The Tiger's Bride

Jamie frowned. “She told you about last night, did she?”

“She told me you wouldn’t help find Papa, and you weren’t very nice to her.” A grubby hand dropped to the hilt of the make-believe sword. “I should chop off the top of your head and feed your brains to the fishes!”

After a frustrating day spreading bribes and threats with equal futility, Jamie was in no mood for more delays, much less childish threats. He still hadn’t procured the services of a pilot…but he had received instructions from the mandarin in charge to prepare to weigh anchor. Lord Wu Ping-chien had decreed that the Phoenix would proceed upriver on the morning tide and off-load its cargo in Canton under the watchful eye of the Emperor’s inspectors. The fact that this decree had been issued while Lord Blair, Chief Factor of the East India Company, looked smugly on only made Jamie more determined to flout it.

He intended to weigh anchor, all right. Tonight He also intended to sail straight up the China coast. He was damned if he’d forfeit half his profits to corrupt Chinese customs officials and another tenth to the East India Company.

First, though, he had to get past this bristling, bloodthirsty imp and speak to his sister. Jamie had dealt with enough boys during his years before the mast to know exactly how to handle this one. Summoning a suitably grave expression, he nodded.

“If someone was rude to my sister, I’d want to feed his brains to the fishes, too,” he admitted. “I hope you’ll spare me, though, since I’ve come to apologize.”

Still scowling, the boy weighed Jamie’s words for a few moments. “Are you going to help Sarah find Papa?”

“Aye, lad.”

The youngster’s belligerence vanished like a cloud blown before the wind. He spun on one heel and dashed into the house, shouting for Sarah to come at once.

Jamie followed more slowly. He hadn’t lied, exactly. He’d help the Abernathy woman locate her father. But he’d do it on his terms, not hers.

He stepped into a sitting room filled with furniture gathered from the four corners of the world and grown shabby with years of use. A heavy English settee with well-worn green velvet cushions was drawn up before an embroidered fire screen. An assortment of chairs flanked the settee, some done in bamboo, some in cane, and one, Jamie noted, in a dark mahogany carved in the exquisitely intricate style of the Upper Ganges. A gatelegged table that might once have graced an English manor house stood against one wall. Atop it sat a Blue Willow porcelain tea set so prized in the Western world and so cheaply procured here, in the land that produced it. Framed watercolors done by an obviously amateur hand hung on the walls. Scattered books, several women’s shawls, and a cricket bat carelessly tossed in one corner added to the cheerful jumble.

Some might have found the room homelike. Having spent seventeen of his twenty-nine years aboard ship, where every wooden pin and twist of rope had its assigned place, Jamie found the room far too cluttered for his taste.

The sound of hurrying footsteps brought him around. A moment later, Sarah Abernathy rushed into the sitting room. Breathless, she disdained polite amenities and got right to the matter at hand.

“Charlie informs me you’ve changed your mind about helping me find my father. When do we sail?”

Jamie took his time replying. As much as any man, he disliked being backed into a corner. The irritation that had built all through this long, frustrating day found focus in the woman before him. Folding his arms across his chest, he surveyed her coolly.

The late afternoon sun slanting through the open windows painted her in no kinder a light than the red lanterns of the House of the Dancing Blossoms had last night. Attired in an unadorned dress of serviceable brown cambric and a long white apron, she looked far more like a maid than the mistress of her father’s house. Heat or strenuous activity or Jamie’s unexpected visit had put a high flush in her cheeks. Tendrils of reddish hair escaped the loose coil atop her head to curl in the afternoon damp.

“Are those chicken feathers in your hair, Miss Abernathy?” he inquired casually, letting her have a taste of the delays and inconsequential inanities the Chinese officials had dished out to him all day. He took a small measure of satisfaction in the impatience that leapt into her golden-brown eyes.

“Very likely,” she returned with a quick shake of her head. Several downy feathers came free and floated on the air. “I was helping Cook scald hens for dinner. When do we sail, Lord Straithe?”

“We do not, Miss Abernathy.”

“We do not? Do you mean you intend to comply with Lord Wu Ping-chien’s order and head upriver for Canton?”

Jamie dropped his arms. “How the devil do you know about the order?” he demanded. “I was just informed of it myself an hour ago.”

