A muscle worked in his jaw as he whirled her into a turn with surprising competence. “All right, I admit it. I’m not just visiting my cousin. I’m here consulting with the British about the treaty they’re brokering with Algeria.”
Her heart sank. He hadn’t mentioned looking for a Dorothy Frier or Smith, which meant his investigation was secret. That couldn’t be good.
She probed further. “But why you ? You’re not a diplomat.”
“I’ve had plenty of experience dealing with the Barbary pirates.”
Her pulse leaped. “You were with Lieutenant Decatur at Tripoli?” she blurted out.
His eyes narrowed. “You know about that?”
Drat her quick tongue. But why did he have to mention the one subject she found utterly fascinating?
Oh well, a flibbertigibbet could have a passion for pirates, couldn’t she? “Everyone knows about Tripoli,” she said lightly. “The newspapers covered it extensively, you know.”
“But you couldn’t have been more than a girl when it happened.”
“A very bored girl in a very dull town. So I read the papers.” She’d kept clippings of every engagement of the Americans against the Barbary pirates.
Tossing her head girlishly, she added, “If there’d been any decent shops, I wouldn’t have resorted to such tedium, but a girl can only embroider so long.” She fluttered her lashes. “And what girl isn’t swept away by tales of corsairs?”
“Ruthless corsairs who kidnap men, women, and children for money. Have you any idea—” He broke off with a sneer. “No, of course you don’t. You think corsairs are a subject for entertainment.”
“Try living in Torquay for weeks on end with only a brooding father for company,” she said petulantly, “and see what entertains you .”
“What about your stepmother? Wasn’t she around then?”
She tensed.Tread carefully.
“Dolly and Papa didn’t marry until a few years ago.” Should she say more? Might he then reveal why he was interested? Or what if she told him the wrong information? His reaction might tell her if it was her own Dolly he sought.
She shot him a vacant smile. “They met right in Devon. England was Dolly’s last stop after her tour of the Continent, and her ship from Italy—”
“Italy?” he broke in, clearly surprised.
As a horrible fear settled in her belly, she forced her tone to sound breezy. “Florence, if I remember right. She visited all sorts of places after her American husband died—Spain and Italy—”
“During the war?” he interrupted, both eyebrows raised.
Drat it, she wasn’t good at this lying business. She could hardly admit Dolly had come to England after the war, for the timing would coincide too neatly with the dates he had for Dorothy Smith leaving France. “Oh. No…that is, she was in Italy at the end of the war, but before that…well, I could be wrong about Spain. It might have been Greece. I’m not sure.” She shrugged. “I can never keep all those foreign countries straight, can you?”
He gritted his teeth. “It’s my job to keep them straight.”
“Oh, of course.” She made herself giggle. “Do you travel a great deal? You must have been to Tripoli at least if you have experience with Barbary pirates.” She cut her eyes up at him in what she hoped was a teasing glance. “Unless, of course, you were a pirate yourself.”
She could well imagine him as a corsair, black hair tossed by the wind, a shining gold loop dangling from one ear, bare chest—
Stop that. You’re trying to determine if he really is here to help with some treaty.
“I wasn’t at Tripoli with Decatur—I’d only just been commissioned as a midshipman. But I was with O’Bannon at Tripoli the next year, marching across the desert to Derna.”
He’d accompanied the valiant O’Bannon? She couldn’t believe it! She was dancing with a man who’d actually been inside the fort at Derna, who might have freed slaves and even entered a harem—
Drat him, none of that mattered. And he was probably lying anyway. “You’d have been only a boy.”
“Someone of seventeen is more a man than a boy.”
She didn’t have to feign her surprise. “But now you’d be—”
“Really old,” he said dryly. “Almost thirty.”
“You don’t look thirty.”
“Ah, but I am,” he said, in an amused rumble of a voice that resonated through her body more seductively than the music of the waltz. “And if you don’t believe I was at Derna, I can give you details.”
