Reckless Seduction

by Jane Feather

  “But I will take responsibility for myself,” she said with a puzzled frown. “I do not see why that should cause you difficulties. If anything happens to me on this voyage, that is my responsibility, not yours. You must do what you would have done, had I not been here. That is how you have always behaved, is it not so? Everyone must take their chance and each is responsible for himself.”

  She really believed it. The golden eyes shone with candor and conviction, and he looked at her helplessly. He could not deny her statement. With anyone else it would have been so. Certainly, if any other woman he could think of had intruded so outrageously and uncompromisingly, he probably would not have felt one iota of responsibility. But this sprite was different, and there was little to be gained by looking for the reasons why that should be so. Deciding to leave that issue, he addressed himself to the one of which he was sure.

  “As it happens, the presence of a woman and a stranger on board has far-reaching consequences for everyone. Every man on this ship is aware of the fact that for three days, you shared his quarters, witnessing the intimacies of below-decks life. They are going to find that hard to forgive and impossible to forget. The rest of the fleet …” He gestured to the flock of sails spotting the sea around them. “Their captains are going to want to know why they were not informed of the presence of Victor Latour’s daughter beforehand, and they are not going to like the idea that she sneaked aboard and managed to remain hidden for three days. They are also going to wonder about their commander, about his ability to make the right decisions for them if he has a woman on board, one of such blatant determination.”

  Genevieve heard him out in shamefaced silence. Why had she not thought of all those ramifications before she had so blithely pursued her desire? “I will try not to be a nuisance,” she said in a small voice when he had finished.

  “I would be satisfied if you would promise me that in the future you will stop and think carefully before you leap,” he said forcefully. “There is nothing to be done about the present situation, except to make the best of it, but I would like to rest easy at night in the knowledge that you have accepted the need to curb your impulses. Otherwise, God only knows what end is in store for you—not a peaceful one, that’s for sure!” Genevieve was silent and he said very quietly, “It is time you grew up, sprite.”

  Her answer surprised him. “Perhaps it is time we both grew up.” The candid tawny eyes met his, and a smile lurked in their golden depths. “I think, Monsieur Delacroix, that we share the same faults. Is the life of a privateer not informed by impulse and love of excitement? By a horror of entrapment in society’s coils? Do you not take immense pleasure in shocking the respectable? It could be said that such character traits are not the hallmark of maturity. Is it so very extraordinary that I should feel the same?”

  The privateer contemplated this series of questions, a rueful smile playing over the chiseled mouth. “There is one difference between us,” he said. “I take no action until I have investigated every possible consequence, and I do not involve the unwilling or unwitting in my adventures.”

  “I will attempt to learn from you,” she promised, an imp of mischief in her eye belying the demure, serious tone. “You have taught me much, and I am quite willing to learn more.”

  “Go below,” he said, turning back to the wheel, but not before she had seen the answering amusement on his face.

  In the cabin, Genevieve found Silas engaged in stripping the bed. “You’ll not be wanting to get back in here today,” he said by way of greeting.

  “No,” she agreed, picking up from the floor the shirt that Dominic had given her last night. “Do you think you could bring me my clothes, Silas?”

  “Not without monsieur’s orders,” he replied stolidly, gathering up the dirty sheets.

  “No, of course not,” Genevieve muttered into the air, as he closed the door behind him. “I cannot imagine why I asked.” Well, the shirt would have to do. Dropping the towel, she shrugged into the fine lawn and was busy with the buttons when there was a thump at the door. Startled, she heard her voice squeak, “Who is it?”

  “Silas,” came the reply.

  “Come in.” When he entered, a tray in his hands, she said, “I am sorry, but I did not realize it was you since you are not in the habit of knocking.”

  “Depends on circumstances,” he replied briefly, placing the tray on the table. “There’s bread and warm milk there for you. You’ve not eaten for over two days, and you’d best start slow.” He unscrewed the lid of a silver preserve pot and spooned strawberry jam into the middle of the steaming contents of a silver porringer.

