He wanted to be there for that unveiling. That was a woman he deeply wished to meet.
When he knocked at the bedchamber—his own bedchamber, at that!—she opened the door to grant him entry. He held up the pails and grinned at her. “You had to buy the largest tub in London, didn’t you?” he teased.
She didn’t smile back. In fact, he thought he saw a flicker of sadness beneath the veil of her usual poise.
Well, he would just have to see about that. After pouring the last of the water into his tub, he turned to grin at her. “I’ll be needing a bit of help tugging my boots off, wife.” He held up his bandaged arm. “Wounded in battle as I am.”
His words did not bring a spark of defiance to those blue eyes or even cause her to lift her chin. Still, she indicated the chair and when he sat, she knelt quite unselfconsciously before him to remove his boots.
Who was this new Bliss? And how could he bring back the one with the fire in her eyes and the brick in her purse?
When she rose once more and turned her back to him, he quickly stripped out of the rest of his clothing. Moments later, he sat immersed in the hot water to his pectoral muscles.
He cleared his throat, and when she turned, he waggled the washing cloth at her. “Wounded, remember?”
Her eyes narrowed. Morgan celebrated inwardly. He could admit to himself, even if he would never admit it to her, that he was enjoying their ongoing battle of wills. Never had a woman struggled so against his charm, not when he’d truly put his mind to seduction.
But didn’t he normally go for widows and jaded wives? Wasn’t that low-hanging fruit?
Those were fine-looking fruit, who had their pick of men swarming to their sides! Nothing easy about it!
And yet none of them had resisted him as Bliss did—and none of them had so intrigued him, either.
Who was she, really? Greedy seductress? Virginal maiden? Or something in between, both fascinating and indefinable? Getting to know her was like mining diamonds—hard work, but with the promise of immense reward.
When she knelt at the side of the tub and took the cloth without objection, Morgan began to worry. Had he done something wrong, on the way home? Said something to offend between the alley and his own front door?
Then her warm hands began to stroke the soapy cloth over his shoulders and he forgot everything but her touch.
• • •
BLISS TOOK THE cloth and began to soap it thoroughly. Then she took a deep breath and reached over to slide it across the broad, muscled back now exposed to her.
His skin was browned, as if he went shirtless at sea. Perhaps he did. In her mind’s eye she pictured him standing in his tight breeches under a canopy of billowing white sails, his dark curls tossed by the wind.
Her fingertips came in contact with his skin. How smooth it felt to her touch! Like satin, satin over iron, for his back was plated with those powerful strapping muscles she had spied beneath his coat. The man beneath her fingers was incredibly strong.
Suddenly, Bliss felt small and frail in comparison, a sensation she had never experienced in the company of a man before. Not Neville, certainly. Yet she knew she was not afraid of the captain.
Her own thoughts were to blame for that.
As her hands sluiced water over Captain Pryce’s bare back, Bliss found her mind slipping a bit sideways. Her usual patient focus gave way to an odd dreamlike state. Her thoughts swirled strangely in her mind—thoughts of smooth warm skin, of hard sculpted muscle, of the difference between men and women, the difference between this man and herself, of the way the genders met and danced and flickered, like the firelight reflecting in the wet, rippling back of the man she touched.
Then her thoughts began to slow. He was so hard. Strong. Beautiful. Dangerous.
Touching his body felt so good. She passed her wet hands over his wide back slowly, feeling every bulge and hollow. Up. His shoulders were so broad, so strapped with muscle, so dark with sun that her own hands looked small and pale and soft against him.
Lost in that slow, absentminded place, she stroked her hands down his bowed spine, feeling the tension in his back. Down, into the water, stroking the small of his back, spreading her fingers wide and pressing her palms into the hollow there.
He moaned, a low, animal noise of pleasure. The noise traveled into her through her hands, shooting deep into her belly—and other places—
She snatched her hands away, pushing against the edge of the tub and scooting backward.
By the time he turned his head to look at her through heavy-lidded eyes, she sat primly with her wet hands clasped in her lap and no expression whatsoever on her face. She was sure of that, just as she knew that her cheeks were aflame and that she’d been biting her lower lip for some reason, for it was now plump and wet.
The water was very hot. Anyone would have pink cheeks bending over a steaming tub.
Her practical nature offered no explanation for the warm, melting sensation she felt between her thighs. Thank goodness Captain Pryce had no idea about that!
Except that his dark blue eyes held a gleam of secret knowledge, along with a smoky hunger of his own.
Bliss cleared her throat slightly. “I am finished.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said mildly. He turned in the tub to lean his forearms on the edge as he gazed at her. “I’m a big bloke. There’s a lot of me left to wash.”
“You can reach everything else yourself,” Bliss pointed out.
Morgan held up his bandaged arm in reply. She hesitated, and he knew he had her.
“Then I must wash the alley off you, I suppose. It is only your due for saving me.”
Was it his imagination, or had her voice gone husky with something like longing? When she tilted his head back and poured warm water through his hair, he only had thoughts of her fingers tugging gently at his temples, stroking the soap away . . . and the tenderness of her touch made him ache.
