Читать книгу A Regency Rake's Redemption - Louise Allen - Страница 15

24th December 1808

They rounded the southern tip of India and headed across the ocean towards Mozambique as dinner was served on Christmas Eve. The stewards had brought a load of greenery on board from Madras and the Great Cabin and cuddy were lavishly decorated with palm fronds and creepers.

The ladies cut both red and gold paper into strips to weave amongst it and there were garlands of marigolds that had been kept in the cool of the bilges and were only a little worn and wilted if one looked too close.

‘At least that reduces the look of Palm Sunday in church that all those fronds produced,’ Averil observed as they made table decorations to run down the length of the long board.

The captain had decreed a return to formality and precedence, Dita noticed as the stewards began to set out place cards with careful reference to a seating plan. It meant she would be sitting next to Alistair. She had been avoiding any intimacy ever since their return on board ship, despising herself for cowardice even as she did so.

She had tried not to be obvious about it: she owed the man her life, after all. But it was torture to be close to him. She wanted to touch him, to have him take her lips again, and yet she knew that the passion he had shown her would have been the same for any woman. It was not much consolation that he appeared to have been avoiding her, too.

‘We can put out the presents now,’ Averil said. ‘The place cards will help.’ Dita made herself concentrate on the task at hand. The stewards were having a difficult time of it, trying to lay an elaborate formal setting while ladies ducked and wove between them, heaping up little parcels that slid about with the motion of the ship, but the mood was good natured and, as Miss Whyton said, sorting out the gifts could only add to the jollity.

Dita juggled her pile of packages, squinting at labels and tweaking ribbons while she tried to avoid thinking about the fact that there was one person she had no gift for. Alistair wouldn’t notice, she tried to tell herself, not with such a pile of parcels in front of him. But she suspected he would. It was not that she wanted to snub him, but she had had no idea what to give him. A trivial token was just that: trivial. She could not insult the man who had saved her life with a trinket. A significant gift—and she was a good enough needlewoman to make a handsome waistcoat from the silks in her trunk if she applied herself—would cause comment.

There was only one thing and it nagged at the back of her mind until the last teetering pile was stabilised with tightly rolled napkins.

‘Just time to get changed,’ Averil said as they all stood back to admire the effect, then Dita followed her to their cabins.

The jewellery box was locked in her trunk and she lifted it out and set it on the bunk. Emeralds for dinner, she decided, and lifted out the necklace and earrings and set them aside.

Her hands went back to the box, hesitated, then she lifted out the top tray, then the items below until it appeared to be empty. There was a pin to be pulled, a narrow panel to be pushed and then the secret drawer slid out. In it was a slim oblong package wrapped in tarnished silver paper. The amber velvet ribbon was frayed and the label, Alistair, Happy Birthday with love from Dita XXX, was crumpled.

It was almost nine years since she had wrapped it up. The stitches might be embarrassingly clumsy—she should check. Certainly it needed rewrapping. Dita hesitated, then lifted out the package, slid it into her reticule just as it was, and reassembled the box before she locked it safely away.

The cuddy was filling up as she returned and the noise level was rising, helped by bowls of punch and glasses of champagne. The doors had been thrown open to the deck so the sea breezes could mitigate the heat of twenty-one bodies, hot food and scurrying stewards and some of the sailors had been posted on the deck to play fiddles and pipes.

‘Lady Perdita.’ Captain Archibald bowed over her hand and handed her wine.

‘You look, if I may be so bold, utterly stunning, Lady Perdita.’ Daniel Chatterton appeared at her side, his gaze frankly appreciative as he took in her amber silk gown and the glow of the emeralds. ‘You look so … uncluttered—’ he glanced towards some of the other ladies, weighted down with jewellery and feathers ‘—and that shows off your beauty.’

There was no denying the pleasure his words gave her. She had deliberately set out to dress her hair without ornament, only one long brown curl brushing her shoulder. The emeralds were simply cut and simply mounted to achieve their effect by their size and quality and her gown shimmered in the light.

But it was not Daniel Chatterton she had dressed for. It was a satisfying statement of the polished style she had made her own and it was a defiant gesture to Alistair. See what you spurn.

He was on the opposite side of the cabin, talking to Averil, making her laugh and blush, and Dita allowed herself a moment’s indulgence to admire the dark tailcoat, the tight breeches, immaculate striped stockings, exquisite neckcloth. He would look perfectly at home in a London drawing room, she thought. Then he moved and the play of muscle disturbed the cut of the coat and the look he swept round the crowded room held the alertness of the hunter. He isn’t quite civilised any more, she thought, and found she was running her tongue over dry lips.

