by Tracy Sumner
He let the drape fall and wiggled in beside her, pulling her against his body. This window seat wasn’t large—but it was large enough. They’d made love on it more than once. Had made love in every room in the main house, the outbuildings, Brook Cottage. The conservatory. The stables. Every inch of his property presented delicious options. Piper loved leaving him notes telling him to meet her in said location. And like a dog on the hunt, he went. He never knew if he was going to find her naked and wearing only a wicked smile, or all those layers she expected him to peel from her luscious body.
Sexual games, bawdy negotiations, laughter.
She had punctured a hole in his life and let blissful contentment flood in. Let joy and fun flood in.
He placed a kiss on the crown of her head, trying for a carefree response. “Maybe. When do babies start talking again?”
She laughed, and he felt the pinch. Of wonder. Of ecstasy. Of disbelief. He made her happy. Amazingly, Julian Alexander made Piper Scott happy. This incredible, vibrant, generous woman. Almost daily, he wondered what he had done to deserve her.
“Are you worried about Ashcroft? Is that it?”
Julian let loose a sound falling somewhere between a snort and a sneer. “Come again?”
“It was in this morning’s broadsheet. An opera singer this time. A slight skirmish, no flames whipping through Covent Garden or anything like that. I have to say, his control is remarkable, which it should be after years of diligent effort.”
“Except when it’s not. Remember the debacle at the Epsom Derby last year?”
“He’s your friend. An essential part of the League’s success. He can’t continue like this, one woman after another. You could—”
“Love’s going to sneak up and bite him on the ass just like it does the rest of us. We’re going to have to ride his idiocy out, I fear. Someday, someone will mean enough to make him change his mind. And his ways. Make him understand he can share his gift, lighten the load.”
“It’s possible to have love and a mystical talent. We’re proof of that.” She sighed a heated breath against his neck. “I’ve told him this a thousand times. I only wish he believed me.”
Julian wedged his shoulder against the wall and counted to twenty. He didn’t want to seem too eager to ask the question. Broach the topic currently top of mind, the reason his mood was tinted as dark as the night at his back. “Anyone else in this family featured in the scandal sheets lately?”
“Oh, Julian.”
He tipped his head back and closed his eyes. What was the use of artificiality when she knew him as well as she did? “We’re losing Finn.” He would have taken the words back—or never spoken them at all—if he knew they’d sound like shards of glass when they spilled out. Most days, he viewed Lucien and Finn with the same parental lens, which made Finn, a determined, confounding young man of twenty-three, viciously displeased. “The boy we couldn’t save damaged him in a way I didn’t expect. A crushing blow, when we can’t possibly protect everyone. He’s aimless, unable to recover. It’s like he’s cut the rope connecting us and set himself adrift. Living above that gaming hell I only bought as an investment, never thinking he would be involved. A graduate of Oxford managing a gambling establishment? Is this his path?”
“I think he’s trying to find his path. That’s the point of rebellion. Learning from one’s mistakes.”
“First-rate insight from a master. What about that drunken scuffle with the Earl of Sandford five blocks from the rookery hellhole where he was born? Why would he want to step foot in that neighborhood again after we risked our very lives to get him out of it?”
Piper’s fingers brushed his cheek and snaked into his hair. Her lips found his, her love and understanding flowing through him, giving him courage when he had little. “He’ll be home next month, Jules. Simon’s birthday is the thirteenth. Finn would never miss that.”
“You’ll talk to him? Because I’ll get mad if I do.”
Piper snuggled against him with one of those relaxed purrs that made the hairs on his nape stand on end. “I’ll talk to him. Make him see a graduate of Oxford need not manage a gaming hell.”
“Because I know what it’s like to feel unworthy of happiness. So bewildered in this strange world we find ourselves thrust into. I don’t want Finn to wait as long as I did to embrace love. A strong partner will help him navigate the chaos, find who he’s meant to become.”
