Amarantha stood before the hotel parlor window, peering at the people rushing to and fro. Her fingertips drummed.

“I cannot remain another minute inside,” she said to her companion, Sarah Jennings, whom her parents had hired for the journey to Jamaica.

“You cannot go out into that melee, my lady.”

“Everybody is busy except us. There must be a hundred and one things I could do to help.”

“You will only be in the way.” The widow was plying the needle to a linen cap.

“In a fortnight I will be the wife of a man of the cloth, Mrs. Jennings. I cannot rest in idle comfort while everybody else labors.”

“Reverend Garland’s note indicated that he will call on us the moment he is able. Until then we must remain here.”

The hotel was damp and making Amarantha’s temper damp too. Outside, the tropical sun bathed everything in heat. Even yesterday morning, as she had found her way from the dry goods shop to the hotel entrance, the sun had already been baking the carnage: uprooted trees, parts of buildings, lifeless livestock, broken furniture, torn sails and tangled rigging, and pools of water everywhere. Now that landscape was a whirl of activity.

“I cannot wait here,” she said decisively, moving to the doorway. “I will go out now and find someone to lead me to the mission.”

“My lady, you must not—”

Grabbing her bonnet and a parasol, she threw open the door and stepped out into the sunlight.

Before the hotel was less a proper street than a morass of detritus from both sea and civilization. Everywhere people were at work picking through the remnants of buildings, heaping refuse into great mounds, and sweeping and scrubbing and hammering. As she headed in the direction of the mission, nobody even noticed her.

Not far away, where a small building had been only days earlier, amongst the rubble an elderly Englishman with a deeply tanned face and hands was tending to the wounds of a cluster of people, most of them brown-skinned, including some sailors she recognized from the Camelot. For several minutes she watched, shocked as the people crowded about him, some bleeding and others weeping, but all polite as they requested his aid. The doctor moved from one wound to the next without even looking up.

Moving to the edge of the crowd, Amarantha held the parasol high and said quietly, “May I pass through?”

They parted for her, swiftly returning hopeful eyes to the doctor.

“—then reapply the salve and rebind the wound,” the doctor was saying to a mother holding a wailing child in her arms.

“Doctor,” Amarantha said, “I am Amarantha Vale. I am staying at the hotel—”

“Dr. Hill will tend to you at his practice, miss. I’ve others to care for here.”

Amarantha stood for a confused moment, looking about at the people waiting for treatment. Then, abruptly, she understood. While she wore fashionable jonquil muslin, the people around her were all dressed simply and plainly. Dr. Hill must be treating persons of means.

“Oh, no, sir,” she said. “I am not injured. I have just arrived in town and have no home or family here yet.” It felt odd to say that. “May I be of use to you here?”

He peered at her more closely.

“Somewhere in the wreckage here, Miss Vale, is a medicine cabinet. You will need two able-bodied boys—those two. Find the cabinet and bring it here. Then I will need your assistance.”

They found the medicine cabinet beneath the ceiling that had fallen on it. While digging it out, she asked the boys about the doctor. In English she barely understood, one of them said that Mr. Meriwether had been a ship’s surgeon but now treated slaves and sailors living near the docks. When the medicine cabinet had been moved, she sent the boy to the hotel with a message for Mrs. Jennings. Then the surgeon bade her assist in arranging pallets on the ground for the most seriously wounded.

Mrs. Jennings appeared, hovering at the edge of the makeshift sick-house with a laced kerchief pressed to her nose.

“This is not suitable activity for a lady of your delicate years. Your parents will be shocked that I have allowed this.”

“My parents would not bat an eyelash at this.” Only a slight exaggeration. “And I am far from delicate. I spent my childhood racing from one adventure to the next.”

“My lady, this is hardly an adventure.”

“Mr. Meriwether needs help,” Amarantha said, shifting tactics. “It is the work of God.”

In Shropshire when she had discovered the angelic Reverend Paul Garland preaching in that church beyond the border of her father’s estate, he had warned his congregation that the life of a missionary was not for the faint of heart. The notion of sailing off to a foreign land had so thrilled Amarantha that she had fallen in love with his crusade on the spot. When, after a month of courtship, he told her that he must finally depart for the West Indies, and asked her to join him there as his bride, she had not hesitated to accept.

