by Mary Balogh
“Ah,” she said, and her chest still ached with the inexplicable grief she had felt when he reminded her of Robert. “Then we must watch the sunrise together sometime, Captain.”
She had perfected the art of flirtation long ages before. But she realized the flirtatiousness of her words only when she heard their echo. Strangely, she had not intended them that way, although she had brought him up onto the walls with the sole purpose of flirting with him.
“Perhaps,” he said, still looking at her so that she felt breathless and almost frightened. She felt not quite in control.
“Perhaps?” she said, laughing. “You missed your cue, Captain. You were supposed to declare that you would move heaven and earth to bring on that day. Are you hungry? Let us return home for dinner.”
She took his arm and set herself to talking lightly and ceaselessly to him as they made their way down the darkened steps into the town and back to her villa.
7
HE breathed a sigh of relief when they entered the marquesa’s villa. At least now they would be joined by the companion, and while conversation would not be easy, at least the tension would be gone. He had felt ready to explode with it up on the town walls. He had bristled with awareness of her and desire for her and contempt for his own reactions, since her own manner was so deliberately flirtatious. He felt rather out of his depth—again. He hoped suddenly that Lord Wellington would burn in some particularly hot corner of hell for giving him this particular assignment.
“Call Matilda,” she told a servant, taking the captain’s arm and leading him in the direction of the dining room.
But the servant coughed delicately. Matilda, it seemed, had not returned to the villa.
“How provoking!” The marquesa frowned. “She has forgotten all about the passing of time, I will warrant. It is ever thus when she visits her sister. I daresay I shall not set eyes on her until tomorrow.” She sighed. “Companions can be very provoking, Captain Blake. They are not quite servants, and one does not like to scold them. We will have to dine tête-à-tête.”
He might have suspected her of scheming that it be thus if he had not noted when they entered the dining room that the table had been set for three.
“I shall return to my inn, ma’am,” he said.
But she laughed at him and told him not to be tiresome, and before he knew it they were seated at the table and he was sipping the wine while she sat and watched him, her chin in her hand. And then he had the painful feeling that he had committed a breach of etiquette by lifting his glass before she did. He set it down.
“I am hungry,” she said, “and refuse to deliver a monologue all through dinner. You must hold up your end of the conversation, Captain Blake.”
There was nothing more sure to tongue-tie him. He picked up his glass again.
She watched him as the servants set out the food on the table. She refused to say another word for a while. She wanted to see how long it would be before he could think of something to say. And she let her eyes roam over his face and wondered what it was about him that made him such an attractive man. His close-cropped blond hair? She preferred men with overlong hair. The crooked nose and the very noticeable scar? But they only took away any claim he might have had to handsomeness. The bronzed skin, perhaps? The light blue eyes? The knowledge that he had killed, that he was a military hero? The awareness that he was from a world and a background alien to hers?
Finally she felt the tension again, as she had up on the town walls. But she was not supposed to feel tension. Only the gentlemen with whom she dealt were meant to feel that.
“Tell me about yourself,” she said. “Where were you born? Who was your father? What was your childhood like? Why did you enlist? Speak to me, Captain.”
“I enlisted,” he said, “because it seemed the right thing to do at the moment I did it. On the whole, I have never been sorry.”
He had not answered her first three questions, she thought. But it was what she had learned to expect of Captain Blake. Unlike most men of her acquaintance, he did not like to talk about himself. Or about anything else, for that matter, it seemed.
And so, after all, she did most of the talking as they ate. Or as they picked at the food, to be more accurate. Her appetite was not usually affected by the company in which she ate. But this evening it was. She was aware of every mouthful she lifted to her mouth, of every mouthful he lifted to his. And she was aware of every swallow.
His fingers were long and slim—an artist’s fingers, she thought. But his nails were cut short and kept clean—a soldier’s fingernails. She wondered what those hands and those fingers would feel like feathering over her back—her naked back—and quelled the thought.
The air was fairly crackling with tension.
And Captain Blake tried to eat as if he were dining with his fellow officers or men but found that he could not rid himself of the notion that she watched his every move—as he watched hers. And try as he would to think of some topic with which to sustain the conversation, his mind was blank and his only contributions were answers to questions. She had a habit as she talked of leaning forward so that her breasts almost brushed the edge of the table. It seemed that his temperature rose a degree every time it happened—and it happened frequently. And she had that way of looking at him that he had noticed before—her eyes sweeping up at him from beneath her lashes.
He cursed himself for not holding firm about returning to his inn when he learned that her companion had not returned. He wondered how long he must sit at the table before he could decently rise and excuse himself. He had no idea what was proper form in such circumstances. Perhaps there was no proper form in a tête-à -tête of this sort. It was all highly improper.
The room fairly pulsed with tension.
“Let’s remove to the drawing room,” she said eventually, smiling at him. “If you have finished eating, that is.”
