The Uncompromising Lord Flint

Alongside the Comte de Saint-Aubin-de-Scellon, the petite Lady Jessamine was his partner in crime. The Boss’s assistant across the Channel. Every covert, coded message they had intercepted in the last few weeks had been written in her pretty, looped handwriting. Times, places, shipments, vessels, corrupt English peers complicit in the widespread and dangerous treachery—Lady Jessamine was privy to it all. In fact, she had assisted in orchestrating it. Always had. There were three other convicted traitors languishing in Newgate awaiting execution who had repeatedly testified to as much.

A midshipman arrived with a lamp and the damp brig was suddenly bathed in golden light. Another pang of pity troubled him as she flinched in pain and shielded her eyes. She’d been kept in the dark too long. Her skin had the grey pallor similar to that seen on long-term prisoners.

Now he could clearly see her body, the evidence of her rough treatment appalled him. One sleeve hung limply at her elbow, ripped nearly clean from the bodice. Finger-shaped bruises marred her upper arm. Her dark hair was matted. Her small feet bare. The remnants of her gown stained and filthy. The coarse, utilitarian fabric surprised him. Flint had expected silk and lace—the obvious trappings of wealth and ill-gotten privilege—not dull, patched serge.

A disguise? It had to be. Once her hideaway had come under siege, it made sense she would don the garments of a servant and attempt to flee capture. But still...

‘Send for soap and hot water, Captain. Some fresh clothes and a hairbrush.’ Whatever she had done, Lady Jessamine was still a human being. ‘And arrange a screen out here so she can bathe in private. The guards can wait outside.’ She was also the sole woman on a ship filled with lusty men who spent the majority of their lives on the ocean with other males.

‘If we can’t see her, there is no telling what she might do! The blasted chit has tried to escape three times already!’

‘The anchor has been weighed and we are miles from shore. Unless she swims underwater with the speed of a dolphin, where exactly do you think she will go?’ Flint turned at the same moment she brushed the dark curtain of hair from her face.

Beautiful.

That was the only thought he had and one that certainly wouldn’t do. He’d been bewitched by traitorous beauty before and had trained himself to be immune since. As her deep brown, almond-shaped eyes locked with his, he abruptly turned on his heel, a little staggered at the odd emotions the sight of her conjured. He had thought he hadn’t needed Lord Fennimore’s stinging reminder about his previous gullibility—now he clung to those insightful words gratefully.

‘Don’t let her wiles waylay you. Remember what happened the last time.’

As if he could forget? His father had almost died as a result. But that had been years ago when he had still been green around the gills and had assumed that all women were like his sisters—over-emotional but good inside. That particular prisoner had duped him with her tears, capitalised on his familial obligation to protect and then thoroughly seduced him into dropping his guard. To then watch helpless as she had shot his poor father with Flint’s own pistol had been a hard way to learn his lesson—but learn it he had. What she looked like and how his body responded had nothing to do what his mission. The mission always had to come first. ‘Get yourself cleaned up. We will talk again in an hour.’

Jess watched him leave. Watched the Captain and her two surly guards follow closely behind, then sank to the floor. The last few weeks had been terrifying and exhausting, but tears had no place now. Self-pity was an indulgence she couldn’t afford—not yet at least. Perhaps soon she could curl up in a ball in a safe little room far, far away and cry for a month to let it all out. Until then, she needed to hold the tears back, knowing instinctively that if she started then she wouldn’t be able to stop.

Everything was going entirely to plan.

Not that she really had any more of a plan now than she had when all this had started a few weeks ago. It was more a series of events and opportunities created out of necessity and desperation and a large sprinkling of unexpected luck, but at least she was out of the run-down pension which had been her prison for the last month and was heading home, albeit as a prisoner again.

She hoped this ship was fast.

The more miles between her and Saint-Aubin the better. Cruel, callous and with the single-minded determination to crush anyone or anything that got in his way under the heel of his glossy boots, that monster had stolen too many years and sucked all the joy out of her soul. Oh, how she hated him! Except now he had an excellent reason to turn all that venom towards her. She hadn’t just escaped, she had destroyed the documentation he would need to fill the void she had left. Every name, every contact, every supplier carefully recorded in her mother’s leather journal now languished somewhere at the bottom of the harbour in Cherbourg. It would take him weeks and possibly costly months to piece it all together again—unless he found her first and forced the details out of her.

Torture, then death.