He’d planned to seduce, to tease, to upend her damned equilibrium as he had done the night before. Yet he could not bring himself to break the spell of her gentle ministrations. There was no sound in the room but the spitting of the coals and the streaming water rinsing back into the tub.
Except for the thudding of his heart. Could she hear it? It seemed as loud as surf pounding on a cliff to him—but she only carried on, bathing him carefully.
He’d tried to tell himself that it was only his long deprivation that made him ache for her. That and her obviously desirable figure. And her beautiful hair. And her eyes of sky . . .
His past was strewn with beautiful women, but none of them had ever dug her slim fingers into his soul. None had ever filled his head with dreams of home and warmth and sleeping side by side until they were old and gray.
He couldn’t bear it any longer. He reached up and caught at her fingers. She went still when he grasped her hands, but allowed him to pull her to kneel next to him.
Pushing back his wet hair with one hand, he gazed at her lovely face. “Who are you?”
She gazed back but did not answer. Was it because she did not know, or because she thought he already did?
He tugged her closer, until the tub rim pressed to her ribs. Still she only gazed back at him. There was only a single candle flame to see her by. They were nearly nose-to-nose, yet he saw nothing in her wide blue gaze but calm and distance.
Kiss her.
I cannot. I gave my word.
You are a bastard. No one expects you to keep your word.
I do.
He could not kiss her. She would not kiss him. The gulf of this simple contradiction yawned between them, keeping them apart.
“Why?” He barely recognized his own voice, so rife with need and desperation. “Why will you not concede?”
Why will you not be mine?
Her response came from a distance. Her
gaze was blank. “Because I am meant to marry Neville.”
His grip tightened on her fingers, but she did not flinch away. “Neville. Does the title mean so much to you?”
She gazed back at him calmly, with neither defiance nor apology. “Neville will give me what I need.”
You feeble ass! It is your own fault. You let her in!
With a snarl of self-loathing, he released her fingers and stood. The water streamed down over his skin, washing back into the tub. He only wished he could shed his need for her so easily.
She did not flee his nakedness this time. She did not even look away but only sat back on her heels and met his furious gaze.
“Neville would bore you to death,” he snarled. “And you bloody well know it!”
Still dripping, he stepped from the tub and stalked from the room. Better to freeze to death in the dark parlor than spend one more moment in the same room as that conniving witch!
• • •
BLISS WATCHED HIM go.
Morgan Pryce’s magnificence took her breath away, but his anger crushed her. And though there was no point in denying that he had turned her world upon its head, she could not go to him.
If she chose to stay in this marriage, she would spend a lifetime watching him leave. Captain Pryce would forever be walking out her door and sailing away.
He would leave her. Alone. Time and time again.
Waiting. Just as she had done all her life.
With this man, it was all she would ever do.
Chapter 24
THE following morning, nothing went well. Breakfast had been a farce.
As Bliss prepared and served the meal, she attempted to keep the conversation cheerfully bland. She spoke of the upcoming ball. She discussed the weather. She inquired from Morgan which of the butcher’s finest meats he might enjoy for his evening meal.
And though he commented here and there, the life was gone from his voice. He was aloof, visibly angry.
Bliss understood Morgan’s discomfort. Her blathering was no more than an attempt to dispel a specter from the room—last evening’s bath. She failed in this effort, as her fingertips still sizzled from contact with Morgan’s hot, slippery skin. Her mind’s eye was seared with the sight of his chiseled torso, his muscled buttocks, the aching beauty of his head-to-toe nakedness. Bliss had slept little the night before, her body on fire with the miracle that was Morgan, her mind swirling with a thousand unanswered questions.
Perhaps Morgan suffered from the same torturous malady this morning.
Bliss had the power to heal him. She could easily reach out and touch him now if she so chose. She wanted to. But that was impossible, as such brazen physical affection would only muddy the annulment process.
She could not remain married to him. Even if she had lost every chance to wed Neville, she refused to condemn herself be alone for the rest of her days.
How odd that she needed to remind herself of this simple fact. How strange that this facade of a marriage had become so . . . complicated.
Morgan thanked her for the food and prepared to depart for his ship. It was as if he could not take leave of her company fast enough.
She followed him to the front door. Once again she was left gazing at his back.
“Morgan?” She had not meant to speak.
He stopped and turned, caution in his eyes. He waited.
“I should very much like to visit the ship today.”
His eyes narrowed. “You wish to come aboard the Selkie Maid?”
“I shall not make a nuisance of myself, if that is your worry. But it was your demand that I remain with you in order to prove myself. So I wish to remain with you.”
Morgan pondered her request for a moment and shrugged with obvious reluctance. “If you must.”
An hour or so later, Bliss found herself with an unexpected visitor. Cousin Attie sat on a stool by the hearth, engaged in some kind of whittling, her namesake kitten curled up at her feet.
“You’re not supposed to have a knife,” Bliss pointed out. “You’re not even allowed scissors. What on earth are you making?”
