by Jo Goodman
"I know the place. My sister and I played there as children. The dam is a new addition. Probably some of the crofters' children."
"Probably." He yawned again. "Sorry. I'll have to pass on that game of piquet we discussed earlier. I'm going to have an early night." He finished his port, stood, and set his glass on the mantle.
Nigel's carefully remote expression hid his interest in the captain's weary state. "That's quite all right. Perhaps you'd like to take a glass of wine with you to your chamber. Takes the edge off your exhaustion and makes certain you sleep comfortably."
"I think I will. I'm feeling equal parts restless and tired, if that makes any sense."
"Indeed it does." He gave Salem the decanter of wine and escorted him to the bottom of the staircase. "Goodnight then." He turned away as Salem mounted the stairs. When the captain paused and looked over his shoulder briefly, he missed the look of utter complacency that softened the duke's sharp features.
* * *
"Restless hardly describes what I'm feeling," Salem muttered to himself as he stripped off his shirt, preparing for bed. "Randy is more like it." He stretched out on the bed, naked, and tried not to think about the serving wench at the Pooley who so obviously wanted a night's toss. "Oh, Erin, m'dear, where are you when you're needed?" Groaning in a near parody of frustration, Salem turned on his side and, supporting himself on an elbow, poured another glass of wine from the decanter now resting on the nightstand. He sipped his drink thoughtfully, wondering about Nancy, the skittish maid with the gently swaying skirts who had escorted him to his room. "Just put that one out of your mind. She wouldn't have you as a gift. Afraid you might have her as a meal." The smile he gave his glass was decidedly lopsided and a little rueful. "A tasty morsel, I'll wager. Watch it," he told himself as he felt his muscles tighten. His skin already seemed warm, and he wouldn't have been surprised to know his face was slightly flushed. His flesh seemed to tingle. "You've had enough." He put his glass down. "Next you'll be thinking Davinia's sidelong glances are appealing." That thought very definitely laid some of Salem's more randy notions to rest. He blew out the lamp at his side and slid beneath the covers.
The room, dark now save for the warming fire in the hearth, blanketed Salem in a comforting silence and lulled him easily into sleep. His mind, released from the brakes he consciously applied, wandered freely along the unexplored and still unsatisfied erotic paths he had laid.
Naturally she was a blonde. Salem preferred hair the color and texture of corn silk. His fingers sifted through the gold and silver strands and playfully unwrapped the smoothly woven braid. Beneath his hands her hair was as delicate as light itself, sunbeams and moonbeams tangibly trapped for his enjoyment. His hands wound in her hair, and his palms cradled her head while the pads of his thumbs caressed the softness of her temples.
Salem liked fair women whose skin had been kissed by nature's kindness. The woman with him now was no exception. Her cheeks held a hint of rose, and her flesh was warm, velvety, and pliant. Her lips, neatly curved and faintly pouting, were the color of red berries, and their dewy moistness invited a man to taste them. Salem's mouth nibbled at hers, drawing out the flavor and texture peculiar to her. His tongue savored the sweet recesses of her parted mouth, slipped along the edge of her teeth, and warmly battled to arouse a like response. Shifting, his mouth grazed the curve of her chin and swept past the hollow of her cheek. His lips tickled the sensitive arch of her cheekbone as he lightly brushed against her on his way to kissing her closed eyelids.
It didn't matter that her eyes were closed. Salem had a fondness for blue eyes and her eyes would be the blue of twilight. As they signaled her arousal, they would darken until they were merely a narrow ring of color. Of course there were other signs of arousal, and Salem's hands released her hair to search for them.