Neither appealed. Once she was in sight of the English coast, Jess would find a way to escape properly and disappear, never to be found again. A new life and a new identity, miles from the shore, ships and the smugglers who had stolen her old ones.

The only hatch to the brig opened, followed by the tell-tale smell of boiled cabbage and stale sweat, and the same toothless sailor who had watched her lasciviously for the last week, carried steaming wooden buckets of water. Over his shoulder were tossed towels and fresh clothes. Behind him came the other guard, not quite as hostile but no more compassionate, with a small tin bathtub filled with folded sheets which the pair of them suspended from the low ceiling like a sail. Then with a snarl, the toothless one produced a key and undid the padlock of her cell, warily watching Jess as she sat unmoving before him.

‘Your bath, your ladyship. Not that traitors deserve baths as far as I’m concerned. If it was down to me, I’d leave you to rot in your own filth.’

‘As you do?’ Bating him was probably not sensible. The toothless one was free and easy with his fists, but Jess couldn’t bring herself to cower subserviently. She had experienced worse. ‘You stink.’

His lip curled and he raise his hand, then dropped it. A first for him. Something must have changed to make him resist. He threw the soap and hairbrush into the straw in front of her.

‘Once you’re finished, the illustrious Lord Flint wants to see you in his cabin while we get to clean up the mess you’ve made.’ Something which clearly disgruntled the old sea dog immensely. ‘Don’t try any funny business! There’s another guard up there with a loaded musket and orders to kill if you don’t do as you’re told. Bath. Dress. And be swift about it.’ Threat issued, they retreated up the narrow steps to the main deck and the tiny hatch slammed closed once again.

Lord Flint.

So that was his name? It made sense he was an aristocrat. Every aspect of his being—from the inscrutable expression on his handsome face, the arrogant stance and the impeccably tailored coat he filled so well—all pointed to as much. His obvious physical attributes aside, the privileged, pampered English male was always the same no matter what magnificent shape or size they came in. Cold, detached and uninterested in any opinions which contradicted their own.

Jess hadn’t been exaggerating when she had warned he was in danger. Saint-Aubin would have them both torn limb from limb and their entrails fed to the dogs in a heartbeat, yet Lord Flint had brushed off her concerns with rude indifference. She hated that.

She remembered her father’s same indifference all those years ago when her mother declared her intention to leave him and take their only daughter with her. Like the arrogant Lord Flint, he hadn’t believed a word of it and lived to rue the day. Or more likely, as it turned out, he had simply been glad to be shot of her and hadn’t rued it at all. The manner of her leaving had certainly given him a valid excuse to dissolve the marriage with impressive haste, disown his only daughter and rapidly find a new wife to finally give him his longed-for son. Cold, detached and uninterested peers of the realm were so at odds with her experience of their French aristocratic counterparts. Saint-Aubin had been hot-headed, suspicious and terminally cruel. While she might have been fleetingly attracted to the man, Lord Flint’s staid, emotionless demeanour had been reassuringly familiar.

He hadn’t bothered introducing himself, not that she’d really given him much chance to or cared overmuch who he was. It wasn’t as if she intended to spend much time in his company. Jess had ranted and raved for all she was worth. If one of Saint-Aubin’s men were on this ship—and she wouldn’t put that past him because he had his poisonous tentacles everywhere—then Jess needed to appear outraged and afraid at being captured rather than relieved. It was relief tinged with a healthy dose of raw terror, but again that emotion was so familiar nowadays, always lurking menacingly in the background, that she had ruthlessly trained herself to ignore it unless absolutely necessary. Right now, while she was bobbing in the middle of the English Channel, it wasn’t necessary.

If they came in little boats in the dead of night to fetch her and drag her back, her only chance at living to see another sunrise depended on her fighting her new captors tooth and nail while lying through her teeth. Once she set foot on English soil, Jess was a dead woman walking. Saint-Aubin or the Boss would have highly paid assassins waiting to eventually erase her from the world unless she outwitted them first.

Until—if—that happened, she could console herself with one not insignificant achievement. Her trail of crumbs had been followed and she was out. That alone was cause for celebration.

Allowing herself a small smile of satisfaction, she rose and dragged the tub to a position which she hoped afforded her the most privacy and emptied the steaming buckets in. It was a meagre bath by normal standards, the water merely a few inches deep, but it was hot and wet and the first proper bath she had been allowed in months. Even conditions in this dank and humid brig were a considerable improvement on her rat-infested prison in Cherbourg or the same, compact four walls in Saint-Aubin’s claustrophobic and oppressive chateau.

