Читать книгу Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch - Louise Allen, Miranda Jarrett - Страница 15

“You have the look of a fightin’ man, Mr. Sparhawk,” said Hart, the earnest young man who was the Raleigh’s mate. Jeremiah had come on deck while he waited for Caro to wake and dress, and while the mate’s cheerful company was not exactly his choice for so early in the morning, at least Hart had none of Bertle’s belligerence.

With obvious pride, the young man patted the stubby little cannonade he was polishing, and swiped his rag over the barrel again as he grinned at Jeremiah. “We’re only a merchantman, but the cap’n insists we be able to hold our own in a fight. You can see for yourself, sir, how far he’s gone to outfit us proper.”

Though Jeremiah considered himself a merchant shipmaster by trade, he’d seen a good deal more fighting one way or another than many captains in the American navy. The boy had guessed right enough there. But Hart’s estimation of the four pitiful cannonades with which Bertle had armed his sloop was inflated by pride, or perhaps loyalty. To Jeremiah’s eye the guns were probably older than Hart himself, and all the polishing in the world wouldn’t make the antiquated barrels aim true or far enough to frighten any enemy. Arming a merchant vessel like this one was asking for trouble, for any attacker would consider the cannonades excuse enough to fire first.

“How I’d like a good crack at a Frenchman myself, wouldn’t I though!” continued Hart. “Why, put anything French within my range and I’d give them a taste of British courage!”

“Be careful what you wish for, lad,” said Jeremiah dryly. Once, very long ago, he’d been every bit as eager to chase after the enemy. His first encounter with one of that enemy’s frigates and the carnage a single broadside could bring had instantly toppled his youthful bravado. “The press-gangs would make a prize of you in an instant.”

“Oh, they can’t take me,” said Hart blithely. “My father paid old man Bertle twenty guineas to rank me mate so I’d be clear of the press. Masters and mates, by law the press can’t touch them.”

“Don’t be so certain.” Judging by what else Jeremiah had seen of Bertle’s character, he wouldn’t trust the man not to sell poor Hart, mate or not, and collect the navy’s bounty himself. He glanced at the horizon, gauging the time by the level of the rising sun, and wondered uneasily why Caro hadn’t joined him by now. She’d been stirring when he’d left, and that had been at least an hour ago.

“Not that it matters,” Hart was saying, his disappointment clear. “I’ll lay you odds we won’t see even a hair of a Frenchman between here and Naples, let alone get to fire at one. Have you ever killed one yourself, Mr. Sparhawk? One of the French bastards, I mean?”

Jeremiah almost winced at the young man’s innocent callousness. “They’re men, Hart, not grouse in season, and they tend to bleed and die the same as the rest of us.”

“Then you are a fighting man, sir!” he exclaimed excitedly. “We was talking in the mess and we were sure you were, no matter what the cap’n said. He said you was mean and dangerous, and we should steer clear of you, but I thought you looked like a man who’d know things worth knowing. A sight more than old Bertle would, anyway.”

Jeremiah looked past the young man to the water. He knew things, all right, such wonderful things that made him shake and weep helplessly as he had last night, things he’d give much to forget if he could. There had been a time in his life when he’d been proud to be known as a man who never walked from a fight because he was confident he’d always win, but now he wasn’t as certain. These days it seemed he wasn’t certain about much of anything.

He thought again of last night, wondering how Caro would treat him this morning. Like the young man before him, she had wanted so badly to believe him a hero who could solve her problems through the magic of his courage alone. Well, she couldn’t believe that any longer. He glanced again at the empty companionway. Where the devil was she, anyway?

“So how many Frenchmen have you killed, Mr. Sparhawk?” persisted Hart, his eyes shining with bloodthirsty ardor.

“Enough to know I’d rather not kill any more of them.”

Hart’s chubby face fell. “Even to defend English soil?”

“The only thing I’ve done for English soil is send English men under it.” He knew he’d be quoted in the mess, and he didn’t give a damn if he was. “If you ever bothered to listen to your captain, you’d know I’m American, lad, not English, and I’ll thank you not to forget the war—our war—that made the difference.”

He turned on his heel before Hart could answer and headed below. God, he sounded as if he were a hundred years old! If Caro had been with him, he wouldn’t have made such a pompous fool of himself. Caro would understand. Caro would—damnation, why had he left her alone for so long?

He skipped the bottom three steps of the ladder and raced to their cabin. He tried to open the door and found it latched from within, and though last night he’d wanted her to lock the door, he now found it nothing but frustrating.