The gong sounded, the patterns shifted and broke up as people went to their places, the chaplain said grace and then went below decks to do the same in the Great Cabin, and Alistair was holding her chair for her. She smiled her thanks and he smiled back. No one looking at them could have imagined that kiss in the rickshaw, she thought. It almost seemed like a dream now. But, of course, he didn’t want her, so there would be nothing in his look to betray him.

The meal passed in a noise-filled blur. The food was good, but too rich, the wine flowed too freely, Alistair made unexceptional, entertaining small talk, first to her, then to his other partner. Dita nodded and chatted and smiled and plied her fan and drank a second glass of wine and wondered if the room was spinning or whether it was her head.

Finally the dishes were cleared, fruit was set out, more wine was poured and the captain raised his glass. ‘A toast, my lords and gentlemen, to the ladies who have created this festive table.’

The men rose and drank, the ladies smiled and bowed and the captain picked up his first present, the signal for them all to begin.

There were shrieks and laughter and people calling their thanks down the length of the board. It would be impossible, Dita thought, to notice if someone had omitted to give you a present unless you were looking for one gift in particular. The Chattertons waved and mouthed Thank you for the watercolour sketches she had done of them. Averil seemed delighted with the notebook she had covered in padded silk and the captain was most impressed with her drawing of the Bengal Queen’s figurehead.

Her own collection of gifts was delightful, too. Thoughtful, handmade presents from some people, well intentioned but prosaic ones from others. The Chattertons had given her a pair of beautiful carved sandalwood boxes, Averil a string of hand-painted beads. There was nothing from Alistair.

Dita carefully folded up the wrapping paper, handed it to a steward and glanced around the table. No, no unclaimed gift, nothing had fallen to the floor. He had not given her a present—that would teach her to be complacent and expect something.

‘What a clever idea these knots made into paperweights are,’ she remarked to Alistair with a bright smile, holding out her own gift from the captain. ‘You have a different knot, I see.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed as he pushed back his chair. ‘Please excuse me.’

Dita watched him leave the cuddy. He had gone down to the Great Cabin, she realised, hearing the noise coming up the companionway from the company below. Why? Was he going to come back? On the impulse Dita got to her feet and followed him. She would give Alistair her gift even if he scorned it. It was that or throw it over the side.

There was a passage at the foot of the steps formed by the screens that divided up the cabins down on this deck. To her right she could hear the passengers in the Great Cabin toasting each other amidst much laughter. A small boy ran out astride a hobby horse, a toy trumpet in one hand. He stared at her, then rushed back.

This was foolish. She could hardly confront Alistair with her tattered little parcel in front of everyone down here; she would go back and lay it at his place. Even as she thought it he emerged from the same opening that the child had run through.

‘Dita?’

‘I have a gift for you.’

‘And I one for you. Come down here.’ Alistair led her past several doors and along the cramped passageway, lit only by a few lanterns. They turned a corner and were quite alone, even the noise from the Great Cabin fading into a murmur like the sea. In the shadows he seemed larger than ever and somehow mysterious.

‘I realised there would be one thing missing from a traditional Christmas, beside a flaming Yule log and snow.’ He held something in his hand, a spray of foliage that caught the light with a myriad of soft creamy orbs.

‘Oh, how lovely! Mistletoe—where on earth did you get it?’ Dita reached for it, but he held it just out of her reach.

‘Magic.’

She could believe that. The ship pitched and she stumbled towards him and was caught in his free arm. ‘Will you trust me with a kiss now?’

‘I thought you didn’t want me. You said you did not.’

‘I said that the way I kissed you then was simply a reaction to danger, to fighting. It was wrong to have done it like that, then. But I would have to be dead not to want to kiss you, Dita.’

‘Oh. I see. I thought—’ So he does want me, just as I want him. ‘Yes.’ Her heart soared and she did not hesitate now. Trust him? It was herself she could not trust, here in the semi-darkness, but she was not going to fight the way she felt. He was so close, and what she could not see clearly she could read with every other sense. He smelled of wine and smoke and she leaned a little closer to inhale clean, hot male and the scent that was his alone. His breathing was slow and calm, but she could detect just the slightest hitch in it as though he was controlling it consciously. And touch—solid, strong male in clothing she wanted to rip from his body.

Around her waist his hand held her steady and she fought the need to press against it, to feel those long fingers move on her skin. She wanted them on her, all over her. In her. Dita blushed in the shadows, hot with desire and shaken by her own imaginings and memories.

Alistair’s free hand moved and touched her hair and she felt him fasten the mistletoe sprig in amongst the heaped curls before he drew her to him with both hands.