And yet, never in her wildest imaginings had she expected this. The injured that sat on the ground awaiting the surgeon’s care seemed to have nothing but the clothing they wore. As people searched among the patients for their loved ones, cries of joy with each reunion and wails of despair from others filled the sticky air that smelled of mud and brine.

“Will you help me?” she said to her companion.

“I most certainly will not. I will remain here and wait for you to remember yourself,” she said, and sat stony faced with disapproval on a pile of rubble.

Amarantha offered her the parasol then decided not to worry about her. She was far too busy.

It was a long, long day.

“Miss Vale, you have overtaxed yourself,” Mr. Meriwether said as the evening made shadows across the cluttered street. “You must go home now.”

“But there is so much still to do. So many people!”

“You are exhausted, and I cannot have my only nurse fall ill.”

“Do you not have a regular nurse? An actual nurse?”

“Eliza left for the interior yesterday to see to family. Now, do go and rest, child.”

Returning to the hotel on sore feet, with blistered hands, aching arms, and a gown stained in things she didn’t want to think about, Amarantha had only one ear for Mrs. Jennings’s complaints. For her companion had spoken rightly: this was no mere adventure. Her entire world had changed. In comparison to the suffering she had seen in a single day, her mother fretting over megrims seemed so foolish.

She entered the foyer with a full head and uncomfortable heart.

“My lady,” the footman said. “A gentleman called for you earlier.”

A spark of happiness pierced her befuddlement. “Reverend Garland?”

“It was an officer from the Fairway.” He proffered a calling card.

The crisp rectangle of ivory cardstock bore two sentences in clean, bold script: A backgammon set is purchased. I will hold you to your promise.

Nerves tumbled into her empty stomach.

In the small hours of the morning, in the blackness of the shop’s cellar as wind beat at the walls, they had not spoken of the storm. Instead they spoke of unimportant things: the impressive variety of bolts in a crate she had opened, the most effective methods for tying a secure knot, the challenge of choosing the perfect Yule log at Christmastime, the unfortunate occasion when at age ten she had opened a gate before taking note of the ram on the other side of it, the curious practice by which naval lieutenants wore a gold epaulette on only one shoulder rather than on both, her profound appreciation for all shades of red despite the color of her hair, the first instance in which he had accidentally walked into a door lintel, and whether winning at backgammon required true strategy or only good luck.

Concerning the last, she argued for luck, he for strategy. Laughingly she scorned his position on the matter, to which he replied if she were so confident, then she must be able to beat even an officer trained to naval tactics in a mere game of backgammon. She promised him that she could—easily—and that if there were any light she would on the spot.

But there had been no light, not until hours later when she had opened her eyes to discover silence all around, that they were alive, and that she had slept, her cheek pressed to his shoulder, her hand still tucked in his.

Standing now in the hotel foyer, filthy and unsteady, Amarantha flipped the calling card over and learned the name of the man with whom she had survived the most terrifying hours of her life: Lieutenant Gabriel Hume, Royal Navy.

She cast the card into the hearth. She was shortly to be wed to the Reverend Paul Garland. It was everything she wanted. There was no place in that scenario for the acquaintance of a naval officer. More importantly, there was no place in her soul for the agitated excitement that had filled her when his hand entwined with hers and the big, hard strength of him became an anchor to her during those endless hours.

Resolved to forget about that night entirely—and him—in the morning she set off with an objecting Mrs. Jennings for the hospital.

“You are a good girl, my lady,” Mr. Meriwether said. “But your young reverend will be unhappy with both of us if I allow you to help me here.”

Mrs. Jennings had obviously told the surgeon about her. With an odd, papery disappointment coating her enthusiasm, she engaged a guide and walked with her companion to the mission.

The storm had damaged the church and the modest house attached to it in which Paul lived, the house that was to be her castle after their wedding. Men were clearing the debris.

“There is nothing for a woman to do here, dear lady,” Paul said with grateful eyes. “Continue assisting Mr. Meriwether. In condescending to do God’s work among the poor there, already you are showing my parishioners an exemplary model of Christian femininity.”

Amarantha suspected that exemplary Christian femininity did not include spending the night with a sailor and never telling a soul of it.