His palms drifted along the smooth arch of her throat and felt her pulse throb warmly against his skin. Her shoulders made a restless, impatient movement beneath his hands as if begging him to cease his patient exploration and trespass lower, where her taut breasts offered some of the proof he sought. His hands cupped the swollen fullness of her, and his thumbs brushed lightly against her nipples, exciting them so she actually seemed to pull away from the pleasure he gave her, as if it were greater than she could bear. Wanting to show her this was not so, Salem brought his mouth to her breast, spiraling light kisses on her tender flesh until he reached the hardened tip. His lips closed around it, and his tongue caressed it, making it wet and eliciting a husky murmur from the woman in his arms. Her voice moved him with its throaty plea and, wanting to please her, he gave his attention to her other breast.
Her hands were on his taut shoulders, and he could feel her fingers pressing into his flesh. Her arms were tense as if she wanted to brace herself against him and her own pleasure. Salem's hands were more relaxed, gently outlining the tapered lines of her waist, the flair of her hips, and the firm curves of her thighs. He brushed the backs of her knees, causing her to twist beneath him, making him feel the sensual fullness of her. Against the strength and masculinity of his own body, this woman felt exquisitely feminine.
He wanted her. He wanted to press himself into her and end his aching frustration in her yielding softness. He wanted all of her against him, returning sensual delight with her hands and mouth, giving him back a measure of the enjoyment he was giving her. He thought of her body, lithe and supple, accessible to his desires, and he nearly groaned with wanting her. His knee separated her thighs, and he considered how it would be after he had loved her, lost in a tangle of arms and legs, momentarily sated yet thinking ahead to the next act of loving.
She would be gentle and fierce by turns. Salem liked women who were unafraid to show their passion. The woman of his dreams knew when to be tender, when to be hungry. And she was definitely hungry now. Salem felt her teeth at his shoulder. They tugged at his skin, worrying it, nipping at it, biting down hard and not letting go.
"Ouch! What did you do that for?" Salem growled, rubbing his tender flesh.
The voice that answered was not as he remembered. There were no overtones of husky passion. This voice was plainly terrified. "Release me! Release me now!"
Salem was now moved in ways that he had not been previously. He rolled away from the woman in his bed as if she had the pox. By the time he had lit the bedside lamp and his eyes had adjusted, the woman was no longer even in the bed. Salem scanned the room and found the object of his search cowering in a corner near the door, visibly shaken beneath the sheet she had managed to drag along and wrap around her.
She was nothing like the voluptuary of his dreams. He could almost find something amusing about the trick his randy desires had played on him. She appeared to be more nearly child than woman, more angles than curves. Far from being the blonde of his fantasy, this woman-child had hair as dark as his own. It fell about her small oval face and slender shoulders, not in the tangled and tempting disarray he had imagined but in jet waves that made her look slightly wild and untamed. Her complexion was even more pale than her terror or the current fashion could account for. The eyes that warily watched him from beneath a thick fringe of ebony lashes were startling green, clear like the facets of an emerald, certainly as bright. Fear made her breath come in short gasps that seemed disproportionately low in the stillness of the room.
It tore at Salem to see this girl face him with all the courage of a frightened deer. She strove to make herself quiet, attempting to disappear into the background as if she hoped to make him believe he had imagined her presence. It would not be that easy, for Salem had the marks of her teeth in his shoulder to remind him of her feral nature when cornered. He rubbed the shoulder absently, his smile contrite, as he considered her more savage side. What a delusion he had been under, imagining those small teeth were acting in a fiercely passionate manner! He recalled the tension in her arms and the way she had seemed to move when he had touched her. It was apparent to him now that she had been struggling against his
attentions, not begging him to have her. Even though he thought he owed her an apology for misinterpreting her presence in his bed, she clearly owed him an explanation for the same.
"Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you, no matter what you've heard to the contrary," he voiced with some disgust. "I suppose Nancy and the other serving girls put you up to this." When she shook her head, her expression more puzzled than wary, Salem expanded on his theme. "Go to bed with the Colonial and see what it's like? Especially for your first time. You are a virgin, aren't you? I won't believe all that terror is for merely being in the same room with me. Some of it must be fear of parting with your maidenhead. You can stop shaking, girl. You're still intact and can remain so until you draw your last breath as far as I'm concerned." His voice softened when he saw a flush creep from her naked throat to the ebony roots of her hair. The touch of color erased her pallor and revealed to Salem the beauty she could be under more sane circumstances. "I apologize for that last remark. My own frustrations need not be taken out quite so crudely. I promise you though, you're quite safe from me. Now why don't you come away from that door and tell me how you came to my room?" He sighed when she remained hunkered down, pulling the sheet even more tightly about her, and continued to stare at him with equal parts fascination and trepidation. He began to feel like the barbarous satyr he was purported to be. He looked down at himself and knew a moment's dismay. "I don't suppose my present state of undress is doing much to convince you of my sincerity." He grinned, sweeping a blanket over himself. His head jerked in the direction of the door as he identified a nervous giggle. "That was it, was it? Now suppose you tell me what is going on. I admit to a certain fondness for feminine company but not young misses who want to cut their teeth on me."
His unwitting play on words brought a tremulous smile to Ashley's mouth. She straightened slightly and to show her mettle she responded in her haughtiest manner. "I had no intention of cutting my teeth on you either figuratively or literally, m'lord. I had no wish to be in your bed but you wouldn't release me."
"Then by all means, take yourself off as soon as you explain your presence in the first place."
"Do not mistake me for a child, m'lord. I'm well aware that the duke bartered me away to you for the night."
Salem shook his head as if to clear it. "One of us is addled. Perhaps I'm still dreaming." He blinked purposefully. "Or perhaps it's the wine that has most definitely dulled my senses."
Ashley's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "You had wine this evening?"
"Yes. But I was hardly foxed."
"No, but perhaps you noticed a special taste to the port you were served? Is that what you drank?" She pointed to the decanter on the nightstand. When Salem nodded Ashley ventured to his bedside, took the bottle, then retreated to the door.
She had no idea that, in spite of being hampered by the bedsheet, she accomplished the task with a certain dignity and grace that fascinated the captain, forcing him to revise his opinion.
Although lacking a guiding female influence in her life, Ashley was a startling feminine young woman. It was nothing she purposely cultivated, for she was unaware of the grace of her movements or the subtle manner in which she accented her speech with expressive, smoothly executed gestures which would have been blatantly seductive had she been anything less than an innocent.
His unwilling companion was, as she said, no child, and her demeanor, once she composed herself, was certainly not that of a servant. He watched her touch the rim of the decanter with one slender finger then taste the wine on her fingertip. She seemed to suck the finger thoughtfully then brought out her tongue to capture a drop on her delicately curved lips. Salem remembered the taste of that mouth. He would never believe his dream had played him false there. He nearly groaned as her guileless eyes turned on him, seeming to hold no knowledge of the provocation in her action. She was as naive as he first thought.
"I apologize for mistaking your part in this affair, sir," Ashley said. "It seems you were duped."
Salem frowned, not liking the idea. "What are you talking about?"
"There is a sleeping potion in this wine. I know because I was also given some. I tried to fight the effects, but it came to naught. I was brought here against my will."
Salem refrained from telling her there was something more than a sleeping potion in the bottle she held so tightly. He began to understand the restlessness that had seized him upon drinking so much of the stuff. "And you say the duke did this to you?"
"He did not give me the wine to drink. He had Davinia do it for him while he was with you."
"Who are you?"
Ashley did not answer immediately, taking first an opportunity to appraise the captain and his character. He was not the uncivilized savage she had thought he would be, and excusing him those minutes in his bed when she had been accosted and fondled beyond bearing, Ashley surmised he was a gentleman. He was not without a certain sense of humor, and it appeared he was capable of laughing at his own foibles. That alone made Salem rise in Ashley's estimation.
