“I’M WOMAN ENOUGH TO PLEASURE A MAN LIKE YOU.”
“Pleasure.” He spoke the syllables as if saying a foreign word, but he did not back away from her.
With shivering fingers she combed back the clean, silky hair at the nape of his neck and guided his head to hers. He resisted. She arched up, standing on tiptoe to find his lips and opening her mouth over his.
Warm, hard. For three heartbeats he did not respond. And then it was as if something within him, something so long denied its existence, something waiting for release, abruptly found liberation. His passion spilled like acid over her body, bright, burning. He reacted instinctively, drawing her tight against his body, holding her to him by the belt he still clenched in his fist.
His lips softened. His free hand roved up her spine and cupped her skull. He bent over her, forcing her to flex backward and clutch his shoulders to keep from falling.
He was purely male, like every other male, being offered what all males seek. And yet …
And yet, dear God, it was so much more.
HIGH PRAISE FOR
CONNIE BROCKWAY’S
PREVIOUS NOVELS
AS YOU DESIRE
“Romance with strength, wit, and intelligence. Connie Brockway delivers!”—New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag
“Priceless! A jewel of a love story in a fascinating setting. As You Desire will turn its fortunate finders into avid Brockway keepers—and seekers!”
—Kathleen Eagle
“Erudite and witty, Connie Brockway’s fast-paced humor delights and entertains. I loved it!”
—Pamela Morsi
“A clash of wits, a meeting of minds, a romance formed of equal parts of passion, pleasure and humor—As You Desire is the best story Connie Brockway has ever written; hence the best of the best.”
—Christina Dodd
“[If] you’re looking for something new, join Harry and Dizzy as they yearn and bicker and stumble their way into a most wonderful love. As You Desire will leave you desiring more romance like this.”
—The Romance Reader Online
A DANGEROUS MAN
“Connie Brockway’s delightful characters and emotional story will surely captivate readers. Her refreshing, dynamic characters and the heartfelt emotions she portrays are what make A Dangerous Man special.”
—Romantic Times
“A winner! Everything readers want in a romance and more. She writes the kind of romance I love.”
—Amanda Quick
“A work of incredible power and emotional scope that leaves the reader exhausted but satisfied. With the quick wit and unsettling wisdom Ms. Brockway has become known for, this book affirms her place among the finest writers of the genre.”
—Pen & Mouse
“Fresh, innovative, and instantly captivating.”
—Catherine Anderson, author of Annie’s Song
Dell Books by Connie Brockway
A DANGEROUS MAN
AS YOU DESIRE
ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT
MY DEAREST ENEMY
MCCLAIREN’S ISLE: THE PASSIONATE ONE
MCCLAIREN’S ISLE: THE RECKLESS ONE
MCCLAIREN’S ISLE: THE RAVISHING ONE
THE BRIDAL SEASON
BRIDAL FAVORS
Published by
Dell Publishing
a division of
Random House, Inc.
Copyright © 1997 by Connie Brockway
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
eISBN: 978-0-307-76833-9
v3.1
With gratitude and affection to Marjorie Braman, the
“best” of editors, who always motivated me
to be “better”
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Epilogue
Author’s Note
PROLOGUE
London
March 12, 1817
The landlady shuffled into the long narrow room ahead of Colonel Henry “Jack” Seward and headed right for the curtained window overlooking the square.
“You don’t know how many times over I could ’ave rented the use of this ’ere room,” she said, eyeing Seward’s tall, punishingly straight figure. “ ’ad a baron’s man come round just last hour offerin’ me twice over what you paid. But I’m an honest woman.”
And a shrewd one, Jack thought as he inclined his head in gracious recognition of the landlady’s honesty. She knew quite well not to cozen the likes of Whitehall’s Hound. He counted out a short thick stack of coins and handed it to her. She snatched them from his outstretched palm and stuffed them deep into the pockets of her worn skirt before yanking back the dingy piece of threadbare velvet hanging over the window.
With a glance outside and a mutter she turned and waddled over to the single chair in the room, a straight-backed wooden one sitting against a waterstained wall. With a grunt she lifted it. Jack immediately came forward and took it from her. “Allow me. Did you want this taken somewhere?”
She gaped at him. Doubtless no one had ever extended the woman a simple courtesy. “Ah.” She snapped her mouth shut and open and blinked. “Ah. Aye. To the window. So you can sits durin’ the show.”
Jack strove to keep his repugnance from his face while he set the chair in front of the window. The woman craned her neck to look out and down the road leading to the square. A shout arose from the mass of humanity crowding the streets below. “There he comes now,” she said with unmistakable satisfaction. “I’m off then.”
Jack didn’t hear her. He was looking outside.
