“She was only a couple of weeks old,” he said after a moment. “Too young to be without her mother. She was meant for someone’s dinner. Fresh meat.” The captain shrugged. “Nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve eaten monkey myself.”
“You meant to eat her?” Phillipa squeaked.
“I was purchasing supplies,” he admitted. “The fellow kept shaking her stick-and-vine cage in my direction, telling me how monkey heart is a virility aid. I wasn’t interested, but she kept looking at me like I was her last hope in the world.”
A virility aid. And he said it so matter-of-factly. “You were her last hope,” she returned.
He shifted. “I suppose so. I was also in the middle of an expedition. But I purchased her, and a female goat suckling a kid. I cut a hole in the finger of one of my gloves to feed her goat’s milk, and to my very great surprise she survived.” He smiled, the expression surprising her with its genuine humor. “Leaving me in the position of being her mother.”
“I have to say, you’re the most masculine chit I’ve ever met,” Henry Camden chortled, while the rest of the group laughed and applauded.
Phillipa started. She’d forgotten that Olivia and her friends were there, much less that they might be listening to the captain’s conversation. “I doubt many others would have been as compassionate, Captain,” she stated. “It speaks well for your character.”
The other ladies were nodding. Wonderful. She’d made him even more appealing, if that was possible. Now for all the conversation she would have with him, she might as well leave and go attend someone else’s picnic.
“It speaks better for the fact that I wasn’t hungry.”
The laughter faltered, and several of Olivia’s friends fluttered their hands over their faces as though they might faint.
Captain Wolfe looked utterly unconcerned by their fragile states, and in fact leaned back on one elbow. “Should I not have said that?” he asked, running his fingers again along the hem of her skirt.
Soft, he’d said. “The book only mentions that you rescued Kero from traders, not that you considered eating her. They’re shocked, I think.”
“And you’re not shocked.”
“No. Very little shocks me.”
“Hm. I wonder about that,” he murmured, tugging now on the bottom of her dress as it lay fanned out around her.
For a second she contemplated catching John’s attention, but as he was conversing with Olivia, she decided against it. She didn’t find Bennett Wolfe’s attention terribly shocking, anyway; it was more…unnerving. After all, she knew a great deal about his rough, harrowing life abroad, and she knew that on occasion when he’d spoken of women in a foreign land, there were things that he left out. Intimate things.
Perhaps that was his difficulty. After all, he’d been away from England for a very long time, and he’d mentioned virility already. “Captain,” she began, searching for a way to be delicate and diplomatic and not shocked, “I know you haven’t spent much time in London.”
“No, I haven’t.” Tug.
“Then if you require…” She stopped, clearing her throat again and then leaning closer so she could lower her voice. “If you require…intimate companionship, there are a plentitude of lightskirts outside the Drury Lane Theater every evening.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “There are?”
“Yes. I have seen them.”
The captain sat up straight again. “You are practical, aren’t you, Phillipa?”
For a moment she thought she could hear laughter in his voice.
“I like to think so.” He’d used her familiar name without permission, but considering the topic of their conversation, she wasn’t about to complain about it.
“For your…practical information, then, there are a plentitude of lightskirts everywhere. They call them by different names in different parts of the world, but if I—how did you say it—required ‘companionship,’ I believe I could track one or more of them down.”
“Flip, you’re not fawning all over our guest, are you?” Olivia chirped, swooping in to sit beside Captain Wolfe. “You mustn’t mind her, Sir Bennett. She can quote from both of your books, and does so constantly.”
Phillipa’s cheeks burned. “I do not do it constantly. And don’t expect me to apologize for having a fair memory,” she retorted. She and Livi sniped at each other frequently, but generally not in public. Why her older sister felt the need to poke fun at her now, she had no idea.
“Oh, of course not,” her sister returned. “It’s only that we all want to hear about Captain Wolfe’s adventures. You mustn’t monopolize him.”
Emerald eyes studied hers for a moment. “I didn’t mind,” he said with a slight smile and a last soft tug on her skirt. Then he stood and moved to the far side of the blanket, all the girls chattering and following behind him like sheep after a shepherd.
Phillipa remained where she was. The portrait in her mind of Bennett Wolfe hadn’t been precisely accurate. For one thing, the scholarly, rugged portrait didn’t tug on her dress and make her feel very warm and breathy. And its eyes weren’t nearly as compelling as those that were just now glancing again in her direction. Perhaps there was more to adventuring than she’d realized.
Chapter Five
I had Mbundi with me when I approached the hunters; he was more likely to speak their language than I. I also doubted these tribesmen had ever seen a white man before. I only realized later that I should have been more concerned over how hungry they might have been and whether they ever ate strangers. Another reason to be sure of an invitation before arriving at a party.
THE JOURNALS OF CAPTAIN BENNETT WOLFE
Well, this is charming,” Jack muttered, clapping Bennett on the shoulder. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“I’m being social.” Bennett grinned, showing his teeth in what felt more like a snarl. “It was suggested that I do that rather than hunt down Langley.”
“It’s a good suggestion. But I could have stayed at home and caught up on my mending for all the attention Livi’s paying me.”