Her curiosity warred with her prudence. Curiosity won out. “Like what?”
“We were four hundred strong—Arab cavalry, Greeks, mercenaries, and a handful of American navy and marines. It took us fifty days to cross the desert. The khamsin winds whipped the sand into storms that blotted out the sun even at midday. When we ran out of food, the Arabs butchered some pack camels, and that’s what we ate until we reached our supply ships waiting at the coast near Derna.”
“You ate a camel?” she said, fascinated.
He shrugged. “Had to. We were half-starved.”
“Yet you and your companions still subdued the fort and forced the town to surrender in less than two hours,” she said in a breathless rush.
That brought him up short. He cocked one brow. “You certainly paid close attention to what you read in the papers, didn’t you?”
She blinked. There she went again. “Oh, yes, I paid attention to it all,” she said blithely. “Especially the part about the marzipan sword.”
His gaze turned contemptuous again. “You mean the mameluke sword.”
“Mameluke?” She cast him a vacant glance, though she had to bite her tongue to keep from asking if it was the strange sword in his room. “They didn’t give you Americans marzipan treats shaped like a sword?”
“No, it was an actual sword.” Then he added in a patronizing tone, “It has a blade and everything. If you like, I can show you mine sometime.”
She wanted to slap him for his condescension…and kiss him for offering to show her the sword. The rascal certainly knew how to tempt a lady adventurer. “You carry it around with you?” She tried not to sound too excited. “Do you expect to have to subdue the enemy by force?”
His gaze drifted to her lips, and his voice turned husky. “If that’s what it takes.”
Her breathing quickened, and her stomach went all trembly. “Are we still talking about swords, Major?”
“Absolutely,” he drawled. Something intoxicating flickered in the inky depths of his eyes. “What else would I speak of to a well-bred young Englishwoman?”
The words leaped from her lips before she could stop them. “Your wife, perhaps?”That was certainly something a flirtatious flibbertigibbet would say. And she merely asked as part of her investigation. That’s all. Truly.
He blinked. “I’m not married.”
She ignored the errant thrill that coursed through her. “Thirty is old to be still unmarried, isn’t it?”
“I’ve been kind of busy the past ten years, ma’am. I was too young for a wife before the war with England, and during it, I didn’t have time for courtship.”
“But the war has long been over. What have you been doing since then?”
His gaze grew shuttered. “Diplomatic missions.” The waltz was ending, so he led her from the floor.
“Where?” she prodded, hoping he’d reveal his real purpose. “Somewhere you couldn’t find a wife? It seems to me—” She broke off as she spotted a gentleman pushing his way through the crowd toward them. “Oh, no,he’s here.”
Thoughts of eliciting information vanished in the wake of her need for self-preservation. “Pardon me.” She released his arm. “I have to go.”
He hurried after her as she swept toward the nearest glass door that led out onto the gallery. “Go where?”
“Away from the marquess,” she hissed. “And please don’t follow me. You’re hard to miss, Major Winter; you’ll lead him right to me.”
Thankfully, he heeded her request. Once outside, she peered back through the door. Major Winter had vanished, but the Marquess of Pomeroy had halted to scan the area. When his sharp blue eyes fixed on the glass doors, she jumped back.
Spotting a nearby pillar, she slid behind it. She fixed her gaze on the crack between the pillar and the wall, through which she could just see the glass doors.
“What did I miss?” came a voice at her elbow.
She nearly jumped two feet. Whirling to find the major standing there, she cried, “You beast! You gave me the most horrid fright! What are you doing?”
“Joining you. I came through another door.” His eyes gleamed at her. “Too bad you couldn’t find a pillar to hide behind upstairs, or you could have—”
“Shh,” she hissed.
Just in time, too, for they both heard the glass door opening. She tensed as a voice called out, “Lady Amelia?”
Her gaze shot to Major Winter. As if to protect her, he edged closer. A smile touched her lips. It was rather thrilling, hiding out here with the major.