“Caro, open the door,” he ordered, thumping his fist on the pine for good measure. “It’s Jeremiah, Caro!”

Yet all he heard in return was a faint, muffled voice from within, and his frustration turned to fear for her. He remembered the way Bertle had leered as he’d spoken her name, how he’d said half the crew was already in love with her. Dear God, if anything had happened to her because he’d been careless…

“Caro, sweetheart, are you all right?” he asked urgently. “Can you come to the door?”

For an answer he heard only another incoherent sound, this one close to a sob. It was enough for Jeremiah. Without waiting to hear more, he threw his shoulder against the door, determined to break it down if he had to and free her.

But as he braced himself to strike the door again, Caro herself threw it open from within. Though in the sunlight that slanted down from the open hatch, her cheeks were flushed and her hair was tumbled wildly about her face, the only part of her that seemed amiss was her temper.

“What in God’s holy name do you think you’re doing, Jeremiah Sparhawk?” she demanded furiously. “First you disappear for hours on end when surely you must know I need you, and then, when you finally decide to grace me with your presence once again, you try to break the door down like some sort of rampaging barbarian!”

“You needed me?” repeated Jeremiah, mystified, fixing on the only part of her tirade that might make sense. “Needed me how?”

“Oh, stop hanging about there in the hall and come inside!” She opened the door wider and stepped back so he could pass, one hand on the door and the other awkwardly behind her back. “Though I suppose I’ve said that all wrong, too, haven’t I? Well, come along then, correct me!”

“It’s a companionway, not a hall,” he said as he reached out and shut the door. Though it was day above, in the windowless cabin she’d been forced to light the candle in the lantern again to see enough to dress, and on her coverlet he saw her brush and a mirror, and the little ivory combs she used to pin up her hair. “But that’s the least of what doesn’t make sense, Caro. What the blazes did you expect of me?”

“It’s what you expect of me!” she cried indignantly. She shoved her hair back from her face. “You toss your coat over your shoulders and fumble a knot into your neckcloth and there you are, decent enough to breakfast with the king himself, while I’m trapped here, struggling like some poor cat in a sack, desperate for a little decent consideration of my plight!”

“Enough, Caro, enough!” He’d never seen her fuss and fume like this, and he didn’t care if he never saw it again. “How can I defend myself when you won’t even tell me what I haven’t done?”

“This!” She turned abruptly to face the bulkhead. In the candlelight he saw how her hand bunched together the black bombazine of her gown, holding it tight at the waist. Above and below her hand the gown was open, to her hips, the lacings hanging loose from the eyelets on one side, and to his stunned surprise, that was all: no shift, no petticoats, no stays or corset, only creamy, flawless skin that seemed almost luminescent in the candlelight.

“Now you understand, don’t you, Jeremiah?” she asked over her shoulder, oblivious to his speechless response. “There is absolutely no way I could do up those lacings myself. I know, because I’ve tried and tried until I nearly wept with my own clumsiness.”

He reminded himself he was a man of the world, a man of experience, but though he knew he should look away he couldn’t, his gaze riveted in admiring fascination to the angled glimpses of her skin. How the devil was he going to act as her lady’s maid, politely ignoring this sort of display? He’d always tried to be a gentleman where ladies were concerned, but this was more than any gentleman should have to withstand. And here he’d been worrying about seeing her in her nightgown!

“Caro, sweetheart,” he began, his mouth dry. “Caro, I’m not sure I can do this.”

“Certainly you can,” she said promptly. “Sailors are supposed to be very good with knots and lines and ropes and things. How different can this be?”

“Oh, it’s different, Caro. Trust me.” He cleared his throat, running his hand back through his hair to keep it from touching her. “Now I’m no expert on such kickshaws and furbelows, sweetheart, but shouldn’t there be more—more petticoats or some such?”

“Of course there should be, but please, please don’t tell your sister!” She turned gracefully halfway around, beseeching him over her shoulder. “I wore the petticoats yesterday because she’d ordered both these mourning gowns for me for this voyage, and I did want to please her, but they’re hot and heavy and stiff and I hate how they tangled between my legs when I walked.”

Lord help him, she wasn’t making this any easier at all. Tangled between her legs, for all love!

“Several years ago, when the fashions were so very bare, one wasn’t supposed to wear a stitch beneath one’s gowns, and I—well, I didn’t. I still don’t, if I don’t have to.” She smiled, the quick conspirator’s grin he’d come to recognize meant trouble for him. “You’re a man, Jeremiah, so you’ll never know how dreadful it is to have whalebone stays and hoops jabbing into your ribs whenever you laugh.”

