"I'm saying--" he smiled and tucked a fiery red curl behind her ear-- "I don't think you should do anything in haste, my pet."
She studied his face intently for almost a full minute before the lines across her brow smoothed and the frown vanished.
"Ooooo," she breathed softly and her eyes shone with shrewdness. "Are yer wantin' ter play a game on 'im luv? Like the time we did on the judge?"
Captain Jason Savage grinned. Bessy's brains were in no way impeded by the single-mindedness she displayed in bed.
"That is exactly what I had in mind, my pet. He's rich, he has ambition, he's ripe for the plucking. Do you have any objections? You aren't in love with the fellow are you?"
Bess was still staring at him. "'Ang on 'ere, 'ang on. Yer mate's name is Cross, ain't it? The nob's son--'ee wouldn't be related ter 'is Lordship by any chance would 'ee?"
"He might be."
"Bloody 'ell!" Bess pushed upright and raked his ribs with all ten nails this time, hard enough to make him curl his torso up off the bed with a harsh grunt. "I should've know'd it were too good ter be true. Is that why yer came an' found me? Is that the reason yer so luvvin' and sweet an' cozy? 'Cause yer wanted ter use me ter run a game on Ranulf Bloody Cross?"
"Bess....now Bess!" Jason caught her hands before they could flay him again. "Do you honestly think I would do that? Do you?"
"Yes!"
She resumed her attempts to scratch and pound him, forcing him to wrench her down and roll on top of her, crushing her beneath his body while he held her arms stretched overhead. "You know better than that, Bessy Toone. You know me better than that. Have I ever lied to you? Have I?"
She squirmed and thrashed but he was too heavy. His grip was firm around her wrists, pinning them to the mattress close to the headboard. His face was infuriatingly calm as if he knew she had no choice but to come to a panting halt and listen to him.
When she did, he raped her mouth with a kiss as savage as his name. "Have I...ever...lied to you?"
She whimpered softly under the assault and blinked tears back from her eyes. "No. Not wot I know of, leastwise."
"You know damned well I haven't. And I am telling you the truth now when I say that it came as a complete and utter surprise when I found out who your new lover was. Ask Emmeline. I broke one of her gaudy parrot lamps when she told me, and Fat Harold had to restrain me before I smashed the whole parlor."
"Yer did?" she blinked up at him. "'Ee did?"
"The fact Ranulf Cross is your new lover had nothing to do with my tracking you down and finding you. Nothing at all. And it surely had nothing to do with anything that has happened in this bed...or on the floor...or against the wall tonight." He punctuated each phrase with slow, nibbling kiss and felt the tension melting out of the body beneath him. He used his knees to slide her legs apart, but she still balked.
"Why is 'ee so important to yer all of a sudden?"
"He isn't important at all, not to anyone but himself. The truth of it is, he is the one responsible for my hasty departure from Portsmouth the last time. He put the excise men onto me and I was half an hour away from having my whole cargo confiscated. I just thought...a little payback would not be amiss. If you don't want to help me, if you don't think you can go through with it, then you don't have to, my pet. It's as simple as that. I will take you away from here right now, just the way you are, back to Gracey Street if that is what you want."
Bess chewed her lip in thought. His body was wedged between her thighs and it was difficult thinking clearly when she could feel him there, hard and wanting.
"Right now yer'd take me back?" she asked.
"This very minute...despite the harm it might do my male vanity."
"An' yer wouldn't be angry wif me? Yer wouldn't throw things an' beat on me or give me over ter old Pritch ter poke 'is little dickie inter me?"
Jason eased his body forward, sliding himself into the tight, wet heat of her body. "I will kill Pritch with my bare hands if he ever so much as looks at you again."
She whimpered and arched her body up into the deep, slow thrust. "I'll think on it then. I'll think on helpin' yer."
Jason released her wrists and slid his hands down, catching at her knees and drawing them up until she was folded nearly in half, opening her fully to him.
"You will think on it, will you? Not too long, I trust."
