Free Nobody's Saint by Paula Reed

to some extent, men were all the same. To them, there were two kinds of women. There were the meek, obedient sort, pure and chaste and made for marriage. Then there were the passionate, challenging kind. Men liked them, too. But they weren’t pure and they weren’t chaste, and men didn’t marry them. No indeed.
    She gave a wicked smile and sampled the fish. Salted, the flavor stronger than she had expected. Quickly, she refreshed her wine.
    Now that she’d gotten to know him better, she didn’t think she so much wanted to kiss this Spaniard after all. He was every bit as rigid and stuffy as any Englishman. But she didn’t want to kiss her English betrothed either, much less lie with him. If she had to give herself to a man she didn’t want, better to give herself to one who would surely cast her aside than one who would lay claim to her for life. And having been taken by the one, the other would no longer want her. Best of all, once she was back in Ireland, the only two men who could bear witness to her shame would be far, far away.
    She ran a quick tally in her head and counted on her fingers. Let’s see, four lies, one dead pirate, one blasphemy that I can recall. Maybe I should count two in case I missed one. One lustful thought.
    She finished every last bite on the tray.

 
Chapter Five
     
    What Diego really wanted to do was to climb up into the crow’s nest and sulk under the stars, but such was not the behavior of a ship’s captain, so he stayed at the helm. He could have gone to his quarters and further castigated his saint, but the thought worried him more than a little. At one point, he would have been too awed to be so presumptuous, but that was not what caused him to hesitate now. Now, he found himself seriously questioning whether or not she was what he had always thought her. He thought about Pablo’s advice. Make a full confession and hand himself over to the Church? He should. But the thought chilled him to the bone. Was that yet another ill omen? Now his vision had him fearing his church!
    “Magdalena,” he whispered, “come to me and tell me I have made a mistake. Tell me this is not the woman you spoke of.”
    “Are you afraid of me then?”
    He whipped around and nearly fell over, unable to decide whether the woman next to him was flesh or fancy.
    She held up her bandaged wrists. “The surgeon’s done with me, and I’ve been out of your room for nigh onto an hour. You can come back down.”
    He struggled to catch his breath. “I thought to wait until you were asleep.”
    “Then you are afraid of me.”
    “I am annoyed with you.”
    “It was wrong of me to lie.”
    He eyed her suspiciously. “You are very good at it. I almost believed you.”
    “Ha! You were eating it up ‘til you read that cursed letter.”
    “Ha! You are not so good a liar as you think. I was looking very hard at you just before Enrique came, no?”
    She smiled and let her eyes wander idly over him. “You’re not the first man to take a long, hard look at me, y’know.”
    He smiled back, in spite of himself. “You think too much of yourself. I was thinking that there was something not quite right about you. I was thinking that a woman who kills a pirate does not run from anybody.”
    She laughed loudly, as unrestrained in her mirth as she was in her ire, and damn him if he did not, just for a moment, cease to care about Magdalena.
    “You’ve the right of it there, Captain. That’s a rare thing, a man who actually pays attention to a woman. There’s plenty who’ll study her form close enough, but look inside her? I’ll give you good credit for that.” She gave him another impudent look and stepped closer, and he caught a subtle whiff of roses. “How long ‘til we reach Cartagena?”
    “We stop in Havana first. It will be nearly a fortnight before this journey ends.”
    Havana? Mary Kate tucked that piece of information away. Perhaps she only had to befuddle this man long enough to escape him in Cuba.