Читать книгу The Pleasure of His Bed - Donna Grant - Страница 6

London, 1717

“Babies are not made that way! Don’t tell me I must subject myself to—” Daphne Havisham shuddered from the tip of her upswept ebony hair to the hem of her voluminous blue gown. “Mama, this is wrong! Don’t make me go to America to become some man’s…Oh, I’m going to be ill!”

From across the sumptuous bedroom, Sofia Martine bit back a snicker. She’d been packing the girls’ trousseaux—Daphne and Beatrix were taking an enormous number of trunks—while Lady Constance educated her two oldest daughters in the ways of men and women.

As the indelicate sound of vomiting came from the corner, Beatrix eyed her mother with a raised brow. “So you’re saying you’ve allowed Papa to do this to you…. Well, if there are four of us girls, at least four times he’s dipped his stick into your—”

“Trixie! That’s enough of your impertinence!” Constance Havisham’s tight-lipped pucker became the martyred expression she assumed at the first sign of unpleasantness. “A woman must endure inelegance—must rise above her own discomfort—to bring children into this world. It’s our mission. It’s why we were created.”

“I’m not going!” Daphne declared. “I cannot fathom opening my legs to allow—to be violated by—”

As the spoiled brunette gagged over the chamber pot again, Sofia turned her head to keep from joining her—and to roll her eyes. It was no secret among the household staff that Lady Constance did not open her legs anymore, and that her husband found his pleasure elsewhere these days…below stairs, when it was inconvenient to visit his mistress across town.

“I’ve finished here for now, milady,” Sofia rasped. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll pack my own trunk. The girls will need me to dress them very early in the morning.”

Lady Constance covered her nose and mouth, nodding weakly.

Sofia threw open the window and then placed the rose-patterned wash bowl beneath Lady Constance’s pale, pinched face. “There, there,” she crooned, “you’ve done your motherly best. It’s up to the girls and their husbands to put it all together, just as you did when you were a bride.”

Sofia exited the bedroom then, aware of a rising hysteria in that room—and the foxlike smile on Trixie’s face. At fourteen, Miss Beatrix was wiser in the ways of the world than her older sister…contemplating a voyage away from her mother’s watchful eye, aboard a ship where brawny sailors might teach her what Daphne didn’t want to know.

For propriety’s sake, there could be no babies—no spreading of virginal legs—before Sofia delivered the sisters to their prospective bridegrooms! Which would be worse? Nursing Daphne, who would puke and pout during the entire voyage? Or keeping track of the devious Miss Trix? As she hurried down the back stairs, Sofia wanted much more than fresh air: she wanted out. Even in their finer moments, the Havisham sisters tried her patience enough to dampen her excitement over this trip to America…this daring adventure!

Those sailors would appreciate a woman who could match them in for out, soft for hard. A willing woman like herself! Except she’d be playing nanny and nursemaid the whole time, unless—

At the sound of male voices, Sofia paused before passing the study doorway. Lord Havisham and the captain he’d hired spoke in low undertones, making the final arrangements before tomorrow’s departure.

“—hope you’ll understand, Captain Delacroix, that while the safe delivery of my daughters is my highest priority,” the nobleman insisted, “I have loaded the Lady Constance with jewels, fine textiles, spices—not to mention the double dowries promised to my associates in New York who are betrothed to Daphne and Beatrix.”

“And I thank you for equipping my two ships so generously, sir,” came the suave reply. “You’ve entrusted me not only with your precious daughters but with a great deal of wealth, as well. I assure you my partner and I are committed to a safe and timely delivery.”

There was a pause. A clinking of snifters.

“I see this voyage as…an investment in America and in my shipping interests there.” Lord Havisham’s voice and sense of importance were riding a wave of happy intoxication, yet he splashed more brandy into their glasses. “I trust you will take every opportunity to make this a lucrative venture…for both of us. Pirates notwithstanding.”

Pirates? Sofia’s eyes widened, and she shifted slightly…caught the men’s reflection in the gilt-framed mirror beside the fireplace. Zachary Havisham, even in his high, white wig, came only to the shoulder of his companion, the captain. And what a fine, square shoulder it was, too.

“Dellakwahhhhhh,” she murmured, tasting his name, just as he was savoring the costly brandy her employer had poured. Saints above, he was a sight! All dark, masculine curls and a cleft chin and blue, blue eyes.

He caught sight of her in the mirror with those stunning eyes and held her gaze as he replied to Lord Havisham.

“Yes, sir, of late the entire coastline of America has become Blackbeard’s playground,” he said calmly. “But my partner, Morgan O’Roark, and I are experienced in the ways of such brigands, and we know alternate routes to elude them. Should we encounter pirates, my lord, I guarantee you we shall have our way with them!”

“Yes, yes! Hear! Hear!” Havisham crowed, and then he clinked his snifter to Delacroix’s again. “By Jove, were I a younger man, I’d be sailing with you! Nothing quite like the salt air—”

“The freedom of the seas.”

“—and the rolling of the waves—”

“The validation of one’s…manhood,” the captain crooned. And damned if he didn’t wink at Sofia!

“—to set the blood a-boil,” her employer expounded. With a single gulp he emptied his snifter and then flung it against the hearth. “Here’s to you, Damon Delacroix! And to your successes in America! Long may you sail!”

Delacroix raised his brandy in silent salute to the mirror—to her!—and then he, too, drained his snifter and shattered it against the bricks. “Here’s to your daughters—to their fine breeding and the continuing of your lineage, sir.”

Oh, but he was asking for it, wasn’t he? Smiling coyly, Sofia ducked down the hall before she did something foolish to call attention to herself. Lord, but she was quivering and flighty and…wet. She could show Daphne and Beatrix a thing or two about how things really happened when a man and a woman felt the heat rising between them!

But it was time to help her mother dish up dinner in the kitchen. Sofia dearly wanted to dish up something hotter and spicier after the meal, too, before the dashing Captain Delacroix left the estate tonight. She’d be shirking her duties indeed if she let this fine man go away hungry!