‘Just a kiss,’ he murmured as he bent his head.

‘Yes,’ she agreed and reached up her own hands to touch his hair. It was soft and strong, thick and rebellious under her fingers and she recalled the unruly length of it when he had been younger, long enough for him to tie back with a cord when he was outside. When they had been in bed together she had untied the cord and run her fingers into the silk of it. ‘I like this short, it feels like fur.’ She stroked as she would a cat and he pushed against the caress, his eyes hooded and heavy.

Just a kiss, a Christmas kiss. The taste of him when he touched his mouth to hers had her closing her eyes and opening her lips. The darkness was arousing, gave an edge of danger now she could not see him, only feel and smell and taste. Alistair kissed her as deeply as he had in the rickshaw, but with no desperation, as leisurely as he had on the maidan, but with no mockery; she sighed into his mouth as their tongues met and tangled and stroked, sharing the wet heat and the intimacy and the trust.

Just a kiss, he had said. Dita wanted more, more of him. She pressed close, feeling the ache as her breasts crushed against the silk of his waistcoat, the heat as his erection pressed against her and she rocked into him, moaning now because a sigh was not enough for the need inside her. The man knew how to tantalise and prolong as his young self had not.

‘Dita.’ He lifted his head and she caught his ear between her teeth as he bent to kiss her neck, his hands sliding up to cup her breasts. Stephen had done that and she had recoiled and his hungry grasp had hurt her; now the pressure made her want to rub herself shamelessly against Alistair. It was an effort not to bite and she forced herself to concentrate on licking, nibbling, probing the intriguing whorls of his ear.

‘Perfect,’ Alistair murmured as his fingers found the edge of her bodice and began to stroke the aureole of her nipple. Her breast ached and swelled, heavy and tight in the silken bodice, and she moved under his hands, restless, needing to be free of corsets and camisole, needing his hands on her bare flesh.

He bent to kiss the swell of her breast above the silk, his teasing fingers fretting at the nipple until it was tight to the point of an exquisite pleasure that was almost pain. Dita gasped and Alistair lifted his head, his eyes glinting in the lantern light. ‘Did I hurt you?’

‘No. No … kiss me.’

It was almost too much, the heat of his mouth on hers, the demanding pressure, the tug at her breast that went deep, deep into her belly, down to where she felt the heat building and twisting into something that made her arch to rub against him—but that only made the ache worse. Her back was against the panelling now, Alistair’s weight pressing her, the thick length of his erection just where she needed him to be.

There was something behind her, digging into her back, and she shifted, felt it move and the wall vanished.

Alistair caught her as she stumbled back. ‘The door must have been unlocked,’ he said as she stared about her, confused. ‘It’s an empty cabin.’ There was just enough light to see. Alistair reached outside, lifted a lamp from the wall and came in, closing the door behind him. She heard the click of the key as he stood there, the light spilling out over the bare deck, the unmade bed with its coir mattress. ‘Alistair—’

‘Yes,’ he said, putting down the lantern and coming to pull her into his arms. ‘What do you want, Dita?’

‘I don’t know.’ She tugged at his waistcoat buttons. ‘You.’

‘I want you, too,’ he said as she undid the last of them and began to pull his shirt from his waistband. ‘I only meant to kiss you: I should have known it wouldn’t stop there. Trust me a little more, Dita? Trust me to pleasure you?’

‘Yes,’ she said, not quite understanding what he was asking, what it meant. ‘I need to touch you. Aah …’ Her hands slid around his waist against the hot skin and she stood there, resting against him, catching her breath and feeling him tense under her caress.

That evening so long ago, there had been no time to simply hold each other. He had reached for her, she had stumbled into his arms, thinking to give comfort for whatever was causing him such pain, finding her innocent intentions going up in a blaze of scarce-understood desire in the arms of a young man who had been, it seemed, as desperate as she had been and who had somehow found the control to be gentle despite their urgency.

Alistair moved and lifted her and then they were lying on the bunk and her skirts were around her thighs and her hand was cupped around his erection through his trousers and he groaned as he stroked up her legs. She trembled as he pressed them apart, opened her, slid his fingers into the slick folds that parted for him with no resistance. She had fought Stephen off before he touched her with such intimacy; now she had no shame and no fear, only the desperate need for this man.

That time before she had been passive and uncertain under his seeking hands and urgent mouth; now she wanted to touch him, all of him.

