“Well, that’d be up to the captain and Miss Wyverne, I expect,” O’Hurley offered sagely.
“You can’t mean that we should marry? We hardly know one another!” Kitty protested.
Haggerty grinned. “You and Cap’n Kelly will have ample opportunity to get to know one another… cause you’ll not be locked in that cabin alone this time, Miss Wyverne. You’ll have your betrothed with you!”
Chapter Eight
O’Hurley stood at his back as Declan entered his cabin behind Miss Wyverne. “Et tu, Brute?”
“Don’t be like that, Cap’n. I’ve known you since you were in short pants. If I hadn’t compromised with Haggerty, they would have tossed you overboard. Heaven knows what they’d have done to Miss Wyverne here before they tried to ransom her back to her father!”
“I told you!” Kitty exclaimed, clearly at her wits end with the lot of them. “He can’t pay the ransom. It was just a lie!”
“That wouldn’t have helped you none, miss,” O’Hurley said. “They’d have gotten money for you one way or another… like as not by selling you to someone who ain’t your father. Marriage isn’t the worst possible outcome here.”
Before Declan could respond, the door was closed and locked behind them, leaving him alone with Miss Kitty Wyverne. “You should never have said that about your inheritance.”
“I was only trying to stop them from killing you… I never imagined they would think the two of us should wed,” she snapped.
“They are pirates!”
“Privateers,” she corrected.
“No,” he said, “They most assuredly are not. I’ve been trying to make them privateers and if today’s quasi-mutiny showed me anything at all, it’s that these are not men who wish to be rehabilitated. A life of crime is clearly where they are most comfortable.”
“Are you truly the grandson of an earl?” she asked.
Declan’s eyebrow came up and he leveled an assessing stare at her. “The Earl of Eastridge. Does that make our predicament, and by that I mean our betrothal, more palatable to you, Miss Wyverne?”
“You’ve called me Kitty from the beginning. I find I prefer your familiarity to the blatant disdain with which you utter my last name,” she snapped at him. “And it isn’t about what you or I want at this time. It’s about what will make you a more reasonable choice in the eyes of the trustees of my inheritance. Have you considered what will happen to us if they decry my choice?”
“I imagine you’ll be sold to an abbess and I’ll be hanged,” he replied flippantly.
“And the men in gaol that are awaiting your heroic attempt at a rescue? What of them?”
Declan sighed heavily as he crossed the room and dropped into one of the chairs he’d occupied during their ill-fated dinner the night before. Propping his booted feet atop the table, he cared not for his rudeness at the moment. His pride was stinging from a dozen blows, the nastiest of which had been dealt by her, or perhaps imagined by the giant chip on his shoulder. “Dammit, Kitty, let me sulk for five minutes if you will and then I’ll figure a way out of this.”
He reached for the news sheet that O’Hurley had left which had the information of Kitty’s abduction on it. “If your father knew who abducted you and where he was heading, why not simply mount a rescue?”
“Because he never meant for me to be rescued, Captain Kelly,” she fired back, uttering his surname with the same amount of disdain he’d treated hers with. “The reward is an incentive only to see it printed far and wide so that my name and reputation will be utterly destroyed. He wanted for Samford’s suit to seem a blessing to me… and for accepting it to be my only option.”
There was no missing the bitterness in her tone, and despite the horrendously bad beginning of his own day, at least his own family hadn’t sold him out so carelessly. “Well, we both know that your marrying Samford is out of the question. Scotland is too far away to even have someone pose as Samford and wed you there in the time we’ve got… and the British clergy frown on dragging corpses up the aisle.”
“We have your compatriot to thank for that, don’t we?” she said and sank down onto the edge of the bunk with her hands clasped together in her lap. “What are we going to do?”
Declan considered every possible option. Whatever came to mind, it all led to one very damning conclusion. “I still need your help in getting Livingston to free my friends. I cannot see them hang, not when all they did was risk their lives to rescue my niece. And neither of us are getting off this ship unless it’s to be carted up to the parson’s front door.”
“We can’t possibly be married. It’s a wonder we can ever say three words to one another without arguing!”
Declan shrugged. “It’s the nature of women, I’m afraid. Arguing. But I do believe, Kitty Wyverne, that you excel at it. You are a prickly creature to be certain!”
Her gasp and affronted expression were instantaneous. “I’m a prickly creature? You, sir, are the most provoking, insolent, insulting man I have ever encountered in my life! Up to and including the man who abducted me!”
“We don’t always argue,” Declan mused as he recalled that brief moment of intimacy from the night before, when he’d kissed her against all reason and better judgement. Looking at her, it was an experience he very much wanted to repeat. He liked the heightened color in her cheeks. He also very much appreciated the deep and indignant breaths that she took which, in turn, drew his gaze to the neckline of her borrowed frock. Yes, indeed, there were benefits to getting a woman riled up. “There was a moment after dinner last night where we did not argue at all.”
“That was before you decided to behave like a—” Her struggle for an appropriate epithet was written plainly on her face.
“An arse?” he offered.
“Yes,” she said sweetly. “That’s a perfect description. Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome. I do try to be helpful whenever I can,” Declan replied with a grin.
