Charlie was sitting at a table at the rear of the Blue Thistle, both hands around a pint he was not drinking, when the man who had made his life a living hell for nearly two years strode through the door.

Having learned a thing or two from the pirate captain during that time, he did not spring up and look about to ensure Rory’s safety. Instead he remained seated but removed one of his hands from the glass, making ready to grab his dagger.

“Where’s the boy?” Pate grumbled. He was a bear of a man, shorter than Charlie by inches but stout as a barrel. Charlie had discovered early in their acquaintance that the barrel was entirely comprised of muscle. Robert Pate had not reached nearly six decades by being soft in any manner.

“The boy?” Charlie said, lifting the pint to his mouth. He’d no desire to drink, only to appear unconcerned.

“The boy who’s been running about town at your bidding.”

“I’ve no idea.” Which was true. After meeting the boys here two nights ago, knowing Pate would return soon he had told them to disappear for a bit.

Pate lowered his heft onto a chair.

“I’ll have that money now, Scholar,” he said calmly, as though a fortnight earlier he had not said that unless Charlie gave over three hundred pounds or stole the dog he would string him up from a yardarm and watch him swing.

“I delivered the dog to you, yet you set the police on me,” Charlie said just as evenly. “That was not part of our bargain, Pate.”

“Neither was snatching the dog from Smythe-Eggers.”

The barkeep set a bottle and a glass on the table. Charlie watched the pirate pour a dram and throw it back.

“Why does Smythe-Eggers want the dog? He looks well-heeled enough to purchase his own.”

Pate shook his head slowly.

“You’ve much yet to learn, lad. I’ve told you a hundred times, a man’s desires are two: power and pleasure.”

“The old woman’s poor as a church mouse. What could Smythe-Eggers want from her?”

“The pile of gold she’s sitting on.”

“There is buried treasure on her property?”

“Of a sort.”

“How would stealing the dog—” But Charlie already knew. In the days since he had taken Douglass from Mrs. Wallis’s house, her health had declined swiftly. Two nights earlier, looking down on her sleeping, he had seen her wan cheeks and the bones protruding from her hands, and knew that the animal was her only joy. As he had deposited the dog on the floor and it leaped up onto the bed to snuggle beside her, he had resigned himself to this moment—now, here, his life again in Pate’s hands.

“Why’d you do it, lad?” Shaking his head, Pate seemed suddenly weary. “Why’d you go and nab that dog again? That pink-faced runt Smythe-Eggers is spitting mad. Now I’ve to pay him the money I owe him, and you know I don’t like sharing me gold with namby-pambies.”

“It is of no interest to me, Pate, what you like or dislike. I did what you wished: I stole the dog and delivered it to you. I am no longer required to listen to your rules or preferences or dislikes.” He set a coin on the table for the drink and stood up.

Pate released a histrionic sigh.

“Guess I’ll have to ask the girl where the dog’s gone,” he mumbled as though to himself.

Charlie rounded on him.

Pate rose, standing to his full height and Charlie forced his breaths to come slowly. He wasn’t the cowardly shopkeeper that Pate had dragged onto his ship, tortured into submission, then trained to villainy. With the threat to her in his ears, now he felt invincible.

“You go near her, Pate, and I will kill you. I will turn every skill you taught me, and the skills I acquired on my own, to that purpose alone.”

Pate’s salty whiskers creased into a wide grin. “There’s my boy. I said I’d make a man out of you, and look here, I have.” He moved toward the door. “Tomorrow, Scholar, you bring me that dog or the money, or I find that pretty bit of muslin and I turn her world upside down.”

“God damn you, P—”

“I won’t touch her.” The pirate looked around at him. “Ever seen me harm a hair on the head of a female?”

Charlie hadn’t. But it was small comfort.

“No,” Pate said. “But I’ll ruin her nonetheless. Don’t doubt me. I’m a man of my word, Scholar. You know that too.”

How it was possible to be at once heartbroken and euphoric, Esme could not fathom. But she was.

Monsieur Cadence, with typical Gallic sensitivity, seemed to know. On the penultimate day of the meeting, after several sessions that filled her head with new ideas while her heart was trying its best to continue beating regularly, he invited her to take an aperitif before returning to the boardinghouse.

