The information succeeded in capturing her attention. She considered him, then said, “I take it you intend to join your men.”
He shook his head. “I know I can trust them to get the job done, and I can’t blend into the local population as well as they can.” Through the shadows, he held her gaze. “And neither can you. You’ll be spotted the instant you walk toward any slum, no matter how carefully you skulk.”
“You’re sure the slavers will go to ground somewhere in the slums?”
“So we’ve been led to believe.”
She was silent for a second; the carriage rolled ponderously on, but they were still some way from the crest.
He could hear hoots and soft birdcalls—like gulls softly cawing. His men had spread out and were pacing the slavers to either side, in alleys and lanes running parallel to the street.
Miss Hopkins opened her lips. “What—”
“Miss!” The agitated whisper floated down through the trapdoor. “That big bruiser we’re following—he’s noticed the carriage. He’s stopped, and he’s looking back at us.”
Before Robert could react, the thorn in his side sprang up and whispered in reply, “Pull into the curb. Now. And just wait.”
She dropped back to the seat.
The carriage slowed and angled toward the roughly scored curb.
Robert twisted about and peered through the small window. The upward angle gave him a good view along the dusty street. Three of the slavers were continuing on, apparently oblivious, but the leader—the big bruiser—had turned around and, with one hand on the hilt of his cutlass, was standing, staring down at the carriage.
The carriage rocked to a halt. The muffled clop of the horse’s hooves faded.
The man shifted his considerable weight, then he started toward the carriage.
“Miss?”
“Keep your head down,” Miss Hopkins quietly directed. “Stay as you are.”
Robert wouldn’t have said any different; now was not the time to panic.
But the big slaver didn’t slow; his suspicions had clearly been aroused, and he wasn’t going to go on until he’d reassured himself over who was in the carriage.
And what they were doing.
Robert watched the slaver pace steadily nearer, the man’s expression growing increasingly intent.
“He’s almost here!”
Robert didn’t need the anguished, barely audible warning to realize Miss Hopkins’s time had run out. Disaster loomed—six-plus feet and more than three hundred pounds of it.
He had to act.
Swearing beneath his breath, he swung to face her. Time seemed to slow; through the dimness, he met her wide, faintly horrified gaze.
He reached for her. “This is the only way. Don’t scream.”
It was all the warning he gave her—all he had time for. He seized the feisty Miss Hopkins about her waist, lifted her and deposited her in his lap, hauled her to him, and slammed his lips over hers.
Even as sensation flooded his brain, he reminded himself this had to look convincing.
He wrapped his arms about her, crushed her to him, and devoted himself to kissing her as if ravishment was his immediate goal.
CHAPTER 7
Sensation crashed through Aileen with a force that left her reeling.
That left her adrift on a sea of surging reactions, of impulses and urges and the giddy sense of having stepped off the edge of the known world.
Her world, at least.
Her awareness expanded, then fractured.
Heat. Hardness.
Lips that demanded.
Limbs of steel surrounding her, that held her so tightly she had no hope of breaking free.
A hard body that made her own stir, that made her pulse race. Thighs like oak beneath hers, and that fabulous chest like a warm wall against which she could lean.
A startling new reality broke over her; she tried to take hold, to grip and steady herself.
Curling her fingers in the fine fabric of his shirt, she clutched and hung on. Tried to make her wits stop whirling, her senses stop waltzing.
What the devil is he doing?
Even as the thought formed, she heard again his words. No other way.
He was right—and she should be grateful he’d thought quickly enough...
His lips moved on hers, and her thoughts fragmented, flitting off like butterflies in the sun.
She couldn’t call them back, not while his lips supped at hers, coaxed and tempted. Barely aware of what she was doing—driven by an urge too powerful to resist—she straightened her curled fingers and slid her palms up, up the long, hard planes of his amazing chest to his shoulders, solid with muscle and just the right anchor to cling to; she gripped.
And kissed him back.
She needed to play her part in this staged scene. The armed man would look in, and see and think...
As if driven—nay, goaded—by her response, Frobisher angled his head and kissed her more forcefully, with a potent demand she felt race down every nerve.
On a smothered gasp—she wasn’t sure when last she’d breathed—she parted her lips in invitation, eager, as she’d never been before, for more. More of the heat. More of this headiness.
More of him.
He surged into her mouth and ruthlessly claimed.
And something inside her rose to meet him.
No wilting flower, she. She wanted to experience, wanted to feel—wanted to seize and savor, too.
So she met him and matched him, kiss for kiss, demand for demand—and found herself utterly enthralled.
Never before had she been so captured by a kiss. Truth be told, she’d never been kissed like this before—as if she were a delicious fruit to be devoured, as if her lips and mouth were a succulent delight to be savored.