"Oo!" She stretched her arms up even higher, her hands grasping at the bars on the headboard. "Not too long at all," she gasped, deliberately misinterpreting him. "I'd say it were just about right."
Jason chuckled deep in his throat. He pulled back and thrust deep again, sealing his devil's pact with Bessy in the language she understood best.
~~
The echo of China's scream was dying off the walls by the time she frightened herself fully awake. This time the door was still open; the shadowy figure had been in too much of a hurry to bother shutting it behind him.
She heard footsteps in the outer hall and seconds later, the approaching glow from a candle cast streamers of light through the slivered gap in the doorway, followed closely by a head and shoulders.
"China? Was that you? Are you all right?"
For a moment she could not find her voice. Sir Ranulf pushed the door wider and strode into the room, his hand cupped around the candle to protect the flame. A second, disheveled head appeared behind him, the wearer in nightcap and dressing gown.
"By Jove, was that you screaming to roust the devil, Miss Grant?" Sir Wilfred was clutching a pistol in his hand.
"I...h-he was here again," she managed to stammer.
"Who was here?" Ranulf demanded to know. "What did you see?"
"S-someone was in my room again. He ran out when I screamed."
The quilts had fallen from her shoulders and with a chock, Sir Ranulf realized his fiancée was sleeping naked beneath the sheets. He reached hastily for the wrapper lying across the foot of the bed and draped it over her shoulders. Setting the flickering candle down, he grasped her wrists gently and pulled her hands away from her face.
"You say someone was in your room again?" He waited patiently for the nod, his thumb wiping at the streaks of tears on her cheeks. "Did you see who it was?"
China shook her head. "H-he was in the shadows."
"He? You are certain it was a man?"
"Yes. Yes, I..." Her breath stopped again as another figure crowded through the doorway. The dawn light was just beginning to filter through the curtains, changing the shadows from black to gray. The stark whiteness of Justin's shirt was as vivid as...
Sir Ranulf frowned and followed her gaze. His jaw squared in sudden anger, seeing Justin, and his voice was tight with fury as he asked in a whisper. "Was it him? Was it Justin?"
"I...I don't know. His shirt...the man who was in here had on a white shirt; that was all I saw."
And that was all Ranulf needed to hear. He straightened and started for the door, his fists clenched, his jaw a solid ridge.
Justin held up his hands. "Now hold up there. Before you do something we will both regret. I gather I am being accused of intruding here again?"
"Where were you just now?" Ranulf asked, his voice a snarl. "And why are you still in your clothing at five goddamned o'clock in the morning?"
"I was in my room," Justin replied calmly. "And I am not still in my clothing. I am just now putting them on to leave, much to the disappointment of the young lady who is, at this moment, reluctantly scrambling into her own clothes to avoid detection by the rest of the household staff. You may ask her, if you are perverse and unimaginative enough to do so, exactly where I was five minutes ago." Justin offered a nod of apology to China. "Forgive my crudeness Miss Grant, but as you can see, subtlety is not one of my brother's stronger suits."
Sir Ranulf's face was livid. "Get out. Get out now!"
Justin kept his hands raised as he backed out of the door. Sir Wilfred was a beat behind, just missing the door as it was slammed shut behind him.
"Bastard," Ranulf hissed. "Bloody cocky bastard."
China hugged the wrapper close to her body, her tears drying cold on her cheeks.
"The door," he said, calming himself with an effort. "Was it locked?"
China looked from his face to the door, back to his face. She had come up to her room, the wine still singing in her veins. She remembered undressing--her clothes were in an untidy heap on the floor--and crawling into bed too tired to even bother with the nightdress Tina had laid out for her. As to the door...
"I...honestly do not remember if I locked it or not," she admitted in a whisper.
"You were advised to do so. It is a simple enough way to ensure your privacy, especially when you know there is a thief and womanizer under the same roof." He paused and glanced at the cast off clothing that littered the floor. "You are inclined to display your naïveté in a rather careless fashion Miss Grant. I do not know how life differs in Devonshire, but when a young lady plays coy with a hot-blooded brigand like Justin, she should not be too surprised if she wakens one morning with two blackened eyes and nothing remaining of her virtue. He is not a man to be teased...or trusted."