  Nursery food, Genevieve thought with a chuckle. It seemed quite incongruous that this burly seaman should be stirring strawberry jam into the nursery posset that he had presumably prepared with his own hands, having decreed like any nursemaid that it was necessary for her well-being.

  She sat at the table and began absently to consume the warming, comforting, bland concoction, watching as Silas took fresh linen from a carved oak chest and began to make up the bed, the gnarled, calloused hands moving efficiently, tucking and folding and smoothing. Genevieve, who had never made a bed in her life, could see Dominic’s point about not disturbing the status quo when it came to caring for his personal needs.

  He came into the cabin at that point, glanced at her almost empty bowl, and accorded her a brief nod of approval before helping himself to coffee.

  “Everything all right with Alouette, monsieur?” Silas asked casually.

  Genevieve’s ears pricked. Who or what was Alouette? She listened attentively as Dominic explained the situation to the sailor, who responded with a grunt and a nod. It was her first realization, since the voyage began, that danger lurked on those calm blue seas, and it became clear, as the two men talked, that they considered themselves lucky to have so far run up against nothing more threatening than the glimpse of a shark’s fin. It also became clear that they both expected trouble in the near future. And Genevieve could not face trouble clad only in the privateer’s shirt.

  “May Silas return my clothes?” she asked, taking a deep gulp of coffee.

  Dominic frowned and shook his head. “No, I’m not having you wearing britches again. When the crew sees you, I want as little as possible to remind them of that time you spent in their quarters.” His frown deepened, cutting grooves between the fly-away eyebrows. “It’s a pity we can’t do anything about your hair.”

  “That’s easily remedied, monsieur,” Silas put in. “If mademoiselle would just sit over here.” He took a large pair of scissors from a cupboard and flourished them purposefully.

  “But it is already so short,” Genevieve said nervously, maintaining her seat.

  “It’s not the length that’s the problem, as I see it,” Silas said, gesturing toward a chair and shaking out a towel with clear intent.

  “You may put yourself quite unreservedly in Silas’s hands,” Dominic said, amused by her obvious reluctance. “Although, after the barbarism already committed, I cannot imagine why you should worry about further damage.”

  With a resigned shrug, she took the assigned chair, and Silas draped the towel over her shoulders. The silence in the sunny cabin was broken only by the snip of the scissors and the whisper of coffee as Dominic refilled his cup. He was the picture of relaxation, leaning back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other, watching Silas’s handiwork with considerable interest. “Amazing, quite masterly,” he said with some awe, when Silas finally replaced the scissors, twitched the towel from Genevieve’s shoulders and shook it vigorously, a silver-gold shower of hair floating to the wooden floor.

  “Why amazing?” Genevieve put a tentative hand to her head.

  “Why don’t you look in the mirror and find out?” Dominic advised, returning to his breakfast.

  She saw a complete transformation. The pudding basin homogeneity had disappeared to be replaced by a neat, stylish cap, clipped into the nape of her neck, a few feathery tendr
ils falling in a fringe on her brow. It was short, but it was undoubtedly feminine. Silas was clearly a man of many parts.

  “Any suggestions about her clothes, Silas?” Dominic asked. “Obviously what she has on won’t do.”

  “No,” Silas agreed laconically, casting an appraising glance at her bare legs and feet. “There’s enough material in the shirt,” he observed thoughtfully, “but it’s not distributed right.” Taking her unceremoniously by the shoulders, he turned her around, seizing a handful of the voluminous garment between her shoulder blades. Genevieve stood still and endured the matter-of-fact examination in the spirit in which it was clearly intended.

  “Mmm,” he pronounced eventually. “Not too much of a problem. You got anything useful in that bundle you brought on board?”

  “Clean underthings,” she said, without embarrassment. Such an emotion was clearly out of place where Silas was concerned.

  “Good. Not sure I could manufacture those for you,” he replied. “I’ll fetch it.” He left the cabin, taking two of Dominic’s shirts with him.

  “He doesn’t approve of me,” Genevieve remarked.

