Her Heart's Captain (4 page)

The smile so transformed his appearance that Jenny couldn't help but respond. “Yes, we would, wouldn't we?” she agreed with a giggle. “Our entire social structure might crumble away.”

She threw a quick, amused glance up at his face to see his reaction, and for a moment their eyes held, a little spark of attraction igniting between them. She felt it with a shock and immediately dropped her eyes.

An awkward silence followed, during which Jenny couldn't find the courage either to look at him or to speak. Finally, her eyes falling on her baggage, she remembered that she hadn't properly thanked him. “I … er … hope you won't think it mere sentimentality, sir,” she said softly, her eyes fixed on the ground, “when I tell you how grateful to you I am. You saved me from a great deal of anguish.”

“Don't mention it, ma'am. It was no trouble.” He hesitated for a moment and then made a little bow, put on his hat and walked away.

Jenny looked after him, feeling quite sorry to see him go. Then she abruptly recalled seeing him give the sailor who'd brought the baggage a gold coin. Should she not have recompensed him for the expense? She started to follow him but remembered the baggage. She mustn't leave it unguarded—not again. “Oh!” she cried in a dither of indecision and put out a hand as if to beckon him back.

He was much too far away to have heard her cry, but at that moment he stopped and looked back over his shoulder. Her expression and her pose gave an unmistakable message. He turned and strode back to her. “Is something wrong, ma'am? Did you wish me to do something for you?”

“No, thank you. It was only that …” She felt herself coloring up once more. If only her feelings didn't always reveal themselves in the flush of her cheeks.

“Yes?”

“… that I remembered … that is, I would very much like you to let me recompense you for what you gave the sailor.” She began to rummage hurriedly through her reticule. “Please …”

With a forbidding frown, he took the reticule from her grasp and pulled its cords taut. “I hope, ma'am, that you will not insult me by making such a suggestion again,” he said, thrusting the reticule back into her hands.

“Oh! I'm … sorry. I meant no offense,” she said, her cheeks hot with embarrassment. “I only wanted to … to …”

“I know. To show your gratitude.”

“Yes.”

He studied her intently. “If you're truly grateful,” he said after a long pause, “perhaps you'll reward me instead with the answer to a question that's been puzzling me since I first set eyes on you. A question of a somewhat personal nature.”

Her eyes flew to his face. “Personal?” She felt her heart begin to pound in nervous agitation. “Wh-what is it you wish to know?”

“I can't help wondering what a young woman of quality is doing in such a place without escort of any kind.”

“But I
do
have escort,” she said, feeling both relieved and disappointed. She had hoped (and feared) that he would ask her name. She would have liked him to be interested enough to ask, but she wouldn't have known how to answer. Her mother would certainly not approve of her giving her name to a strange man. But this question was safe enough. “My brother is with me. He's only gone off on a brief errand.”

“Brief? It's been over half-an-hour since I began observing you, you know.”

“Is it?” Jenny's brow wrinkled worriedly. “Yes, he
does
seem to have been gone a long while. I wonder if he's forgotten where he left me.”

The gentleman shook his head, the look of disapproval again in his eyes. “I must say, ma'am, I can't approve of his, behavior. I'd offer to go and search for the fellow, but it would be a rather pointless exercise, since I don't know what he looks like. And
you
certainly can't wander about looking for him, not all alone, even if I remained to watch over your baggage.”

“You needn't worry,” Jenny said confidently. “Robbie will reappear at any moment, I'm certain.”

“Hmmmm.” The gentleman was obviously unconvinced. “If you've no objection, ma'am, I'll keep you company until your brother returns.”

Jenny felt herself coloring again. It was probably quite improper for her to accept the companionship of a stranger, but every instinct told her that he was a man who could be trusted. Besides, if she refused, he'd probably go back to his post near those packing-crates and watch over her from there. (That was probably why he'd been watching her in the first place—to keep a protective eye on an unescorted female.) “I've no objection at all,” she told him with shy frankness. “In fact, I'd be even more grateful to you than I am already.”