He was larger and stronger than she had expected from her first glimpse of him, yet even when she had been beneath him, he had often been tender. She could forgive him much for the gentleness he had shown her. Once he was aware she did not desire him, he had released her immediately and had spoken in tones that showed he could temper his frustration and curiosity with a modicum of kindness.
Ashley wondered if she could truly trust this Colonial captain. Everything about him seemed alien to her. His eyes were too silver, bright and piercing in a face that appeared too deeply tanned, but the face itself was not unhandsome. The captain had the distinct, balanced features she associated with Nigel, but without the sharp stamp of cruelty. This man would be hard, determined, certainly arrogant as the situation demanded, but she thought he would maintain reason. He would laugh at men like her guardian, who bid for power, and ask only that he be left alone to go about his labors. It was this last thought that brought Ashley up short, making her fear for the captain and at the same time decide in favor of trusting him. She had to make him aware of the danger the Duke of Linfield presented him.
"I am Ashley Lynne," she told him.
Salem's dark eyebrows arched in surprise. "Not the duke's daughter?"
Ashley flushed deeply. "No. Nothing like that. At least I don't think so. I'm just a poor relation."
"Illegitimate?" Salem asked bluntly.
She glared at him for a moment, looking away when she realized she was hardly in a position to intimidate him. "You needn't puff it up," she said mockingly. "I am a bastard relation of the duke's. I have no idea who my parents are, and know of no one who does. I have been under Nigel's guardianship since I was a babe, but I hardly think I am his daugther. I'd refuse the dubious honor anyway."
Salem's smile applauded her show of spirit. "Well said, Miss Lynne. Do you know who I am?"
"I know your name and that you're a Yankee merchant. I was told precious else."
"The way you were staring at me earlier made me think my parentage was in doubt. I assure you, I was not spawned by the devil, no matter what you hear to the contrary."
"I wasn't thinking anything of the sort," she said with some disdain. "And it's unkind of you to try to read my thoughts."
"Pardon me, but I've never encountered a situation quite like this before. I'm afraid my Colonial manners leave something to be desired."
"Now you're making fun of me. And I wasn't of you. I don't know what to make of this situation either. But I know enough not to laugh at it. The duke has shown me repeatedly the folly of that particular action."
Salem was not deaf to the very real distress in Ashley's voice. He was also aware that her voice could carry to the ears of any interested person in the hall. If there were reasons to be cautious, then they had to begin now.
"Come closer, girl. There's no need to shout." He pointed to a chair situated near his bedside. "You can sit there. And where's your nightgown? You can't keep clutc
hing that bedsheet. You're positioning of it is precarious at best."
Startled by his last statement, Ashley halted in her progress to the chair and looked down at her bloodless fists gripping the sheet. The sheet had slipped at some point, and the upper curves of Ashley's breasts were presented more fully because of her tight grip below. When she tried to make an adjustment the sheet nearly parted completely, eliciting a chagrined chuckle from the captain and a rosy blush from Ashley. She stamped a small foot, which almost proved to be her undoing as her heel caught in the folds and yanked the sheet even further downward. There were tears of embarrassment in the green eyes that finally faced Salem and he experienced regret that he had not been more kind.
"I don't seem to have a gown, sir," Ashley told him diffidently, her voice strained to maintain control. She sat down and made certain she was modestly covered. "I don't think I was given one when I was brought to your chamber."
She's so young, so terribly vulnerable, Salem thought, aching for her as she struggled for poise and proud of her when she found it. He promised himself he would be more considerate of her tender feelings.
"Perhaps you should tell me why you were brought here," he said patiently. "I don't seem to be very clear on what is going on."
Ashley nodded hesitantly, the motion bringing forward a sweep of dark hair that hid one side of her face as she spoke. "First you must understand that you are the real innocent in Nigel's tasteless drama. If Davinia hadn't brought you back from London, it would have been someone else. The duke is determined to make me fall in with his plans." She bit her lip, uncertain how to continue. The tale seemed even more sordid in the telling.
"And what are the duke's plans?"