Louise Allen – Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch (страница 40)

“You might say you’re glad to see me, Jeremiah,” she said, her smile fading. She had so anticipated this moment, and now that it was here, it wasn’t at all what she’d counted on. “I’m vastly glad to see you again, you know.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Tomaso, shaking Caro by the arm. “You would dare to pretend you know this gentleman?”

“She does,” said Jeremiah grimly, “just as I know her. This, Captain Tomaso, is Caroline Moncrief, Countess of Byfield, though she doesn’t look like much of anything right now.”

“I do not believe it, Capitano,” said Tomaso flatly. “This creature a contessa?’

Delighted that her disguise was such a success, Caro’s smile returned. She had done what the dowager countess had advised and taken responsibility for herself, and she was proud of how well she’d done. Remembering how in Portsmouth the secondhand gown and bonnet had hidden her in plain sight, she had literally bought the clothes from the back of a maidservant at the inn.

Not that anyone should guess she was an English countess, not dressed in a rough full-sleeved shift beneath a laced black bodice, two coarse petticoats, thread stockings and worn shoes that tied with dirty pink ribbons. She had tried to pin her hair severely back the way the maidservant had worn hers, but since Caro’s fashionably cropped tendrils had refused to sleek back, she had been careful to cover her hair and shadow her face with the oversize black shawl that, too, had come from the maidservant.

“Captain Sparhawk’s right,” she said to Tomaso. “I am Lady Byfield. Didn’t you receive word that I would be a passenger?”

Hearing the unmistakable upper-class accent in her speech, Tomaso hastily released her arm. “Forgive me, ma donna, I did not know! But how would I, eh? You dress yourself like una domestica, you pay for yourself on the wharf like all the others, you sleep on the deck with them. How would I know otherwise when this ribaldo accuses you of cutting his purse, eh?”

“You wouldn’t, and that was the point.” Free of the heavy shawl, she tossed her hair back in the cool night breeze, unaware of the interest that her pale, loose hair caused among the sailors and other male passengers. “It was a disguise.”

Unsatisfied, Tomaso shook his head and raised his shoulders. “But I do not understand. Why such a disguise, eh? You are a great English lady. Is it some jest, una facezia, that I cannot see?”

“That’s two of us, Tomaso.” Jeremiah took her arm, his grip every bit as rough as the Italian’s had been. “Come along, love. I’m eager for answers.”

She went meekly as he led her down the short companionway to the tiny cabin, and when he released her to bolt the door and light the little lamp hooked to the bulkhead, she stood with her hands folded, waiting patiently. She had nothing to fear, nothing to hide. Her reasons for joining him were the best.

Yet from the look in Jeremiah’s eyes when he turned around to face her, she knew at once he wasn’t going to agree.

“Don’t start, Jeremiah, not until you’ve heard—”

“I’ll start whenever I damned well please, Caro, and nothing you say will change that.” Pointedly he lowered his eyes to her clothing. The tightly laced bodice accentuated the curve of her waist and hips in a way that her more fashionable French chemises never could. “What the hell are you doing here, rigged out like that?”

“Like this?” She lifted the side of her skirt and glanced down at it almost as if she’d forgotten herself what she wore. “That’s quite simple. I wanted to come on board without any extra fuss, so I dressed myself like this to look like the others. I remembered what you said that night in Portsmouth.”

“For God’s sake, Caro, can’t you see the difference?”

“The difference?” she repeated uncertainly, and looked again at her petticoats. “I suppose these are worse than what you bought me that night, smelling as they do of the kitchen. Frederick would be absolutely appalled to see me like this. That’s why I brought a gown of my own to wear when we free him, white mull—oh, Jeremiah, I left my bundle on the deck!”

“Whatever was in it is gone now,” he said. “You might be too fine a lady to steal from your fellows, but believe me, they won’t feel such scruples about you.”

Hoping to retrieve her belongings, she tried to squeeze past him. “But if I went and asked—”

“You really don’t understand, do you, Caro?” He blocked her path, his body filling half the cabin and his fury the rest. “What’s different isn’t the rags on your back. It’s that you were alone, among strangers who’d sooner do you harm than blink. Can you guess what kind of mercy you’d have found from that crew on deck if I hadn’t come to vouch for you?”

