Malia Martin Read Online Free PDF Page A

would interfere with that goal in ways he was only starting to realize.
    He looked back at her, his gaze drifting to her full pink lips before he forced himself to look into her eyes. A man could surely swim in such large dark pools of innocence.
    God, he was turning into a jelly-spined poet, of all things. “I have a very important job to do here in Gravesly, Lady Farnsworth, and I can’t be …” What? What couldn’t he be? Pining after Lady Farnsworth like a lovestruck schoolboy?
    “Yes, Captain?”
    “I must focus on my job,” he said, his concentration evaporating completely as the tip of Lady Farnsworth’s tongue slid out and wet the bottom corner of her mouth. For such a prim and proper woman, Lady Farnsworth had the lips of a well-used courtesan.
    The moment that thought crystallized, James nearly groaned. Surely this situation had gotten out of control if he had such thoughts in his head.
    “… It would seem to me.”
    James caught the last of Lady Farnsworth’s sentence and realized that she had been speaking to him about something. And now she gazed at him expectantly as if she awaited a response.
    Of course, he also realized that he had just spent the last few moments staring heatedly at the lady’s mouth. He would most definitely have to remove himself from Lady Farnsworth’s home, and hopefully her company.
    “Don’t you agree, Captain?” she prompted him.
    “I agree?” he said, thinking that such an answer could never get him in trouble.
    “Good, then, it is settled. Now, Captain, shall we go? We’ll be delivering baskets in full dark if we do not start soon.” She nodded toward the reins in his hand.
    What was settled? he wondered, as he turned his gaze deliberately away from Lady Farnsworth and urged the horses forward.
    “I am sure you will find Chesley House much more conducive to concentrating than Harker’s Inn, Captain. The fellows that frequent that establishment are terribly loud.”
    Ah, that was settled. If his men could see him now, they would surely laugh him right out of England. The great Captain Ashley befuddled by a woman who did not even reach his shoulder.
    The horses seemed to know their way, as they turned toward town at the main road with no direction from him. Trying desperately to focus his own thoughts on his duties, James asked, “What do you know of the smuggling hereabouts, Lady Farnsworth?”
    “Nothing at all!”
    A rather strident answer.
    “What I mean to say is, I really am not the one to give you that sort of information, Captain. I am woefully ignorant of the trafficking of untaxed goods.”
    “Ah.”
    “Turn here, please. We shall visit the Widow Leland.”
    James obliged his passenger and turned the horses down a rutted lane that ended at the front door of a small cottage.
    “Surely you know a bit about the smuggling, Lady Farnsworth?” James tried again to get any information he could. “It is quite prevalent in the area.”
    Lady Farnsworth fluttered her fingers in a gesture that James found strangely un-Lady-Farnsworth-like. In the little time he had been in her presence, he at least realized she was not at all the fluttering type.
    “Really, Captain, I know very little. In fact, I only know what everyone else in the country knows. The smugglers send out our wool on French vessels without putting them through customs, and receive goods like tea and whiskey in the same manner.” She shrugged prettily. “I am sure I have never seen any untaxed goods. Since the incoming tea and alcohol usually go straight to London, you have probably seen more of the end product than I.” She batted her lashes and then pointed. “There is the dear Widow Leland now.”
    James pulled the wagon to a halt as the Widow Leland came out to greet them, and all James could think was that the poor of Gravesly were rather better fed than the poor he had seen in other parts of the country.
    James jumped down and bowed to the round Widow Leland when Lady Farnsworth