The Most Unlikely Lady

by Barbara Devlin

  “Mind if I join you?” Though he addressed the admiral, his eyes never left Sabrina. Since she continued to avoid his stare, Everett was afforded only a view of her charming profile.

  “Oh, I say, I see Chomley over there, and I need to have a word with him.” The admiral drew rein. “Lord Markham, would you be so kind as to accompany Sabrina on her ride?”

  Why you sly old salt. Confidence surged to the fore, and Everett lowered his chin. “It would be my honor, Admiral.”

  #

  Sabrina’s pulse raced in direct proportion to the rapidly increasing distance between her and her father. Traitor. How could he leave her alone with Everett? Even in the park, the damn fool man was bound to make some illicit advance, and she knew she would not refuse him.

  “Ouch!” A sharp pinch to her right buttock brought her to attention. As self-consciousness set in, swift and unsteadying, she searched the immediate area to check if anyone might have witnessed his affront. Lucky for her, the park was all but empty. Leashing her temper, Sabrina confronted the bane of her existence. “My lord, you are deliberately trying to compromise me.”

  “Actually, I desired only your consideration, and I believe my actions quite conservative--for me.” Everett tilted his head and cast her an unrepentant grin. “But you have given me food for thought, so let us not abandon your idea.”

  “Scandalous.” She rolled her eyes and groaned. “I assure you, Lord Markham, anything you do would pale in comparison to the embarrassments in which I have already landed, so I need no help, in that respect.”

  “Why so formal?” He frowned and shifted in the saddle. “If memory serves, you have called me Everett, and a wide assortment of colorful alternatives, on a number of occasions.”

  “Because you addressed me as Miss Douglas.” He had, and she hadn’t appreciated it. She loved the way he said her name, because his voice always grew husky, which gave her delicious shivers from top to toe. She stared at him through her lashes. “You used to call me Brie, as do my friends. Are we not friends, anymore, Lord Markham?”

  “We are, my lady.” Everett reached for her hand and held it snug in his own. Slowly, he tugged at her calfskin glove, baring her flesh. “But we could be so much more, if you would only marry me.”

  “W-what are you doing?” She stuttered in nervous anticipation and then licked her lips. “Everett--no. Someone might see you.”

  To her surprise, he made no reply, just arched a brow, daring her to refuse him, as he traced delicious circles on her palm with his thumb.

  “Everett, you mustn’t.” Though she protested, she made no attempt to break free from his grasp. Instead, Sabrina closed her eyes, clutched her throat, and savored his improper advances, as he thrust a finger between two of hers in a sensuous caress. The movement was repetitive, enticing, and maddeningly explicit, and his meaning was not lost on her.

  Once, when she had been but a young and curious girl, she inadvertently discovered her parents engaged in marital relations, in the summerhouse at their country estate. While her father reclined on a daybed, her mother rode him, as she would a horse. Sabrina had not watched them for very long, but it had been an enlightening experience.

  But that was an altogether different incident, because now she was no spectator. Indeed, she was an active participant, as heat sang in her veins, soothing her frazzled nerves, and she moaned her appreciation. Sabrina felt bold, wild, and wanton. Without thought, she reached for him.

  “Sabrina Francis, either you marry this man, or I will kill him.” Her father spoke in a familiar tone, which conveyed the gravity of her infraction.

  Irritating warmth pooled in her cheeks, and she came alert in an instant, a mere second before Everett flinched. In that moment, she realized he had been just as lost in their exchange.

  Was it possible?

  Could Everett care for her?

  Though he had made no formal declaration, he had taken her fishing. Surely that was tantamount to the same?

  “Admiral Douglas, sir. I am sorry if I have caused offense.” Everett released her and pulled at his cravat. “I assure you, none was intended, as I hold your daughter in the highest esteem.”

  Her sire stared at the sky before chuckling in his deep baritone, and Sabrina breathed a sigh of relief, because her father was not angry.

  “Oh, I do believe you got it, Lord Markham.” With a dramatic flair, she waved her hand in the air but fidgeted beneath her father’s scrutiny. As she fumbled with her glove, she swallowed hard. “There was a splinter in my finger.”

