“Bastard,” Mark murmured, shaking his head. “What did you do?”
“I slapped him with every ounce of energy I had. Then I went to my room and didn’t emerge until they were gone. I never saw him again after that.”
“Well, that explains his grudge against you then.”
She stared at him, fascinated. “Did he say something about me?”
Mark nodded and popped a piece of cheese into his mouth.
“Well, what did he say?”
He cocked his head at her. “I don’t want to upset you.”
She smirked. “Trust me when I say that absolutely nothing Thomas Poole could have said about me ten years ago will upset me today.”
“Very well then. You asked for it.”
“I did,” she agreed.
“He said you were an ice bitch who liked to put on airs and pretend that you were better than everyone else even though your father’s money was from trade. He said you had schemed and connived the Viscount Whytestone to marry you in a futile attempt to better yourself.”
She widened her eyes at him. “Goodness, that is harsh.”
“Well, I didn’t appreciate any of it. So I flattened him.”
“You flattened him?”
He nodded and took a bite from a piece of bread.
“What does that mean?” she asked, frowning.
“Hm… Well, I punched him several times. In the gut, in the face. Until he was down and not about to get back up.”
“Mark!”
He turned to her, a look of mock innocence on his face. “Then, a few days later, I slipped about a pint of castor oil into his dinner. He spent the rest of the night and the following day running back and forth to the privy, clutching his stomach in agony.”
She gaped at him, though this sounded more like the Mark she’d known as a child.
“What?” Mark asked. “He disrespected you. It was the first—and last—time anyone did that in my presence.”
She shook her head in shock. “How is it that I didn’t hear of this?”
“I don’t know. Nate was there.”
Her eyes went even wider. “He was?”
“Yes. He watched the whole thing.”
Nate hadn’t “flattened” Poole. Mark was the one who had. And this had been after Mark and Nate had learned of her marriage. Evidently, Mark hadn’t hated her as much as she’d thought. She gazed on the man beside her with new eyes, impressed—and yet… “You shouldn’t have done that, Mark,” she chided.
“Of course I should have.”
“You could have been hurt. Or you might have seriously hurt him. And I’m sure the proctors at Cambridge wouldn’t have looked kindly upon that kind of violence from one of their students.”
“Oh, they were angry with me for a while. Though I daresay it was more from the castor oil than anything else. He… ah… had a difficult time containing himself before reaching the privy, and he soiled himself—and his room—extensively.”
She groaned, and he continued, “But then Trent stepped in and ensured that I didn’t get into too much trouble.”
“Your brother got involved?”
Mark smiled. “Trent was always involved, Caro. Where I used fists, he used words—and his incredible influence. It used to annoy me, but I’ve learned over time that his involvement, each and every time, was for my benefit.”
She nodded. “I remember how it annoyed you,” she said. “You felt stifled by it.”
“I wanted to be independent.”
“Is that why you started to travel so much?”
He looked away, suddenly seeming to study the tray of food intently. “Mostly,” he said.
But that wasn’t the entire truth. Caro knew she’d somehow, unintentionally struck a nerve.
He turned back to her, offering her a small plate covered with food. She took it from him. “Thank you.”
Bending down, he kissed her cheek. “You’re welcome.”
As the storm raged around them, they stayed comfortably ensconced in Caro’s stateroom, talking, eating, and eventually making love again. Finally, they fell asleep naked, limbs entwined.
It was the best night’s sleep either of them had had in years.
Chapter Seven
The next morning and the next several after that dawned clear and blue, cool and with a brisk wind that made the Liberty shoot along once more at an excellent clip. Captain Torrance was back to gleefully assuring his passengers that they’d arrive in New York well before the first of November. “Less than a calendar month from London to New York—only the fastest ships in the world can claim to do that!” he crowed. Mark appreciated a man who took pride in what was his, and Torrance was full of praise for both his crew and his ship.
“The weather has been absolutely perfect today!” he proclaimed over just about every meal they shared. “Just excellent.”
Most of the passengers disagreed about the weather, citing the nasty squall of several nights earlier that, by all accounts, had everyone gripping their bed railings all night in fear for their lives.
Whenever the squall came up in conversation, Mark and Caro exchanged a secret smile. Evidently, they were the only two passengers who hadn’t thought they’d drown that night.
Caro and Mark had decided to be as discreet as they could, so Mark would often sneak into Caro’s room after dark and return to his own cabin before dawn. That didn’t mean that the other passengers didn’t suspect what was going on, though. Owen Evans, in particular, cast Mark a nasty stare whenever the opportunity arose.
Mark didn’t really care about Owen Evans, or any of the rest of the people aboard the Liberty, for that matter. He cared about Caro.
He didn’t think he’d ever been so happy. He’d pretended for so long to want other things that it was a relief to admit—at least to himself—that Caro was what he wanted. He’d wanted her in the past. And he wanted her in his future.
But first, there were things he needed to tell her. Things a part of him still worried would cause her to believe she was too good for him.