  Dominic laughed. “No, he does not. But then he does not approve of women in general, and certainly not of the kind who don’t seem to know their place in the scheme of things.”

  “And where is that?” she inquired.

  “In bed, or in the kitchen,” he informed her succinctly. “Not, at all events, on board ship.”

  “Oh.” She glanced thoughtfully at the bed, and then back at Dominic. “I suppose it would be a pity to undo all his good work?”

  He crooked a finger at her and, smiling, she came over to him, allowing him to draw her between his knees. “I suspect you are incorrigible,” he said, lifting the shirt slowly, bending his head to kiss the soft skin as it was revealed, inch by inch. Genevieve shivered as his unshaven jaw rasped across the tenderness of her belly, and his tongue dipped into her navel. Then the prickly fire crept up her body with the shirt. Holding the hem against her shoulders, he turned his attention to her breasts, nibbling their rosy crowns with a sharp insistence that produced the strangest tug in her belly and a liquid fullness in her loins. She looked down at the head, glowing richly burnished against the white skin of her bosom, and her hands went to cup his shoulders, feeling the muscular angularity beneath his shirt. As if in a trance, she moved to explore the feel and shape of his neck, that strong, bronzed column rising from the shirt’s open collar. The power of him pulsed against her fingers that moved to trace the whorls and contours of his ears, then slid down, inside his shirt to follow the knobbly path of his spine.

  He raised his head and smiled. “You have in mind a little more than dalliance, it would seem.”

  She nodded her head, reaching her hand even further, until it met the restraint of his belt. Her fingers insinuated themselves inside and reached further to the base of his spine. He inhaled sharply, feeling the insistent, intimate pressure, and, with a sudden movement, he pulled her shirt over her head, obliging her to remove her hand so that her arms could come out of the sleeves. Then, deliberately, not taking his eyes from her face, he unbuttoned his shirt, tugged it free of his belt and shrugged out of it. “Is that enough, or do you wish for more?” he asked, a sensuous, teasing smile curving his mouth.

  “More,” she said definitely, running her tongue over her lips in that gesture that he had come to look for as indication of the depths of her excitement. Bending, he removed his shoes and stockings, then slowly stood up, unfastened his britches and pushed them, with infinite deliberation, over his hips.

  “Mmmm,” she murmured with soft satisfaction at the sight of his arousal springing with unmistakable power from the curly nest at the base of his belly. She moved to stand against him, feeling the thrust of that power against her thigh, her nipples pressing against his chest. Her hands moved to palm the lean hips, slipping behind to the hard, muscular buttocks that rippled in response. A light sweat misted her skin as the tension built deep in her belly, and her inner muscles contracted in involuntary preparation as she leaned into him, her grip on his buttocks tightening with the sudden urgency of her passionate need.

  “You have a novel way of expressing your hatred, Mademoiselle Genevieve,” Dominic teased gently, globing her breasts, tracing tantalizing circles with his thumbs, circumventing the taut, wanting nipples until she thought she would die of the wanting. Her head fell back in a gesture of pure abandonment as her lower body moved with a sinuous urgency against his, seeking the fusion that was for the moment withheld.

  “God, but you were made for loving, sprite,” he said huskily, his breath rustling against the fast-beating pulse at the base of her throat. “Sometimes I wonder what I have unleashed.”

  “Then cease wondering,” she whispered, “and know what you have unleashed.”

  For a second, he looked down at her. The ivory complexion, lightly kissed by the sun as a result of her days as cabin boy, was flushed delicately; the golden eyes were enormous, deep pools of passion, her lips slightly parted. It was the face of a mature woman who knew her own depths, who knew how to give as well as to receive, who was not afraid to express her desire, nor afraid of another’s desire. And he thought, the instant before he kissed her, that only one woman before had had the power to stir him in this way.