“I can imagine.” Oh, he imagined, all right, imagined everything there was to imagine.

“Then you’ll understand that I’d rather Desire didn’t know. I don’t want her to think me ungrateful.” She turned away from him again, releasing the fabric she’d bunched in her hand. “Now help me, please, Jeremiah, so we can go up on deck together. I’m sick to death of this wretched little cabin and I can’t wait to see the sun again.”

If she could be so cavalier, than so could he. He took a deep breath and forced himself to study how the back of the gown was constructed. There was one wider tie that seemed to pull the high waist together, and then a narrower cording that must weave the two halves of the back together. No challenge at all, really.

“You must remember I’m only pretending to be a married man,” he said gruffly. “I suppose you’ve grown so accustomed to your husband doing this for you that you think nothing of it.”

“Frederick? Helping me dress?” She laughed, not scornfully but with genuine amusement, yet enough to rankle Jeremiah.

“I suppose you have a whole flock of maidservants to help you instead in that big house of yours,” he said as he untangled a knot she’d worked into one of the laces. “Things are different for a countess, aren’t they? Where I’m from, husbands and wives help each other, and not just because of a lack of servants, either.”

“That’s not the reason,” she said quickly. “It’s that Frederick does not choose to be so familiar, not that we’ve so many servants.”

‘’ ‘Familiar’? Is that what you English call it?” Jeremiah laughed but without much enthusiasm. “I thought that was the whole reason for bothering to marry in the first place.”

“Don’t make judgments about my marriage, Jeremiah.” With her face turned away he couldn’t see her expression, yet he could feel her body tense, her amusement replaced by edginess. “I don’t doubt that what we have differs from your notions of a husband and wife, but in our way we’re happier than most married people I’ve seen. Frederick understands me.”

“Will he understand you asking some other man to do up your clothes like this? Will he understand you pretending to be my wife, sharing this cabin with me?”

“He would understand the circumstances,” she said firmly, though she’d hesitated a moment too long for her conscience to be as clear as she wanted Jeremiah to believe. “In any event, it’s not as if the gown laced in the front. What can my back alone signify?”

“Oh, Caro,” he whispered roughly, “you shouldn’t tempt me to prove you wrong.”

With just his fingertips he traced the long, sweeping curve of her spine, grazing so lightly along her skin that he felt her shiver. Smiling to himself, he ran his hand upward, spreading his fingers so he felt not only the shallow valley, but the soft rise of her back on either side, and this time she gasped. But she didn’t move away, and she didn’t tell him to stop.

And he didn’t.

Caro never would have asked him if she’d thought it would lead to this. But how could she have known? No one had ever touched her like this before. She felt both his hands now as he kneaded the tension from her shoulders, his thumbs working deep into her muscles, and she closed her eyes as her heart quickened and a delicious languor swept over her.

Her conscience told her the freedom she was giving Jeremiah was wrong, no matter how wonderful it felt. She had tried so hard to be a good woman, a lady, and no lady would ever let a man touch her like this. Look what had happened to her own mother, and what had nearly happened to her, as well.

But as she felt Jeremiah ease the silk of her gown further off her shoulders, she couldn’t stop him, not when she felt his hands slide once again down the length of her back, his fingers splayed to cover as much of her as he could. This wonderful, wild sensation that only he seemed able to bring to her simply felt too good. His hands were warm and sure wherever they touched her, learning where her waist narrowed and her hips flared, reaching forward to find the softest flesh on the underside of her breasts. She gasped with surprised pleasure and instinctively arched against him, seeking the strong support of his chest as her own knees turned wobbly as a new lamb’s.

“Oh, Jeremiah, what you’re doing to me,” she whispered with what little breath she still controlled. “Oh my, Jeremiah!”

He chuckled softly, knowing and masculine, as he slid one arm around her waist to steady her. “Exactly what am I doing?”

“You—you know.” Grateful for his support, she turned her cheek against his shoulder, the wool of his coat rough against her skin. With her eyes still closed, she was almost painfully aware of his touch, the stiff hair on his forearm grazing against her side, the rustling silk bombazine of her gown gliding over them both.

“I didn’t know you wanted me to play lady’s maid,” he teased, his lips so close that his breath was warm on her ear, making her shiver yet again. “Don’t be so sure I know what you want now.”

“But you do,” she said breathlessly. “You know better than I do myself.”

“Do I now, sweet Caro?” His other hand moved higher, her breast filling his palm as his work-calloused thumb teased her nipple into a taut peak. She caught her breath as the first hot flames of desire raced through her blood, her whole body tightening, coiling in a way she didn’t begin to understand. Seeking some kind of release she moved restlessly against him, not realizing the agony she was bringing to him until she heard him groan, his grasp on her tightening as he tried to hold her still.