A long silence ensued, during which she envisioned Lord Pomeroy surveying the gallery with his supercilious stare. When she heard the click of his heels on the stone, she flattened herself against the cold marble, struggling to keep her breathing quiet.
That was no small feat with the major standing inches away. His hand had found her waist, and he stroked it silkily, enticingly. She swallowed hard.
His gaze fixed on her throat, and again there was that delicious flicker in his eyes. But Lord Pomeroy’s muttered curse broke the moment. As Amelia held her breath, the footsteps receded, and the door closed.
“Do you mind telling me what that was about?” Major Winter asked.
“I don’t wish to speak to Lord Pompous…I mean, Pomeroy,” she breathed, worried that the man might come out again and find them.
“I guessed that much. Who is he?”
“The man you met earlier, the one to whom you made the comment about promenades and pistols.”
“General Paxton?”
“Try calling him that instead of Lord Pomeroy, and he’ll bite your head off.”
“I did. Call him that.” The moon illuminated the major’s lips as they quirked up in a wry smile. “And he did bite my head off. Self-important old goat, isn’t he?”
She cast him a chastening glance. “We English consider him a war hero for routing Boney. That’s why the prince honored him with the title of marquess.”
“Then why are you hiding behind pillars to avoid him?”
She sighed. “He wants to marry me, curse him. Me and my fortune.”
“Doesn’t he have his own?”
“Not really. They gave him lands and the title, but he has to maintain it.”
His gaze probed hers. “And you don’t want to marry a fortune hunter.”
His hand still rested on her waist. She knew she should move away, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so. “Who does?”
He leaned his forearm against the pillar, his expression calculating. “I guess that means I don’t have a chance with you.”
“Don’t you have money?”
“I did once.” His voice now held an icy edge. “But it vanished years ago.”
“You should have been more careful,” she said lightly, though her blood pounded in her ears. Had his money “vanished” because of Dolly?
Anger flashed in his eyes. “Care had nothing to do with it.” Dropping his hand from her waist, he pivoted on his heel and marched off.
She followed him down the gallery. She had to know more, which meant not antagonizing him. “You have other advantages that make up for your lack of fortune, Major Winter.”
“Do I?” he growled.
She slanted her gaze up at him. “What woman could resist a handsome, strapping marine like you, who’s had such exciting adventures? Hearing your tales would keep a woman entertained when other duller husbands would not.”
He paused to regard her with obvious skepticism. “And you would marry a man because he’d had adventures?”
“Certainly! It would be great fun.” With a flirtatious smile, she continued down the gallery. “Especially if my husband took me on adventures, too.”
“So why not marry General…Lord Pomeroy?”
“He’s old, for goodness sake!” she said in her best flighty manner.
“Well then, why not one of the other English officers?”
“Most of them only want my fortune to fund their retirement.” Sadly enough, that was true. “And the few adventurous officers either don’t want wives or are already married.” She turned to him with a pout. “Even the married ones expect their wives to stay home like good little girls and never see the world, while they sail to the West Indies and beyond.”
“Trust me, Lady Amelia, you wouldn’t enjoy seeing the world if it meant spending your days in a cramped ship’s cabin or long hours on a camel’s back.”
“Oh, what’s it like to ride a camel? Can they run like horses, or is it more like a trot? Do they really go for hours without water?”
He stared at her. “Camels are smelly and dirty and cantankerous. You wouldn’t like riding one. You certainly wouldn’t like eating one.”
Goodness, she was giving herself away again. “Of course not,” she said primly. “I imagine camel meat is rather tough.”
“Tough and stringy. Not food for a lady.” He shifted his gaze to the gardens below. “I suppose you got this interest in adventure from your stepmother.”
He kept turning the conversation back to Dolly. He must suspect her somehow. Walking over to the gallery rail, she stared down into the bushes to hide her agitation. “Why do you say that?”
