by Sabrina York
“Yes,” he said matter-of-factly. “I shall kidnap her.”
“Kidnap her?” Ewan’s ears turned an odd shade of red.
“Toss her over my shoulder and carry her away.”
Edward slapped his knees. “That sounds like an excellent plan.”
“It’s a terrible plan!” Ewan bellowed.
“May I borrow your carriage?”
Edward grinned. “Absolutely.”
“You’re not kidnapping my sister! We’ve just barely covered up her last disappearance.”
Ned fixed Ewan with a glower. “You kidnapped my sister.”
Ewan bristled. “That was’na me! How many times do I have to—”
“Tossed her over your shoulder in the middle of a ball if memory serves.”
The great hulk stilled. His lips worked. “Well, that time it was me. But that is hardly the point.”
“It is exactly the point. You wanted Violet so much you didn’t care what anyone thought or did or threatened you with. You took what you wanted, like a man.”
“I loved her. This is not the same thing.”
Ned fixed him with a steady look. “This is exactly the same thing.” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Sir, I love your sister. More than life, more than breath. I would do anything for her. I realize I don’t have much to offer her now—”
“Now that you have right—”
“But I am willing to work at that. I’m willing to do whatever it takes. However long it takes to make something of myself.”
“You are something, Ned,” Edward said softly. Ned shot him a grateful glance. “You are a brave man who would sacrifice his life for another, time and time again. And,” he shot a glower at Ewan, “you are the brother of a duke. That makes you a man of consequence.”
“Edward, everything I have is yours. I intend to make my own fortune and then return for her. All I ask is that you allow her to wait.”
“Wait?” Ewan sputtered. “She’s practically on the shelf now!”
“Not hardly.” Edward brushed this declaration away and focused on Ned. “But what will you do?”
Ned cleared his throat. “I was hoping to get your advice.”
“Our advice?” More sputtering from Ewan.
“You are both successful men. You, Ewan, carved out an empire with your own two hands. From nothing. Surely you can teach me something.”
“Well…I…”
Edward tapped his lips. “You like horses, don’t you, boy?”
“Horses?” Who didn’t like horses?
“I was planning on gifting you an estate on the occasion of your twenty-fifth birthday. But I don’t see why you can’t have it a little sooner.”
“Edward!” His heart swelled with gratitude. And hope.
“It has a stable. Some promising horseflesh. I wager you could make a profit on it if you tried.”
Ewan frowned at the duke. “Not Watersly?”
“The very same.”
“But I wanted that.” When Ewan put out a lip, he looked very much like Sophia.
“Have you a better idea?”
Ewan’s nose wrinkled. “I suppose I could include him on an investment or two.”
“Nothing illegal,” Edward said.
The affronted expression on Ewan’s face was amusing. “I assure you, I am nothing but aboveboard.” He whirled on Ned. “But I promise you this, while you are working at making your fortune, I shall be working to find a husband Sophia will accept. Mark my words.”
Though Ewan’s threat made his gut churn, Ned nodded. “Fair enough.” He could only hope Sophia loved him enough to wait.
After Ewan left, Ned collapsed into the chair he’d vacated and scrubbed his face.
“Nerve-racking, isn’t it?”
“Huh? What?” He glanced up at his brother.
“Being in love.”
“Oh, hell, you have no idea.”
Edward laughed and fetched them both a whisky, clinking their glasses before responding. “Actually, I have a very good idea indeed.” They sipped in silence for a bit before Edward cleared his throat. “By the way, how are you feeling, Ned?”
“Much better, thank you.”
“Are you up for a masquerade tonight?”
Ned made a face.
“Your old friend Billingsly is hosting. It’s a pirate theme.”
Still not enticing.
“And from what I understand from Kaitlin, Sophia will be there.”
Hell.
Yes.
Edward grinned. “We leave at seven.”
Chapter Fourteen
There were pirates everywhere.