She muttered something under her breath. It could have been “maddening”. A few seconds later it was followed by something that was definitely “arse”.
“We’re stuck together for the time being. We might as well make the best of it.”
She gifted him with a baleful stare. “And how are we supposed to do that precisely?”
He had a few ideas, but they were unlikely to be met with enthusiasm. “Do you play cards?”
“Very poorly.”
He rose, walked to his desk, retrieved a deck from the drawer and brought them back to the table where he patted the other chair. “Livingston is a gamester. He lives for it. And he won’t be able to resist you if you can speak knowledgeably about his favorite game… whist.”
Kitty rose, albeit reluctantly, and made her way to the table where she sat down across from him. Was she really going to have to marry him? Pirate or not, he was still a better option than Samford had been. It did sting her pride though to think that she would be married to a man who had no wish to be married to her. It was worse even than simply being desired for her money, to be bound to someone who desired her not at all. Of course, he had kissed her the night before. Perhaps he desired her a little, but wanting to kiss someone and wanting to marry them were far different things. Even a thoroughly on the shelf spinster such as herself was aware of that.
“If we are to marry, how? I cannot imagine that your cutthroat crew members would be willing to wait the necessary two weeks for the banns to be read! And a special license would require a trip to London… there’s always marriage by ordinary license, but we’d still need to get to Bath at the very least to be married in my home parish.”
He grimaced. “Well, not necessarily. I have a small estate in Cornwall. Just outside of Charlestown in St. Austell. So you’ll get no reprieve. Is it so terrible, truly? The idea of being married to a man like me?”
Kitty frowned. “For the longest time, all I wanted was to marry a man who wanted me. The older I got, the more I realized how terribly unfa
shionable I was with my lameness and my love of books—and my spectacles which I miss terribly—and I realized that there were very few men out there who truly would want me, certainly no gentlemen of my acquaintance. So I began to look for something else… for a husband who would at least be kind to me.”
“You say that as if kindness is such a difficult thing to find,” he noted with a frown.
“It has been for me. There is no kindness, no mercy, no love, nor even a hint of warmth in my father’s house. There never has been. I thought, if perhaps I could find just that, I might not be happy but I would be content enough,” she explained, her gaze locked on his strong hands as he absently shuffled the cards he held. She had never noticed before just how appealing his work-roughened hands were. They appeared strong and capable and so very, very tempting.
“I’m sorry for that, Kitty. And I’m sorry that I’m an arse. I don’t mean anything by it. Not really,” he said.
She looked away, embarrassed by all that she’d said, more embarrassed by how very much that offhand apology affected her. “It’s all right. I don’t mean to be so missish about everything.”
“Missish? Did you or did you not escape from Samford all on your own? I’d call you a great many things, Miss Wyverne, but never missish.”
Kitty felt a blush creeping over her cheeks. “Like what?”
“What do you mean?”
She hated the desperate plea in her voice as she said, “You wouldn’t call me missish, so what would you call me?”
He cocked his head to the side, his assessing gaze sweeping over her. “Brave. Resourceful. Sharp-witted with a sharp tongue to match, but not shrewish. Lively. You’re the type of woman who’ll give a man what for until he wants to bash his own skull in to escape it… but then you’ll soften it with a smile and he’ll come begging like a cur for scraps just to see those rosebud lips curve again.”
Her breath caught. “Declan, I don’t want to play cards.”
“Then what should we do, Kitty?”
“I think I’d like it very much if you kissed me again… as you did last night.”
“Even if I’m a maddening arse?” he asked with a grin.
“Even if,” she answered with a very serious nod. “You don’t pretend with me. And I don’t think you give a fig for my money, do you?”
“Not in the least,” he agreed. “But, Kitty, we’re locked in this cabin together for at least a day and a half. Longer perhaps, depending on the weather and the storm that’s likely to come today. If I kiss you again, it’ll only lead to more.”
“I know. I believe that’s why I asked,” Kitty admitted, puzzled at her own boldness.
As she watched, he rose from the table and returned the deck of cards to his desk. He then walked back to her and held out his hand.
“We’re locked in! Where can we go?” she asked.
“If you’re going to seduce me, Kitty, you could, at the very least, do so in a proper bed,” he said in a mockingly scandalized tone.
“Oh. Is that what I’ve been doing?” The question emerged with a bubble of laughter. She was nervous, but her curiosity far surpassed her anxiety.
His grin faded and his eyes glittered with something she couldn’t quite name. “From the very moment I laid eyes on you,” he said.
Ignoring the trembling of her fingers and the breathlessness that had suddenly assailed her, Kitty placed her hand in his and allowed him to lead her to the bed.
Chapter Nine
The softness of her hand in his, the delicate feeling of it against his own much rougher skin, was a reminder of just how different their lives had been. Yes, his mother had raised him as a gentleman, they had not been wealthy. They’d struggled to keep body and soul together, but at least she’d loved him and his sister. She would have sacrificed her very soul to keep them safe. It was only when his grandfather had discovered Declan’s existence that their lives had gotten any better. Whatever else the old man had been, he’d been a stickler for responsibility. Kitty’s family seemed to be cut from a very different cloth. They’d used her, lied to her and about her, and in general made her life a misery.