Jeremiah could, all too vividly, and the horror of what might have happened to her, either on board the Colomba or wandering about the Neapolitan waterfront, fueled his anger at how much she’d foolishly risked.

“Damnation, Caro, this isn’t some little masquerade for your amusement! Why the hell didn’t you stay in Naples where I’d know you’d be safe?”

“Oh, yes, and Naples is such a fine, safe place!” Her own temper flaring, Caro shoved at the hard wall of his chest. “Have you ever considered what would happen to an English lady if Bonaparte’s army returned? Why do you think Frederick’s mother is so eager to make peace with me so she can go home to England? She told me that I—”

“Why are you suddenly so thick with a woman who despises you? How can you trust a blessed word she says?”

“At least she believes that I can do things for myself!”

“Don’t argue with me, Caro,” ordered Jeremiah, his voice as stern as if he stood on his own quarterdeck.

“And don’t give orders to me!” Furiously Caro lashed out at him, her hand nearly reaching his cheek before he grabbed her wrist.

“Stop it, Caro,” he said, more softly this time, but with the same commanding tone. “Do you want that whole pack of jackals topside to believe you’ve lost your wits?”

“I don’t care a fig what they believe!” With a cry of wounded frustration, she struggled to pull free and try to strike him again, but he held her as tightly as if they’d been bound together. He was so much larger, so much stronger, and in that moment she hated him for it. “And you don’t care, either, not about what they think or whether I’m safely left behind in Naples! All that matters to you is that I obey, like some well-trained little dog, so that you can feel free to go off alone and get yourself killed with a clear conscience. That’s it, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

“How can you say that after all we’ve done together?” he demanded, his eyes glittering like green fire. She’d never guess how deeply her words cut into him, as surely as any knife. Didn’t she realize how much he’d changed for her? The man he had been a year ago would not be here now, risking his life to save an English lord because his wife had asked him. For Davy, yes. He’d do anything for a friend like him.

But not for a woman. And never for love.

“I can say it because it’s true!” she cried, her words shaking with emotion. “Whatever you do, you do for yourself, because you’re the blessed American Captain Jeremiah Sparhawk!”

“Damnation, Caro, I’m doing this now because I love you!” His mouth crushed down on hers, stopping her words as he kissed her long and hard and deep. He felt the instant when her struggles subtly changed, when she stopped struggling to free herself and instead clung to him, when her anger, too, was channeled into the same desire he felt racing through his body. He let her hand go and she curled it around the back of his neck, her fingers tangling in his hair as she drew him closer.

He pushed her back the last few inches against the bulkhead, lifting her higher until her hips were level with his. He held her there with the pressure of his body, suspended, her toes grazing the floor as she steadied herself with her hands on his shoulders. The lacing of her bodice snapped through the eyelets as he hooked his fingers in the bow, tugging the neckline lower over her breasts.

She gasped as his open lips found her nipple, drawing it deeply into his mouth and suckling hard. Even through her petticoats she could feel the heat of his arousal, and instinctively she rocked her hips against his, her back arching against the rough timber of the bulkhead and thrusting her breast more deeply into his mouth. As much as he gave her, she desperately craved more, more that only he could offer.

His hand plunged beneath her petticoats, following the sleek length of her thigh above her garters to her bare hip, and she whimpered as she moved against him. Rapidly he unfastened the fall on his trousers, freeing himself as he swept away the last barrier of her skirts and shifted her long legs around his waist.

She was open and ready for him, her need shameless, and when he guided himself into her aching flesh, she raggedly cried out his name. With her legs crossed over his back she drew him in deeper, intoxicated with the way he filled her as he drove into her so powerfully that he lifted her against the wall.

She didn’t care; she didn’t care about anything except the feverish, spiraling ecstasy that was coiling in her body, making her limbs shake and her heart pound, her breath hot in his ear. Passion swept them both beyond sense, beyond reason, until at last their self-made world of pleasure exploded, and with a final sob of release she melted in his arms.