“He’s thought to be the most handsome man in England, Jules. Love is plentiful. He breaks hearts by doing nothing more than strolling down the street.”
Julian smacked his head against the windowpane. “That doesn’t make me feel better, Yank. What if he gets the pox?”
Smothering laughter Julian wouldn’t appreciate, Piper lifted her nightdress to her shoulders and with a suggestive shimmy, let it drift to the floor. Then she climbed atop him as his breath left his body in a whoosh. “If you promise not to wake the babe, I have an interesting proposal, Viscount Beauchamp. A way to take your mind off your troubles.”
A gorgeous, enthusiastic viscountess, naked and astride him?
He would promise anything.
* * *
~ END ~
Thanks!
Thanks for reading The Lady is Trouble. Look for Finn’s sizzling supernatural romance in Summer 2020!
* * *
Continue reading for a sneak peek of Tides of Passion. Feisty Southern suffragettes in the Gilded Age!
Chapter 1
Women can't have an honest exchange
in front of men without having it called a cat fight.
~Clare Boothe Luce
Outer Banks, NC
1898
Savannah knew she was in trouble a split second before he reached her.
Perhaps she should have saved herself the embarrassment of a tussle with the town constable, a man determined to believe the worst of her.
However, running from a challenge wasn’t her way.
She laughed, appalled to realize it wasn’t fear that had her contemplating slipping off the rickety crate and into the budding crowd gathered outside the oyster factory.
No, her distress was due to nothing more than Constable Garrett's lack of proper clothing.
In a manner typical of the coastal community she had temporarily settled in, his shirt lay open nearly to his waist. She couldn’t help but watch the ragged shirttail flick his lean stomach as he advanced on her. Tall, broad-shouldered and lean-hipped, his physique belied his composed expression. Yet Savannah detected a faint edge of anger pulsing beneath the calm façade, one she wanted to deny sent her heart racing.
Wanted... but could not.
Flinging her fist into the air, she stared him down as she shouted, “Fight for your rights, women of Pilot Isle!”
The roar of the crowd, men in discord, women in glorious agreement, eclipsed her next call to action. There, she thought, pleased to see Zachariah Garrett’s long-lashed gray eyes narrow, his golden skin pulling tight in a frown. Again she shook her fist, and the crowd bellowed.
One man ripped the sign Savannah had hung from the warehouse wall to pieces and fed it to the flames shooting from a nearby barrel. Another began channeling the group of protesting women away from the entrance. Many looked at her with proud smiles on their faces or raised a hand as they passed. They felt the pulse thrumming through the air, the energy.
There was no power like the power of a crowd.
Standing on a wobbly crate on a dock alongside the ocean, Savannah let the madness rush over her, sure, completely sure to the depths of her soul, that this was worth her often forlorn existence. Change was good. Change was necessary. And while she was here, she would make sure Pilot Isle saw its fair share.
“That’s it for the show, Miss Connor,” Zachariah Garrett said, wrapping his arm around her waist and yanking her from the crate as people swarmed past. “You’ve done nothing but cause trouble since you got here, and personally, I’ve about had it.”
; “I’m sorry, Constable, but that’s the purpose of my profession!”
He set her on her feet none too gently and whispered in her ear, “Not in my town it isn’t.”
As she prepared to argue—Savannah was always prepared to argue—a violent shove forced her to her knees. Sucking in a painful gasp, she scrambled between the constable’s long legs and behind a water cask. Dropping to a sit, she brushed a bead of perspiration from her brow and wondered what the inside of Pilot Isle’s jail was going to look like.
Fatigue returned, along with the first flicker of doubt she had experienced in many a month. Resting her cheek on her knee, she let the sound of waves slapping the wharf calm her, the fierce breeze rolling off the sea cool her skin. Her family had lived on the coast for a summer when she was a child. It was one of the last times she remembered being truly happy.
Or loved.
Blessed God, how long ago that seemed now.