The crowd pressed eagerly in around the cart carrying John Cashman into a cordoned-off area in front of the gunsmith’s shop, the same one he was alleged to have robbed in order to arm himself in a revolt against His Majesty’s government. Men, women, and children, mostly poor people, had come to see “the gallant tar” hanged for treason.
Few, Jack knew, thought young Cashman deserved his sentence, and the injustice of it frightened them. Some hoped for royal clemency.
And who was more worthy of mercy than Cashman? Jack asked himself sardonically. His greatest crime had been trying to collect his arrears payment and prize money from the Admiralty. The crowd contained hundreds just like him. Men who’d fought for their country only to return home to discover they
had no jobs, no pensions, and no futures.
Jack’s gaze remained mild, but the hand pulling off his black leather gloves trembled just the tiniest bit. He took his seat, his posture as straight as a papist’s at mass. Yes, Cashman had broken into this gunsmith’s shop during the Spa Fields riots, but liquor and his own discouragement had been the reason for his presence there, not treason.
Premeditated? John Cashman, Jack knew, had received severe head wounds thrice in the line of duty. He was not even reckoned by most to be competent enough to handle his own affairs.
No wonder his fate frightened the crowd. Hell, it enraged them.
“I always fought for my king and country, and this is my end!” Cashman shouted once more as he stepped down from the cart and gazed resolutely at the scaffolding before him. Thousands shouted back in a frenzied chorus of support.
They’d been gathering since five o’clock that morning, and now they spread as far as the eye could see: choking streets and alleys, crowding windows with angry faces, thick as bees in an overcrowded hive, clinging to balconies, hanging over rooftops.
Without hesitation, Cashman mounted the steps to the gibbet, his courage firing the masses. At the top, a clergyman hurried to his side, laying a comforting hand on his arm. Cashman shook it off, his eyes blazing. “I want no mercy but from God!”
The executioner led him forward. When he moved to place a hood over the condemned man’s head, Cashman jerked away and said, “I want to see till the last.”
The executioner and clergyman left the scaffold together and took their positions beside the tripboard beneath Cashman’s feet.
“I could not get my own, and that has brought me here!” Cashman shouted. “I have done nothing against my king and country but fought for them!”
He was still shouting when his words were cut off, strangled in his throat. Jack’s hand jerked involuntarily to his own throat. He ground his teeth, pain and anger mixing together as he forced himself to watch the man below swing crazily, his tied limbs spasming.
The crowd went utterly silent. The silence lasted while he was cut down, while the clergyman finally placed the hood over his contorted features, while they hefted his body into a plank coffin. It lasted as they set the coffin in a cart and drove away.
Jack stood up and drew on his black leather gloves. He felt cold, as if a bitter wind buffeted him, yet not a breeze stirred the skeletal branches of the trees outside. He checked the buttons at his wrist and adjusted his coat, his expression carved in concentration, his movements economical, deliberate.
Below him, a single utterance rose from the stunned crowd. It gathered pitch and momentum, growing louder with each added voice until it reached a horrendous din.
“Murder! Murder!”
Colonel Seward finally ceased adjusting his gloves and looked out over the crowd to see the cart disappear from view.
“Indeed,” he murmured soberly, “indeed.”
CHAPTER ONE
London
December 1817
Never assume you are safe. Never drop your guard. The thief’s father, a cracksman the likes of which London had never known before or since, had drilled that lesson home above all others.
Ears straining to detect any sound above the murmur of a night breeze stirring the bed curtains, the thief known as Wrexhall’s Wraith lifted an ormolu clock from the mantel. Too heavy. A delicate porcelain figurine nearby tempted but was too fragile to survive the leaps across rooftops that night work entailed.
Another of the old man’s imperatives whispered just behind the thief’s conscious thoughts: Five minutes in, five minutes out. This was taking too long.
Long, sensitive fingers lightly roved along the gilt frames of the pictures on the walls, searching for hidden caches, finding none. With a small utterance of annoyance, the Wraith roamed deeper into the Marchioness of Cotton’s suite. Her fabled jewel collection had to be some-bloody-where.
At the far wall the thief pushed aside the unease that came from being so far from the window and bent over an ornate dressing table. A music box, pretty but no more than a dab. A pearl-inlaid snuffbox. Bah! Nothing worth the £5,000 promised. Only a gem would suffice to pay that debt.
The thief moved more quickly now, thrusting hands along the contours of various furnishings, tipping a mirror, opening drawers, and then … there. Innocuous, noteworthy only for its relative stodginess among its opulent companions, a thick, marble-slabbed washstand.
White teeth flashed beneath the band of black silk masking the Wraith’s face. So obvious. Father’s most elementary wisdom: Hide in plain sight.
The thief dipped to one knee and felt along the undercarriage of the washstand, immediately finding a small metal tab and slipping it back. A drawer dropped beneath the marble top. The smile broadened. Now just a quick plunge of the hand into the secret drawer and … It was empty.