“I have heard the rumor, mademoiselle, that gives me at once great happiness and great sorrow,” he said, sipping his wine and watching the passersby. The evening was mild, and people of all sorts were strolling along the footpath.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I wish it were only happiness.”

“Yet I must be glad for this sorrow. For I have heard a little bird say that our friend Pierre will invite you to Paris.”

“Monsieur Poe intends to invite me?”

Monsieur Cadence raised his glass. “To Mademoiselle Astell, the finest young perfumer in all the lands.”

Bidding him goodnight, she walked the length of Old Town back to the boardinghouse. Not allowing her gaze to stray to the Hart and Rose and bypassing the alley in which he had taught her to climb up the side of a building, she went inside and requested her key.

“I’ve let the room, lass,” the boardinghouse proprietress said with customary irritability.

Esme blinked. “You’ve let my room?”

“Aye. Now dinna be crowdin’ up my foyer. Off with you.”

“Mrs. McDade, how could you have let my room?” Panic stole beneath her skin. “I paid the full ten days in advance.” And now had only enough to pay for the coach fare back to London. “I have two more nights in that room.”

“’Tis let, missy, an’ I’ll no’ hear another word.”

“But—”

“They left this for you.” Mrs. McDade tossed a letter on the desk.

“They?”

“The niffy-naffs that carried away your luggage.”

“My luggage?” She took up the letter. On thick creamy paper—the sort Charlie had always kept in a box on his desk at Brittle and Sons—the letter bore her name in scrolling calligraphy.

Inside was only a calling card for the manager of a hotel in New Town, the gloriously elegant establishment she had shown Charlie days earlier.

“The men who took my luggage left this?” she said to Mrs. McDade.

“Aye. Now be off with you, lass. I’ve a business to run here.”

In bemusement, Esme again walked across town, the sun setting beautifully over the hills to the west and casting dramatic shadows everywhere. The scents of cooking came on the evening breeze and the sounds of laughter and chatter wafted from the doorways of pubs.

Inside the rose and ivory splendor of the hotel’s main foyer, an elegantly dressed man approached.

“Miss Astell, I presume?” he said.

“Why—yes. How do you know my name?”

“I was given a precise description o’ you. I am the manager here. I will show you to your room.”

“Oh. But I have only come for my luggage, which it seems was mistakenly delivered here.”

“It was not mistakenly delivered, Miss Astell,” he said. “You are to stay with us for the next two days.”

“I am? But I’ve no—that is to say, I cannot afford a room in your hotel. I cannot afford a cup of tea in your hotel.” She laughed.

“Your room and meals have already been paid for. Now, if you will, I shall show you to your room.”

She followed him, wondering if Monsieur Poe had arranged this. Perhaps awaiting her in the room would be an invitation to join him in Paris.

There was no invitation, only a large bedchamber of sumptuous comfort. A thick rug was soft beneath her tired feet, the walls were wainscoted and white, the mantel over the fireplace was ivory marble, and the bedclothes were creamy white and embroidered with rosebuds. A vase of white and pink roses filled the space with sweet scent. Her small traveling trunk was set on a stand. And on a table, laid out in creamy china, was a feast of apples, cheese, roasted pheasant, custards, biscuits, and wine fit for a king.

“This is beautiful!” She turned to the manager. “Are you certain it is for me?”

“Quite certain, miss.”

“Did Monsieur Poe arrange it? Or Monsieur Cadence, perhaps?”

“The gentleman did not offer his name. But he was most certainly English, and his manners were impeccable. Now I will leave you to your dinner. If you should require anything, simply ring the bell.”

Alone, sitting on the edge of the bed, she clasped her hands together to still their trembling.

Charlie had done this—Charlie, who had kissed and touched her within an inch of making love to her, then simply disappeared. Again.

Yet . . . this.

Falling back on the mattress and into decadent feather down, she laughed and wept a little and then laughed again. It was no wonder that she had loved him for years.

Drying her cheeks, she washed her hands and face in the basin of water kept warm on a washstand beside the fireplace, then poured wine into a crystal goblet and took it to the window. From this height, she could see all the way over to the castle in Old Town. Dipping her gaze to the street below, she almost dropped the glass.

He stood across the street, leaning against the wall and looking directly up at her.

Her pirate.