Returning to the makeshift hospital, Amarantha found three more volunteers taking Mr. Meriwether’s orders, all of them from other churches, two brown-skinned. Their tasks were many: fresh water to be fetched and boiled, linens to be collected for the washerwomen, instruments to be cleaned, and bandages to be changed. When the others weren’t looking, Amarantha took the hand of a weeping patient and held it snugly, confidently, as a naval officer had held hers for hours, helping her find courage within the depths of her fear.

The following day the surgeon’s nurse, Eliza, arrived. A woman of about sixty, she had a dark brown complexion and spoke with the accent of the island. Yet, unlike so many others aboard ship and in town, Amarantha could entirely understand Eliza’s English. With a breath of profound relief, she went from patient to patient with her, taking instruction on how best to help.

“I am grateful for your patience with me, Eliza, despite my mistakes.”

“I was your age when I tended my first patient.”

“Did Mr. Meriwether teach you all of this?”

Eliza chuckled. “No. My mother taught me healing, and the patients themselves, and their families. Listen to them as you listen to me. In time you will learn too.”

That evening she returned to the hotel exhausted, wrote to Emily, and collapsed onto her bed. Her fingernails were torn, her hands raw, and her hair a halo of untamable frizz, and the hotel laundress had to apply bleach to her gown and linens.

Yet in the morning she awoke with renewed energy. She had never felt so useful.

The quays seemed particularly busy, and at the hospital she heard that ships laden with supplies from other islands had begun arriving and unloading tools, timber, and laborers. Among the arrivals was a naval vessel, Theia, which limped in with one of its masts broken, sails torn, and half its crew lost in the hurricane, including every officer except the surgeon and second lieutenant.

The night of the storm, wrapped in darkness, her companion in the cellar had told her of the Theia and its second lieutenant, who was his cousin. Hearing the news of the officer’s survival now, Amarantha felt a pang of regret that she would never have the opportunity to tell Lieutenant Hume how glad she was for him.

Each time she remembered his big hand around hers, his hard shoulder against which she had slept, his rumbling brogue, and the shadows in his beautifully dark brown eyes, an agitated little dance of nerves started up in her stomach.

Never seeing him again was for the best.

She heard him before she saw him.

“Good day, Mr. Meriwether,” he said not five yards away, and she jerked her head around.

Smartly dressed in naval blues and whites, and attended by another officer and a half a dozen sailors, he stood straight and tall, surveying the sea of pallets as the surgeon approached him.

“How may I help you, Captain?”

Captain?

“I present to you Theia’s surgeon, Mr. Boyle. He an’ these men are at your disposal till Theia sails.”

“At my disposal?”

“His Grace the governor has requested it. Put my men to work, sir.”

“This is a godsend! We are in need of a roof over these patients’ heads.”

“You’ll have your roof by fortnight’s end.”

“Thank you, Captain. And may I congratulate you on your new command?”

He nodded curtly then gave his men orders.

Forcing herself from paralysis, Amarantha finished wrapping linen about her patient’s hand. Her heartbeats were far too quick. She kept her head down and face averted, and when she heard Mr. Meriwether bid the captain goodbye, she said two silent prayers of gratitude: first for the sailors Captain Hume had lent to build the roof, and second for his leaving. He had not noticed her, and now he would not, for surely he would not return. His ship’s refurbishment would be his first priority.

Walking to the hotel later, Mrs. Jennings was all praise for the navy. But the following day, when new acquaintances called for a cozy gossip, the praise turned to shock.

“Captain Hume’s reputation is nothing short of scandalous,” one woman said in hushed tones.

“Scandalous?”

“Oh, yes.” The silk flowers on the gossip’s bonnet jiggled as she whispered, “He and Lieutenant Brock are known carousers and libertines.”

Mrs. Jennings gasped. “But with such a reputation, however did he win a command?”

“His skill and bravery are not to be doubted,” the gossip said with another knowing tick of her head. “But I suspect that his noble rank has done him no harm.”

“His noble rank?”

“He is the son of a duke. Second son only, of course, and Loch Irvine is a Scottish title. Nothing to compare to your charge’s lineage,” she added with a glance at Amarantha, and discovered both Amarantha’s and her daughter’s eyes on her.

“What is a libertine, Mama?” the gossip’s daughter said.