The truth was, as much as Caro had disproved his previous notions about her being the kind of woman who angled for titles, money, and prestige, a part of him still saw her that way. She was a proud woman who stood tall and didn’t hesitate to look down her nose at someone whose behavior she found lacking. He’d seen her do it to Owen Evans just today when the man, over a luncheon that hadn’t included Mr. and Mrs. Frank, had described the Americans as “whining complainers with weak constitutions.”
Caro had squared her shoulders. “Is not your own brother still bedridden with the seasickness?” she’d asked Owen.
“Well, yes.”
“Would you describe him similarly to the way you’ve described the Franks then?”
“Of course not. Evan’s different.”
“Oh?” she asked, tilting her head in question while Mark, the captain, and the first mate watched with interest. “How’s that?”
“Well, Evan’s ambitious and strong. And he never complains, as sick as he is.”
“Evan is almost forty years younger than the Franks though. By your logic, since he is young and strong, he should be as fit as the rest of us.” She motioned to everyone sitting at the table. “And yet he is not.”
“Well…”
“As far as I am concerned, the Franks—and your brother—have been beset by illness outside their control. Mr. Frank is much better now—he only stays in their cabin to keep his wife company. Did you know that? And he does so without complaint. I’d consider that quite gentlemanly of him. And his constitution, if you ask me, is clearly better than your own brother’s since, even at his advanced age, he has recovered and poor Evan has not.”
Owen’s pale complexion clearly revealed his flush. He mumbled something unintelligible, then changed the subject while Mark fought off the vision of laying Caro flat on the dining table and burying himself into her. God, she was magnificent, her dark hair curling around her face,
her spine straight, her blue eyes penetrating and intelligent.
After the luncheon, Mark and Caro strolled the deck, watching the seamen work and exchanging friendly words with the officer on watch before walking arm in arm down the length of the deck.
“I’m being very well behaved, you know,” Mark observed.
She arched a brow at him. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve a mind to put clotted cream in his pillow to make him think he vomited in his sleep.”
“Do you mean Owen?”
He nodded.
“That’s disgusting, Mark!”
“The expression on his face would be priceless though. I think the only thing stopping me is that I wouldn’t be there to see it.”
“You’re terrible,” she chided. But she was laughing as she said it.
“Or I could put gravy on his seat at dinner tonight,” Mark mused. “It’d look like he shat his pants when he stood.”
She shook her head, still laughing.
“He deserves it, don’t you think?”
“Oh, nonsense. He’s young. Young men at that age often aren’t self-aware enough to realize how they project themselves to the world.”
“I think he’s only five years younger than we are,” Mark observed.
“I’ve changed quite a bit in the past five years though. Haven’t you?”
Mark nodded. He was a completely different person now than he’d been five years ago… for more reasons that Caro might imagine.
“Fine,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll leave the poor lad alone.”
She patted his cheek. “Good choice.”
Caro and Mark stopped at the rail at the bow of the ship and spotted a pod of dolphins. They watched as the sleek silver creatures came closer, seeming to want to race the Liberty and play in the wake the bow created as it sliced through the waves.
Well, Caro watched the dolphins, enraptured by their fast swimming and graceful leaps. Mark watched Caro, simply enraptured.
But also, something dark had been niggling him on the inside, and that darkness had been growing day by day until he couldn’t ignore it any longer. He shouldn’t feel this way. Every day he was with Caro, his confidence in what they were developing together should be increasing. But instead, the opposite was happening.
She was so self-possessed. Mark had never been as confident and self-contained as Caro.
Now he watched Caro watch the dolphins, her bright laughter, her vivacious blue eyes, pale skin, and dark hair. She complemented Nate’s looks better than his own. Nate was a blond-haired Adonis with blue-green eyes. Mark, on the other hand, looked like a common laborer. As a boy, he always got a laugh from pretending to be one of the help and seeing the looks of horror on people’s faces when they learned he was the son of the Duke of Trent after they’d treated him with the disdain they would a dirty chimneysweep.
Little had he known at the time—the joke was on him.
Here he was, pretending to be someone he wasn’t, pretending he was good enough for the one woman he wanted.
He wasn’t good enough. That was why he’d never bothered to compete with Nate for her: he’d known even as a lad that she was too good for him. He’d always known it. Why was he trying to fool himself into believing he was good enough for her now?
His body, however, was having none of it. God, he wanted her. Just looking at her, as he was now, made him painfully hard. He’d assumed that, as it had with other women, his desire for her would decrease the more he bedded her. But the opposite was happening. He wanted her incessantly now. Desperately. Relentlessly.
“Did you see that?” she asked, grinning up at him.
“They’re impressive, aren’t they?”
“They’re wonderful,” she said with feeling. “I adore dolphins. Look! I think that one’s smiling at me.”
It did look like the creature had flashed her a smile as it arced over the small bow wave. “I think he is,” he agreed. “Then again, can you blame him?”