“Steady, lass,” he said, his breathing now as ragged as her own. “There’s naught to be gained for either of us that way, is there?”

“Oh, Jeremiah, I’m sorry!” Unaware until he’d spoken that she’d done anything wrong, she twisted about in his arms, clutching her gown modestly over her breasts as she faced him. “I told you I didn’t know what I was doing, but you refuse to believe me.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” He swept her pale, tangled hair back from her forehead and tipped her face up toward his. “I’ll need convincing.”

He had, she thought with giddy conviction, the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen on a man, as green and as ever changing as the sea he loved.

“I’m not very good at arguments,” she said softly. “I doubt I could convince you of your own name.”

“Don’t use words, sweetheart, and you’ll do just fine.” Gently he raised her chin and captured her mouth for his own. She remembered what joy it had been to kiss him before, and eagerly she parted her lips for him.

But the heady sweetness she’d remembered from before wasn’t there this time. Too much had happened since then to change the subtle stakes between them, and that easy, careless attraction between two strangers had been irrevocably lost. In its place was something deeper, darker, that Caro sensed from the instant his lips began moving over hers, something she welcomed even as she realized it could lead only to her ruin.

Now when his mouth moved so surely over hers, she felt his heat like a fire licking at her soul. Seamlessly their mouths joined, his tongue savoring her velvety sweetness, plunging deeper and then withdrawing in a seductive dance that left her desperate for more. In return she kissed him the only way she knew how, with a shy eagerness, the way he’d taught her the first time, and he rewarded her with a low growl of masculine satisfaction.

The gown between them slipped forgotten from her fingers as she reached her hands beneath his coat to curl around his neck, drawing him closer as she arched into him. Her breasts tightened against the rough linen of his shirt and the hard muscle of his chest beneath it, and little cries of pleasure escaped her lips to be swallowed by his.

His large hands slid deep into the black silk to caress her body, lifting her against him so she could feel how well they fit together. With an intimacy that at once shocked and excited her, her legs fell open on either side of his, and through the thin barrier of silk she could feel his rigid length as he pressed against her most secret parts, her softness melting around him, teasing them both with the promise of what completion would bring.

His mouth broke free of hers, his beard rough against her skin as he trailed kisses along her jaw. “We’re so good together, sweetheart,” he murmured, and even in her inexperience she knew he was right. “I’ll give you paradise like you’ve never known.”

Frustrated by the frail barriers still between them, he began pulling her skirts high over her legs, relentlessly guiding her toward the bunk as she clung to him. In her ear she heard how he whispered her name over and over, his voice thick with desire, making the single word a prayer of passion and tenderness she’d never dreamed she’d hear.

“Love me, Caro,” he whispered hoarsely as he licked at the salty hollow of her throat. “Love me, and let me love you.”

Love me. He loved her, he wanted her: what else could a woman hope for from a man? Yet for Caro the awful reality of his words sliced through the haze of passion, and her eyes filled with tears of longing for what she could not—must not—have.

“No,” she said softly, covering herself as she pushed away from him. “I can’t, Jeremiah.”

“Yes, sweetheart, you can,” he breathed, still so sure of himself as he gently drew her back, kissing her again with an intensity that left her dizzy with longing. “You will.”

She closed her eyes and pulled away again, trying to shut him out as she struggled to find the strength within herself to turn away. There could be no place in her life for the kind of love he was offering. Love like that was an indulgence that women could not afford. Love like Jeremiah wanted from her brought suffering, pain and sorrow. She had only to look as far as her own mother.

“I can’t, Jeremiah. Please. Please!’ She withdrew again, and again he reached for her, but now with a blind possessiveness she hadn’t expected, crushing her hard against his chest. For the first time she found him using his size and strength against her, and too late she realized the force of the passion she’d raised in him. Once he had told her he’d never taken a woman against her will, but if he tossed her onto the bunk now to finish what they’d begun, she knew she would have no one to blame but herself. Panicking, she tried to shove him away. “No, Jeremiah, I can’t!”

“Can’t, or won’t?” The blood pounding through his body drowned out every thought except the overwhelming need for her. He had never known a woman who had responded to him so passionately and with so few inhibitions, the sinuous movements of her pale body half hidden, half revealed by the black silk more incendiary than if she’d been completely naked. Her eyes were dark with passion, her throat and breasts flushed; it was inconceivable that she’d wish to end this any more than he did himself, and the physical pain of interruption flared into anger. “I’m waiting, Caro. Can’t, or won’t?”