China gasped. "But I wasn't playing coy. I wasn't teasing."
"You were lucky tonight. After meeting him alone in the library in your bedclothes, you should have realized his total lack of conscience. And tonight...not even bedclothes."
China felt all the blood drain out of her face. Her knuckles ached where she clutched the wrapper tight to her body, and the words to refute the implication she was a flirt were all there at the back of her throat but they refused to take shape or sound.
"I shall take your silence as an indication of your own complicity in this matter. From this night forth, I shall instruct Mrs. Biggs to personally check your door each night when you retire to ensure you have not neglected to turn the key." He bowed stiffly and turned to leave. "Goodnight Miss Grant. What little there is left of it."
CHAPTER EIGHT
China Grant saw nothing of Justin Cross the next day, nor did he make an appearance during any of the following four. She hadn't actually seen him that night in her room either, despite the glaring white shirt. The figure had moved so fast once she started screaming, it could have been a nightshirt or a dressing gown she saw streaking out the door. She was not particularly eager to see the younger Cross, or to speak with him, but her resentment over Sir Ranulf's unfounded charges still had an effect on her blood flow whenever she replayed the scene in her room. She certainly did not owe Justin Cross an apology, for she suspected he was guilty of all the qualities Ranulf assigned him. This particular charge had been unfounded, however, and should the opportunity arise, she would most certainly set the record straight with regards to her flirting or not flirting.
For the time being, however, every hour of every day was filled with nonstop activity and the trivial matter of an apology was place well to the back of her mind. There were visits to the dressmaker and shopping trips for linens. There were social calls to be made, and luncheons where she was ogled at and inspected by peers of Lady Prudence Berenger-Whyte. Many of the women China met looked at her down the length of very long noses, for they all had daughters who had set their bonnets on winning Sir Ranulf Cross as a husband. For a chit from the country to have been selected over the cream of English society, well, frankly, it was not to be borne.
Sir Ranulf's anger from that night waned, but in it's place was a return to indifference. He was rarely at home and most nights sent word that he was staying at the hospital taking care of patients. When he was at Braydon Hall, he was busy with matters concerning the running of the estate and showed no sign of awaiting the upcoming wedding--only a week away now--with anything more than polite disinterest.
She had no way of knowing that Ranulf's lack of attentiveness had little to do with Justin and even less to do with hospitals or estate management. Most of his hours were taken up searching every detail, however trivial, relating to the Reunion and her captain, Jason Savage. He was all but certain now that Savage was behind the blackmail demands, but that did nothing to relieve his anxiety over what the letters contained. Despite all his efforts to date, proof kept surfacing that a witness had survived the sinking of the Orion. A faceless, nameless specter out of the past who knew in alarming detail the contents of the dour sea chests that had gone to a watery grave with Sir Anthony Cross. That knowledge and its appearance now could destroy Ranulf Cross and take away everything he had worked so hard to rebuild since the incident.
He had been to the bank and had managed to borrow the ten thousand pounds demanded in the letter. Past debts and the cost of his inquiries about the Reunion had eroded most of his personal fortune and was being forced to pay a high premium to arrange this new staggering debit. His nerves were frayed, his patience was limited, and the only thing that saved him losing all sense of perspective was, conversely, the other source of his exhaustion.
Bessy Toone.
The girl was a marvel. An insatiable infinitely resourceful marvel. The first two visits had left him weak in the knees and decidedly faint of heart. The third occasion he actually lay there after a long session, drooling onto the pillow and too numb to move. But by God, he was a new man. He felt strong and vital and inwardly exhilarated, capable of tackling any man, any obstacle the world might throw across his path. Bessy's lips, hands, and body all worked together to send him to heights he had not dreamed were possible. There was no coyness, no delicate flushes, no hesitation in offering any opening of her body that sparked his hunger. She had his trousers off and his appetites well in hand before the door was firmly bolted behind them.