Ned sighed as he scanned the Billingsly ballroom. He’d thought it would be an easy thing to find Sophia but now he wasn’t so sure. The masquerade was an absolute crush. And everyone was in costume. Even the ladies.
Polite society had embraced the theme with zeal and come out in record numbers. In fact, at the moment in town, pirates were the newest passion.
Despite Edward’s and Ewan’s attempts to keep the adventure a secret, it had leaked out. Everyone was abuzz with the details of Ned’s exploits. It had blossomed into something bordering on legend. He was the toast of his circle, everyone crowding around him to hear his tale.
What they had kept from the clamoring throng was the fact that one of the captives had been Sophia. Ewan had put out the story that she’d had to leave the city to tend an ailing relative in Scotland. No one knew she was aboard the doomed ship. No one but Ned and Percy and MacDougal, who had all sworn, upon their honor, to keep her secret.
It was absolutely essential to preserve her reputation. She was to be his wife—once he made his fortune.
If he could find her.
He frowned and scanned the crowd once more.
Clearly a masquerade wasn’t the best place for a clandestine meeting. All the ladies looked identical with wide-brimmed hats and flowing capes and half-masks. Several of them even had swords strapped around the waist of their gowns, which for some reason he found unsettling.
He strolled along the edge of the ballroom, quartering the teeming mass and searching each face. It was difficult because they kept moving.
He spotted Ewan though. He stood at the fringe of the crowd, fists on his hips, glowering at Ned with an eagle eye.
“Hullo, Ned.” A familiar voice wafted to him; he turned to smile at his sister.
“Violet,” he said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “You look dashing.”
“I feel dashing.” She twirled and her hair, along with her skirt, belled out. She wore a floppy pirate’s cap and leather straps across her chest. “What a brilliant idea for a party, don’t you think?”
“I was just thinking the opposite.”
“Were you?” Her eyes twinkled.
“I cannot find Sophia.”
“Ewan forbade her from coming.”
His gut lurched. Damn and blast.
“But she’s here.” Her grin widened and a trickle of illicit excitement rippled through him. He knew that smile. “You’re looking in the wrong place.”
“The wrong… What?”
She winked. “If you become bored with the dancing, dear, you might fancy a game of cards.”
“Cards?”
“I believe Lady Billingsly set up some tables in the library for the men.”
The men?
Oh hell.
Hell no.
She couldn’t be saying what he thought she was saying.
“Excuse me.” Without waiting for Violet’s reply, he pushed through the crowd, heading for the library. Her laugh trilled after him.
The library was crowded with pirates as well. The room was ringed with smoke and tinged with the scent of whisky. Tables were filled, as were the chairs sprinkled about in casual arrangements. He saw Lord Billingsly right away at the mantel, surrounded by men—no doubt they were hungry for details of his recent adventure. But he didn’t see—
His gaze fell on a y
oung lad with a cheroot in his mouth, leaning back in his chair with a horrifying insouciance, regarding the cards in his hands. When he slapped them down on the table, a cry of dismay went up and all the other men tossed in their cards.
He was a slender thing for a man but dressed as a pirate in full kit. It was the silver wreath of curls peeping out from his hat that gave him away.
Gave her away.
Ned grumbled to himself as he made his way across the room, pausing every now and again to greet a compatriot. But he didn’t stop. He had to get to her. Spirit her out of here before someone saw her and recognized her for what she was.
That would ruin her quicker than any rumors of piracy.
He stopped by the table and waited for her to look up. He was gratified by the light in her eye, her smile, when she saw him.
“Ned! By all the saints. You came!”
“I say, Ned!” one of the other players, a rake named Camden, called. “The man of the hour. We’ve all been dying to hear your tale.”
Good gad. He was tired of telling it.
He smiled apologetically at his friend. “Perhaps later? Andrew? A word?”
Sophia’s lashes fluttered. “But we’re playing—”
“A word. Now.”