Some part of her mind understood his motives; to pull off this deception, they had to make the armed thug—the slaver—believe that this was why they were there, wildly and obliviously consorting in the carriage on the darkened street. That their hunger for each other was enough to have driven them to such flagrant madness.
Their lips parted for a heated breath. For just a split second, from beneath heavy lids their eyes met, and in that instant, she realized she wasn’t calling on any large degree of histrionic ability—and neither was he.
This was all too...real.
Then they plunged back into the fiery exchange, melding their lips, their mouths, driven by an unprecedented madness—by a desire too potent to deny.
Passion beyond anything she’d ever imagined all but erupted between them.
She caught and framed his jaw and recklessly returned the fire and molten heat he’d sent streaming down her veins.
From a great distance, she heard a throaty chuckle.
Then a very deep male voice growled, “Wondered what you and your fare was up to, mate.”
“Pretty obvious, I’d a thought,” Dave mumbled back.
“That it is, and clearly not something I need to worry about. Leastways, not unless I was her husband.”
With a distinctly male guffaw, the thug walked off.
Aileen strained her ears, trying to refocus enough of her senses away from the demands of the utterly engrossing kiss to track the man’s retreat.
Frobisher’s hand firmed about the back of her head, and he relentlessly drew her and her senses back, down, into the still-swirling cauldron of their exchange.
She knew she could stop kissing him now, but she couldn’t seem to summon the strength, the will, to pull back, to turn away from the enthralling embrace.
Surely she could rely on him to end the exchange once they were safe? She’d draw back when he did—and he wasn’t by any means drawing back yet...
>
“He’s gorn, miss. Where’d you want me to take you to now?”
The words rudely jerked her back to the here and now. To full consciousness of what she’d been doing, and with whom.
Where had her wits gone begging?
It was suddenly easy to end the kiss and pull back—assisted by Frobisher having returned to earth courtesy of Dave, too.
They sat wrapped in the warm dark of the carriage; from a distance of mere inches, their gazes met.
And held.
She could feel the rigid rod of his erection against her hip. She was twenty-seven; she knew what that particular circumstance meant.
But then his features hardened. His arms fell from around her; he gripped her waist and lifted her off his lap and set her back on her seat with an alacrity that made her blink.
And question her conclusion. Perhaps he was hiding something else in there...no! Don’t think of that.
Composing herself—regaining her usual firm mental footing—was going to be difficult enough as it was.
Robert watched the delectable Miss Hopkins blink distractedly several times—as if trying to bring the world into focus. He knew precisely how she felt. While one part of him was pleased to note the first sign of anything like weakness in her—and was tempted to preen—his own inner turmoil wiped out any inclination to smugness.
What the hell just happened?
He knew what it was supposed to have been—hell, he’d instituted it. But somehow the simple act of pretense had metamorphosed into something quite different.
Into something else.
He could barely catch his breath. Him!
And where the devil did she learn to kiss like that?
He mentally shook aside the question; it was something he didn’t need to know.
This was his chance to seize the initiative, to claim and keep the upper hand.
Ruthlessly blocking the lingering sensations of having her—all warm feminine curves and sleek limbs—in his arms, he refocused on her—
Just as she leaned forward to peer through the window beside his head.
Her features eased. “They’ve gone.” Immediately, her gaze flicked to his face. “Are your men following them?”
He nodded. He listened, then said, “I can’t hear their signals, but they’ll already be on the other side of the crest, so that’s no surprise.”
She sat back and studied him. He got the impression that she’d recovered from the kiss—from its unexpected, unprecedented intensity. Given he was still inwardly scrambling to do the same, he wasn’t sure he approved.
Her eyes narrowed on his face. “I know why I was following those men—even if I didn’t know they were slave traders. But why were you?”
“For much the same reason.” He hesitated, but she already knew enough to guess the rest, and probably would. “As you’ve discovered, this particular band of slave traders is working in conjunction with Undoto, and the people they’ve been seizing have been Europeans, mostly English—men, young women, and children.”
“Good Lord.”
“Indeed. That’s not the normal pattern of slavery in these parts—and yes, it’s been outlawed, yet it does still go on. However, there are several oddities about this particular outbreak, not least that it’s been occurring inside the settlement under the very noses of the local authorities, apparently without hindrance. But this enterprise is also notable in that they’ve chosen to kidnap several serving officers—your brother William among them.”
“From what I’ve gathered, Will was following the trail of a Captain Dixon, an army man from the fort.”
Robert nodded. “Dixon disappeared first. Hopkins—your brother—was sent to see what he could learn about Dixon’s disappearance, and he, too, vanished. Next came a Lieutenant Fanshawe, who was sent to find William, and he also disappeared. There was one other, too, but after that, London called my brother in, and subsequently, I’ve been sent to pursue the trail.”
“What—”
“Are we going anywhere, lady and gent?”
They both looked up at the coachman’s faintly exasperated question.
