curves of her breasts, there in the caress of red velvet.
It occurred to him that she expected him to kiss her. It also occurred to him that as much as he would like to oblige her—damnation, as much as he’d like to oblige himself—to do so would be purest madness, and disaster for his career.
He took a step away, clasping his hands behind his back. That was his habit from walking the quarterdeck, but for now it was also the only sure way he’d keep himself from reaching for what she was offering. Even in a wanton place like Monteverde, there had to be other ways of showing trust.
He cleared his throat again. “I am glad that you trust me, ma’am. That should make it easier for you to answer my questions.”
“Your questions.” Her cheeks flushing nearly as red as her gown, she ducked her head and turned away from him. “I had not forgotten, Captain.”
Damnation, he hadn’t intended to shame her, especially when he’d wanted the same thing. Promptly he looked away, too, his own face growing warm, and instead concentrated on a blank-eyed marble bust of Homer that stood on a pillar in the corner.
“There were far too many coincidences this morning for chance alone, ma’am,” he began, striving to be all business. “Have you contacted anyone else from Monteverde since you arrived in London? An ambassador, a friend?”
“The ambassador returned home months ago, before I’d left, to guard his estates from the French,” she said. “I do not believe Father replaced him. Everything was already too unsettled. And as for friends or acquaintances—I have not a one in London, else I would have gone to them instead of here.”
He could not imagine being so entirely adrift in a foreign country. The navy had always been there to support him even if his family and friends had not, and he marveled at the strength this small young woman must possess, forced to depend upon strangers for so much.
“Is there any reason beyond politics that someone would want you dead?” he asked. “Did you bring with you anything of great value? Gold, jewels, paintings?”
She sniffed with indignation. “Lady Willoughby could tell you that. Recall how she and her staff have searched my belongings.”
True enough. That search would have served its purpose, even though Tom didn’t like the notion of her having so little privacy. If anything of real interest had been discovered, then the admiral would likely have relayed it to him.
“Well, then, another reason. Someone who is jealous of your position or rank, or the fact that you escaped while they were forced to remain?”
“No,” she said sadly. “My life has not been so interesting as that. Besides, most Monteverdians would consider my escape a banishment, not something to be envied.”
“There is no one?” He hesitated, wishing he did not have to ask this. “No, ah, no fiancé, or lover?”
“By all the saints in heaven, of course I had no lover!” Her indignation was rising to such heights that he half expected to smell smoke where she’d scorched the carpet. “No Monteverdian princess would dare take a lover before she was wed, and before she’d given her royal husband a legitimate heir.”
“I understand, ma’am,” he said hastily. “You don’t have to say more.”
“But I do,” she insisted, “because you do not understand, else you would never have asked. To risk bearing a bastard child of impure blood, to lose all my value as a bride to any respectable royal house, to sully my family’s name, to be forced to surrender my dowry—I would not do that, Captain, never. Never.”
Oh, hell. Now he’d made a right royal mess, hadn’t he?
“I didn’t say that you had done any of that, ma’am,” he said, wishing desperately for a way to withdraw that particular question. “I was only trying to, ah, to learn if there was anyone else who might wish you harm.”
“Harm, ha,” she said darkly, and muttered some black, incoherent words in Italian that he was certain must be a curse. “I could show you harm, which is what you deserve for that. Because I know exactly what you meant. I may be a virgin, but I am not a fool.”
He felt himself flush again, something that had not happened since his voice had cracked at age twelve. But then, he could not recall ever having had any woman, young, old, or in between, speak to him so frankly of her virginity.
No wonder he was feeling mortifyingly out of his depth, and sinking fast.
“I assure you, ma’am, there was no disrespect—”
“No more of your assurances.” Suddenly she was standing between him and Homer, her dark eyes full of sparks and a fierce tilt to her chin that had nothing shy about it. She snapped her fingers before him, as if to flick away the word itself. “No more of your harms, and your coincidences, and—and no more of your ridiculous ‘ma’am’s,’ either. It is the insipid sound a nanny goat makes, and it does not please me.”
He frowned down at her. He’d always respected titles and ranks, whether it was a senior officer, or his father the earl, and he wasn’t sure why anyone would choose to do otherwise.
“But ‘ma’am’ is the proper way to address you. Even our own queen is called ‘Your Majesty’ only for the first greeting, and ‘ma’am’ after that.”
“I am not your queen, am I?” Her frown matched his. “I am different. You are different. You are the only Londoner who has spoken to me in my own language, and it seems most barbarously wrong of you not to call me by my given name while we converse.”
“Call you by your Christian name?” he asked, incredulous. His experience with ladies might be limited, but he did know that most did not wish to be addressed after a few hours’ acquaintance with the same jolly familiarity used with a drinking crony in a tavern. Here he’d been worrying that he’d been too free, yet she was offended instead by his being too formal.
“Yes, yes. It will give me great comfort, and be so much better than the nanny-goat bleat.” She nodded with satisfaction, as if everything had been decided. “Whenever we are alone, or speaking Italian as we are now, you will call me Isabella. I give you leave. We will speak as friends, eh?”
How could he possibly refuse her when she’d no other real friends in the entire country? How cruel would it be to turn down such a humble request?
She snapped her fingers again, now less from annoyance than for emphasis. “In turn I shall call you whatever your name might be instead of ‘Captain.’ You do have another, don’t you?”
“It’s Thomas,” he said reluctantly. “Tom for short. But I’m not certain this is—”
“Thomas,” she repeated, testing the sound of the name. “Tom. Tomaso. That will do. Ah, here is that lazy maid at last with my chocolate. Set it down there, on that table.”
Tomaso: no one had called him that since he’d been a boy traveling the Continent with his family. Yet from her lips it sounded different, a silky, luxuriant ripple that couldn’t possibly refer to him.
So how in blazes was he supposed to say her name? “Ma’am” might sound like a goat’s bleat to her, but at least it had none of the sinuous, sensuous entrapment of Isabella.
He was saved for the moment as the servants entered with her requests, and he watched her dictate to them with appalling precision. The maid must place the silver tray with the chocolate pot and toast here, squared to the edge of the table. The footman must present the basin of water, holding it steady while she dipped one fingertip into the surface to judge the temperature, and then place it before the wicker-backed chaise, with the linen cloth folded in half over the arm.
“I know you judge me to be too picky, Tomaso,” she said once the servants left. “Perhaps I am. But there is a proper way for things to be done, and an improper one, as well. If standards aren’t kept, why, then, civilization is meaningless, and we should just