“Into my cabin?” Her eyes opened ingenuously wide. “Why, Mr. Deverill, what an improper sugg—”
“Enough,” he cut in, giving an uneasy glance up and down the corridor. “If you want to hear my apology and have the satisfaction of crowing over it, you’d best let me in.”
She gave way, closing the door behind him. She then sat down at one of the two chairs at the minuscule table, gesturing for him to take the opposite chair, and it did not escape his notice that her tight-fitting gown forced her to perch on the very edge of her seat.
“After our discussion this afternoon,” he said as he took the offered chair, “I appreciate that I may not have handled our situation as well as I could have done.”
She didn’t seem satisfied by that, but he persevered. “I can only reiterate that learning you were a woman, not the child I’d been expecting, was a shock. And I knew at once that your age would require an entirely different set of circumstances than I was prepared to meet. Then, the discovery of you aboard ship, in my room, a place you had no business to be—”
“You don’t make apologies often, do you?” she cut in.
He blinked at the abrupt question. “No,” he answered, “I suppose I don’t.”
“Obviously not, since you’re terrible at it.”
“I don’t often find it necessary,” he shot back before recalling that he’d come here in a conciliatory spirit. Exhaling a sigh, he started over. “Miss McGann—”
A knock on the door of her cabin interrupted before he could go any further.
“Ah.” Marjorie rose. “That’ll be the baroness, I expect, coming back to fetch me.”
“Who?” he asked, too surprised by her declaration to bother with proper grammar.
“Baroness Vasiliev,” she answered over her shoulder as she turned away and stepped across the tiny stateroom. “My chaperone and companion.”
“Chaperone?” he echoed in bafflement as he stood up. “Companion? What are you talking about?”
“Baroness Vasiliev,” she said again, as if repeating the woman’s title was expected to enlighten him. “I’m so looking forward to presenting you to her.”
Jonathan watched as Marjorie opened the door to a middle-aged woman of Junoesque proportions and suspiciously black hair. Dressed for dinner in a red brocade gown that was obviously new and swathed in diamonds he suspected were paste, this so-called baroness looked far more like an actress playing a part than a real aristocrat, at least in Jonathan’s opinion.
“Marjorie, darling,” she greeted the girl with exaggerated familiarity, flinging the end of her fluffy, feather-trimmed evening stole back over one shoulder. “How marvelous you look,” she said, her voice laced with heaviness of an overdone Russian accent. “The dress fits you well.”
Too well, Jonathan wanted to say, but somehow, he managed to suppress his opinion.
“I do hope you are ready to go down,” the woman continued, “for I must have a drink. I’m parched.”
“I’m not ready just yet, I’m afraid,” the girl answered and opened the door wide. “But please, do come in, Baroness.”
The woman noticed him as Marjorie moved aside and she entered the cabin. Frowning, she lifted the jeweled opera glasses that hung about her neck, plunked them onto her nose, and gave him the once-over in a way so theatrically perfect that he almost wanted to laugh.
“Baroness, may I introduce my guardian, Mr. Jonathan Deverill?” Marjorie presented him to the woman with a flourish. “Mr. Deverill, the Baroness Vasiliev.”
He responded to this introduction by bowing his head a fraction. “Madam.”
If he thought his refusal to address her by her title would be regarded as a set-down, he was mistaken. At once, the opera glasses dropped to nestle in the crevice of her bosom, and her disapproving face relaxed into smiles, making her look even more like the blowsy actress he suspected her of being.
“It is so good of you to trust me with the responsibility for your young ward, Mr. Deverill, and I assure you that I take my duty as her chaperone most seriously. That is why I must ask you to leave her apartments at once.”
This pretense of concern was a bit much, and it took all the effort Jonathan had not to roll his eyes. “Your vigilance does you credit,” he said instead, striving to keep a straight face. “But I’m afraid I have some matters of business to discuss with Miss McGann.”
“My dear man...” She paused, flinging out her hands in an extravagant gesture. “I cannot permit it. Here, in her own cabin? No. This is not done.”
He glanced past the self-proclaimed baroness to where Marjorie was standing by the door, and his expression must have been grim indeed, for she looked away at once. But he did not miss the smile that tilted one corner of her mouth, and he feared that instead of being intimidated, she was having a jolly good laugh at his expense.
“What sort of chaperone would I be,” the older woman said, bringing his attention back to her, “if I allowed any man, even her own guardian, a private meeting? No, I must be able to assure the duchess when we meet again that the girl has been looked after.”
Diverted for a moment, he frowned. “The duchess? Do you mean my sister, the Duchess of Torquil?”