He removed his hat and made an acknowledging bow. “You may as well resume your seat on the trunk here,” he said, his tone making the suggestion sound more like an order.

She did as he bid. “You're very kind, sir, to wait here with me,” she offered, peeping up at him from the corner of her eye and noting with a twinge of discomfort how he glowered as he searched the face of each passerby. “I hope I'm not keeping you from your business.”

“I've nothing so pressing to do at the moment that would justify my abandoning an innocent girl to the dangers inherent in sitting alone on this dock in the midst of this press of rag-tails and cut-purses.”

“I'm sure you exaggerate, sir. After all, it
is
broad daylight, and—”

He expelled his breath in disgust. “It was broad daylight when your baggage was stolen, wasn't it? Yet that didn't prevent the crime. And it didn't inspire any one of this mob surrounding you to help you, either.”

Jenny couldn't help feeling that, kind as the gentleman had been to her, he was much too disparaging of his fellow man. “But someone
did
help me,” she pointed out gently. “You.”

“So I did,” he admitted, a smile reluctantly making an appearance at the corners of his lips. “You were most fortunate.”

“I know.”

He turned to stare at her with knit brows and an arrested expression. “You, ma'am, are a very unusual young woman. I think, in your quiet way, you've just cut me down.”

“Cut you down? Why do you say that?”

“You are trying to say that, if I hadn't come to your rescue, somebody else might have, is that it?”

“Nobody else did, though.”

“But I've been a coxcomb to assume that I'm the only one in this crowd with an impulse to decent behavior—that's what you're trying to tell me, isn't it?”

Her eyes twinkled. “I'm much too beholden to you, sir, to tell you any such thing.”

He laughed. “Yet you made me see it without saying it. It was deftly done. Never have I been put in my place with more ladylike delicacy.”

“I had no wish to put you in your place. Perhaps I
do
believe that you are a bit too harsh in your judgments of your fellow man, but I'm quite sensible of the fact that you've been unusually protective of me from the first. That was why you were staring at me earlier, wasn't it? You saw me sitting here all alone and were afraid I'd come to harm.”

“Is
that
what you think, ma'am?” His smile widened. “How little you know of men, my dear.”

“Why, what do you mean?” she asked innocently. “Are you trying to deny your kindness in—?”

“
Jenny
! What on
earth
—?” came a voice behind them.

“Oh, Robbie!” Jenny jumped up, startled. “
There
you are. Where have you been for so long?”

But her brother was glaring at the gentleman with obvious pugnacity. “Is this man bothering you?” he demanded, his fingers curling into fists.

“No, of course not. If it weren't for him—”

The gentleman held up a restraining hand. “So this tadpole is your brother, eh? He's a bit younger than I'd expected but not so young that he shouldn't have known better than to leave you unprotected. Have you no sense, fellow?”

Robbie's mouth dropped open, and he stared from the stranger to his sister and back again. “Are you acquainted with this man, Jenny?” he asked bewilderedly.

“Well … er … not exactly, but—”

“Then I fail to see,” Robbie said, glowering at the stranger, “what he's doing here and why he should be ringing a peal over me.”

“Robbie!” Jenny was appalled at his rudeness. “You don't understand. We owe this gentleman a great debt of gratitude. Why, he—”

“Excuse me, ma'am,” the stranger interrupted, “but it's not necessary to go into that now. I just want this puppy to know that his behavior was utterly reprehensible. One doesn't leave a young woman unprotected in such a place, boy. It's a place where she is vulnerable to all manner of molestation. Remember that in future.”

“Hang it,” Robbie burst out, “I don't see what concern it is of
yours
what I—”

“Hush, Robbie,” his sister said quietly. She put a hand on her brother's arm and turned to her scowling protector. “You mustn't think ill of my brother, sir. He is about to embark on a naval vessel for a long voyage, and since it's his first, he's understandably distracted—”

“A naval vessel?” The stranger looked at Robbie with interest. “You don't mean the
Providential
?”