Her lip came out but she stubbed out her cheroot, collected her winnings and pushed from the table. “It’s been charming, gentlemen.”
They all protested at the sight of their money walking away but another fellow quickly took her chair. Ned grabbed Sophia’s elbow and drove her from the room.
“What are you doing?” he hissed.
“I was playing faro.”
“You know what I mean. Why are you dressed like this? At a society ball? For God’s sake, Sophia. What if anyone recognized you?”
“I should be ruined,” she said. The nonchalance of her tone was unsettling.
“That would be an utter disaster.” He guided her for the backstairs, where it was likely less crowded. His target was the garden where they could, God willing, talk in peace.
“Oh, it would be.” She shot him a minxish grin. “Only imagine. Ruined like that. No man would have me. Certainly not a prince or this beastly count. And absolutely not Dittenham.” She leaned in and confided, “His mother would never approve.”
Alarm curled in his gut at the thought of her ruining herself on purpose. “Sophia Fiona—”
She cut him off with a cavalier laugh. “Oh Ned.” She patted his arm. “You are adorable when you attempt to snarl.”
“I am rather adept at snarling.”
“If you say so.”
“Come. Down here.” He opened the door to the servant’s stairs and led her down the narrow staircase. “Sophia said Ewan forbade you from coming.”
“Naturally.” She sighed. “Once he knew you were coming.”
“How did you get here?” Visions of her walking through Mayfair dressed like this horrified him.
She grinned. “I posed as a groom.”
Fucking hell. Ned gaped at her. New visions, terrible visions, of Sophia clinging to the back of a coach as it winged through darkened London streets, scoured him.
“You could have been killed.”
“I held on tightly.”
“Sophia. Darling. You must have a care. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you. Anything.”
She waggled her fingers. “Pish.”
He grabbed those offending fingers and held them tight in his own. “I mean it. I must insist.”
Her eyes glowed in the dim lamplight. “Oh my.” A slow smile tweaked her lush lips. “I do like it when you insist.”
“Do you?” Of a sudden, his fury and fear became something else, something equally hot. He pushed her against the wall and kissed her. Insistently.
She responded with a raging passion that nearly unmanned him right there in the servant’s stairwell of the Billingsly townhouse. Her arms wrapped around his neck and she pressed against him. Her breasts were soft against his chest, her breath hot, her mouth damp and alluring.
“Ned, oh Ned. I’ve missed you so.”
“And I, you. God, Sophia. I can’t bear to be away from you. Not for a minute. These past few weeks have been hell.”
“Absolute hell.” She kissed him again and another flurry of passion ignited.
Unable to stop himself, he rubbed his hard cock against her belly. “I want you so much.”
In response, she raked his scalp with her nails. “I want you, Ned. I think about it every day. Every night.”
He shivered at the tenor of her words. They brought back memories, never far afield. Memories of the tight clasp of her body, the ripples clutching him as she came, her cries, her demands.
His hand skimmed her side. He wrapped it around her exquisitely curved buttock, cupped as it was in the indecency of trousers. Somehow this inflamed him more. He dipped his head and nuzzled her neck as he squeezed her cheek. She shuddered and undulated against him. The scent of her arousal, the sweet sweat of want, rose on the air.
He was about to reach for the buttons of her shirt when the door below them opened. A footman carrying a heavy tray of canapés stopped in his tracks at the sight of them entwined on the landing. He looked from one to the other and then, with a mutter, brushed past them up the stairs.
Ned frowned at Sophia. “This is not the place.” Not during a busy party, for certain.
“The garden is secluded.”
“Is it?”
Sophia shrugged. “That’s what Kaitlin said.”
“Did she?” God bless Kaitlin. “Come on.” He grabbed Sophia by the hand and tugged her down the stairs, through the kitchen—past a surprised retinue of servants—and out the back door into the mews.