Snatching up her cloak, she dashed out of the room, down the stairs, and out the door.

As she neared him, he smiled.

“How is it?” he said.

“Gorgeous.” She wanted to throw her arms around him and kiss his smiling lips. “Why did you do it?”

“To thank you.”

“But you said days ago that you haven’t any money.”

“I found some.”

She lifted a brow. “Stole some?”

“Not this time.”

“You did not give your name to the manager. If you meant to be mysterious, why are you here now?”

“I came to say goodbye.”

A mote of hope—hope that he had not said goodbye the other night because he had not yet left Edinburgh and still meant to see her—had remained in Esme, until this moment.

“I imagined you already en route to Boston,” she said.

“Not yet. Would you care for a stroll, Miss Astell?” He offered his arm.

Obviously he did not understand that she had spent the past forty-eight hours trying to rid her mind, heart, and body of the memories of touching him.

“Thank you, sir.” She tucked her fingers around his elbow and he tightened his arm to his side.

They strolled and she spoke of her admiration of the buildings, the elegant square that seemed still to be under construction, the magnificent carriages, a gentleman’s ivory-tipped walking cane, a lady’s lacy parasol, and anything else that would allow her to continue speaking so that they could avoid the goodbye she dreaded. The early-spring evening was all around them in budding leaves and rain-dampened cobbles, but she barely smelled it. She did not remove her hand from his arm and he held her firmly there. It was intoxicating and maddening to be at once so close and yet not closer.

By the time they again stood in the great hall of the hotel, she was gripping his sleeve so tightly that her fingertips ached.

“May I escort you to your door?” he said rather formally.

“Thank you, sir.”

As they ascended the stairs, her mouth continued its attempt at denial of what would come momentarily with a continuous catalogue of the hotel’s accoutrements. In murmurs he agreed with her praise of the elegant risers, the paintings adorning the walls, and the chandelier that illumined all. But when she glanced aside, he was not looking at them; he seemed to be studying the tips of his boots with great sobriety.

Arriving before the door to her room, he lifted her hand to his lips.

“Miss Astell, this must be goodb—”

“There is an impressive dinner laid out inside. Would you care to share it with me? You paid for it, after all.”

His grip tightened about her hand.

Finally she lifted her gaze to his eyes that she had not met in an hour. What she saw there tore the breath from her lungs.

“That would be a bad idea,” he said, his voice very low and marvelously rough.

“The best bad idea ever.”

His chest rose and fell upon a hard breath.

Upon her own stumbling heartbeat, she found herself nodding. And then, as though longing were a quality one could taste in the air, it passed between them, and pure, honest desire.

Seizing her about the waist, he swung her into her room, kicked the door shut, and dragged her into his arms. Their mouths met, her fingers sank into his hair, and his hands flattened her body to his.

“I am leaving,” he said and kissed her again.

“I know.” She pressed herself more tightly to him and could not kiss him fast enough, close enough.

“Leaving Scotland.” His hands moved over her back, up and then down, his palms exploring her hips and making her weak with need. “Britain.”

“I know.”

“I cannot do this,” he said, seizing her face between his hands as though he would force her away, and instead kissing her once, twice, again, each time more closely.

“You can,” she said. “We can.”

His hands descended again, now to her waist, pulling her yet tighter against him, and she felt every glorious part of his body against hers.

“Esme, I—”

She pressed two fingertips to his lips. Sliding them down his chin and throat, she felt the jerk of his Adam’s apple.

“Don’t speak. Don’t say anything.” She lifted her gaze to his. The beautiful gray-green of his eyes was unfocused, fevered.

“Please,” she whispered.

There was no asking again. No begging. No making plain to him in further words what was perfectly plain in her hands that clutched his shoulders as he released the fasteners of her gown, and equally obvious in her lips as she explored the rough texture of his jaw. Then he was sweeping away her gown and she was before him in her petticoat and his hands were curving up her waist and around the sides of her breasts.

“Beautiful,” he said so deeply she barely heard it above the pounding of her heart. “Perfectly beautiful,” he said and as his hands covered her breasts he bent his head and took her neck with his mouth.