‘Touch me,’ he said against her mouth, echoing her thoughts, and she struggled to understand for a moment. She was touching him. Then she found the fall of his trousers and somehow undid them, slid her hand inside, found the hot, hard length of him and closed her fingers. ‘More. Dita …’

She squeezed and stroked and he shuddered and slipped one finger inside her as she clung to him. Then another, and his thumb found a place that felt hard and tight with tension and stroked and she cried out until he stopped her mouth with his, pressing into her circling hand, stroking and squeezing until she screamed silently, arching upwards as everything broke inside her and he surged in her grasp and shuddered above her and the world spun out of its orbit.

‘Dita, sweetheart. Are you all right?’

‘Hmm?’ She was on a bed, in a strange cabin, with Alistair, and he had made love to her—and she had made love to him and it had been everything she remembered yet different. ‘Yes. Yes, I am quite all right.’

He was sitting up, putting his clothing to rights and she lay there, just looking at him in the lamplight. Beautiful, mysterious, male. Even more mysterious now he had let her come so close to him again. As close, almost, as it was possible to be. Alistair gave her his handkerchief and got up, his back turned, while she tidied herself and got unsteadily to her feet.

‘Are you all right?’ He turned to look at her in the lamplight and she smiled. ‘That wasn’t what I really want, you know that.’ He reached out and began to put her hair into order. ‘There. I’ll leave the mistletoe in place for some other lucky fellows to snatch a kiss.’

‘What do you want?’ she asked, ignoring her hair, not caring about any other men and their kisses.

‘To make love with you, fully. But I won’t take that risk, Dita. You said it yourself—one slip would be fatal to your reputation. This was certainly a slip—but I think we’ll get away with it.’ He pulled her closer. ‘Was it all right for you, our loving, even though it was not complete?’

She answered him truthfully. ‘You gave me more pleasure just now than Stephen did in two days and nights.’ You gave me as much pleasure as that boy had done, so long ago, even though I ache because I need you inside me.

Alistair laughed and caught her to him for another kiss. As they stood there, her arms twined round his neck she said, ‘Do you want your gift?

‘Of course!’ He sounded eager, almost the young Alistair that the present had been intended for all those years ago.

‘Where is my reticule?’ They found it on the floor and she pulled out the package and handed it to him and watched as he flattened out the crumpled label.

‘Happy birthday?’

‘I was going to give it to you the day you left home. I tossed it into the secret drawer of my jewellery box when I realised you were gone. Then I found it again, quite recently. I thought it might amuse you.’ She shrugged, ‘I will not vouch for the embroidery—I think I will have improved since I was sixteen.’

‘You were sixteen when I left?’ He frowned at her. ‘I suppose you must have been. Dita, did we quarrel, that last day? There was something, some memory in the back of my mind that I cannot catch hold of. Dreams like smoke. A kiss? But that cannot be right: I would not have kissed you.’ She thought he muttered, Let alone more, but she was not certain. ‘God, I was drunk that night. The whole thing was such a hellish mess I can’t recall properly.’

‘Yes, we quarrelled,’ she lied. He does not recall making love, his anger, the things he said afterwards. He must have been beside himself. ‘And I cried and you … I left.’

‘Ah.’ The tarnished silver paper flashed in the light as he turned it over in his hands. ‘What are you going to give me for my birthday this year if I open this now?’

‘It depends upon what you deserve,’ she said, and tried to keep her voice light to match his tone.

‘Mmm.’ The low growl held a wealth of promise as the paper tore away to reveal the comb case, wavy stripes of amber and gold and black on one side, on the other a tiger, copied painstakingly from a print in her father’s library. The stitching was a little uneven, the sewing not quite smooth.

‘You made me a tiger?’ Alistair slid the comb out and then back, turning the case in his hands. ‘You had powers of prediction?’

‘No. I always thought you had tiger’s eyes,’ she confessed. ‘When I was a little girl I used to dream you would turn into a tiger at night and stalk the corridors of the castle.’

Alistair stared at her from those same uncanny amber eyes. ‘I frightened you that much?’

‘No, of course not. I thought it was exciting. You know you never frightened me, even when you were angry with me. You looked after me.’

‘I did, didn’t I.’ There was a silence that was strangely awkward while he stood there, quite still except for the restless fingers that turned the comb case over in his hands. Then, just as she opened her mouth to break it, he pushed the gift into his pocket and took up the lantern.

‘We shouldn’t have done that, Dita,’ he said flatly. She stared at him as he turned the magic of their lovemaking into an ill-judged romp with his matter-of-fact words. ‘You look a little ruffled—we had best go up the companionway at the end here and account for that with some sea air. Ready?’

It was as though another man entirely had come into the cabin: brisk, efficient and practical. ‘A good idea,’ Dita said, chilled, and followed him as he stepped with wary care into the corridor.