  “Rubbish, my dear.” Her father actually snorted. “I do not claim to understand the arrangement between you, but I will not indulge it much longer. Either you accept Lord Markham, or I will forbid him to call on you.”

  “Papa, no.” Accustomed to her sire’s ire, as they were well acquainted, Sabrina drew herself up with the hauteur one would expect from the daughter of an admiral. “You mustn’t blame Lord Markham for my shameful behavior.”

  Everett nudged his mare. “Sabrina--”

  “It is true.” And then she recalled a familiar phrase from the night in the maze and turned it to her advantage. Her father had bellowed it loud enough that she was certain she would never forget it. And, in a sense, it was an accurate depiction of what had occurred. She could have rejected Everett, but she had not wanted to do so. In any case, the declaration was for the greater good. “I made an improper advance on Lord Markham’s person. If you wish to heat my posterior, I will be happy to accommodate you.”

  The outrageous statement was a means to an end--to spare Everett an appointment at dawn, on Paddington Green, with her father. Her sire opened his mouth and then closed it. Was it possible? Had she, at long last, stumped her father?

  “All right, miss. But I want a word with you in the study, upon our return home.” And then he heeled his stallion. “Be quick, as you do not want me to come for you.”

  “I shall be right behind you, Papa.” She chewed her lip. “But I owe Lord Markham an apology.”

  “Sabrina, why did you tell your father you initiated our contact?” Everett snickered. “Spinning falsehoods is not your forte.”

  “Because he was going to forbid me to see you.” She stared at her hands and summoned courage. “And I could not let that happen.”

  “Oh?” Sporting an arrogant countenance, Everett shifted his weight. “Are you finally admitting you welcome my suit?”

  How she wished to evade the question or, better yet, ignore it. But Sabrina Francis Douglas was neither a coward nor a liar. Grudgingly, she met his amber gaze and was stunned by the intensity of his stare.

  “I--” Her voice faltered, and she gulped. In a desperate effort to maintain what remained of her dignity, Sabrina nodded the affirmative.

  Everett rewarded her with a radiant smile, boyish and sweet. Relief washed over her, as a gentle spring shower, and she returned his smile, measure for measure.

  “Sabrina!”

  “Holy mother.” She started at her father’s summons. “I-I must go.”

  But Everett stayed her, when he caught her hand and pressed his lips to her gloved knuckles. “Until tonight, lady mine.”

  #

  The ballroom at Richmond House filled to overflow, and dapper dandies and delightful debutantes engaged in a rollicking game of cat and mouse. Amid the crush, Everett focused on a cascade of raven locks piled in loose curls, and a sapphire silk gown encased the body he ached to know on a more intimate level.

  Sabrina stood among her friends, a quirky group known throughout the ton for their close familial ties. To his advantage, the men were not present. After partaking an afternoon in the pugilist ring with Trevor, Everett had learned some mysterious endeavor for their shipping company had called the legendary mariners into action.

  Since Trevor married Lady Caroline Elliott, as was, he declared he had paved the road for newcomers into the rather odd extended family. Given Sabrina’s clumsy but sweet confession in the park, Everett w
as confident he would be the next member of the notoriously exclusive clique. In fact, he had entered the fray with that precise goal in mind, if only to claim the woman of his fancy. With patience growing thin, he had wasted enough time. She was going to be his wife, and it was past due she reconciled herself to that fate.

  But he strolled at his leisure, steering left and then right, as a predatory hunger burgeoned in his belly. And each successive step only increased his appetite. Ah, he was sincerely looking forward to his wedding night, as his bride-to-be was a spirited woman.

  When the crowd parted, Cara noticed him and alerted the other ladies present, as evidenced by Elaine and Alex, when they turned and faced him. But Sabrina kept her back to him--which was a wise move on her part.

  He smiled his wolf’s smile.

  Oh, yes.

  “Good evening, Lord Markham.” The personification of feminine deportment, so unlike her younger sister, Cara held out her hand in welcome, and he placed a chaste kiss on her gloved knuckles, as would a refined gentleman, and greeted the remaining ladies in similar fashion, with one exception.