Nothing she had felt before, not even with him in the carriage, had prepared her for the shower of pleasure across her skin, delving beneath the surface and fanning everywhere. Through the linen his fingers found the edge of her shift, and then beneath it her nipples, taut and aching to be touched. He touched them, generously, his lips on the sensitive skin of her neck making each pass of his fingertips a current of beauty running between them, until it was almost unbearable.

Then she opened his mouth on her and she could not remain still. With shaking fingers she tore at the buttons of his waistcoat, then pushed it over his shoulders, coat and all. His hands returned to her petticoat, unlacing now, and her stays; to the floor they went too. Grabbing his waist, she tugged his shirt and pulled it up. He took the tails in his hands and its removal over his head was a thing of beauty, each muscle in his chest and waist rippling beneath taut golden skin, sending heat pulsing between her thighs. Her gaze swept up a flat abdomen to the contours above. And abruptly halted in shock.

“Char—”

He pulled her to him and his mouth covered hers. She allowed it, held his face in her hands and felt him through only the thin linen of her shift.

Then she broke away, grabbed his wrists, and stared.

“What—what is—” She could not continue. Spiraling from his forearms to his shoulders were images of ropes so perfectly rendered in black ink that they seemed to sit upon the surface of his skin. She ran her fingertips over the stains, across the thick veins in his forearms and up the swirling twine that mounted the rounded muscle of his upper arms and curled over his shoulders.

“What are they?” she whispered, feeling only the taut heat of his skin beneath her hands.

“My bonds,” he said. “The permanent proof that I am no longer a gentleman.”

“Who did this to you?”

“A man who did not care for my ability to talk circles around him. Does it repel you?”

Wrenching her attention from the ropes, she looked into eyes that were again like stone. Curving her palms around his shoulders, she moved close, lifted her face, and whispered, “I am not a maiden.”

He blinked.

“Does it repel you?” she said.

He kissed her. Then he kissed her again. Then again. Shortly the thin layer of linen that separated her from him was gone, and soon after their shoes and stockings as well. Skin against skin, they reveled in the flavor of kisses.

He lifted her up in his powerful ink-stained arms and carried her to the bed. Laying her on her back upon the covers of soft white cotton, he lowered himself above her.

“I have never been carried anywhere before,” she whispered as his gaze moved from each of her features to the next, then down her neck to her breasts.

“How did you enjoy it?” he murmured, bending his head to feather kisses over the base of her throat, then the curve of her breast.

“Quite a lot,” she said on a quivering sigh.

Then he took her nipple into his mouth and she was unable to say anything more, only to make sounds of flagrant rapture. It was divine pleasure and certainly immodest, and she did not care. His hand circled her other breast, his fingers played with the excruciatingly tight peak, and quite suddenly she wanted nothing but this for the remainder of her days, for as many days as that lasted.

Yet when his hand began a southward exploration over her belly, it turned out she wanted that too. And when his fingers slid between her thighs and found the pulse of her need, and began the maddening massage that made her arch her back and make whimpering sounds, she decided she wanted that quite fervently too.

“I could give pleasure to you,” he murmured, “to this body,” he said and grazed his teeth across her nipple, “forever.”

Wanting to shout, “Yes! Do! Please!” she could only moan. A wave of tight, hard ecstasy was swallowing her, slowly, inexorably, pulling her under. It broke in thick, hot convulsions that swept up and outward. She did shout, wordlessly, gasping for breaths then crying aloud again.

His mouth left her breast and she was abruptly aware—breathlessly—of the heat of his skin between her thighs, of hard muscle urging her legs apart, then an entirely new and staggering touch.

As though he had all the time in the world and she had not just become an undulating voluptuary beneath him, he brushed the pad of his thumb across her nipple as he shifted between her thighs and sent her deep into pleasure anew, and then into further stammering convulsions.

When her high-pitched moans had quieted, his lips came to hers.

“Yes?” he asked and his voice sounded wonderfully fierce.

“Yes. Have me now.”

“Have you?”

“Take me.”

“Take you?” Now he was smiling. “To where?”

“To heaven.” Laughter tumbled from her. “Charles Westley Brittle, for pity’s sa—Oh, yes.”

Their groans mingled as he fit their bodies together. It was hot and wet and thoroughly perfect, and actually heaven. No one teased now.

