Steve grinned. “I’ve always wondered—what were you doing when Ginny and Concepciόn were fighting? Why didn’t you take the knife away?”

Shuddering, Paco shook his head. “I have a strong sense of self-preservation that does not permit me to be fool enough to try to take a knife away from an angry woman who knows how to use it.”

It was a sentiment that Steve understood. His untamed tigress, his siren-nemesis wife, was the kind of woman who kept a man curious as well as cautious. He was living proof of that.

Yes, he understood Bishop’s desire to use Ginny as a means of gaining information from Lerdo and Díaz, much as he hated the thought of it. She was the kind of woman who would always be noticed by men, and by jealous women as well. Even ’Cesca, who was one of the most confident women he had ever met in his life, had admitted to a twinge of jealousy.

“Caro, your wife is a bitch, but a beautiful bitch. I can see how she would attract a man such as yourself, though I think you a fool for going back to her.”

Ginny would not have appreciated the Italian woman’s dismissive assessment of her, but she had voiced her own opinion of Francesca that was even less flattering. Being in the same room with them in London had not been an experience he cared to repeat; he’d been on tenterhooks waiting for one of them to start an angry, spitting catfight, and had been amazed by Ginny’s restraint.

Maybe she had changed, as Paco said, but he was damned if he knew how permanent it would be. He didn’t trust her not to revert to her old ways.

Hell, he couldn’t trust himself not to lapse into his more familiar role as an indifferent husband. It would be far too easy to forget their recent vows to revive their marriage for the sake of the children as well as their own mutual need. With Ginny, he always felt as if he were walking a tightrope, balanced precariously between heaven and hell.

The dragging creak of chains was suddenly loud, and diverted his attention to the fact that the ship was about to depart. Steve left the rail and Paco, and headed down the passageway belowdecks. The pungent scent of damp wood and cargo was thick in the air, redolent with vestiges of spice and tobacco, even whiskey.

The Liberty made frequent voyages to the Texas-Mexico border to deliver cargo, some of it not as legal as the ship’s manifests recorded. It was sleek and silent, a vast advantage over the noisier, more visible steamships of the line, and able to slip into port without much notice.