“It’s a pasta fork.” Attie looked up from her work, a long strand of hair falling across an eye. “I’m making it for Francesca.”
Attie was lonely, and the thought softened Bliss. “You miss Orion, don’t you?”
Attie shrugged, focusing once more on her whittling. “And Callie. And Elektra. And Poll . . . and now you. It’s like I’ve been left behind.”
Though Bliss was dressed and ready to call upon the ship, she could not simply toss Attie aside. Bliss understood loneliness too well to ever contribute to anyone else’s. “You can come with me to the docks, if you like. But I have one requirement.”
Attie dropped her whittling project and closed her knife, shoving it in the pocket of a particularly ratty pair of breeches. The rest of her attire was equally dismal. “What request is that?”
“That you put on a dress, Attie. A real dress that is becoming of a young lady of your age. Do you have a real dress?”
Attie rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I have that yellow thing Mr. Button made me wear to Orion and Francesca’s wedding.”
Bliss clapped her hands together. “How lovely that dress was, and how pretty you were in it!” She reached for her bonnet and reticule. “Come along, then. Let’s stop by Worthington House so that you can change.”
“But why would anyone wear a dress to a ship?” Attie followed at Bliss’s heels as they left the house and climbed up into Mr. Cant’s waiting carriage.
Attie and Mr. Cant bonded instantly, surly companions of the soul. Like cats forced into alliance against a world of dogs, they kept their distance with utter mutual understanding.
Bliss thought it was most appropriate.
Finally, they were both seated within, after lengthy debate over whether Attie should be allowed to ride up top and learn to drive a hack, “just in case I should need a profession, a legal one.”
Bliss answered Attie’s question as if none of the querulous protest had just occurred. “You should wear a dress because you are a young lady, who happens to be visiting a ship.”
Attie groaned as if she were in agony.
“I shall not force you, Atalanta. Perhaps you should remain at home instead.”
“No! I’ll do it! Ugh!” She slouched against the carriage bench in defeat. “But only for you, Bliss.”
• • •
MORGAN LOOKED PARTICULARLY handsome—if not exactly welcoming—when he greeted them at the bottom of the gangway. After helping them aboard, he excused himself for a moment. As he turned away from them to call instructions to the men repairing some rigging on the center mast, he leapt upward and caught himself on the ropy ladder by one hand and one foot, poised in the air like a circus performer. Bliss realized this was the first opportunity she’d had to see him in his world, thoroughly at home. His hair was tousled by the wind, and his careless garb, which looked rather rough in the civilized setting of a drawing room, seemed suddenly practical and easy to move in. It was as if half of him had been left behind when he stepped off that gangplank and she was only now seeing the whole man.
He had never been more attractive to her.
When he dropped down to land lightly on the deck, Bliss turned her head away to hide the sudden hunger she felt.
“Now I can take a moment to give you that tour, ladies.”
Attie replied with a decidedly unladylike snort.
Bliss ignored her cousin’s lack of manners, since Morgan seemed not to notice. He responded with a bow. “Miss Atalanta Worthington. This is quite an honor.”
“Captain.”
Bliss was confused. She looked from Morgan to her young cousin, and to Morgan again. “You two have met?”
“Indeed.” Morgan stifled a smile. “Miss Atalant
a and her brothers recently offered me a ride in the Worthington carriage.”
Attie grunted. “Yes. The captain was in danger of being trampled by a milk wagon.”
“Oh?” Bliss waited for further details of their encounter, but no one seemed willing to provide them.
Attie crossed her arms over the yellow bodice of her gown and smirked at Morgan. “We had a lovely chat about the importance of family loyalty, did we not?”
Morgan regarded her young cousin with a flat gaze. “Indeed.” Then he turned to Bliss. “Shall we, ladies?” Morgan gestured for Attie to walk ahead, and extended his arm to Bliss. She gave him a sideways glance, hoping he might provide insight into that odd exchange. Instead, he changed the subject entirely.
“Here she is, the Selkie Maid. Over the years she’s carried a variety of commodities, from coffee, tea, and sugar, to silk and precious metals. She requires a crew of forty, but we’ve just six men aboard while we’re docked. The others are taking leave with their families.”
A young seaman ran up to their group and bowed gallantly to the ladies. Bliss guessed he was no more than fifteen, just a bit older than Attie, and clearly interested in the pretty visitor.
Bliss could not blame the young man, for Attie looked lovely. All it took to bring her beauty to the fore was a good hair brushing, a splash of water upon her face, and the dress. It was clear that one day soon Attie would take Society by storm.
Poor Society.
Morgan introduced Attie to the seaman and then ordered him to show her about the main deck. “Meet us back here in a quarter hour, Tommy.”
“Aye, Captain.”
• • •
THE SHIP WAS fascinating, and Attie had to wonder why she hadn’t managed to board one sooner.
“Have you ever met a real pirate?” she asked.
Tommy thought about it for a moment. “Probably, but real pirates don’t go about bragging that they’re pirates. That only happens in storybooks and legends.”
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