“Yes, thank you, ma’am,” he said, setting his napkin thankfully beside his plate and getting to his feet. “But I must leave. We should make an early start in the morning.”
She allowed him to pull back her chair as she got to her feet. And the relief of doing so, of no longer having to sit alone with him at the table, was enormous. But she could not let him go. Some foolish stubbornness refused to allow her to do what she knew she ought to do and what she wanted to do—to let him go.
“It is not even late, Captain Blake,” she said, linking her arm through his. “And I shall be dreadfully bored if forced to spend the rest of the evening alone. You would not doom me to loneliness and boredom, would you?” She smiled and looked at him from beneath her lashes in a manner she knew drove men wild. And was more aware than she ever had been before of how large he was and how broad-shouldered and well-muscled. And there was a flutter of fear that she was playing with fire. She ignored the feeling.
He did not resist further. She was almost disappointed that he did not. She had half-hoped that he would insist on leaving. They must converse, she thought. They must fill up the silence.
“What languages do you speak?” she asked him as she led him into the drawing room. “I know you speak several. I know that you have been sent on many reconnaissance missions as a result.”
“Several Indian languages,” he said. “And some European ones too.”
She slipped her arm from his and walked about the room, fluffing cushions and repositioning ornaments. He was still standing just inside the drawing room door, his booted feet slightly apart, his hands clasped behind him.
“Do come and sit down and tell me about some of your spying missions,” she said. “Tell me about some you have carried out in the Peninsula.” She patted the back of a sofa and felt her heart pounding against her ribs.
“I had better go, ma’am,” he said.
He had more sense than she had. It was impossible, she thought, that he did not feel the tension between
them as she did.
“You do not like the topic?” she asked him. “Then we shall choose something else. I shall tell you about Luis and life at court before the removal to Brazil. There are many amusing stories with which I can entertain you. Come and sit down.”
“I must go,” he said.
An inner voice told her to let him go. She was in much deeper than she had ever been before. Flirtation had always been a light, amusing, slightly boring game before. And very safe. Let him go, that inner voice told her again. But if she let him go, she would be admitting defeat. She could not let him go until she sent him away. She strolled across the room toward him, a smile on her lips.
He watched her come. And he stood there feeling like a gauche boy, wanting to take his leave, desperately wanting to be gone, and not knowing quite how to accomplish such a seemingly simple task. He clamped his teeth together rather than tell her once more that he must go. Almost any other man she might have chosen as an escort would have known how to take his leave, he thought.
She stopped when she was almost toe to toe with him—delicate white slippers almost touching heavy polished black boots. The top of her head was just beneath the level of his chin—smooth dark hair over the crown of her head and styled into a cluster of curls at the back. She wore a soft musky perfume that he had noticed while they were out walking.
“You are not afraid, are you, Captain?” she asked him, long lashes lifting to allow her eyes to travel up from his chin to look into his own. There was a hint of laughter and a hint of something else in her eyes.
He swallowed and wished he could have controlled the action. He was mortally afraid. He had never been in such a situation with any woman who was not a whore and his for the purchase. He had no experience in controlling himself in such situations. There had never been the need. And then one of her hands, for once ungloved—small, white-skinned, smooth—lifted so that one finger could trace the line of a seam beneath the shoulder of his coat.
“Almost threadbare,” she said.
“It has seen much service.” The heat from her finger burned along his collarbone.
“Some woman will have to mend it for you soon,” she said.
“Yes.”
Her eyes moved upward again, passing over his chin, lingering over his mouth, pausing at the scar across his nose, looking fully into his eyes. “Are you afraid?” Her voice was low, almost a whisper.
The style of her dress, falling in soft folds from beneath her bosom to the floor, made her appear light and slim. Yet she was even slimmer in reality. His hands almost met about her waist—there was a sharp memory of a similar impression from the time when she was fifteen.
He spread his hands downward behind her waist and brought her against him while she arched backward from the waist and set her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes with an expression on her face that was almost a frown. She was all light, warm, soft femininity. He slid his hands upward until her breasts touched his coat and flattened against it—he watched and felt their softness yield to the hardness of his chest muscles.
Jesus, he thought, and the blood pulsed through him like a hammerbeat. Lord God in heaven. But she was too small. For as long as they stood, she was too small. He bent at the knees, lifting her against him so that her feet almost left the floor.
And she knew that she had made a mistake. She knew that she had carried the flirtation too far. The fear she had had the moment she had first set eyes on this man was upon her. She had lost control. He had lifted her so that all her weight and all her balance were at his mercy. If he let her go suddenly, she would fall. And he had lifted her sufficiently that she could feel against her womb the hard swelling of his desire for her.
They had moved beyond the area of her own expertise—flirtation—into the realm of his—passion. And she had no experience—no, none whatsoever, not even in her marriage—with passion. She looked up into his light blue eyes, now burning with the fire of his passion, and she felt him with every part of her body and every nerve in it. He was all hard, magnificent masculinity.