  She locked her arms around his neck, rising on tiptoe to reach against his length as his hot tongue took possession of the warm sweet cavern of her mouth, and the roughness of his chin rasped deliciously against her cheek. The pressure of his lips made her own tingle, and she inhaled his special fragrance of salt sea and crisp air, and the lingering tang of cigar smoke. When he lifted her against him, without releasing her mouth, she curled her legs around his back and tightened her grip on his neck, knowing without thought what he wanted of her. He took the necessary steps to reach the chart table, bending forward to lay her down so that, in some other world, she could feel the crackling paper against her back. He stood against the table, his hands slipping beneath her buttocks, lifting and cradling, her legs curled around his hips as he entered her, sheathing himself by tormenting degrees in the velvety chamber of her being. She lay, poised on the threshold of wonder, breathless with the knowing expectation of what was to come, her body motionless although the hot blood surged in her veins. He withdrew to the very edge of her body, and the nerve endings at her core tingled and throbbed around the teasing, tantalizing tip of the pleasure-bringer. She heard her voice, as if from a great distance, murmuring the words of joy, then demanding as the waiting became infinity; she thought she could bear the sweet torment no longer. She looked upward into his face, into the softened turquoise eyes that were watching her expressions with intense concentration. Her hips arced upward from the table, insistent, but when he shook his head in unspoken denial of her demand and moved inward only a fraction, she knew that the denial was only to ensure her greater joy. Then he brought one hand from beneath her and touched her at the tender, swollen, nerve-stretched point of fusion, before thrusting deep within. Her body exploded in seemingly limitless pleasure, and the tears of exquisite, indescribable joy squeezed beneath her closed eyelids to lie wet and gleaming on her cheeks. She drew him down to her, holding him tightly against her as he toppled from his own mountain, and they shared the transcendent glory of a loving where both minds and bodies were matched.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was noon when Silas came into the cabin bearing Genevieve’s passport to the outside world in the shape of a simply cut, neatly stitched gown, which bore no resemblance, beyond the fine lawn material, to Dominic’s shirt. He held it up for her inspection and allowed a small smile of gratification to crack his impassive features at her very obvious pleasure and sincere, complimentary thanks.

  “One of monsieur’s kerchiefs will serve as a sash, I reckon,” he said, going over to the cupboard and flicking through the neat pile of gaily colored scarves. “This will suit.” He handed her a large square of turquoise silk. �
�When you’re ready, you’re to go to the quarterdeck—and nowhere else,” he added sharply, shooting her a look pregnant with warning.

  “I would not dream of going anywhere else,” Genevieve retorted with as much dignity as she could muster. It was quite true and, if she were to be perfectly honest, just the thought of going on deck and facing the men who had known her during those three dreadful days filled her stomach with butterflies.

  Silas merely grunted and left her to get dressed. She had no petticoats with her, since they were incompatible with britches, so she was obliged to make do with only camisole and pantalettes beneath the thin white material. Fortunately, Silas, who had presumably foreseen the lack of respectable undercovering, had left the gown with a degree of fullness, although he had removed a panel from the back and had narrowed and shortened the sleeves. He had used the second shirt to add to the length so that it now grazed her ankles. The turquoise scarf, twisted into a wide strip, made a most satisfactory sash. She experimented with fastening it beneath her breasts in the fashionable Empire style, but decided that the gown was too full to suit that body-skimming design, so she settled for tying it around her waist. She had no suitable footwear. The shoes she had brought with her were not intended for wear with female attire, but it was warm enough to go barefoot. Besides, she enjoyed the feeling of freedom and unrespectability that her stockingless legs and shoeless feet gave her.

  It was with a nervously fluttering pulse, however, that she eventually emerged on deck, consciously trying to avoid catching the eye of any of the sailors busy with their appointed tasks. The wind lifted the neat cap of hair and feathered the tendrils of her fringe as she climbed the ladder to the quarterdeck where Dominic was to be found in his usual place behind the helmsman. He was scanning the horizon through his glass and did not immediately notice her as she came to stand beside him. Then, without taking his eye from his glass, he laid one hand on her shoulder in recognition, and she leaned against him with a little sigh of pleasure. It felt so right to be here beside him.