She took a step forward. “That isn’t what I want. That I would be sorry for.”
“Your brother is in the next room.”
“My brother is unconscious.”
“Mr. Cheap will return,” said Sparhawk.
“Not for several hours.”
“Then it would be wrong to abuse the trust he has placed in me,” said Sparhawk.
“Mr. Cheap trusts that you will not force yourself on me. And that I am old enough to make my own choices.”
“But it is as you said in Salem. What you want—what we both want—would leave you worse off in the morning.”
“Not if we were careful,” she said. Her mother and the dame might have been disappointed before. They would be positively horrified now.
Sparhawk wasn’t. He was tempted. She could see it in the stiffness of his posture, in the way he held himself as far back from her in the tiny hall as he could manage. “I never meant to be anything else with you,” he said.
They were dancing around it, but she must be certain they both held the same understanding. “You must pull out,” she said, feeling her face flush. She had received a graphic and thorough education in the matter. Not from the dame, of course, but from the well- meaning trollops on the Salem docks. Now, as then, her cheeks colored and her tongue failed to form the words. She was a pirate’s daughter, but Micah had been her only lover, and they had not discussed anything beforehand.
“Micah did not,” she said. And afterward, it had only deepened her humiliation. When he started talking about settling money on her, buying her a house near his wharf, making her his mistress, not his wife, she had realized her folly. She’d told him she would never consent to being his mistress. “You won’t have any choice if you are pregnant,” he’d replied.
He’d been right. The Wards were too stretched already. They could scarcely support themselves, could not bear the loss of even a fraction of Sarah’s labor, or afford to feed and clothe a child. She had spent the better part of the next month in anxious misery. News of her broken engagement raced through town on the wind of gossip, but she seemed to move through the days between her night with Wild and her next courses like a ship becalmed.
For two years she had raged at the way Micah Wild had robbed her of her ability to chart her own course. She had struggled, ever after, to remake her future. Tonight with Sparhawk, not only could she change her future; she could also change her past, dislodge Micah Wild from his place in her history as her only lover, as her logline for passion and intimacy.
Sparhawk took a hesitant step forward in the hall. “Before you arrived, I resolved to part with you, for your own good.”
“I know you fear acting the part of the rake and seducer, but here, tonight, you are not the authority of the Crown, and I am not the fugitive from its justice. Only our sexes make us unequal, and that is a distinction of bodies, not of spirit.”
• • •
She had demolished all his arguments. Sparhawk had known Sarah Ward to be his equal in spirit from their first encounter on the Sally; he knew he would not meet her like again.
He took her hand in his. It was small but capable, softer than it had been on her father’s schooner, a delicate gold bracelet circling the wrist. He lifted it to his lips, and she came lightly into his arms as he pressed a kiss in the center of her palm, then over her pulse point, and again on the downy inside of her forearm.
His heart beat faster, and the last of his misgivings fled. He was sorry her first lover had been Wild, but he was also glad she was not a virgin. He had never deflowered one, never known the responsibility of setting the pattern for a woman’s future passions. He was glad of that as well. He had not understood, until now, that first encounters were more than physical experiences. Wild might not have hurt Sarah physically, might even have given to her generously of pleasure and attention. It was himself he had withheld.
Sparhawk would not make the same mistake.
• • •
Sarah felt the last of Sparhawk’s resolve crumble. He pulled her close and his mouth descended; his lips covered hers; his tongue sought entry and gained it. His mouth tasted molasses sweet with the rich dark rum he had shared with her brother, whose life he had just saved.
He backed her to the wall until his taut body met every inch of hers. She felt the cool plaster against her shoulders through the thin cotton of her gown. Her center of gravity shifted. Weight pooled between her legs. His body responded, thick and urgent against her belly.
She had been land bound in Boston for so long that the tang of sea and salt in his hair, on his skin, thrilled her senses and made her want to drown in him. The familiar textures beneath her questing hands, the soft snowy linen of his shirt, the starched white cotton of his neck cloth, the soft wool of his fawn breeches, were made startling and new by the presence of his hard muscular body beneath.
He stepped back and looked down at her, eyes wide with wonder. She shared his excitement. “Upstairs,” he whispered, his inflection at once hungry and solicitous.
She nodded and took his hand, as eager as he was for this thing that was unfolding between them.
They climbed the first two steps, but when they reached the bend in the stair, he stopped and turned to her to kiss her lips, her eyes, her hair, and whisper her name over and over. She could feel the beat of his heart in his chest, setting an insistent rhythm that her own body echoed.
They were as close as they could be with layers of muffling cloth between them, but it was not enough. She needed him. Flesh to flesh. Skin to skin. She raised her knee and hooked it over his hip, bringing them closer together there. He moaned and grasped her buttocks, then lifted her and turned to mount the next stair.
She locked her ankles at the small of his back, kissed his throat where his tanned skin was bare above the ruffle on his shirt, opened her mouth and flicked her tongue against the pulse in his neck.
That undid him. He staggered and set them down, locked together, on the stairs.
“I meant for you to have a bed,” he whispered.