And she was terrified. Terrified of him: the embrace he had begun was an embrace that led only to one place and to one ending. It was an embrace fully intended to be taken to completion. And terrified of herself: her body was delighting in the sensations and the possession in store for it, and her mind was wanting to surrender.
It would be so good, she thought. She knew it would be good. It would erase, perhaps, the nauseating memories of her marriage bed. She wanted more than anything to surrender. Her eyes fluttered closed and her lips parted as his head lowered to hers. She wanted to know what he would do with her. She wanted to know what a virile, passionate man would do to the woman he desired.
His mouth came down wide over hers so that for a moment she opened her eyes in shock. His tongue outlined her lips until she felt a sharp stabbing ache deep in her womb, and then it plunged warm and hard and deep into her mouth. She gasped and drew it deeper still.
And the terror was back, thrusting its way past the curiosity and the temptation. She had no control over the situation at all. She knew that it was a matter of mere minutes, perhaps less, before she was lowered to the floor and her skirts raised and her body penetrated. She would have surrendered control to a man—a man she did not know or understand. An enigma. Someone she was merely to work with.
She bit down hard on his tongue.
When he jerked back his head, she smiled at him and fought down terror and breathlessness and shaking knees. “Why, Captain,” she said, “was that not a little extravagant for a good-night kiss?”
“Why, you bitch!” he amazed her by saying, taking a step backward and frowning ferociously at her.
Terror curled itself into a fist inside her. She raised her eyebrows. “I did not hear that, Captain Blake,” she said. “A temporary deafness, I daresay. You had decided not to stay for port?”
“You bitch!” he said again, not taking the cue from her to restore a measure of civility to their dealings. His eyes narrowed on her. “You sent your companion away deliberately, didn’t you? You had no intention of there being a threesome for dinner, did you? You do not need a chaperone, ma’am. You need an animal tamer.”
She smiled at him. “Alas, the deafness was only temporary,” she said. “But I will forgive you, Captain. It seems you misinterpreted the situation entirely. I have been grateful for your escort. I intended to show my gratitude. Pardon me, but I meant no more.”
His heels clicked together and his face was again all hard lines, his eyes steely. It was a soldier’s face, one which must strike apprehension into the heart of any enemy soldier unfortunate enough to look into it on the battlefield.
“Good night, ma’am,” he said. “I shall return at dawn if that meets with your approval.”
“I shall be ready, Captain.” She smiled at him. “Good night.”
He turned and left without another word. A gentleman would have apologized—both for the liberties he had taken with her person and for the unpardonably vulgar language he had directed at her. But Captain Blake was not, of course, a gentleman. And she could not say she was sorry he had not apologized. She would have felt even more guilty than she was already feeling if he had.
And Captain Blake, striding from the villa and the courtyard and up the hill to his inn, cursed furiously beneath his breath and damned her to hell and back. His tongue was throbbing and there were cuts at the back of it that would be sore for days.
The bitch! He could think of no other words to describe her. She had led him on all evening just so that she could make a fool of him and laugh in his face at the end of it all when despite all his efforts he had failed to resist her. But it was a dangerous game she played. He would have been the one laughing if he had been unable to stop despite the bitten tongue.
He felt a prize fool. To have had his tongue bitten! He would never
again be able to look her in the eye without remembering how she had set up his humiliation.
Twice. Twice he had been made a fool of by a woman, and by the same woman both times—Jeanne Morisette and Joana da Fonte, Marquesa das Minas. In any language she was trouble, and once she had been safely delivered to Viseu—a task he would complete as expeditiously and as impersonally as was possible—he would have nothing more whatsoever to do with her.
Not that he would have the opportunity to do so, of course—a captain who had once been a private soldier and the widow of a Portuguese marques and daughter of a French count.
How had she once phrased it? He paused outside his inn and frowned down at the ground before his feet. The bastard and the daughter of a French count. Yes, he believed those had been her exact words.
Well, he had just relearned his lesson. From now on he would confine his attentions entirely to the Beatrizes of this world. Beatriz might take money for services rendered, but at least she was open and honest about what she did. She did not entice a man to madness and then claim, all wide eyes and sweet smiles, that she had merely been offering a good-night kiss of gratitude. Beatriz knew how to give as well as receive. And what she gave was her sweet and ample self for his pleasure and his comfort.
He was sorry in his heart that he had not brought her with him after all. He would have given all the meager contents of his purse at that moment to be able to take her up to his bleak inn room and bury himself in her.
Damn, but she was beautiful, he thought. And warm and slender and shapely. And tasty. But it was not Beatriz he was thinking of any longer.
8
THEIR journey lasted three more days. They stayed at Leiria one night, Joana choosing to sleep at a convent in company with Matilda, and at Coimbra the next—she had friends there with whom to stay. Before the third night closed in on them they had arrived finally at the city of Viseu, high on a breathtaking plateau, its city walls and its churches and cathedral giving it a beauty all its own.