She strove not to shift. She knew she had trouble biting her tongue but surely he didn’t mean to tie her up? Or even worse, gag her? After all, he had kidnapped her. She shouldn’t be surprised.
“It’s what you want isn’t it?” He tugged it around his neck. “Me to start behaving like a gentleman.”
She lowered her gaze to the trellised soup bowl. Him? She was imagining this. A fault of whatever had doused that handkerchief. Dear Lord, maybe for that matter, she also had imagined Louise-Ann and Marigold? And these fine dishes here?
“Whatever it takes, sweetheart.”
“What it takes…” She paused and ran her tongue over her lips, which were suddenly dry. A cravat? Why on earth was he wearing a cravat? “What it takes is for you to give me your terms and let us go.”
How could it be otherwise? For over five months now she had felt nothing. Neither happy, nor sad. She had sworn never to forgive him.
“Ah?” He worked the knot with his fingers. “Isn’t going to happen. Why do you think I’ve brought you here?”
“I confess I don’t know.” Somehow she kept her voice cool, although his words were hardly encouraging. “To show me you have whores and that you can tie a cravat?”
“I brought you—I brought them to show you I can be the kind of man you want.”
She almost laughed out loud, the cool way he said it. “And what is that? A man who steals, drugs, and kidnaps?”
“The kind who doesn’t go near women like that, sweetheart. No matter the temptation.”
“Go near them?” Now she did laugh. Please don’t tell her he had kidnapped her to show her that. Yet his stare burned. “Flint, you had them in here.”
“Obviously I did. But I never did anything with them.”
“Right.”
“Hell, that’s what you want to know, isn’t it? Shape you are right now, and when you get further down the line, I can be trusted to contain my urges. Because, you think I don’t know I’ve hurt you?”
God, it would be nice to think he could. But the shape she was in? Only Flint could make so uncomplimentary and basic a remark. Only Flint could let his eyes flicker over her while he did too. As if there was nothing wrong with what he said and she should be flattered.
“I’m sorry? And you want to be a gentleman?”
“Louise-Ann just wants to get to England.”
“Oh? So she’s working her passage?”
If Louise-Ann wanted to go to England, wouldn’t it be better to smile nicely and find out when and where? To befriend these women if necessary. To play along with whatever devious little scheme he’d hatched?
After all, extricating herself, Susan, and her unborn baby intact from this situation, with the least amount of damage to her reputation, mattered the most to her. If Lady Margaret got wind of the fact Fury sailed on a pirated vessel with Captain Flint, who was one and the same as the Captain Ames who had helped her in the matter of her missing husband, she’d be cut off without a single penny.
But the talk about hurting her was too unnerving. Curse him. And curse herself. When she was unsure of just what scheme he was hatching, she barely needed talk like that. A sneaking suspicion came to her.
“Whose boat is this?”
“It’s Malmesbury’s, all right?”
After all Flint had said, the notion repulsed her. Yet, why wasn’t she surprised?
“Maybe if you’d come with me when I asked, I wouldn’t have felt the need to.”
Well, this was a time for confessions.
“You took my book and you gave it to Malmesbury?” She managed, just, to keep her voice level. Her breath squeezed so tightly in her ribcage, she swore it shrank. “Is that what you did? Plotted my ruin with him? Because there is nowhere I can safely go and survive this. Nowhere. My children either.”
“I didn’t plot your ruin.”
“From the start was it?”
“How the hell can you think I’d do that?”
“How the hell? Oh, quite easily.”
“Haven’t I got enough kept back here to protect you?”
“I’m very glad you think so.”
Clearly feeling he’d sorted this to her satisfaction, he sat down opposite. “Anyway, you give me the damned chance I’m asking here, you won’t need that book.”
“You? That would take years.” Rage clouded her mind. She wished it didn’t. Yet, was it any wonder?
Nothing had changed. Perhaps not even herself. When she saw the things she fought here, when she knew the sheer necessity of keeping her heart armor-plated, yet she still had the capacity to hear, even if just by the dullest flicker, his words about hurting her, how could she say that she had?
But real love—oh, there was more to that, between a man and a woman, than him wearing a cravat and containing himself around whores.
Once she might not have thought so. But now, what burdened her had made her wiser. This kind of machination was exactly what she wanted to be free of. Because love was not what she heard mentioned.
Had she not suggested England to him, if he had been interested? Not stealing her book, kidnapping, and imprisoning her. She let a small smile play about her lips.
“Let me tell you something, James. Whatever deal you think you can make here. You can’t.”
“Why’s that?”
He was confident of his ground, wasn’t he? Surprising, for a man who hadn’t always seemed confident in Genoa.
Although the boat swayed, she stood. As did he. He loomed taller than her. Still it felt better facing him standing up.
“I know for all these years you thought I killed Celia. But I didn’t.” She held up a hand to silence him. “I took water up to her room that morning. She lay dead. As simple as that. Some kind of seizure. I saw it was my chance. My chance to get away from everything. From my father’s inn. And everything that went on there. From his drinking. And his whoring. From the washing and the cooking. And all the other tasks he had me do for the women who didn’t just use his rooms as a convenient place to stay in. Because I never wanted to become one of those women.”