“I don’t need a bed,” she said just as quietly, still dimly conscious of her brother sleeping downstairs. “I just need you.”
The stairs were dark, but there was enough moonlight coming from the landing above for her to see the expression of sensual intent that suffused his face.
He reefed her skirts, neat as a foretopman, folding each layer of cotton back until there was only the gossamer silk of her chemise covering just her knees. This he reefed as well, carefully, almost reverently, until she was completely exposed to him.
“Beautiful,” he said, stroking the thatch of blond curls with the backs of his knuckles. She was already slick and ready for him, but he took his time to please her anyway, and she came very near knowing just how good it could be if he did it for her before he stopped.
Then he opened his fall front. He stroked his shaft to spread the moisture beading at the tip. There was nothing preening or self-conscious about the gesture, just a pure carnality that freed her to embrace her own.
He knelt over her. She grasped a banister and leaned back. The risers of the second flight bit into her back, but she didn’t care. His hardness was stroking her slickness, back and forth, a prelude to the joining she hungered for, and when she raised her hips and he lowered his, they slid together in a perfect fit, a dovetail joint.
She had a little leverage, with her feet upon the stair below, her hand upon the banister, to move with him, to arch and meet his thrusts and find for herself that which she had passively waited for Micah to give to her. And that discovery made the moment, with Sparhawk, wholly new.
Right as her body went slack, his tensed. He gasped, stilled, and pulled out, just in time.
He rested his forehead against hers. She could hear his deep-drawn breaths, feel his heartbeat reverberate through her whole body.
<
br /> They climbed to their feet, whispering endearments, straightening each other’s clothing, kissing, touching, smiling at their own impatience. Together they crept up the stairs, like errant children sneaking back to bed.
They discovered three chambers on the second floor. The first two were small and sparsely furnished with simple low beds and practical straw ticks. The third was obviously meant to be the great room, and like the rest of the house, reflected the taste of a previous century. The bed was heavy oak and paneled, the posts carved in a frenzy of stylized floral motifs. No doubt it had been quite grand once, but age had darkened the wood almost to black, and much of the fine detail was lost. It did, however, boast the plumpest feather mattress Sarah had ever seen.
“I asked my man of business to buy and furnish a love nest,” Sparhawk said, by way of an explanation.
Sarah flounced on the edge of the cloudlike mattress, and a feather floated up. “It would seem he has a very literal mind. At least the bed is roomy and there is no need to bend me over it.”
His eyes widened fractionally, and he tensed with what she now recognized as desire held in check. “Need . . . ,” he said, considering her assertion, then shaking his head, “no.” He crossed the room, drew her to her feet. “But what is a necessity at sea may prove a pleasing variation on land. And need is a matter of perspective.”
• • •
Sparhawk lay staring up at the canopy of the great bed. Sarah Ward was curled beside him, her honey gold hair spread across the pillow. She radiated happiness and contentment. Over and over again as they had moved together, he had thought, We are made for each other.
After the first time on the stairs he had experienced a sense of discovery that recalled his very first affair, a liaison with a Venetian opera singer named Marcella. McKenzie had introduced her to him, part of the gruff old Scot’s effort to broaden a young officer’s horizons.
Marcella had been thirty, experienced, beautiful, and kind to a fumbling youth. He’d come so quickly the first time that he’d expected to be thrown out of her bed, but instead she had roused him again and shown him, patiently, how to stop and start and prolong his pleasure to ensure hers. After a mutually satisfactory second performance, and then a third that met with not only her approval but her praise, he’d lain back on her gilded bed, surrounded by grinning putti, and seen the world anew. So long as he was considerate of his lovers, and did not repeat the mistakes of his father or the brutality of Slough, he could enjoy this anytime he was in port.
Making love to Sarah Ward on a darkened staircase had filled him with a similar sense of revelation. They’d climbed to the second floor and laughed over the ludicrous old bed, and he had shown her how a man enjoyed a woman in the confines of a crowded ship, bent over a cannon or a narrow berth. He had described to her how much he wanted to have her that way when he had a ship again, his words, as Marcella had taught him so long ago, painting pictures to drive both their passions higher.
When they were spent, melancholy had washed over him, and self-loathing such as he had not felt since the first time he had given in to Slough. He had told Sarah Ward that he loved her, implied with his heated talk that they would share a future together.
She reached out to stroke his shoulder. He felt her fingers, feather light, tracing over the linen of his shirt, which he had kept on to hide his scars. They were not the sort of thing that refined ladies liked. Her hand traveled lower and he tensed. Then her fingers reached the hem and met the ridged flesh of his back.
She did not shrink from the contact, did not take her hand away. “If you asked me, right now,” she said, “to come with you tonight, I would.”
He was as bad as his father. She had a future within reach, safe from the horror of imprisonment and execution, and he had compromised it. Even now her brother slept downstairs with stitches in his belly—a tangible reminder of the danger in which this affair placed her.
He rolled over and pushed her questing hand away. It felt like amputating his own.
