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I’d know you were here, too?”
    “Perhaps the shackles and a Bridewell guard colored your choice.” Welles had told him how she’d come stumbling into the cabin, her face white with pain and her ankles torn and bleeding from the irons.
    Kit caught himself wondering if the wounds had healed yet, and what the curve of her ankles must be like.
    “Either one of us is lying, or else Sir Henry Ashe has played us both for fools.”
    “You lied readily enough under oath!”
    “I don’t lie, my girl, not under oath, and not for the likes of you.” Kit wanted to grab her by the shoulders, to shake some sense into her foolish, ov-erbred head, but he remembered too well how soft her body was and how it had addled his judgment before. He wouldn’t let it happen again, and he clasped his hands behind his back to be sure.
    “I told the court exactly what you told me, that you had killed your uncle.”
    “I struck my uncle in my own defense, not to kill him. And I am not your girl.” Dianna forgot her promise to Captain Welles.
    “I’m Lady Dianna—” But Kit cut her off.
    “You are Dianna Grey, spinster, no more. I understand Welles made that quite clear. Or do you prefer Dianna Grey, wanton?
    Dianna Grey, murderess? Dianna Grey, actress?
    There, I think that’s the one I like best.”
    Dianna winced. His words hurt her so effortlessly. Spinster, wanton, murderess, actress… Dianna thought of the Penhallows, of Mary and Eunice and the children. She would lose their friendship in an instant if they found out about Sir Henry and the trial.
    “Captain Welles promised that no one else would know.”
    Kit shrugged.
    “Why do you care? You’ve broken your part of the agreement by insisting on your title.”
    “But I haven’t, not with anyone else, anyway.”
    Her dream of a new beginning was crumbling before it had even begun, and all because of one selfish man.
    She could sense him watching her with those green eyes, cat’s eyes, waiting for her reaction. What does it matter to him, she wondered desperately. Why should he care?
    “I swear the other passengers know nothing of who I am, and I’d—I’d rather they didn’t.”
    She raised her chin a little higher, and for the first time Kit noticed the cleft that divided it neatly in two.” Her face was not conventionally pretty. Her aristocratic nose was a shade too long, her mouth too full to be the fashionable rosebud. But there was a sensuality to her features that attracted him more strongly than he wanted to admit. In spite of his intentions, his irritation with finding her on board was quickly changing to something a good deal more enjoyable.
    “No matter how far you run, my girl,” he said softly, “you won’t leave the past behind.”
    “Then what will you do with me?” she asked bitterly.
    “Pitch me over the side? Aren’t you afraid I’ll defile the whole ocean as well as your sainted ship?”
    He cocked one eyebrow in surprise at the bleakness of her tone.
    “Nay, there must be some better use for you than that, isn’t there?”
    He had meant it as teasing, a way to coax the bitterness from her. But Dianna heard only the bare words. Her uncle had said the same things to her, and she knew what they had meant, just as now, she understood why she had been brought to Christopher Sparhawk’s ship. The man wanted her—no, expected her to be his whore for the voyage. She felt her cheeks burn with shame, and automatically she glanced at the bunk behind him. Lord, a man of his size could kill her! Her mouth went dry, and she bit her lower lip to fight back the tears as she looked down, unable to meet his gaze.
    Kit in turn could not take his eyes from her. The way she’d blushed so prettily as she’d looked at the bunk, her little white teeth nibbling on her lip as she’d glanced up at him through her lashes–God’s blood, she’d have to have her invitation engraved to spell it out any clearer!
    “Dianna, lass,” he murmured, low and dark, as