He was not too blinded by the heat of passion to recognize the dangers of such a liaison. He was infatuated with her, no question of that. It would come upon him suddenly and without warning--and unbearable tension that knew relief only in the slut's wildly ferocious embraces. But she was by no means the sort of woman one took home to family and friends. She was a jewel to be sure, but still only a trinket.
Of no less importance was the fact that she was an endless font of knowledge about the teeming, sweaty masses who populated the waterfront. Having lived in the stews and taverns all her life, she also had an astute perception of what drove men like Jason Savage and, once the topic had been broached, she became a willing participant in Ranulf's quest for knowledge. She claimed not to know Savage personally but she had heard the rumors that were widespread throughout the underbelly of the city. Savage was, for instance, a notorious drunk and gambler. He squandered most of the profits from his voyages on rum and women and card games, often leaving port a footstep ahead of moneylenders.
He also kept company with a nob's son. Ranulf cringed at this snippet of information, but thankfully Justin's name was not mentioned. What did come as a surprise was hearing that this nob's son owned a large share of the Reunion. Ranulf had had no idea Justin's involvement had gone beyond serving as a mate on board the bloody ship.
When word had first reached him of Justin's signing on with the Reunion crew, Ranulf had flown into a rage. Only when he had calmed, days later, did he realize what a rare stroke of luck he had been handed. Justin on board the Reunion. His arrivals, his departures, his braggartly accounts of each voyage all proved to be invaluable to Sir Ranulf. That was why he had tolerated the bastard under his roof for so long. That was why, with the net closing inexorably tighter around Jason Savage, it would be no grave loss if Justin was destroyed along with his captain.
All these thoughts were running through his head as was jolting along in the carriage ride home to Braydon Hall. The envelope with the blackmail lucre was pressing like a lead weight in his breast pocket, but he could afford to let Savage have this one last taste of triumph. After his marriage next week, he, Ranulf Cross, would have the means to destroy the coward once and for all.
A particularly violent jolt sent the coach and passenger lurching as the wheels drove over something solid in the road. Ranulf heard the driver curse and
Chamber's voice questioning him from the rear box as the horses were reigned to a halt. Cursing, Ranulf retook his seat, dusted off his trouser leg and leaned his head out the window.
"What seems to be the problem? Why have we stopped?"
"Looks like a tree fallen over the road, m' lord."
Ranulf looked down. True enough, a large tree had crashed across the roadway and the coach had driven over one of the branches before the driver managed to stop the horses.
"Good God. Can it be cleared away?"
"Aye, Sir, if we put our backs to it."
"Be quick about it then." He glanced around at the utter blackness surrounding the coach on this moonless, windswept night. "I've no desire to sit out here in the middle of nowhere any longer than necessary."
"Aye, m'lord."
Ranulf pulled his head back inside the coach and crossed his hands irritably over the crown of his walking stick. The quick glance had told him they were on the deserted stretch of road midway between Braydon Hall and the outskirts of Portsmouth. Of all the times, all the places to be held up by a felled tree...
A sudden hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach made him grip the walking stick tighter, but before he could release the catch on the door and issue a warning to Chambers and the driver, he heard two heavy thuds and a groan as something fell to the ground. Almost immediately, a rasping growl came out of the darkness.
"Out yer come, Lordship. Make it quick if ye've got a wit about ye."
Ranulf reacted to the words with a mixture of anger and dismay. A highwayman! Of all the blessed nights to be set upon by a thief--! And him without pistol or blade to defend himself!
His hand tightened on the shaft of the ebony walking stick even as he heard another gruff voice from the front of the coach, the words too muffled to distinguish.
"Dunno," said the first voice. "I've arsked 'im nice enough to climb out. Mayhap he needs an 'elpin 'and."
Ranulf unlatched the door and stepped down onto the dirt road, glaring at each of the two hooded, caped shadows in turn.
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