He could have stopped there but the mews was crowded as well, with coachmen having a smoke in something of a party themselves. He urged her on, around to the back, through the garden gate. Laughter and music wafted over the grounds but as Ned led Sophia deeper and deeper in the garden, it faded to a mere whisper.
To his delight, he saw a gazebo just off the beaten path, settled in a stand of trees.
“Come,” he whispered, heading for it.
“Oh Ned. It’s lovely.”
Yes. Yes. It was. But not as lovely as she. He swept her inside and into his arms, taking a moment to rip the annoying hat from her head. He stilled. Stared.
Nan had indeed done a magnificent job fixing her hair. Where there had once been long, bouncing silver ringlets, she now sported closely cropped curls that clung to her head and highlighted her high cheekbones and the beauty of her almond eyes. They seemed enormous, and wide, and trained on him.
“You’re so lovely,” he said, cupping her cheek and kissing her again, this time reverently.
He intended it to be a reverent kiss but it quickly dissolved into something wild and profane. She did that to him. Burned away all civility when she was in his arms. All chivalry. All thoughts other than stripping her, mounting her, making her come.
He walked her backward toward a bench on the far wall, then he sat and pulled her onto his lap.
She clenched his lapel and pulled him into another kiss. He allowed her to take the lead because first of all, it was magnificent when she kissed him. And second of all, he was preoccupied. With her buttons.
Her breath escaped on a sigh when he freed her breasts and thumbed a nipple. Then, as he continued his teasing, she began to wiggle.
Sad news for his cock, which had his trousers stretched tight. He groaned as agony and ecstasy tangled in his belly. “Darling,” he mumbled against her questing lips, “I need you.”
Her eyes glowed in the moonlight. She smiled. And then, to his horror, she got up. He tried to clutch at her and pull her back but she danced away.
And then his horror evaporated before the force of his raging lust. Because she unfastened her trousers and let them fall. He nearly swallowed his tongue. Her skin was alabaster, her legs long and lean. The shadow of her nest sent a scorching
ripple through his belly. He made a choked sound and dropped to his knees and buried his face between her thighs.
He couldn’t help it. He needed to taste her.
And ah! Was she sweet. Much sweeter than he remembered. She stood before him with her legs parted—him bracing her with his hands to her full bottom, her with her hands anchored in his hair. She stood before him and let him feast.
It did not take long for her ardor to rise and with it a great rain of passion. As he licked and lapped at her taut button, he eased a finger into her. She shuddered then moaned and then, as he worked away in her, filling her again with more, she began to pant.
He knew when she came close. He could feel it. Taste it. Hear it in her panicked wails. He quickened his pace. His own passion was pressing but he needed her to come first. They could be discovered at any moment and he desperately wanted to fulfill her so she could remember how glorious it had been.
A tremendous satisfaction washed through him as she climaxed. He was fairly certain it was a climax on account of the fistfuls of hair she yanked out. He caught her as she collapsed.
“Darling,” he breathed into her mouth as he kissed her.
He whipped off his pirate cloak and spread it on the floor of the gazebo. She needed no urging. She lay down and spread her legs and held out her arms to him.
“Come to me,” she whispered.
Ah. Ah yes.
He was on his knees in a trice, had his cock in his hand in an instant—though he had to fumble with the fastening because his brain couldn’t seem to function. He sucked in a deep breath as he positioned himself. He rubbed up and down her slit and nearly went cross-eyed at the slick heat.
He nudged her clitoris and she seized.
“Ah! Ned,” she gasped. “Please. Fuck me now.”
His heart stilled. His cock lurched. That word from her lips? It enflamed him.
He lunged in, filling her with one crazed thrust. And God. God. It was magnificent. She was magnificent. Her heat enclosed him and he allowed himself a moment to savor the tight hold she had on him. It had been so long. Who knew how long it would be before he touched her like this again? He resolved to memorize every sensation.
But apparently she was too impatient for savoring. “Ned,” she whispered, urging him on with an arch of her hips. He complied, easing out and then taking her again in long, languorous strokes.