She waved a dismissive hand, as though the source of her intelligence was a matter of little consequence. “One of Cook’s friend’s uncles works in the Customs House. He sent word that you’d been given notice to proceed to Canton immediately.” Pinning Jamie with a level stare from her remarkable eyes, she demanded an answer. “Do you head for Canton, Lord Straithe?”

“No, Miss Abernathy, I do not.”

“I thought not.”

The slight downward curl of her upper lip gave Jamie evidence of Miss Abernathy’s true feelings. She might require his assistance, but that didn’t mean she particularly liked dealing with a smuggler.

“So then,” she said briskly, “when do you weigh anchor?”

“I sail with the evening tide.”

“Good gracious!” Her hands flew to her cheeks. “That’s less than three hours from now. Cook must send word to his brother’s son-in-law’s cousin at once!” She whirled and headed for the hall. “I’ll go gather my things and—”

“I am sailing with the tide, Miss Abernathy. Not you.”

She spun back around. “But…I thought…you told Charlie—”

He cut through her stuttering confusion. “I told your brother I would help find your father and so I will. In exchange for the services of this pilot you’ll provide, I’ll make inquiries at the coastal ports of Fukien.”

“Make inquiries!” She lifted her chin. “If I provide your pilot, Lord Straithe, you’ll do more than make inquiries. You’ll take me with you and you’ll send an armed escort ashore with me when I locate my father, so I may bring him safely back to the ship.”

“The hell I will.”

“Do not use such language with me, sir! I won’t tolerate it.”

“You’d tolerate far worse if I was so idiotic as to take you aboard my ship,” he retorted.

Golden sparks lit her eyes, reminding Jamie suddenly of the woman he’d kissed last night. When she threw her head back like that and looked down her uptilted nose so disdainfully, damned if he didn’t feel a sudden, pounding urge to kiss her again. Do more than kiss her, in fact. As he remembered all too well, she carried a full set of curves under that atrocious gown.

“You’ll take me with you, or sail without a pilot.”

Jamie’s lecherous thoughts vanished instantly. When it came to ruthlessness, Miss Sarah Abernathy was no match for a man who’d battled pirates ashore and at sea for a dozen years or more. His voice brusque, he cut the ground out from under her feet.

“You’ll provide this so-called pilot, or Lord Blair will hear about your father’s disappearance.”

“You would not tell him!”

“Aye, I would. And I don’t doubt that if word gets out that the good Reverend has defied the laws governing travel to the interior of China, he’ll lose his Mission and his living, Miss Abernathy.”

Jamie steeled himself against the pallor that leached the color from her cheeks. He and his crew had invested too much in this cargo. He wasn’t about to risk it or his ship by dallying in port at Fukien province while Miss Abernathy journeyed into the interior in search of her fanatical parent.

“Although one tries not to heed gossipers,” she said in a strangled voice some moments later, “it appears in this case they were right. You are a despicable scoundrel.”

Jamie squared his shoulders. He’d been called far worse in his time. Still, the disdain in her expressive brown eyes stung a bit.

“I’ll make inquiries, Miss Abernathy. If I find that your father’s within a day’s journey of the coast, I’ll get word to him and wait a reasonable time for him to make it to the Phoenix. That’s my offer. Accept it or not.”

She drew in a ragged breath, her breasts lifting under their covering of white apron and gray cambric. Whatever she intended to say was preempted by the sound of the front door closing.

“Sarah?” A soft, melodic voice came from the hall. “You’ll never guess who I met at the Holcombes’.”

Gritting his teeth in frustration at yet another delay, Jamie turned to roust the newcomer so he could finish his discussion with the stubborn Miss Abernathy. A moment later, the speaker glided into the room with a flutter of pink bonnet ribbons, and Jamie’s frustration took an instant, unexpected twist into stupefaction.

He’d never made any claim to monkish tendencies. Quite the opposite, he possessed a virile male’s healthy appreciation of beauty in its fairest, feminine form. The golden-haired goddess who tripped into the sitting room carried Jamie well beyond appreciation, however. He felt the floor tilt under his feet.

“Oh!” The vision stopped on the threshold, a pretty confusion coloring her cheeks. “I didn’t know you entertained a visitor, Sarah.”