That was how Zach found her. Crouched behind a stinking fish barrel, dark hair a sodden mess hanging down her back, her dress—one that cost a pretty penny, he would bet—ripped and stained. She looked young at that moment, younger than he knew her to be. And harmless.
Which was as far from the truth as it got.
He shoved aside the sympathetic twinge, determined not to let his role as a father cloud every damned judgment he made. Due to this woman’s meddling, his town folk pulsed like an angry wound behind him, the ringing of the ferry bell not doing a blessed thing to quiet a soul. All he could do was stare at the instigator huddling on a section of grimy planks and question how one uppity woman could stir people up like she’d taken a stick to their rear ends.
No wonder she was a successful social reformer up north. She was as good at causing trouble as any person he’d ever seen.
“Get up,” Zach said, nudging her ankle with his boot. A slim, delicate-looking ankle.
He didn’t like her, this sassy, liberating rabble-rouser, but he was a man, and he had to admit she was put together nicely.
She lifted her head, blinking, seeming to pull herself from a distant place. A halo of shiny curls brushed her jaw, and as she tilted her head up, he got his first close look at her. A fine-boned face, the expression on it soft, almost dreamy.
Boy, the softness didn’t last long.
Jamming her lips together, her cheeks plumped with a frown. Oh yeah, that was the look he’d been expecting.
“Good day, Constable,” she said. Just like that, as if he should be offering a cordial greeting with a small war going on behind them.
“Miss Connor, this way if you please.”
She rose with all the dignity of a queen, shook out her skirts, and brushed dirt from one sleeve. He counted to ten and back, unruffled, good at hiding his impatience. What being the lone parent of a rambunctious little boy would do for a man.
Just when he reached ten for the second time and opened his mouth to order her along, a misplaced swing caught him in the side and he stumbled forward, grasping Savannah’s shoulders to keep from crashing into her. Motion ceased when she thumped the wall of the warehouse, her head coming up fast, her eyes wide and alarmed.
And very, very green.
He felt the heat of her skin through the thin material of her dress; her muscles jumped beneath his palms. Her gaze dropped to his chest, and a soft glow lit her cheeks. Blushing... something he wouldn't have expected from this woman.
Nevertheless, he stared, wondering why they both seemed frozen.
Zach was frozen because he’d forgotten what it felt like to touch a woman. How soft and round and warm they were. How they dabbed perfume in secret places and smiled teasing smiles and flicked those colorful little fans in your face, never really realizing what all that nonsense did to a man's equilibrium.
It was the first time he’d laid his hands on a woman since his wife died, except for a rescue last year and the captain’s sister he’d pulled from the sea. She had thrown her arms around him, shivering and crying, and he’d felt for her, sure he had. Grateful and relieved and humble that God had once again shown him where the lost souls on the shoals were.
He hadn’t felt anything more. Anything strong.
This wasn’t strong either, nothing more than a minute spike of heat in his belly.
Nothing much at all. He didn’t need like other men. Like his brothers or his friends in town. He had needed once, needed his wife. But she was dead. That life—loving and yearning and wanting—had died with her.
“Your mouth is bleeding,” Savannah said and shifted, her arm rising.
Don't touch me, he thought, the words bubbling in his throat.
Cursing beneath his breath, the full extent of his childishness struck him. She would think he’d gone crazy. And maybe he had. Stepping back, he thrust his hands in his pockets and gestured for her to follow, intentionally leading her away from the ruckus on the wharf.
Buttoning his shirt, he listened to her steady footfalls, thinking she’d be safe in his office until everything died down.
“I’m sorry you’ve been injured.”
Dabbing at the corner of his lip, he shrugged. He could still hear the rumble of the crowd. No matter. His brother Caleb would break it up. They’d argued about who got what job in this mess.
Zach had lost.