“Good heavens.” The woman’s cheeks colored. “It is not for a gently bred girl to know such things, or to eavesdrop on her elders’ conversation. Forgive me, my lady,” she said to Amarantha.

But after their callers departed, Amarantha asked her companion the same question.

“You must forget you ever heard the word,” Mrs. Jennings said firmly.

“If I am to be the wife of a man responsible for the eternal souls of other men, I must at least know what names to put to the earthly sins that bedevil them.”

Mrs. Jennings’s lips pinched.

“Consider this,” Amarantha said. “If you do not tell me what a libertine is, I shall be obliged to ask it of one of the other volunteers at the hospital.”

As though she sucked on a lemon, Mrs. Jennings told her.

“If Captain Hume returns to the sick-house,” her companion concluded, “you must remain as far from him as possible.”

This warning seemed wise to Amarantha. Given her ridiculously quick pulse when he was near, she had little doubt that a weak woman could easily be caught by the lures of such a man.

Two days later, as she carried a heavy pot of water, she discovered him blocking her path between pallets.

“Allow me.” Without awaiting her response, he took the pot. His hands brushed hers and the madness of nerves that Amarantha had been pushing away for days returned in a wild rush.

“Where to?” He had a deep voice, which seemed a bit hoarse now.

“There.” Her tongue could manage no more syllables. She went ahead of him, stomach tight and cheeks hot. As he set down the pot she knew this fever must be her punishment for seeking comfort from him that night—from mortal man. Only now did it occur to her that throughout that entire night she had not said a single prayer.

Not the ideal behavior for a woman betrothed to a man of the cloth.

The captain bowed. “Ma’am.”

She nodded. “Shark Bait.”

His smile was roguish, as appealing as the rest of him, and as confident as he had every right to be. It horrified her. She horrified herself. Only a sennight into her life as a missionary, and already she had sins to confess.

“How may I be o’ service to you, lass?” he said in the rumble that had soothed her terror through an endless night.

“I have no authority here.” She attempted an attitude of crisp dismissal. “You have spoken with Mr. Meriwether. You must already know which task most requires attention.”

“Aye,” he said, his gaze dipping to her lips. “An’ I mean to give it my most devoted care.”

It was too difficult meeting those dark eyes that seemed to see inside of her to where she was still trembling from the storm—and from waking lodged against his side. Instead, she took up a tray of surgical instruments and said, “You are too forward, sir.”

“I’m a sailor, lass. When I see a thing I want, ’tis only forward I can go.”

“I am not a thing. I am a woman.”

He was no longer smiling, rather studying her face, slowly: the curves of her lips, the angle of her cheek, consuming each lash across the inches. Finally he looked into her eyes.

A thousand spaces hollowed out beneath Amarantha’s ribs. She had never seen it before, never felt it, but some instinct in her recognized it in his eyes: animal desire—thick and hot and powerful.

She made herself speak.

“You are doing God’s work here, and I commend you on your devotion to seeing to the comforts of others.”

“Lass.” The brogue caressed. “We both know God’s got naught to do with the reason I’ve come here.”

It was alarming and shocking and pleasurable to feel his dark gaze on her. Too pleasurable. It could not continue.

“I am engaged to be married. To the Reverend Paul Garland.”

With the hint of a half smile, he said, “No’ for long.”

He strode with nonchalance from the hospital as the surgical instruments in her hands made soft, tinny music dancing upon the tray.

The following day he came again.

“There are no pots of water to carry at this time, Shark Bait.”

“Give me another task,” he said, smiling a bit.

Obviously he required a set down firmer than a statement of her disinterest.

“That man must be turned,” she said, nodding toward a patient.

“Turned?”

“To prevent bedsores,” she added, repeating as though she were an expert a lesson which Eliza had taught her only that morning.

Without comment, the naval commander went to the cot and, with careful strength, performed the task. From the distance, she heard him speak quietly to the patient, and the man’s responding chuckle.

She could hardly breathe.

Returning to her, and standing just a bit too close, the captain bent his head.

“I’ve sewn wounds an’ swabbed decks after battles since I was thirteen, lass.”

“Then what can I do to frighten you away?” she said, outrageously.

Now he smiled fully.

“Give it your best.” Upon that, he departed.