  At last, when Sabrina rotated, he grasped her wrist, pulled her dangerously near, inched down her glove with his thumb, bent his head, and pressed his lips to her palm. When she gasped and shivered, raw lust pooled in his loins, and he chuckled. “Dance with me, my saucy Sabrina.”

  Much to his surprise, she made no protest, as he led her into a sea of couples. With his arm resting at her waist, he kept her close, and their embrace bordered on the indecent, but he cared not. Staring over the top of her head, Everett savored the flirty sashay of her skirts to his thighs, and formidable ardor seared him to the marrow.

  At the ripe old age of one and thirty, women had long since ceased to command his senses, and his attachments had devolved into a series of practiced widows, superficial attractions, and base desires. His bed partners knew what he wanted from them, what they wanted from him, and he gave it to them. For a while, such relationships satisfied him--until he met Miss Sabrina Douglas. And that stolen kiss in the Hawthorn’s maze, permanently forged in his memory, had carried him to the heights of passion, as he had never experienced.

  And he had not even taken her--yet.

  That knowledge worked on Everett in ways he could not have anticipated. As he whirled his future wife, she trounced his foot, a common occurrence to which he had become painfully accustomed. He peered at her face.

  And he stumbled.

  With her lower lip trembling, and an unmistakable plea in her blue eyes, he noted, for the first time, the heat of her gloved palm against his. When he exerted the slightest pressure at the small of her back, her breath hitched. But it was the raw, unconcealed passion investing her expression that held him captive and almost sent them tumbling to the floor.

  Recognition dawned.

  Hunger for hunger. Desire for desire.

  Sabrina wanted him as he wanted her.

  He cleared his throat. “My dear, are you all right?”

  “Oh, Everett. I feel so…I do not know what I feel.” With an exhalation of utter helplessness, she closed her eyes, shivered in his arms, swallowed hard, and licked her lips. “I fear I may have a fever.”

  “Bloody hell.” He cursed under his breath and scanned the vicinity.

  Yes, she had a fever, all right, and he had known Sabrina was not immune to his charms, but never had Everett expected her to reciprocate with such unrestrained fervor. As a man of the world, he knew how to hold tight the reins of desire. As an ingénue, Sabrina knew no such control, and heaven help him if she brought her honest, explorative nature into that realm.

  As the music played, he navigated the throng, nudging her to the edge of the dance floor. To rouse no suspicion, he reversed course and then halted. Slow and methodical, he escorted his errant debutante to the back wall. Drawing from memory, he located the terrace doors, glanced over his shoulder to ensure their privacy, and handed Sabrina across the threshold.

  Stepping onto the flagged surface, Everett welcomed the cool night air against his heated flesh. The gardens spread before them, welcoming and enticing, for a lover’s tryst. Silvery moonlight peeked between the foliage of the large maples, casting a mosaic of intricate shadows on the grass. At a fork in the pebbled walkway, she paused and drew him up short.

  “Where are you taking me?” Sabrina whispered.

  “Shh.” At that moment, he located what he required. “Perfect. Come with me.” A mountainous oak, boasting thick, low-hanging foliage, which shrouded the trunk, provided fortuitous concealment.

  With nary an objection, she followed in his wake, as Everett was a man on a mission. Sheltered beneath the tree, he turned on a heel, reclined against the bark, and hauled Sabrina against him. With something between a sob and a sigh, she lunged, twined her fingers in his hair, and bit his lip.

  How he reveled in her jerky and unschooled, but wildly wanton, maneuvers. As an unpracticed but earnest seraph, she moved, frantic and rushed, as she engaged his tongue in a frisky little duel he could not resist.

  Of one thing he was certain. What had happened in the Hawthorn’s garden had not stayed in the Hawthorn’s garden. That rendezvous had been no aberration. Somehow, some way, Sabrina touched him on a level he had not known existed, and he wanted more. The nagging doubts, the worries that his hopeful imagination had made something of nothing, which had plagued his consciousness, evaporated in an instant.