“Your brother told me that you are about to receive an offer,” he said, the words tasting like bile in his mouth. “On terms I cannot match.”
“Indiscretion,” she said, “is a Ward family failing.”
“He also pointed out to me that ours is a dangerous association, one that could get you hanged.”
“My older brother is a hypocrite.”
It had not occurred to him that she might be aware of her brother’s affairs. “You know?” he asked. “About Benjamin?”
“He told me when he was seventeen and I was fifteen,” she said. “The girls at my dame school, including my best friend, all adored him. I asked him why he didn’t take any of them into the garden during dances at the assembly hall. I thought I was so very worldly then, but he had to explain it to me, the way men loved other men. I knew I mustn’t tell anyone, although I think Father suspected early on. But I didn’t understand what it would mean, the danger it might place him in, until later. And now he has a lover who is rich and royal, and who can do as he pleases. And if they are found out, it is Benji who will suffer.”
“Ansbach held the marines back after Benji was shot,” said Sparhawk. “I will not say that your brother has chosen an easy path, but Charles Ansbach is an honorable man, and the fact that the streets were not teeming with soldiers hours ago is a testament to the affection in which he holds your brother.”
“I thought the navy took a dim view of sodomy,” she said.
“When it is discovered, yes. But between consenting adults, on most ships, it is more often ignored than prosecuted.”
“And on your ship?”
“Your brother has nothing to fear from me,” said Sparhawk. “And he is right about us, about our prospects.”
“My brother,” said Sarah Ward, “is the last man on earth who should lecture another about dangerous entanglements.”
“Nevertheless, he is right. And prosecution for sodomy is rare, whereas arrest for piracy, smuggling, and treason is epidemic at the moment.”
“I am not afraid of Admiral Graves or his odious nephew.”
“You should be. Your testimony could condemn them both. And now Benji is implicated as well. He was seen on the Hephaestion. Ansbach restrained the marines, but not before he called out your brother’s name. It would not take much for an alert informer—and both sides have their share—to put two and two together and realize that Ansbach and your brother were acquainted in London. That will give the admiral greater leverage over you. And as you pointed out, Ansbach is royal and inviolate. Your brother is not.”
“Do not presume to lecture me about the risks my brother takes.”
“I am sorry,” he said. “That came out ungracious and ungrateful. I am conscious of the great service you and your family have done me, and would like to repay you. I can instruct my prize agent to sell the house and forward you the money.”
She stiffened. He felt it through the feather mattress. “That is very generous of you,” she said in an icy voice, “but I don’t require payment for my services tonight—”
“That is not what I—”
“And we don’t need the money. The Rebels will pay us for the use of the Sally and Benji’s services as captain.”
She was brave and loyal and tenacious, and that was why, for the first time in his life, he was in love. And that was also why he must now act like the man he despised above all others—his father—and abandon her.
He got up and paced to the washstand, where he completed a quick toilette in silence. He could feel her watching him, knew he had hurt her, and was about to hurt her more. He buttoned his breeches, tied his shirt closed, reached instinctively for the blue wool coat that he was no longer entitled to wear, then left it where it lay on the chair. Finally he turned to her. She had drawn herself up on the bed, pointed chin held defiantly in the air.
“Your b
rother may be a hypocrite,” he said, knowing his words would lash her like a whip, “but Benjamin’s assessment of your predicament is correct. If you come with me, and we are overtaken, you will be at the admiral’s mercy. He must try me as an officer, but the Port Act means he can arrest you and hold you indefinitely, without trial. And I very much doubt, since you know the truth about the French gold, you would survive long in his custody. I cannot take you with me. I sail on the tide for England, alone, and I will not be coming back.”
• • •
She would never learn.
It was impossible to stay after that, in the pretty little house he had bought her with its sturdy antique furniture and sanded floors, where they had made love. Her heart broke again when he didn’t try to stop her.
A few blocks away, the cook’s son caught up to her carrying a lantern and a kitchen knife and looking solemn and scared, whether of Sparhawk, the regulars, or common criminals, she couldn’t say. He walked her the rest of the way home.
He needn’t have bothered. The streets were no longer empty. Carters and drovers were already stirring, bringing their scanty produce, their precious eggs, their dear butter, the fish that the admiral only occasionally allowed them permission to catch, to market.
But she was glad of the boy’s company, because alone she might have broken down and started crying. When Micah had jilted her, the humiliation, the public tallying of her worth, had been crushing, but in the months that followed, she had been able to tell herself that money and Wild’s mercenary nature had played a role in her rejection.
There would be no such comfort with Sparhawk.
Inside Trent’s manse it was cool and silent, the stairs dark. She longed for the enveloping cocoon of her dimity bed curtains, where she could lay her head on the feather pillow and stretch her body, sore from its exertions, over the smooth fresh sheets.
She saw the light under the door: her father would be waiting up for her, eager for news of the escape he had helped plan, of Benji and Mr. Cheap and the Sally; the sort of exploit that harked back to the escapades of his youth. He would be able to read her face, and offer his bottomless understanding. She only wished she didn’t need it quite so often.
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