Seize the initiative. Quickly, Robert ordered, “Back to Miss Hopkins’s lodgings.”
Silence, then the coachman carefully queried, “Miss?”
Robert shackled his annoyance and calmly met the delectable Miss Hopkins’s glare. Finally, she looked up and called, “Thank you, Dave. Go by the same route we’ve taken previously.”
“Aye, miss.”
Robert heard harness jingle, then the carriage rocked into motion. It picked up speed as it continued up the slope, then veered right into a street that led across the side of Tower Hill toward the more fashionable quarter.
Once they were bowling along, before she could return to her attack, he caught her eye and said, “As I mentioned, I’m acquainted with your older brothers. Given that connection, I must in all conscience insist that you leave the pursuit of the slave traders and the subsequent rescue of those taken—including your brother—to me and my crew, and those who will be sent subsequently.”
Her eyes narrowed on his face; he was growing accustomed to the sensation, to being the absolute focus of her keenly attentive gaze. “Why subsequently? Why wouldn’t you see this...this mission through to its end and rescue those taken by the slavers yourself? Well, you and your men.”
Opportunity offered, and he reached for it. “That is one of the difficulties with this particular mission.” He paused, realizing he stood on the brink of revealing another secret, yet the potential reward outweighed the risk; he needed to get her to leave the settlement. “There are those in the settlement whom we have yet to unmask who are working with the slavers. We cannot and, indeed, must not risk alerting any of those people, whoever they are, or to escape eventual exposure and justice—to cover their tracks—they might well order the massacre of all those who’ve been taken. At this juncture, we have no reason to imagine that those taken are already dead. In fact, we believe they’re alive and have been specifically taken for some reason—for something they know or something they can do. So at no point must we do anything to jeopardize the safety of those missing.”
He paused to study her face; she was listening intently and all but immediately waved at him to continue. He hid his reaction to her imperious, if wordless, command and went on, “Because of that restriction, each...operative sent to look into this business can only remain here long enough to further the investigation to the next stage. Consider—your brother William was the first to be sent in. He was followed by Fanshawe, who was in turn followed by a highly skilled operative named Hillsythe. Your brother, Fanshawe, and even Hillsythe, experienced though he was, each pushed one step too far—and were seized and taken, leaving London no wiser as to what was happening here.”
Her frown was definite, her concentration complete, and she gave no sign of wishing to interrupt. He hesitated, considering the wisdom of further revelations, but eventually continued, “My brother came to the settlement openly—he and his wife posed as merely calling in while on their honeymoon cruise to Cape Town. They identified attendance at Undoto’s services as a common key in all the disappearances, and also learned of the slavers’ association with Undoto himself. But then my sister-in-law was drugged and handed to the slavers—because she asked questions of the wrong person. My brother rescued his wife, but of course, they then had to leave to maintain the covert nature of the investigation and to take word back to London.
“When I arrived here, I learned that the local priestess who had connected the slavers directly with Undoto had been brutally murdered shortly after my brother and his wife had spoken with her, so I had no direct avenue to locate the slavers other than by watching Undoto.”
“The priestess was murdered?”
“Yes. This priestes
s lived among her people, yet the slavers were able to walk into her house and bludgeon her to death.” He’d deliberately led her to that fact—the one he felt most clearly illustrated the danger involved in pursuing the slave traders. “As I said earlier, this is not a mission that’s safe for someone like you—someone without the requisite training and support—to actively pursue.” He had far too much experience with women to say she couldn’t pursue it because she was female. “I assure you that you may, with full confidence, leave your brother’s safety in my hands and in the hands of those who will follow. London is now fully aware of the delicacy and urgency of the situation here, and the authorities there are fully committed to ending this illegal endeavor and rescuing those taken and seeing them safely home.”
The carriage started to slow; they rolled past the church, then Dave drew his horse to a halt.
Robert waited, breath bated, for the thorn in his side to pluck herself out and agree to return to safety on the next vessel bound for England.
She continued to study him, then quietly said, “So this mission is being run in stages, as it were—each with some definable goal?”
He didn’t respond.
Her gaze grew more intent. “What’s your stage—your goal?”
He inwardly swore. Her brothers were well known for their dogged stubbornness; clearly, that was a familial trait.
She wasn’t his responsibility. She was old enough to be her own mistress and clearly was determined to be so; he didn’t need to feel that it was incumbent on him to keep her safe at all costs.
He told himself that. Several times, in various ways, increasingly explicitly.
He knew himself well enough to know it hadn’t worked.
For whatever godforsaken reason, responsibility for Miss Hopkins and her safety, at least while here, now rested squarely on his shoulders.
He sighed and tipped his head back against the squab.
Her eyes had narrowed on his face; he could tell without looking.
“Are you going to tell me? Or should I start to follow you, or ask at the governor’s office for information—”
A Buccaneer at Heart Page 14