He came up to lean against the rail beside her. “I’m sure she told you all about her own travels in France and—”
“Not France, Major Winter.” Her blood pounded in her ears. “It was Spain, remember?”
“Right, during the war. I forgot.” He searched her face. “You must be very close to your stepmother if you adopted her love of travel.”
“I can’t imagine what you mean,” she hedged. He must be after her Dolly. Until she knew why, she didn’t know how to answer his questions safely. She had to get him off the subject.
“I gather she and your father haven’t been married long, yet you seem to share her interests. How long have they been married, anyway?”
“Major Winter,” she said, desperate to change the subject, “are you going to just stand there babbling about my relations? Or are you going to kiss me?”
He frowned. “Beg pardon?”
Turn his head,she reminded herself.Away from Dolly.
Her heart thundering wildly, she walked her fingers up the gold braid of his coat. “When a man follows a young lady onto a gallery and talks to her of suitors and such, he generally has something other than conversation in mind. We’re alone, and the stars are out. You couldn’t ask for a better opportunity.” She tugged his hand to her waist.
He didn’t remove it and dragged in a sharp breath. “How old are you?”
“Nearly twenty-one.”
“Too young for me,” he said hoarsely.
“Nonsense. Lord Kirkwood is your age, and Lord Pomeroy is over fifty. It didn’t stop either of them from pursuing me.” She lowered her eyelashes in what she hoped was a provocative manner. “Of course, if you find me unattractive—”
“No man in his right mind would find you unattractive,” he ground out. “But that doesn’t mean I’m fool enough to kiss you.”
Some insane and reckless instinct possessed her. “Then I’ll have to kiss you. ”
Chapter Four
Dear Charlotte,
You and I are in perfect agreement. The spoiled Miss Linley needs a husband with a firm hand. Besides, Mr. Chambers secretly frequents the sort of establishment no gentleman should visit, which shows a definite lack of character.
Your opinionated cousin,
&nbs
p; Michael
Every muscle in Lucas’s body went as taut as a full sail. God have mercy. The flirt actually rose up on tiptoe to press her lips to his. Hell, she was young enough to be…well, at least a younger sister.
But she didn’t kiss like a younger sister, that was for damned sure. She had the most tempting lips he’d ever tasted. Not to mention her pretty little treat of a body that made him want to run his hands over every inch.
Before he even got the chance to enjoy himself, however, she broke the kiss, drawing back with a knowing smile.
His temper flared. She was just like her countrymen, baiting and tormenting him, thinking she could escape unscathed because he was a crass American and she was the highfalutin English. But she’d been the one to start this, and she was damned well going to finish it.
He snared her around the waist and dragged her against him. “If that’s your idea of a kiss, it’s no wonder you crave adventure.” Seizing her chin, he growled, “This,Lady Amelia, is a kiss.” Then he covered her mouth with his.
Although she froze, she didn’t fight him, so he took advantage. He moved his lips on hers, testing, tasting, enjoying. Then, splaying his fingers over her silk-clad back, he thrust his tongue inside—
She jerked back, but didn’t pull out of his embrace, just stared up at him with those luminous, chocolate-hued eyes. “What are you doing?”
“Kissing you.”
She colored. “Yes, but you…that is…your—”
“That’s how we savage Americans kiss.” Her reaction irritated him. Given her flirting, she had to know what he was doing. “But I suppose you don’t like a plain soldier daring to kiss you with his whole mouth.”
“I-I didn’t say that,” she protested.
“Good. Then you won’t mind if I continue where I left off.”
Without giving her a chance to resist, he kissed her again. He didn’t know which drove him harder—her obvious shock at his insolence or the fact that she’d meant only to tease him—but he wasn’t letting some lofty English lady get the better of him. Not tonight, not when his blood still ran hot and furious after his encounter with the soldiers.
He took her mouth as insolently as any marauding army, half-expecting her to fight off the attack with the same ferocity. To his shock, she not only refused to fight, but when he probed between her lips, she even let him in.
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