Now she spoke of it, the first time ever, this chapter that belonged in a closed book, it felt very strange.
“You have no idea how I wanted to get to England and have a new life. But you got in the way of that. I didn’t mind. It was my own fault. You see, I fell in love with you. But then Storm came, so the new life…” The last thing she desired was to descend into self-pity. “The new life was difficult. I met Thomas. To start with he wasn’t unkind. But I didn’t think I could be happy with him. Because I think there was always you, even though I had put you from my mind. Even though, I know now, it would never have worked, the girl I was then, when I met you first.”
“Fury, listen.”
“No, you listen.” She jerked up her chin to look at him. “You have no idea what I endured those last months with Thomas. The beatings. The humiliations. The accident on the staircase, for which I blame myself.”
“I do. I saw it. The bruises. Why the hell do you think I stayed when I was all set on leaving?”
It was vital that just for once she tried to concentrate on her desires. Her proper desires. Not the fact he’d stepped closer and his hands, warm as they always were, clasped her arms.
Now, as never before, not even that night when he’d stepped from the shadow of her candle flame, had she been more aware how little she could afford to muddle this. He held her from her dreams. She, whose life at eighteen, he’d already ruined.
“It was all to have what was rightfully his. Rightfully mine. No more. There’s Storm, after all. And now I finally have this chance to do that, to have the things I stole, ran away, and took a dead woman’s identity for, do you think I’m going to stand here and allow you spoil it for me again?”
He was going to kiss her. Perhaps he wanted to disguise the blow to his pride, his face had flushed with fury. And she admitted, against her will, the impassioned way he looked, breathed, the way his ha
nds cupped her face, the thought was not unpleasant. Except Flint settled everything this way. If she descended to it, the next step, pregnant or not, she knew all too well.
She swallowed, her throat dry. “We had a contract. A deal.”
“This here’s another deal.”
He bent his head. His lips struck against hers, passionate and open-mouthed, his fingers holding her face in a powerful grip. The feel sucked all the breath from her body and she felt something buried deep inside her, beneath the covering of frost, start to thaw.
For a moment she reacted instinctively, to the heat flooding from his body into hers and racing through all her pores. Not because she wanted to, but because she had no other choice. The feel of his hands, the taste of his mouth was yet something she knew she must withstand. Or lose everything. Including her dignity before him. So she must, she wouldn’t allow herself to abandon all rational thought and surrender mindlessly to him, as she had before. She would fight this. No matter how the room seemed to sway and every awareness was of him.
She waited till he pulled back, for the moment when he looked into her eyes. What she saw in his made her more aware than ever of her need to remember two words: Book. Kidnap.
She drew in a slow, shaky breath to quell her hammering heart. “I’m sorry, but you need to know exactly what you’re up against here. If you think you can change my mind that won’t do it.” A stupid thing to say that would only encourage him to do more. “No.”
He didn’t flinch, although she knew she’d cut him. This new Flint’s reactions were surlier than the old one’s. She swore she could breathe his displeasure. But then he stood close.
“A few days. No more. To prove to you I’ve changed and I can be the things you want is all I’m asking here.”
“A few days? But a second ago you said—”
He tilted his jaw and narrowed his eyes, emotion flashing in the crystal depths. “I meant it’s not going to happen tonight, you and Susan walking free from here. But that’s it. That’s the deal.”
Impossible. It couldn’t be. Not even the mighty Flint could be that confident, could he?
Unease flickered. Of course, it was no trouble to agree to this. Good God no. Her desire for other things was formidable. Versus what he had done to her, all the things he’d done, it was indomitable. So, why did she feel the teeny tiny faint clang of a warning bell within? As if she might not be safe entering into this. Might not emerge unscathed at the other side.
It was just her pride that made her rebel wasn’t it? And nothing to do with his swagger. Because his swagger was something she should and would delight in pricking, baiting, and deflating.
A few days were but a few days. She had so much to sustain her.
“And if I don’t agree?”
He curved his lips upward. “You’re not in any position. Here alone on this boat with me.”
“Is that right? What are you going to do? Rape a pregnant woman?”
Actually he’d never thought a pregnant woman could be so appetizing. Of course, she was his pregnant woman. And he should have told her he loved her. But how could he when she stared as though he were something she’d found under her shoe?
“No, sweetheart.” His gaze drifted down the bulge below the elegant line of her breasts. He didn’t know if he’d felt more strongly about anything in his whole life than he did about that little bump. About her. “But I will keep you here.”
“What do you mean keep me here?”
“What I said. See, I don’t have a whole lot of time here. In fact, you might say this is a hell of risk I’ve taken. Even down to bribing the harbormaster. This is Malmesbury’s ship, but this isn’t his crew.”
“I’d never have guessed. I don’t suppose you’re sailing in the agreed waters either?”
“Malmesbury’s bound to know I’ve pirated this boat by now. A capital offense.”
