Seduced by the Scoundrel. Louise Allen

hand and went back to pulling the skin off the rabbit as the whole group relaxed. Averil began to breathe again.

      ‘I’ll wring ‘em, ma’m.’ A big man with an eyepatch got to his feet and shambled over. ‘I’m Tom the Patch, ma’am, and me ‘ands are clean.’ He held up his great calloused paws for inspection like a child. ‘Where do you want ‘em?’

      ‘I’ll drape them over those bushes.’ Averil let out the breath she had been holding and pointed halfway up the slope.

      ‘Not there,’ Potts said. ‘They’ll see you.’

      ‘Who will?’

      ‘Anyone in a ship looking this way. Or on Tresco. Put ‘em there.’ He waved a bloody hand at the thinner bushes close to the fire. Potts, she was beginning to realise, had either more intelligence, or more sense of responsibility, than the other men. Perhaps he had been a petty officer of some kind once.

      ‘Why don’t you want anyone to know you are here?’ Averil asked as Tom twisted the shirts and the water poured out.

      ‘Hasn’t the Cap’n said?’ He dropped one shirt into the bucket and picked up another.

      ‘We haven’t had much time to talk,’ she said and then blushed as the whole group burst into guffaws of laughter.

      ‘Why not share the joke?’ Luke strolled out from behind one of the tumbledown stone walls. He had his coat hooked over one finger and hanging down his back, his shirt collar was open, his neckcloth was loose and he gave every indication of just coming back from a relaxing stroll around the island. Averil suspected that he had been behind the wall ever since she had approached the men, waiting to see what happened, testing their mood.

      ‘I said that we had not talked much.’ She hefted the bucket with the wrung linen and walked towards the bushes. Any gentleman would have taken the heavy pail from her, but Luke let her walk right past him.

      ‘No, we have not,’ he said to her back as she shook out each item with a snap and spread it on the prickly gorse. ‘I’ll tell you over dinner.’

      ‘Tell ‘er all about it, will you, Frenchy?’ Dawkins said and the whole group went quiet.

      Frenchy? Averil spun round. He was French? And that made the men … what? Not just deserters—turncoats and traitors.

      ‘You call me Captain, Dawkins,’ Luke said and she saw he had the pistol in his hand, loose by his side. ‘Or the next time I will shoot your bloody ear off. Nothing to stop you rowing, you understand, just enough to make sure you spend what is left of your miserable life maimed. Comprends-tu?’

      The man might not have understood the insult in the way he had just been addressed, but Averil did. And her French was good enough to recognise in those two words not the pure accent of someone carefully taught as she had been, but a touch of originality, a hint of a regional inflection. The man was French. But we are at war with France, she thought, stupid with shock.

      ‘Aye, Cap’n,’ Dawkins said, his face sullen. ‘Just me little joke.’

      ‘Go back to the hut, Miss Heydon,’ Luke said over his shoulder. ‘I will join you at dinner time.’

      ‘I do not want to go to the hut. I want an explanation. Now.’ It was madness to challenge him in front of the men; she realised it as soon as she spoke. If he would not take insubordination from Dawkins, he was most certainly not going to tolerate it from a woman.

      ‘You get what I choose to give you, when I choose,’ Luke said, his back still turned. ‘Go, now, unless you wish to be turned over my knee and taught to obey orders in front of the men.’

      Her dignity was all she had left. Somehow she kept her chin up and her lips tight on the angry words as she walked past him, past the silent sailors and down the slope towards the hut. Bastard. Beast. Traitor …

      No, she realised as she got into the hut and flung herself down on a chair, Luke was not a traitor. If he was French, he was an enemy. The enemy. And she was sitting here, an obedient little captive who shuddered under his hands and wanted his kisses and washed his shirts and trailed back here when she was told. She was an Englishwoman—she had a duty to fight as much as any man had.

      Averil jumped to her feet, sending the chair crashing to the floor, and twitched back the crude curtain. There was a navy ship at anchor out there—too far to hail, and probably, unless someone had a glass trained on the island, too far to signal with anything she had to hand. But she could swim. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? If she ran down to the sea, plunged in and swam, surely they would see her? And if Luke gave chase then that would create even more of a stir. Someone would come to investigate and, even if he shot her, he would have to explain the commotion.

      She was out of the door and running before she could think of any objections, any qualms to slow her with fear. The big pebbles hindered her, but she was clear of them, up to her knees in the water, before she heard anything behind her.

      ‘Get back here!’

      Luke! She did not turn or reply, only ploughed doggedly on, fighting through the thigh-high waves. ‘Stop or I will shoot!’

       He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t shoot a woman in the back. Even a French agent wouldn’t—

      She didn’t hear the shot, only felt the impact, a thumping blow below her left shoulder, behind her heart. It pitched her forwards into the sea and everything clouded and went dark. Her last thought as she felt the water closing over her head was of shocked anger. He said he would not kill me. Liar.