“Both,” she whispered miserably, her own body aching with unfulfillment. “You must understand—”

“Damn your understanding!” He could take her now, here, while the fire she’d roused in him still throbbed in his body. Despite her words, he knew she wanted him. It would be so easy to bury himself deep within her, to lose himself in the hot promise of her love.

But instead he shoved her away while he still could, so roughly that she stumbled backward. Desperate for some sort of release, he lashed out furiously at the paneling over her head with his fist. “You parade about half-naked and rub yourself against me like a cat in heat, and then you want me to understand when you change your mind?”

She winced at his crudeness, tugging her gown back over her bare breasts. “I didn’t mean it that way,” she said softly. “There are so many reasons.”

“Afraid you’ll lose your title, Countess?” he snarled, as angry with himself for what he’d nearly done to her as he was with her for denying them both. “Afraid that if your precious Frederick learned how eagerly you’d spread your legs for some poor American sailor like me, he’d toss you out on the street like the little whore you are?”

Hot tears of shame ran down her cheeks. “It’s not like that at all!” she cried. “It’s just I—I cannot love you the way you deserve.”

“You expect me to believe that?” Disgusted, he turned to leave.

“It’s the truth!” she sobbed. “Damn you, Jeremiah, did I question you last night?”

He froze, his hand on the latch, his face rigid.

“I need you, Jeremiah,” she said haltingly through her tears. “I need you and care for you, and I believe you care for me, too. But for me, for now, that’s all it can be. I can’t love you the way you want. I can’t love anyone like that. It’s not you, and it’s not Frederick. It’s my fault. All mine.”

She sank down to her knees on the deck, burying both her face and her tears in her hands. He would hate her now. How could he not? She deserved it for what she’d done to him. But, oh, how hard his hatred would be to bear!

She could still hear her mother’s voice, raspy with consumption, as she and her friends had taught the little country virgin the cold, mercenary lessons in pleasing men so men in turn would value her. They’d told her things she’d thought impossible between men and women, then showed her themselves with their willing lovers if she’d dare doubt in their hearing. They had ridiculed her innocence and mocked her romantic ideas of love and happiness as readily as they had criticized her beauty. Such spiteful, jealous women, those friends of Merry Miriam Harris, their high-pitched laughter and their bright satin gowns making them seem like exotic, expensive tropical birds in the gray seaside mist of Portsmouth.

Though she had tried so hard to do what her mother and her friends wanted, every cruel word had found its mark in her thirteen-year-old soul, and each night she had cried herself to sleep on the pile of quilts, rank with stale perfume and old sweat, that was her makeshift bed in the corner of her mother’s dressing room. Yet each night, too, she swore she wouldn’t be like them, and when Frederick had rescued her she thought she’d succeeded. She was cherished, she was loved, she was treated as well as a favorite daughter by a gentle man old enough to be her father who never in fifteen years had asked her to perform the specialities she’d been forced to learn.

But now Caro knew she was no better than her mother and her friends. Only her price had been different. And God in heaven, how dearly it had cost her!

For a long time Jeremiah stood watching her, crumpled there on the deck at his feet in the black sea of her tangled skirts. She was too lost in her sorrow to notice him, and as she wept softly to herself, he felt the blind anger that had so possessed him lessen and slip away. Overhead he heard Bertle shout an order, followed by the crewmen’s footsteps as they hurried to obey. Strange how he’d forgotten he was even at sea. Stranger still how his whole world seemed to have narrowed to this one tiny cabin and the weeping woman within it.

Her hair had fallen forward to veil her face, leaving the nape of her neck and her back in the open gown touchingly exposed. He had never thought of her as vulnerable, yet as she was now he could think of nothing else, and he had done it.

This was his fault, not hers. The scars he carried were there on his body, plain as day, but the ones that marked her ran deeper, and were no less painful for being hidden. He, of all people, should have listened when she’d begged for his understanding. He didn’t care now what had happened to make her believe she was so unworthy of the love she was born to give. What mattered most was that once again, one more time, he had failed another who had trusted him.

With a weary sigh he crouched down beside her, taking her hands in his to gently raise her to her feet. She kept her face lowered, unwilling to let him see how she wept. Wordlessly he turned her like a doll toward the bunks and began to lace her gown the way she’d first asked. The black cord crossed and recrossed her skin until, with a deft twist of his wrist, he pulled the two sides tightly together. He tied a neat little bow at the neckline and tucked the ends inside the gown.

And then, before she realized it, he was gone.