That night she folded her hands, clamped her eyes shut against the image of him, and prayed that he would not return the following day.

He did not.

The day after that he did. And regularly thereafter, performing every task she required of him, and not only in the hospital. Upon Mr. Meriwether’s request, he went to the nearby church to summon the vicar to a dying patient’s bedside. When Amarantha was obliged to do an errand he escorted her through the busy streets, and then carried whatever packages she gathered.

No one seemed to think this remarkable. The hurricane had turned the world upside down, and everyone worked to put it to rights. And, quite simply, people deferred to him. He was the youngest naval commanding officer anybody had ever heard of.

“How do you come to captain a naval ship at such a young age?” she asked as she finalized a purchase of timber the surgeon had made, with which the Theia’s crewmen would build cots for patients.

“’Tis a modest command, lass.”

“How modest?”

“Fifty-six guns.”

“Even I know that there is considerably more to captaining a naval ship than the ability to count its cannons, Shark Bait. Everyone says your promotion is impressive.”

“Everyone?” He studied her so singularly sometimes, as though he cared about the words she said as well as the thoughts she did not speak.

Except for her father, no men ever listened to her. Her suitors in England had seemed most interested in telling her about their carriages or the poetry they had written. When Paul asked for her thoughts on a matter, it seemed he liked to hear his thoughts supported, which she did; he knew much more about everything than she did, and as her husband, he said, it would be his duty and joy to shape her mind.

Aside from their disagreement about backgammon, the captain seemed disinterested in convincing her of his opinions on anything. But this probing into her head with his gaze made her feel always at the edge of a cliff.

“The other volunteers have said it,” she replied honestly. “Even Mr. Meriwether remarked on it.”

“War an’ mishap have thinned the Atlantic o’ good men. Lad,” he said to the lumber seller’s boy who waited beside the cart piled high with planks. “Assist her”—he gestured toward a woman burdened with packages nearby—“an’ you’ll have a coin.”

The boy scampered off and the captain in the Royal Navy, son of a duke, took up the cart handles and pushed the load toward the hospital.

“Thinned?” she said, walking at his side.

“Tragedy was the mistress o’ my command, lass.”

Amarantha doubted this simple explanation. He had a brusqueness of manner with merchants, planters, and seamen alike that distracted from his youth. There was no fluidity to him, no sophisticated charm that could be credited for his easy command over other men. He was tall, powerful, and physically formidable, despite the hollows of his cheeks and lean waist. His speech was often abrupt. Occasionally he was awkward, surprising others with unexpected questions, or departing a place suddenly. This only seemed to lend to his authority: it was clear that his manners arose not from a desire to please, rather from utter confidence.

Sometimes when he arrived at the hospital especially late in the morning, his eyes were red and his movements unusually deliberate. On these occasions the women gathered at the washbasin whispered of his scandalous habits.

On a morning Eliza was to take medicine to a sick patient at home, Mr. Meriwether unexpectedly required her assistance in surgery. Amarantha volunteered for the errand.

“It is a lengthy walk,” Eliza warned.

“I have barely been beyond town yet. I welcome the opportunity to explore.”

“You cannot go alone.”

“Captain Hume must escort her,” Mrs. Jennings said from where she sat folding clean linens, the only chore she would perform. “He is, after all, of noble blood, and a gentleman.”

He was not, however, a predictable gentleman. As they walked the narrow road, Amarantha’s boots got trapped. Drawing her feet from the sucking mud, she investigated the path. It promised even greater peril ahead.

“I must return with a horse and cart, if an idle horse and cart can be found.”

“Afraid to wet your feet?” he said.

“To ruin my only boots. The cobbler is sufficiently occupied supplying shoes to those who lost everything in the storm. But I have slippers at the hotel.” She inched toward the mud.

“I’ll carry you across.”

She laughed. “It seems you have something in common with my sister. She enjoys teasing me too.”

“I’m no’ teasing.”

Butterflies alighted under her ribs.

“You would carry me? As though I were a helpless invalid?”

“A princess.”

“Oh, then absolutely not.”

“Absolutely?”

“It would not be allowed!” she said with mock archness. “That is, I don’t know any princesses personally, but it is my understanding that they are obliged to live by any number of rules, and I’m certain one of those rules must be that they cannot be carried by a lowly sailor, not even to save their boots.”