“Esme.” He moved in her. “Esme.” Stroking slowly, he uttered her name again, low and ragged in his chest where she felt it vibrate. Taut and thick and stretching her delectably he thrust again, then again, then again harder. “Esme.” Then he was repeating her name, taking her, truly taking her, making her need him deeper, and deeper, and faster. Grasping her knee he pulled it up to hug his side, the ropes on his arms twisting, blurring as he thrust and the pleasure crested again.

She heard him call her name, heard her own cries, and then she was shaking—shaking so hard that he was gathering her in his arms as though he would prevent her from shaking to pieces, and murmuring her name into her hair again and again.

“Sweet Esme,” he whispered hoarsely. “Sweet, sweet, beautiful Esme.” His lips strafed her brow, then the bridge of her nose, then her temple and cheek and finally her mouth. “Are you—”

“Perfect” shot from her lips upon very little air. “Perfect. Oh, so perfect. That was—it was perfect.” She opened her eyes. “Shall we do it again? Let’s.”

Creases formed on either side of his mouth. He closed the space between their lips and she locked her arms about his neck as he demonstrated once again how superbly well their mouths fit together too.

But, however absolutely delightful it was to run her fingers through the short hair at the nape of his neck, she was unsatisfied with that exploration alone. Smoothing her palms downward, she let them experience the gloriously firm expanse of his shoulders and then—

Her breaths caught between a sigh of pleasure at the sensation of smooth skin over taut muscle, and a gasp of horror at the sensation of something quite different.

Her hands stilled.

He lifted his head.

“Aha,” he said as though he were only discovering the scars beneath her fingers now too.

“Charlie—”

“The catalogue of my imperfections is as dull as it is lengthy,” he said, brushing his wonderful lips across hers again and then gently drawing away. “I would much rather quiz you on the—shall we say?—discarding of your maidenhood.”

Settling on his side along the length of her, elbow propped beneath him, he was looking at her, really studying her, his gaze traveling over her face and then her breasts and then trailing down her belly. Everywhere his gaze touched her skin felt aflame, hovering somewhere between lust for the raw virility stretched out for her viewing enjoyment and very silly embarrassment. She had not, after all, ever been entirely naked with another person. Now, however, she found that she liked being naked with him. Quite a lot.

“So?” he said.

“It is not a particularly interesting story.”

He smiled slightly. “Dull and lengthy too?”

“Painful and brief, rather,” she said.

Anger sparked in his eyes. “Painful?”

“Oh, no,” she said swiftly. “Not—that is—I was willing. Entirely. But it was, well, a mistake.”

Now his brow knit. “A mistake?”

She nodded.

“Esme, men don’t make mistakes. Not of that sort.”

“Perhaps mistake is not the correct word,” she admitted. “Rather, an experiment. The boy was part of a traveling theater troupe. He was young. I was too. We were each curious and the opportunity—well, it occurred.”

“I see,” he said.

“You are pensive.” She shifted away. “I know of course that girls should not have those sorts of desires, or women either. But my mother said it was her curse and that she passed it on to me as well.”

“Curse?”

“The curse of inordinate female lustfulness, she called it. That is what a priest once said to her in the confessional. But I told her it is simply that the women in our family have particularly acute senses.”

He met her gaze.

“Now you are repelled,” she said.

“In fact I am wishing I had been that boy.”

Her lashes did several quick flutters. “You are?”

Charlie leaned down and touched his lips to hers, which were still blowsy from his kisses.

“I would have quit the theater troupe,” he said and took her cheek into his hand. Her hair was like silk where it had escaped the tight braids about her ears, soft against his fingertips.

“Would you have?” she said, her eyes half closed now and her lips almost smiling as he set his mouth to her throat and breathed in her scent of vanilla. Vanilla. He had not expected it. But of course the woman who could recognize every scent on the earth, each flower and herb and costly cologne, would adorn herself with such simplicity. “And survived on what income, exactly?” she said.

“Whatever came to hand,” he replied promptly, tasting the sultry, salty flavor of her skin. “But I am a London boy, born and bred. What does one do to make a living in the wilds of Yorkshire—when one tends toward bookishness, that is?”

“Shear sheep. Cut crops. Dig ditches.” Her smile was wide, her voice light. The caress of her fingertips skimming his arm was getting him hard again.

He lifted his head.

“I would have dug ditches to be with you, Esme Astell.”

