didn’t think so.
Leaning one shoulder against the bars that separated his cell from hers, he looked down at her.
She was young, no more than twenty-two or twenty-three, he guessed, with a flawless honey-colored complexion framed by a regal mane of tawny hair. A straight little nose that tilted ever so slightly upward at the tip. Thick, dark lashes resting on elegantly high cheeks. It was an aristocratic face. One that should be painted on an expensive cameo, protected in a gold locket, and kept close to some wealthy young lord’s heart.
Nicholas frowned. He was supposed to be making escape plans, not ogling fellow inmates.
He picked up the mutton leg from his interrupted supper and took a bite. “You can get up now,” he said with his mouth full. “They’re gone.”
Her even, shallow breathing suddenly stilled.
After a moment, she opened one eye and cast a cautious sideways glance toward the door. Then she opened the other and glared up at him. “How did you know I was faking?”
“Women have fainted on me before,” he said sardonically. “One learns to tell a true faint from a display of female dramatics.”
She sat up, gingerly touching her bruised cheek, and squinted at him, as if her vision were only now adjusting to the torchlit darkness. Her eyes widened as her gaze traveled from his beaten, bloodied face down over the breadth of his shoulders and chest.
She quickly, warily moved to the other side of her cell, as far away as she could get. Which wasn’t far. Her slender back came up against the metal bars with a muted clang. She sat speechless, staring at him as if he were some kind of dangerous animal in a zoological park.
Her expression made him feel every bit as rough and brutish as he must look. She regarded him with a trace of fear in her eyes, and something else... a certain disdain, a haughtiness that he had seen before in the eyes of ladies of quality.
It was a look that never failed to annoy him.
And it made him stare all the more boldly back. He allowed his gaze to roam over her, deliberately undressing her with his eyes.
Every rich, creamy inch of her.
He mentally slipped her lemon-colored silk gown from her shoulders and admired the delicate line of her collarbone... the generous swell of sweet feminine flesh below, almost overflowing her lacy bodice... her slim waist and the womanly swell of her hips. Her skirt had tangled around her, revealing a glimpse of long, long legs.
He lifted his gaze slowly, lingering over every ripe, soft curve hidden by the fragile silk. Curves that would fit so perfectly in a man’s hands. His hands.
Honey-colored skin, flaxen hair... spun from gold, she was, burnished and sleek like a treasure plundered from a Spanish galleon.
And the pirate in him had never been able to resist the lure of gold.
He felt a stirring, tightening sensation low in his body, felt his breathing deepen even as he looked at her, imagining those legs wrapped around his hips.
As if reading his thoughts, she quickly rearranged her skirts with a whispered oath.
He lifted his gaze to hers. This close, he could see the color of her eyes, sparkling defiantly in the torchlight.
Gold. She had golden eyes—a light, clear amber color with flecks of pure gold around the center.
Forget the last meal, he thought with a slow, hungry curve to his mouth. One night with her would do quite nicely for a doomed man’s final wish.
Another flash of gold caught his eye—something dangling from a short, pale ribbon attached to the center of her bodice. A strangely shaped medallion or locket. Oblong, like a small barrel. Gasping, she grabbed it in one fist and clasped it against her. As if she meant to protect it from him.
Or as if it had some power to protect her.
He wondered how the devil a pampered chit like her had landed herself in gaol. And where she had picked up the salty language and street tricks she had used earlier.
One thing was certain: if he was any judge of women—and he was—this was easily one of the most beautiful he’d ever laid eyes on. “What did they arrest you for, lady? Caught stealing crumpets at a tea party?”
“What affair is it of yours?” Her frosty tone matched the disdain in her eyes.
He noticed, however, that her gaze flicked to his food with obvious longing.
He settled more comfortably against the bars and finished the mutton leg, noisily cleaning every last