“Hmm…” She leaned against him, the most she’d touched him within the sight of anyone who might be on deck, and sighed contentedly. His fingers twitched with wanting to touch her. He wanted to wrap his arm around her, pull her close, and kiss her until the darkness went away.
On second thought, that wasn’t such a bad idea. “Come,” he said, taking her hand and not caring who saw. “We need to go below.”
“But… the dolphins…”
“There’ll be more of them,” he said confidently, starting to tug her back down the length of the deck.
She didn’t complain, which surprised him. Caro wasn’t the kind of woman who complacently allowed men to drag her this way and that. He glanced back over his shoulder at her and saw that she moved with practically the same urgency that he felt. She was staring at him with an expression on her face he was beginning to know well.
She was aroused. And that spiked his own arousal.
Seconds later, they were at his door and he was thrusting the key into the lock. Finally, he got the damned thing open. She hurried inside with him following closely, kicking the door shut behind him.
Then he turned and pushed her back against the door. Their mouths met in a clash of lips and teeth. Without taking his mouth from hers, he yanked off his coat. She wrenched his shirt free from his trousers as he untied the cloak ties under her chin. Then he stepped back to pull the shirt over his head as her cloak dropped to the floor.
He was on her again in another second, his chest now bare and pressed up against the muslin bodice of her dress. Lace scratched his nipples, but he didn’t care. There wasn’t time to rid her of the damn dress. His urgency was too great.
He fumbled with the falls of his trousers until the buttons all came loose and his cock—now painfully hard—fell free. He pressed against her, rubbing skin against muslin, as he groaned. “For God’s sake, woman. Why do you have to wear so many damn clothes?”
She laughed softly. “I don’t know. I think I should do away with them altogether.” She pulled away as if to strip off her dress, but Mark held her steady.
“On second thought, never mind,” he said. “Wear clothes. Wear a great deal of clothes, because I don’t want anyone looking at you. You’re mine, do you hear me? Mine.” His voice had deteriorated to a near growl. He let go of her and, still pinning her to the wall with his body, shoved her skirts up over her hips.
“Mark—” she gasped. But whatever she was going to say was cut off as he slid into her.
He grunted and straightened his legs, grabbing her thighs and lifting her over him, her back still pressed against the door. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in the crook of his neck, her lips pressed against his bare skin.
He braced himself, his legs slightly spread, and drew back slightly before spearing himself into her again. They both gasped.
God, she felt so good over him. Like nothing else.
She was his dream, his fantasy. And Mark knew, better that anyone, that dreams and fantasies always ended. This, too, would be done. When Nate saw her… how could he not want her? He would. And Caro already loved Nate. She’d probably cast one look on his handsome, positively ducal features and want him more than she’d ever wanted Mark.
He ground his teeth, taking her brutally against the door until his legs were shaking—not with exertion but with the need to come. But he didn’t want to come—not yet. He wanted to stay inside her for as long as he possibly could.
He slipped out of her, then took her hand and pulled her to the bed. “Hands and knees, Caro,” he ordered. She complied. He flipped her skirts up over her backside and pushed inside her again, closing his eyes in pleasure as her hot, tight heat wrapped around him.
He groaned. “It feels so good to be inside you. So damn good.”
She purred and arched her back, and he let go, allowing his baser nature to overtake him. He thrust hard and deep, all the way in until the tops of his ballocks rubbed against her body.
She panted wantonly, and her channel fluttered around him, squeezing him tight. He grew harder, tighter, until he felt like all the threads of his body were wound up inside his cock. His heart, his mind, his soul.
She grew tighter, then tighter still, until it felt like she crushed him in pleasure. As she tightened, she grew hotter, slicker, searing him. And then she threw her head back and cried out. He gripped her hips tight as her body undulated, squeezed, and released him in rhythmic pulses.
He began to unravel. It started at the base of his spine, then spread like wildfire down to the tip of his cock. He thrust once, twice, three times, making her cry out with the force of it. And then he yanked out of her, just in time, as his seed began to pulse from him, dripping white fluid onto her backside. He pressed himself into the crack of her arse and gave over to his release.
He sank down onto the bed when it was finally over, turning to his side and bringing Caro with him, his cock still flush against her bottom, spooning her from behind with the fabric of her dress crushed between them. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips to the bare skin at the back of her neck.
They lay in silence for a long while, Mark keeping his eyes closed and trying to stay in the moment. Trying to banish those dark thoughts and the insecurities that wouldn’t stop plaguing him.
After a few minutes of silence, Caro turned, and they both haphazardly readjusted their clothes. When her skirts were back to partially covering her legs, she faced him. She reached up and cupped a soft hand to his cheek.
“Mark,” she said, her blue eyes soft, “what’s wrong?”
Chapter Eight
“This cannot last, Caro,” he said quietly.
She stiffened, suddenly wary. “What do you mean?”
“Me. You.” He waved his free hand over them. “Us.”
She pressed her lips together. “We haven’t spoken of the future.”
“I am now,” he said. “And there is none.”
An Affair in Autumn Page 7