Her lips parted and for the length of five full heartbeats she was silent.

“Let’s do it again,” she whispered.

She was perfect.

“If you will finally loose these tresses from their bindings,” he said, tracing a braid with a single finger, “we can do it as many times as you wish.”

With alacrity, she loosed the tresses. Rather, together they did. To gain access to the final braid she sat up, thus revealing the beauty of her breasts and waist in a whole new posture and momentarily rendering Charlie paralyzed. She spoke to him—said something—asked him something, he thought—but he could only nod and stutter unintelligible syllables.

Not, however, for long.

Taking the laughing little beauty into his arms, he reminded her with carefully placed kisses and caresses that lovemaking was a very serious matter indeed. Shortly she was sighing and gasping and moaning again, as she had been when he’d had her beneath him.

When the pale golden locks flowed freely about her shoulders, down her back, and over the dusky tips of her breasts, it was not outside the realm of honesty to say that he lost himself in them, in her, in thorough mutual hedonism.

Some time later—quite a lot of time later, although it seemed to both of them one continuous enchanted moment—on his back, with the golden tresses draped over his chest like a lavish blanket as she dropped kisses one after another onto his belly and her hands explored, he did not hear himself whisper between groans, “This must be a dream.” Afterward, however, she told him that he had.

“Did I?” he murmured, on the cusp of sleep and trying not to tip into the abyss. As long as he remained awake, he reasoned, the dawn would not come.

“What dream?” Her fingertips were painting a portrait upon his chest, of what he hadn’t any idea, but he was highly appreciative of her art.

“Every dream I have ever had,” he heard himself say, knew he should not have, but refused to regret it.

“What is this scar?” she said, running a single fingertip over his shoulder.

“Musket . . . shot,” he mumbled, tilting over the precipice of slumber.

“I did not tell you the truth when I said I cannot describe a person’s unique scent,” he thought she said, but he was dreaming already, wishes and hopes and visions of heaven just out of reach, as ever. A pirate could never bed a princess, after all. Rather, wed. In any case, have. She could never be his. Not beyond the dawn that was, he suspected, shortly to break.

“Chestnuts, warmth, and the color of burgundy wine,” she whispered. “That is your scent, Charles Westley Brittle.”

“Color?” Perhaps he only mouthed the words. Colors could not, after all, be scents. He thought.

She chuckled: a smooth, sweet sound of sage. Aha: herbs could have sounds. He was mad. And dreaming.

“I have known it since the day we met.” Her fingertips stole across his lips. “Chestnuts.” The tip of her tongue traced his lower lip. He struggled to open his eyes but clouds held them closed. He had not slept in days, not deeply, not in weeks. Months.

“Warmth.” Her breath skittered across his jaw, then trailed down his neck. “And the color,” she whispered against his breastbone, “of burgundy.” Her tongue lapped his nipple.

Abruptly, he was fully awake and on the way to being fully aroused as well.

Grasping her shoulders, he turned her onto her back and rose above her.

Her eyes were very, very wide. Startled.

“I thought you were asleep,” she said.

“Your clever tongue woke me.”

“The scars on your back,” she said. “They are scars from lashings.”

“They are.”

“Make love to me,” she said, and her breasts rose and fell in quick, sharp breaths.

He did as she requested. As before, she was easily roused, and as before he was easily lost. But not so lost that he forgot his dream, or perhaps not a dream after all.

“Chestnuts, warmth, and the color of burgundy?” he said finally, when she was panting, whimpering, and begging with her body for gratification.

A pink flush suffused her cheeks and neck all the way to the tight peaks of her breasts, and her skin glistened in candlelight. Eyes closed, she turned her face away. He ducked his head and tasted the column of neck she exposed, then her breasts, then her sex that was wet and ready for him.

After that there was no further conversation, no more confessions or even laughter, only caresses.

Eventually, they slept for a short time.

As dawn crept into the sky he said goodbye—this time permanently—at the door of her room. He kissed her lips tenderly, lingering and kissing her again just as beautifully, then releasing her hands and whispering, “Goodbye, Esme.”

She could not say goodbye, and could not watch him walk away. Instead she closed the door, went to the bed that was thoroughly tousled, curled up in the covers that smelled of him and of their lovemaking, and watched the dawn gradually transform into day.