“What did you expect, Miss Connor?” he finally asked. “People get heated, and they do stupid things like fight with their neighbors and their friends. Hard not to get vexed with you standing up there, rising from the mist, preaching and persuading, stirring emotion like a witch with a cauldron.”
She rushed to catch up to him, and he slowed his deliberately forceful stride. “Those women work twelve-hour days, Constable Garrett. Twelve hours on their feet, often without lunch breaks or access to sanitary drinking water. And for half the pay a man receives for the same day’s work. Some are expecting a child and alone, young women who think they can disappear in this town without their families ever finding them. Their lives up to this point have been so dominated and environed by duties, so largely ordered for them, that many don’t know how to balance a cash account of modest means or find work of any kind that doesn’t involve sewing a straight stitch or shucking oysters.”
She stomped around a puddle in their path, kicking at shells and muttering, nicking her polished boots in the process. “If you can reconcile that treatment to your sense of what is just, then we have nothing more to discuss.”
Zach halted before the unpretentious building that housed Pilot Isle’s lone jail cell, getting riled himself, an emotion he rarely tolerated. He didn't know whether he should apologize or shake the stuffing out of her. “I’ll be glad to tell you what I reconcile on a given day: business disputes, marriages, deaths, shipwrecks, the resulting cargo and bodies that wash up on shore, and just about everything in between. What you’re talking about over at the oyster factory has been going on forever. Long hours, dreadfully long. The men may well get paid a higher wage—I couldn’t say for certain—but they labor like mules, too. Do you think Hyman Carter is begging people to come work for him? Well, he isn’t. It’s a choice, free and clear.” Reaching around her and flinging the door open, he stepped inside and, by God, expected her to follow. “What the hell can I do about that?”
Her abrupt silence had him turning. Savannah Connor stood in the doorway, bright sunlight flooding in around her, again looking like a vision of blamelessness, of sweet charity. She even smiled, closing the door gently behind her. Troubled, Zach reviewed his last words, racing through them in his mind.
“Oh no,” he said, flinging his hand up in a motion his son knew meant no, flat out. “I’m not getting involved in this campaign of yours. Except to end it, I’m not getting involved.”
“Why not get involved?” she asked, the edge back. “Give me one worthy reason why. You’re the perfect person to request a review of the factory’s processes.”
Ignoring her, he slumped into the chair behind his desk, dug his cargo ledger out
of the top drawer and a water-stained list out of his pocket, and began calculating entries. He was two shipwrecks behind. The town couldn’t auction property—funds they desperately needed—until he, as keeper of Life-saving Division Six, completed the sad task of recording every damaged plank, every broken teacup, every sailor’s shoe.
Work was good for the soul, he had always thought; it had saved his a couple of years ago.
Besides, maybe Miss Connor would quit talking if he didn’t look at her.
Moments passed, the only sound the scratch of pen across paper and the occasional crunch of wagon wheels over the shell-paved street out front. When the cell’s metal door squealed, Zach started, flicking ink across the page. He sighed. “I’m almost afraid to ask what you're doing.”
Looking up from plumping the cot’s pillow, she flashed a tight smile. “Getting ready for a long night, Constable Garrett. You’re writing”—she pointed—“a summons for me in that little book, correct? What will it be? Disturbing the peace? Instigating a mutiny?” She shrugged, clearly unconcerned. “I’ve been charged with both of those before.”
The fountain pen dropped from Zach’s fingers. “Arrested? Ma’am, I’ve no intention of—”
“Thirteen if you count the incident in Baltimore. That time, the police took us to a school instead of the local station. They didn’t have a separate holding area for women and felt it would be inappropriate for my group to share quarters with common offenders.”
Thirteen. Zach coughed to clear his throat. “I’m not arresting you. I only brought you here until things calm down on the wharf.”
Savannah smiled, relief evident in the droop of her shoulders. “Then you’ll help me. Thank goodness.”
Gripping the desk, he shoved back his chair. “No way, no how. Are you deaf, ma’am?”