“It’s not my fault I’m more interesting than you are,” he murmured back. “If you want to talk to her, then go talk to her.”
“It’s not that easy, wild man. She has to want to talk to me.” Jack shook his head. “I’m heading back to Clancy House. And you need to find somewhere else to stay soon. My mother’s convinced that Kero’s going to tear out her throat while she sleeps.”
“Do not leave me here with this pack of laughing hyenas,” Bennett shot back, keeping his voice below the nearly constant giggles and chatter of the mostly female herd around him.
He wanted to talk with only one of the chits, and she was sitting behind him, reading. He knew that, because he knew everything that she’d done, everything that she’d said, everything that she’d eaten, since the moment he’d arrived at the picnic. Including her advice on where he might go to find some whores to satisfy himself. Plural. Apparently she sensed his appetite.
“Very well,” Jack murmured back, doing a very poor job of hiding a grin. “But you will owe me a favor.”
“Yes, yes. Just stay close by. Leopards, I can face. These people terrify me.”
“I doubt that very much.”
Jack was correct; it wasn’t terror as much as it was insurmountable boredom. He stayed on his feet mainly because it kept him from being mobbed, and because from there he could see over the bonnets and bare ringlets to where the very unusual Lady Phillipa Eddison sat.
And he listened, as well. Not just to that Henry half-wit regaling the females with the tale of how he and eleven other riders and twenty hounds had chased down a fox and killed it, as though that was the greatest test of manhood ever conjured. He also heard the whispers, the behind-hand mutterings about how he didn’t quite appear to be the character Langley so humorously described him to be, and about how even if he was a bit dilapidated, at least he had a handsome face and a fair income.
This was what Som
merset had meant, he supposed, when the duke had said he’d joined the small group of men who saw Society with different eyes than those who’d never left it. Because the idea that chasing a fox for amusement was comparable in any way with hunting down a leopard that had killed two of his porters, for example, was absurd. As for the rest, they were welcome to their opinions as long as none of them was in a position to sponsor an expedition.
He sent another glance at Lady Phillipa. Her head still bent over his book on eastern Africa, she didn’t look as though she’d even listened to the foxhunt tale. It likely hadn’t even occurred to her that she should be applauding or admiring Henry half-wit’s courage or some such nonsense. She picked up a strawberry and slipped it between her full lips, and he felt a responding twitch in his cock.
Christ. Over the past three years he’d seen more bare breasts and bare arses than a man could count, but while he had no reservations about learning foreign practices in intimacy, neither did he have the compunction to rut with everything that moved. The tribes along the Congo had for the most part been hostile—their only and limited experience with fair-skinned men had been with Arabian slave and spice traders. And he hadn’t wished to have anything cut off that he might have a use for later.
Above and beyond years and experience, though, Phillipa Eddison was something out of the ordinary. Literally. The moment he’d heard her voice he’d wanted to see her face. Upon seeing her face, he’d wanted to talk with her. And now he wanted more. If he could decipher her character a bit better, find the best way to hunt, he had every intention of doing so. Because in his experience, practical, logical chits on the outside were anything but that on the inside.
“—for a discussion of your own discoveries in the Congo?” Lady Olivia was saying, and he shook himself. Social. He was supposed to be social, make a fair impression, until he could wrap his hands around Langley’s throat.
“Oh, that would be magnificent! I do love Captain Langley’s other stories.”
“Say you will, Sir Bennett!”
“I’ll talk to Papa,” Phillipa’s older sister went on as he attempted to decipher the conversation, “and he’ll have to agree. We’ll arrange for a dinner, and then you could entertain us with your own tales of grand adventure.”
Phillipa lifted her head again at the discussion, and he caught the flare of excitement in her earth-colored eyes before someone else cut between them. “I’d be happy to,” he heard himself say.
“Oh, I want to hear you tell the story about when you and Captain Langley encountered that quaint tribe on the river. The one who gave you the canoes,” the prominent-chested Sonja Depris suggested.
Bennett frowned. He’d read Langley’s watered-down tripe about that incident. The Nbule had “given” them the canoes only after they’d attempted to slaughter the entire expedition and steal their supplies. He remembered it as a night of blood and fire and screaming. It had not been quaint, and his journal had not described it that way. Perhaps Langley thought that if he stole only every other sentence of a man’s work, he could claim the results as his own.
As the rest of the group began offering suggestions of the stories they wanted to hear, movement halfway around the edge of the glade caught his attention. A group of children and a harried-looking woman, more than likely their governess, danced about and pointed excitedly at a nearby tree. A quick look told him that Kero had gone exploring. Thank God. An excuse to escape.
He inclined his head in the general direction of the largest number of picnic-goers. “Excuse me.” Taking several strides toward the monkey, he slowed as he caught the desperate look on Phillipa’s face. She seemed to hate being there as much as he did. “Lady Phillipa,” he said, turning around, “Kero seems to like you. Come with me, will you?” He returned to her side and held down his hand to her.