“I see,” he said, smiling. “Only by Prince Charming, I assume.”

“Of course.” She laughed again and felt positively light enough to fly over the mud. He had a manner of looking at her with his entire attention, as though she were the only soul in the world. It made her unsteady.

Dragging her gaze away, she took a renewed step toward the mud, prepared to sink to her ankles and ruin the hem of her gown as well.

He came to her side.

“You’ll wear these.” He proffered his boots. His trousers were rolled above his ankles.

Amarantha knew it was wrong to stare but she did anyway. She had never seen a gentleman’s bare calves. The muscles were starkly defined. The sight of them did things to her insides: hot, wicked things that made her face flame and her throat grow dry.

“Oh—But—I cannot,” she burbled.

“Yet you will.”

The boots were enormous and she swam in them with each footstep, holding her skirts aloft from the mud.

“In some cities,” he said, strolling along comfortably despite his bare feet, “’tis all the rage for women to wear men’s oversize shoes an’ toddle about like children new to walking.”

“You might have seen much more of the world than I, Shark Bait, but I am not a complete fool. I recognize a taradiddle when I hear it.”

“Shame there’s no portraitist here to paint you in all your glory now.”

“You were obviously truant from your lessons the day they taught gentlemanly flattery.”

He laughed easily and she felt it all the way to her toes inside his shoes.

On the way home she paused before the last turn in the road and told him that she must redon her own shoes.

“People will not understand if they see me now,” she added.

“I gave your shoes to the woman to clean an’ polish,” he said.

“But she is already fully occupied nursing her husband! You should not have done that, not for—for . . .”

He offered her the smile she never saw him show others, a private, contented smile.

“Not for me,” she said firmly, willing him to understand.

“Lass, she’ll have payment for it.”

Amarantha had no response. The house had been entirely bare: no jar of grain, no salt fish, not even a manioc root in the bin. Since the devastation of the storm, famine had come to the poorest on the island who could not afford the expensive foodstuffs brought on ships, and beggars were everywhere. In offering the woman compensation for this small task, he offered her dignity.

Amarantha felt the most urgent need to take up his hand and kiss it.

She did not.

She removed the boots and walked in only her stockings, feeling his gaze on her the remainder of the way and loving it. She had a horrible suspicion that she was falling in love with him, which was not possible. She had found her angel in a tiny church in Shropshire. This big, rough man with shadowy eyes and a bad reputation could mean nothing to her.

He was not the marrying sort. The women at the hospital said it in moments of idle chatter, and Mrs. Jennings’s new acquaintances confirmed it. An established bachelor, Gabriel Hume had mistresses in every port. He liked women, drink, and game, and was never seen in a church, reformed or Anglican.

Amarantha suggested that perhaps he was Presbyterian, as most Scots were.

“My lady,” the gossip said, “by all accounts, he is not even Christian.”

“My maid heard that he attended a heathen service at the Abbott plantation,” another woman said in a hush.

“No!” another gasped.

“But I thought the slaves on the Abbott plantation were Baptists,” a third woman exclaimed.

“One in the same, of course,” the gossip said with a dismissive flip of her hand.

Amarantha was skeptical. She knew the hospital volunteers from the Baptist church to be good, decent Christian women. As for Captain Hume, he was unusual, but surely the admiralty would not promote a heathen to the rank of captain. So she asked him about it.

In reply he smiled the gentle smile she was coming to believe was more natural to him than the roguish grin.

“Seems to me, lass, there should be more to religion than church walls,” he said only. “An’ more to faith than rules.”

She did not know what to make of him. He seemed as indifferent to the scandalized whispers of the gossips as he was to the deference of those who admired him—a friend to all yet an intimate of none. In his company she felt light and fevered at once, excited and unsettlingly right. Despite his initial vow to undo her betrothal, he asked nothing of her and seemed content with friendship.

But occasionally, when she saw him watching her, she knew she was lying to herself to justify the time they spent together. At those moments she saw in his eyes the same desire that she had seen there the first day.

She was playing with fire—not the contained flames in a hearth, but the unbridled bonfires she had loved at harvest festivals back home—dangerous yet so beautiful that she wanted to stand as close as she could.

As her nurse had warned her on those festival nights, girls who played with fire got burned.