All in all, things were looking up. Jess would not weep today. If she was destined to die in the coming few days, then she would take whatever small pleasures she could in the interim. Jess closed her eyes, inhaled slowly and deeply, tucking the constant fear into the little box in her mind where she stored all the bad things, then stripped off her filthy dress, kicking it back into the cell. It was the last vestige of Saint-Aubin and she was done with all that.

From this moment on she was in control of her destiny and nothing and nobody was ever going to get in her way again. The call of freedom and survival was too strong. She took a moment to inhale the sweet, fresh scent of the soap before she gratefully stepped in the tub and lowered herself into the water, revelling in the glorious sensation of soothing, clean water enveloping her skin.

Délicieux!

Paradise.

It was the little things, the things people took for granted, that she had missed the most. The hot meals, the heady aroma of fresh air, this warm bath. The unfamiliar sound of her first language spoken once again and the odd yet comforting way it felt coming from her own lips after all these years. Everyday luxuries she would rejoice in until she gasped her last breath because she was tired of hating herself and determined to begin her life afresh.

The handsome Lord Flint and his aristocratic arrogance could wait until her bath chilled and her skin shrivelled before she deigned to grace him with her presence. If he was to be the latest in her long line of temporary gaolers, it was best he found out early that Jess had never been partial to following orders.

Chapter Two (#u5f24da4e-cd4a-5022-b615-a3fc4d75b832)

The harridan had made him wait two hours already. No doubt she would have made him wait two more had he not dispatched someone to go fetch her. He would allow her that petty victory. He’d used the time constructively, going over the prearranged route to London and writing messages to send to every fashionably busy inn along the way, cheerfully appraising them, and anyone else who intercepted the missives, of the exact dates and times he expected to arrive at their establishment. Lord Flint and Lady Jessamine would require two rooms next door to one another, but not a private dining room. The more witnesses who saw her pretty face, the better.

The rap at his cabin door had him pausing mid-sentence. He kept his head bent and his pen hovering as the guards shepherded Lady Jessamine in, ignoring the way his body seemed to sense her.

‘The prisoner, sir. Would you like me to attach the manacles?’

‘That won’t be necessary.’ Flint didn’t do her the courtesy of looking up. He could play silly games, too. Till the cows came home if need be. ‘Leave us.’

Both guards hesitated, then let go of her elbows. ‘As you wish, sir. We’ll be outside.’

He scratched out another few words, then dipped his quill in the inkstand before continuing to write, leaving Lady Jessamine standing like a naughty student at his desk. In his peripheral vision he took in the sight. Bare feet, clean this time, and several inches of shapely, naked female calf poked out from beneath the striped sailor’s breeches she had been issued. The over-large linen shirt had been gathered to one side and tied in a jaunty knot, cinching the masculine garment tightly around her slim waist and displaying the obvious feminine shape of her rounded hips and bottom to the world. The collar was undone, the graceful curve of her neck and delicate collarbone yet another reminder of her sex—not that one was needed. Her long, tousled, jet-black hair was completely loose and tumbling down her back and around her shoulders. A beautiful, dark-haired temptress who might have been expressly designed by God to specifically appeal to his particular taste in women—damn her.

She looked scandalous, sultry and, to his shame, Flint’s body had never wanted a woman more. But he wouldn’t be waylaid by the physical. Beneath the perfect veneer, the wood was rotten. He gripped his pen so firmly as he formed the next letters, it would take a miracle to prevent the crew hearing the sound of it squeaking against the parchment up in the crow’s nest. Sheer pride made him grit his teeth and continue regardless. Let her think he was furious, which he really was now—but at his own uncontrollable and wholly unwanted lust rather than at her.

Arrogant to the last, without waiting for an invitation, she wandered to the comfortable armchair across his cabin and lowered herself into it. For good measure, she crossed one delectable leg over the other and lounged with an elbow propped upon the arm and stared at the top of his head insolently.

Totally relaxed.

Totally galling, when he could feel the intoxicating power of those beautiful eyes all the way down to his toes.

Flint waited another couple of seconds before he carefully laid the quill down and faced her, his face a perfect mask of blandness that took all his years of training to muster. ‘Your friend—The Boss—I need his name.’

‘Straight to the point? No small talk, Monsieur Flint?’ Dropping his honorific was an obvious insult, not that he cared. In his line of work, where he was paid to be a chameleon, he rarely got to use it anyway.