  But when his most unlikely lady gave vent to a rather vigorous moan, he recognized the depth of her ardor and understood, too well, her affliction. And before she sounded the alarm, not to mention the admiral, Everett summoned years of finesse, focused on her needs, and soothed her frayed nerves the best way he knew how.

  With one hand he kneaded her breast, while he trailed the pearl-like nodes of her spine to massage her lower back with his other. When she pressed her curvaceous body to his, teasing his Jolly Roger, which was dangerously jolly and only too ready to plow her field, he concentrated on not responding.

  But how he ached, and how he burned.

  It was a tender torment unlike any he had ever known, and he craved release. As his heart pounded a warning knell, pulse points blazed to life, and he could not breathe. Against his better judgment, he walked his fingers over her lush landscape, tracing every peak and valley, and the beast below his belly button raged.

  The next moan was his.

  In his mind, he grasped at the last vestiges of personal constraint, but he had inadvertently swept Sabrina off her feet, and she took him with her. He simply had to have her.

  But could she trust him?

  Would she marry him?

  “Lord Markham, I must protest!”

  Sabrina half-screamed as the admiral pulled her from Everett’s arms, and a cacophony of panicked whispers echoed from the surrounding hiding places. Her father reared back, with his fist poised to strike, and she barely managed to catch it. Everett sighed in relief.

  “Papa, no.” Clutching the admiral’s wrist, she held fast. “Please, stop.”

  “Sabrina, stay out of this.” Her angry sire turned his steely gaze on his youngest daughter and tried but failed to shake free. “He has defiled you in full view of the guests.”

  “You misunderstand.” Sabrina refused to yield, and Everett thanked her in silence. “We were celebrating.”

  “What?” Admiral Douglas snorted. “Your ruin?”

  Why, he was not sure, but Everett braced for her rejection.

  “No--our betrothal.” She swallowed hard and stared Everett straight in the eye. “You are about to murder your future son-in-law.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Standing before the long mirror in her bedchamber, Sabrina smoothed the skirts of her dusty blue jaconet dress and assessed her appearance. Downstairs, in the study, Everett conferred with her father regarding their marriage contract.

  As she gazed at her reflection, she smiled and then laughed, as she recalled the open-mouthed stare she garn
ered from her arrogant lord when she accepted his proposal, somewhat belatedly. It was nice to set him on his heels, for a change.

  For a scarce moment she had wondered if Everett would refute her declaration, but he had not. Instead, he masked his shock and offered his hand to her father, who teetered in an equally dumbfounded state. The men shared a congratulatory shake; complete with hearty backslaps, before her father embraced her, swelling with obvious pride.

  Wrapping her arms about herself, Sabrina giggled. It had not happened as she had planned, but the important thing was it happened. She was to marry Lord Everett Markham. Self-doubt crept into her mind, but she quashed it as she would a bug. Like a giddy schoolgirl she twirled, around and around, in her room.

  A knock at the door had her reaching for the rail of a chair for balance. “Come.”

  Her mother peeked around the edge of the oak panel. “My dear, your father is almost finished with Lord Markham. I thought perhaps you would enjoy a bit of privacy with him before he leaves.” She inclined her head. “There will be little time to be alone until you are married. I can send him to the drawing room once he has concluded his business.”

  “That would be lovely, Mama.” Clutching fistfuls of her skirts, Sabrina gazed at the floor as her stomach flip-flopped. Uttering a silent prayer that she had done the right thing, she nodded. “I shall be there in a moment.”

  “Very well, but do not keep Lord Markham waiting.” Her mother arched a brow. “It is not polite.”

  “Yes, Mama.” The creak of a hinge signaled her mother’s departure, and she hugged herself and paced the floor.

  What would Everett say?

  Could he truly want to marry her?

  Though he had offered for her, he had only done so because he thought he compromised her. The cold, gnawing hand of doubt traipsed her spine and shivered over her skin.

  Staring at herself in the long mirror, she said, “Sabrina Francis Douglas, you march in there and face him this instant.” With chin held high and shoulders squared, she heeded her own advice.