But it wasn’t his family or hers he wanted to think about in that moment. For better or worse, to borrow a phrase he’d be uttering soon enough, they would be man and wife. Others might disagree, but to Declan’s mind, happiness wasn’t made entirely by what passed in the marriage bed, but it could certainly be destroyed there. He was very certain that she had no idea she was beautiful and desirable. Too many people in her life had told her otherwise. And despite however curious she might be, however passionate she might be, he believed that she was an innocent. But there was the question of Samford and what might have occurred during the time she traveled with him. It changed nothing of his feelings for her or what the outcome of their evening would be, but it would very much determine the tone of it.
“Kitty, did Samford hurt you?” He asked the question as gently as possible.
“You mean did he ravish me?” Her eyebrows lifted imperiously with that question. “If I said yes, would you suddenly be repulsed by me?”
“No. I’m not asking because it changes how I feel or what I want… but in order to make this a pleasant experience for you, I’d like to be able to gauge how much foreknowledge you actually possess,” he explained.
Her expression softened, her quick temper mollified by his explanation. “Samford had no interest in me.… only my inheritance. It was a fact that he made abundantly clear, loudly and repeatedly. He threatened, of course. To hit me, to toss me out of the carriage, to compromise me so thoroughly that I’d have no choice but to marry him. But he was just being a bully.”
No. He most assuredly wasn’t. Samford had been capable of everything he’d threatened and likely guilty of it on more than one occasion. “I cordially disagree with your assessment, but I’m very grateful that he failed to appreciate all of your many charms. Rest assured, Kitty, I will not.”
“For now,” she said.
“It’s a good place to start,” he replied and then tugged her closer to him, closing his arms about her as he pulled her down onto the bunk with him. She sprawled over his lap in a tangle of skirts. “We’re both talking entirely too much.”
She leaned into him, placing her hands on his shoulders with a tentative touch. “What are we supposed to do then?”
“Let me show you,” he murmured softly before pressing his lips to hers.
It was a gentle kiss, but thorough. He teased and toyed with her, tasting the sweetness of her lips fully before sweeping his tongue inside. Initially, she simply accepted the unfamiliar intimacy from him but, after a moment, she responded in kind. When she kissed him back, tentatively at first and then with a progressively bolder touch, any doubts he had about the wisdom of their choice fled. He wanted her. He meant to have her.
No longer content simply with kisses, Declan allowed his hands to roam over her body. Her shoulders, her arms, the curve of her hips, down her legs and then back up again. When he touched the soft, generous mounds of her breasts, she let out a soft gasp.
“There is nothing done here that we cannot come back from, Kitty,” he whispered. His honor demanded he make the offer even as his body raged with lust. “If you’ve changed your mind—”
“I haven’t. I just… it’s just so much, Declan. I didn’t know I could have these feelings,” she confessed. “I’ve been pursued by men. Rarely has it been by a man I would consider allowing to catch me. They’ve attempted to kiss me, to take liberties, and I was only ever disgusted, offended, bored or irritated with them.”
“I daresay you’ve been all of those things with me,” he admitted ruefully. “Except bored.”
“No, I have not been bored,” she replied. “And while you do know how to induce pique like no man I have ever encountered… it’s different. Because you see me. Not my inheritance. Not an entree into society. You just see me.”
The last was said with a kind of wonder, as i
f it were truly the most shocking thing in the world that he could. “The men of your acquaintance have been blind fools, Kitty. And while I know it was difficult for you, I cannot be sorry. Had any of them been capable of looking past their own ambitions, you’d not be here now and I would not be touching you this way.”
With that, he tugged at the ties of her borrowed gown, until the bodice gaped and he could see the upper swells of her breasts rising above her stays. Leaning forward, Declan kissed that tender flesh. Gently and almost reverently at first, then with an infinitely more carnal bent. He nipped with his teeth and soothed with his tongue, allowing the scrape of his whiskers on her skin to heighten the sensation even as he marveled at the soft and supple flesh. But even as he lavished those kisses and caresses on the bounty before him, he was still working toward his ultimate goal—to have her naked before him. He’d freed the laces of her stays and untied her chemise. With a tug, the lot of it slipped down over her arms, baring her breasts and their tempting dusky peaks to him.
“You’re very sneaky,” she said.
“I’m a pirate.”
“If you want to change careers,” she offered, “you could probably make an adequate lady’s maid.”
Declan grinned. “Not really. I’m far better with the undressing part.”
To prove his point, he lifted her from his lap, placed her on the bed and very efficiently divested her of the lot of it. Stays, petticoat, chemise and gown all landed in a heap on the floor and Kitty was laid out before him, all blushing silken skin and lush curves.
“I should have warned you. I know my leg is terribly ugly,” she said.
“Nothing about you is ugly, Kitty. On the contrary, scars and all, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” he said. It wasn’t simply lip service to soothe her fears or to continue his own pleasures. Kitty was breathtakingly beautiful and she was to be his.
“I feel beautiful when you look at me that way,” she admitted breathlessly.
The Pirate’s Bluestocking Page 5