“No joy there, I’m afraid,” a calm voice said.
The Wraith bolted upright and spun, looking frantically about for the author of those words.
There, in the lightest shadows, in the center of the room, his dun-colored coat blending with the gold settee, he sat on with telltale perfect posture.
Hide in plain sight.
No fashionable scent signaled his existence. No quiver of readiness shivered through the air, telegraphing his presence. Colonel John Henry Seward. Whitehall’s Hound.
Every fiber in the thief’s body coiled in preparation to take flight as Seward’s lean figure slowly rose, blocking any access to the window. The thief was fast but no one was that fast. London’s underworld regarded Seward as their most formidable opponent. Still, there might be no other way, and if—
“I wouldn’t, son.” There was nothing but gentleness in Seward’s soft advice, a hint of raspiness in his tone, as if his throat had been injured at one time.
“Coo, what would ye have me do?” the thief said. “Stand here docilelike while you tie the bow ’round me neck? Not bloody likely.” Only a slight tremble ruined the thief’s cocky certainty.
“You should have thought of that before you embarked on this career. Give over, lad.” Incongruously, a touch of pity laced Seward’s voice.
Pity? Nothing of the kind from Jack Seward. That “pity” was only a spot of wishful thinking best eradicated now. There’d be no pity from Jack Seward. Best keep one’s wits clear, alert for an opportunity to escape.
“There’s nowhere to run,” Jack said as if reading the thief’s mind. “My men are in the outer hall and I”—he shrugged apologetically, lifting his hands—“well, I am here.”
“So you are,” the Wraith murmured.
Abruptly Seward tilted his seal-sleek head. Even in the dark, one could discern the intensity with which he suddenly listened.
Damn. The thief had only one trump card to play—surprise—and that was a long shot. Jack Seward looked as if he’d given up being surprised a long, long time ago. Yet there was no other option. If unmasked … Well, there was only one possible end for a thief: the Tyburn Tree.
“Right-o, Cap,” the thief said, using Seward’s former rank and swaggering forth with hard-feigned bravado. “You got me fair and square. But why, I’m wonderin’, ain’t you screamin’ to your lads for help?”
“Very good. Very astute, lad,” Seward said approvingly. “But not so fast, if you please. I’d like to see your hands, above your shoulders and straight from your body. Anyone as good with a pick-lock as you are is bound to be just as good with a sticker.”
“Right, mate. But I don’t carry no knife. Bloodlettin’ ain’t what you’d call a gentlemanly trade, and I—within me means a’ course—am a gentleman.” A bit closer now.
This close the shadows lifted from Seward’s angular face revealing a scar-broken brow, a long mouth mobile with intelligence, and quiet, watchful gray eyes.
“Just what sorta deal is it you look to be strikin’? You wants a bit of the take? A little somethin’ to turn the blind eye?”
“N
o,” Seward said. “I want something you’ve already stolen.”
“Oh.” What? the thief wondered desperately, measuring the distance to the window, all the while still moving closer to Seward.
What could possibly be so important that Whitehall’s Hound had been sent to retrieve it? Nothing taken had been priceless. Indeed, there were never any family heirlooms in the take, nothing anyone would bother to raise a sustained hue and cry about. No, nothing—nothing—justified the involvement of the War Office’s premier agent.
“I told you to stop moving,” Seward said, his gentle voice assuming a subtle mantle of deadliness.
The thief shuddered, a tincture of unhealthy pleasure spurring on a sudden, reckless decision. Lately, more and more often, audacity proved irresistible, the urge to give in to it irrepressible. Like now.
“Right you are, Cap.” Nearly within arm’s reach. There would be no second opportunity to catch Seward off guard. “But I told you, I ain’t got no sticker. And we don’t want the lads in the hall there to get wind of any deal we might be conductin’, now do we? Pat me down if you don’t believe me. Go on, satisfy yerself before we begins negotiations.”
Seward’s eyes narrowed at the same time his crippled hand shot out, seizing the thief’s wrist. There was surprising strength in the twisted fingers. The Wraith jerked back, instinctively fighting the implacable hold until it became clear any struggle could end only with Seward the victor.
“I believe I will, at that,” Seward murmured, pulling the black wool-clad figure against his hard chest and securing both wrists. Quickly and efficiently he swept his free hand down over the thief’s shoulders and flanks, hips, thighs, and legs. He moved back up, his touch passing lightly over the thief’s chest.
He stopped, pale eyes gleaming with sudden intensity, and quickly jerked the slight body forward by the belt. His hand dipped down, clamping hard on the juncture between the legs in a touch both violently intimate and absolutely impersonal.
“My God,” Seward said, dropping his one hand as if burned, though the other still clenched the belt, “you’re a woman.”
All Through the Night Page 1