When she set aside her book and reached up to grip his fingers, warmth slid up his muscles in a pleasant, unexpected jolt. He most decidedly liked touching this woman. He wanted to touch her more intimately.
“Should we help?” the Sonja chit chirped.
“You should not,” he returned, only half paying attention to the rest of them as he helped Phillipa to her feet. The top of her head just reached his chin as they stood in the grass. He hadn’t realized that the other night. Today it seemed oddly significant.
“But why does Flip get to—”
“I doubt Captain Wolfe wants everyone chasing after Kero,” Phillipa said, interrupting the Sonja chit before he could state that Phillipa was allowed to accompany him because she was the only female he found tolerable in the entire crowd. “She more than likely doesn’t even understand English. We’ll be back in a moment.”
When he caught sight of Jack scowling at him, Bennett realized he still held her fingers. Belatedly he let her go. “She understands English and Swahili—when she wants to,” he said, moving off with Phillipa falling in beside him. “Which is generally when food is about.”
“If she understands English then I can see why she wanted to escape the picnic and all that chattering,” she returned with an amused chuckle.
“I like the way you laugh,” he stated. “Even if I was in the middle of the chattering.”
Her fair cheeks darkened. “Oh. I didn’t mean your chattering. That is to say, you weren’t—I mean, I found your conversation very interesting. The—”
He grinned. “They sounded like a troupe of damned baboons.”
Phillipa snorted. Immediately she covered her mouth with one hand. “I knew from your books that you would be very witty.”
“What did you think of me after you read Langley’s book?” It took some effort not to sneer as he said those two words.
Her smile faded. “Everyone has their own opinion of everyone else.”
“That’s diplomatic of you. What happened to the chit who informed me where the high flyers could be found?”
For a moment he thought he’d embarrassed her into muteness—which would be a damned shame. Then she sighed, a sound that he instantly memorized, and one that he wanted to hear again. Repeatedly. “I do know what’s proper and what isn’t,” she finally said. “Olivia says I assume most people are more intelligent than they are, and that when I speak to them that way they find me odd and incomprehensible.”
“I find you to be neither.”
“Then you must be one of the truly intelligent ones.” She smiled again, more shyly.
“Which is why I realize that you didn’t answer my question. Did Langley’s book alter your very high opinion of me?”
“In all honesty, and only because you asked me, I found Captain Langley’s book a bit one-sided.”
He slowed, moving closer to her before he’d even realized that he’d done so. “How so?”
“I read in the newspaper that you were the leader of the expedition,” she returned, gesturing with her hands as she spoke, “and yet Captain Langley seemed to do everything. He chose the path, organized the porters, decided where to camp, was the better shot, the better fighter, and the better tactician.”
Bennett clenched his jaw. “And?” he prompted.
“Captain Langley wrote the book.” She shrugged. “I imagine if you wrote one concerning the same adventure, it would be a bit more balanced.”
“What if it simply tipped in the other direction?” he asked, feeling somewhat mollified.
“Ah, but I’ve read your other books, remember? You, Captain Wolfe, give credit where credit is due. In my estimation, anyway.”
As they reach the twisted old oak tree, Bennett held up his arm, and Kero hopped down from the tree limb where she’d perched and sat on his shoulder. Over the past three years, and for all twenty-six before that, he’d made his way in the world by assessing swiftly and accurately the character of those he encountered.
In this instance his sentiments were likely influenced by the fact that he found Phillipa Eddison damned fascinating and he wanted her, but she also had good instincts. He wanted to trust her
, and he wanted to tell her that most of Langley’s book was actually his words, twisted to make David the hero and to make his heroism more important than any of the myriad discoveries they’d made along the way.
At the moment he had no proof, and he knew what a braggart he would sound like because of it. And if she told anyone else what he’d said, he would sound like a disgruntled and incompetent explorer angry at a better man for pointing out his shortcomings.
“You avoided one of my questions as well, you know,” she said, shaking him out of his thoughts.
“Did I?”
“Lord Fennington. Why didn’t you want to talk about how he greeted you when he learned you weren’t dead?”
He gazed at her levelly. “I haven’t been to see him yet.”
“What? Why not? He’s your family.”
“I haven’t set eyes on him since I was twelve years old.”
She put a hand on his arm, her touch light, but he felt as though he’d been permanently marked. “But he wrote so warmly about you in the foreword of Across the Continent,” she protested. “He seemed to know you quite well.”
“Perhaps he’s read my books.” Abruptly he realized that his hand was halfway up to touch her cheek, and he swiftly lowered it again.
“You should go see him, Captain,” she urged.
He did need to visit Fennington, though not to play the prodigal son returning to the family’s bosom. He needed to know how complicit the marquis was in the theft and publication of his journals. “Call me Bennett, and I’ll consider it.”
“Bennett, go see him,” she repeated, his name soft on her lips.
Slowly he nodded. “I will. And then I have a book to return to you,” he said.
“May I help you?” the tall, hollow-cheeked butler asked as Bennett, Kero on his shoulder, reached the front door of Howard House, the London residence of the Marquis of Fennington and his family.
The Care and Taming of a Rogue Page 6