely more different than any man you’ve ever known.”
    His arrogance infuriated her, all the more since he was right: she hadn’t ever known a man like him.
    His features were hard and lean, his nose and cheekbones prominent, and there was none of the indolence about him that Dianna remembered from her father’s friends.
    “Do you think I would have willingly come aboard this ship if