“Yes, that's what she means,” Robbie said rudely. “Not that it's any business of yours.”

“So you're sailing on the
Providential
. How very interesting.” His scowling expression had changed to one of ill-concealed amusement. “I wish you good fortune in your travels.” He turned to Jenny, took her hand and bowed over it. “Good day to you, ma'am. Thank you for this most enjoyable and enlightening encounter.”

“Thank
you
, sir,” Jenny said, blushing shyly, “for
everything
. I shan't forget—”

The gentleman grinned down at her. “Don't thank me for too much. What I began to say before your brother interrupted us was that I was not watching you because I thought you'd need protection.”

“No? Then why—?”

“Because, ma'am, you were the prettiest creature within range of my eye. It was a purely selfish act, and quite rude. So you have a great deal less to be grateful to me for than you thought.” With that, he tipped his hat and strode off, completely indifferent to the fact that both Jenny and Robbie stared after him, agog, until he disappeared from sight.

Chapter Four

For weeks afterward, Jenny wondered if the strange gentleman had really meant what he'd said about her being pretty. “He was probably only teasing, so that I wouldn't feel beholden to him,” she told her friend, Andrea, when they discussed the matter.

“Not necessarily,” Andrea said, considering the question seriously from her perch on the chaise in Jenny's bedroom where they often hid away to discuss matters of life and love. “You
are
rather pretty, you know … or you would be if you'd curl your hair and rub a bit of color on your cheeks.”

Jenny studied her face in her dressing-table mirror with critical detachment. The face looking back at her from the glass was really quite unexceptional. Her eyes, large and dark-brown, were her best feature, and her skin was smooth and clear of blemishes, but there was nothing else particularly admirable about her. Her cheeks, as Andrea had pointed out, were lacking in color, her nose was too wide and her hair was a drab brown and pulled back from her face in severe simplicity, plaited at the moment in a single braid which hung carelessly down her back. “Not nearly pretty enough to cause a man to stop and stare,” she muttered dejectedly. “He cannot have been sincere.”

“I don't see why the matter should concern you anyway,” Andrea remarked, putting her legs up on the chaise and stretching languidly. “You'll never see or hear of him again, so what difference does it make if he meant it or not?”

Andrea Clement was, like Jenny, twenty years of age, but their personalities were not alike. While Jenny was considered to be above average only in understanding, Andrea was above average in everything else—things like height, beauty and Her Heart's Captain self-confidence. Those were the things, Jenny's mother often pointed out, that really counted. Andrea had silky blonde hair, wide hazel eyes and two large front teeth which protruded slightly from under a deliciously shaped upper lip and bit charmingly upon the full lower one. Her reputation as the prettiest girl in the district had been won when she was just a child, and it gave her character and movements an assurance that Jenny's mother described as “an air.” Lady Garvin would often remark on it. “If you could put on an
air
like Andrea Clement's,” she would say at the slightest provocation, “people would find you almost as pretty as she. Beauty, you know, is largely an illusion. If you would only carry yourself like a beauty—instead of like a shy little mouse—then someone might take you for one.”

But Jenny had never been made to feel like a beauty and had no idea of how to carry herself with “an air.” Andrea's remarkable self-confidence filled Jenny (who had so little of it herself) with admiration bordering on awe. Accustomed to feeling second best in her own home, she slipped quite easily into feeling second best in relation to her friend. Andrea, an only child—indulged and spoiled by a doting father and an ineffectual mother—was completely happy in the relationship. So long as everyone acknowledged her superior position, she was perfectly willing to admit that Jenny was generously supplied with good sense, good humor and one other quality which only a few people noticed and hardly anyone appreciated—sweetness.

At the moment, however, Jenny's normal good sense and good humor seemed to have deserted her.
Andrea is right
, she thought, rising from the dressing table and crossing listlessly to the window seat.
The whole matter shouldn't be of the least concern to me. The man doesn't know my name nor I his. I shall never see him again
.