She stared, with predatory avidity from beneath her eyelashes, and he could as good as hear her mind whirring about how she could use all this to her advantage. He lowered his eyelids.
The thing was, she couldn’t.
When he’d hatched this plan he hadn’t expected her to take five months to reach Calais. He’d been ready to head for England and Ravenhurst when he got wind of the fact that finally she was here.
He’d reckoned a week, maybe two, a little consuming of humble pie, a little seduction, and once she saw the fine clothes and jewels he could give her—once she got over her initial surprise about what a changed man he was—she’d be his.
But now, his eyes sweeping her face, he knew he hadn’t imagined her throwing the dress on the floor and vomiting on his shirt. And while seven and a half months wasn’t nine, no matter how much he did the arithmetic, seven from nine was still two.
Now, he felt against the clock. What if she dropped that bulge here? His palms sweated for all that a smile touched the ends of his mouth and he released her. When his hunger for her amounted to starvation, why the hell didn’t she feel the same?
“So then—”
“So, then you don’t agree to this small thing I’m asking, I’m going to keep you here.”
“You’re what?”
Beguile—he must beguile her a little, the way she did him, for her eyes to flicker like that at the thought of being kept here. Yet was he really going to do that? Was she really beguiled, the way she now tightened her jaw?
“Till when?”
He swallowed. If he said this, he probably ruined his chances further, but he’d never imagined her not wanting him because of the things she wanted more. He hadn’t imagined that story she told touching him. So he was tempted to let her go. Anyway, she was bound to know he didn’t mean what he threatened.
“Till you either give me the baby or you give me Storm.”
In so far as it was possible for a face to whiten when it was already an unattractive shade of green, hers did so now. “Are you mad? Storm?”
“She’s the one being left out of this, isn’t she? This fine new life you see for yourself and this new baby here.”
Where feet and mouths were concerned, he knew he’d just stuck his size nines in his. But what never failed to surprise him was how one could start seeing things one had been blind to before.
She twisted her mouth into a sneer. “Because you were there the day she was born, holding my hand, welcoming her into the world, right?”
With difficulty he kept his voice neutral. “No, I wasn’t. Like you were that girl, I was that man. You’re right. What would I have done with a baby?”
“Which means you’ve a nerve to speak when I want the best for her. School. Europe. Marriage.”
“And that’s why you hide her away?”
“Hide her away? I don’t—”
“And you won’t tell me where she is, so I can see her?” That too, was a sudden grievance. A blindness illuminated by light. “Because you want these things for her?”
“You left us, remember?”
She moved forward to the door. He wasn’t going to let her end the interview. It was his misfortune to have made that mistake in Genoa. It had cost him dearly. He wasn’t going to do it here.
“I’m back now. The choice is up to you. A few days is what I’m asking.”
The tiny hesitation, while she stood with her gaze edged sideways, burned him. He’d said something he didn’t mean but found he was seeing things as he’d never done before. Feeling things he’d never felt too.
For as long as it took, he’d keep her. Until she gave him what he wanted. She needn’t bother treating this as a gauntlet to be picked up and worked to her advantage. As though she could play for time while she did something else altogether. Turning this cabin upside down for what was left of that book for example. He knew her too well for that.
“Why—why certainly.”
He stepped toward her, and she cleared her throat.
“But even you must see the start is not auspicious. You will allow me to return to the
other cabin while I think about this?”
“Of course, I will. You have till tomorrow night.”
“Night?”
“Night.”
He opened the door and gestured for her to go before him.
Chapter Fifteen
Fury stood in the oil-lit companionway, her hand raised, ready to knock on Flint’s door. Susan’s shocked words from last night popped into her splitting head. She shut her eyes tight, willing everything Susan had said away. Already her hands shook and head pounded enough that she wanted to tell Benito to take her back to her cabin. She didn’t need Susan’s damned words beating at her senses. As if Fury were somehow responsible for Flint’s raging insanity. And now their hopes of getting off this boat were nonexistent.
Flint’s appalling ultimatum yanked her back to the present and she knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
She opened her eyes and fisted the fabric of her corded cream day dress, which Susan had scrubbed the stains off last night while Fury had lain curled beneath the rough blanket.
The red silk would be too clear a signal of her compliance. She wasn’t compliant. Her blood boiled more than she thought humanly possible. But she was also vulnerable. More vulnerable than she’d been in her entire life, which was why she hadn’t refused his offer to think things over.
But if those whores were present…
Gritting her teeth, she opened the door. “Flint.”
After all, it was best to meet him with her head held high, her best foot set forward. Even if her neck felt as if it had been snapped along with her ankle and her head ached.
She was here to find out exactly what he wanted. It could not possibly be her.
And even if it was, that wasn’t a request she would grant.
Flint turned from the washstand and she rebuked herself for allowing her eyes to roam over his immaculate body to his face. Damn, but the black coat became him. Except for sometimes wearing a black tricorne, she’d only ever seen him in scruffy brown. Blue, beige, or gray, or any other color. And those were all a compliment to his blue eyes. But black…
The Unraveling of Lady Fury Page 24