“Elba?” She tilted her head to the side. “Have you been to Elba?”
“Many times.”
She puzzled over that. “It’s my new perfume,” she breathed. And then, “I didn’t know orchids grew in Elba.”
“The Spiranthes spiralis does. It’s subtle. Small. Its blooms are white. It seems insignificant, nearly invisible to those who don’t pay attention, until you look closer. It’s gorgeous and it smells heavenly.”
How to reply to that? She didn’t realize for several seconds that she was holding her breath. His words were so similar to what she’d been thinking a moment earlier. It was as if the man had read her mind. She didn’t have to answer because Cade said, “Just follow my lead.” He stepped forward, then back, then to the side.
Danielle felt herself swept into the easy, lilting rhythm with a partner who, despite claims to the contrary, obviously knew precisely what he was doing.
They turned in time to the music in the small space by the bed. For a moment Danielle felt like a young lady of the ton at her debut. She would pretend for just a few minutes more.
“You’re a quick study.” Cade smiled down at her.
“You’re an effortless teacher.” She paused before asking, “When were you in Elba?”
“Years ago.”
“Why were you there?”
He contemplated that for several seconds before saying evenly, “I ran off from home and joined the Navy when I was thirteen.”
“Thirteen!” She gasped. So young. But she’d run away herself at that age. Why did it seem so terribly young when someone else said it?
“When you come from the alleys of Seven Dials, a life in the Navy seems preferable, believe me.”
Seven Dials? Is that where he and Rafe grew up? She’d never imagined. “Was it preferable?” Why couldn’t she keep herself from asking these questions?
“In some ways, yes. In some ways, no.”
“In what ways was it not?”
Still leading her in the dance, Cade scoffed, “Let’s just say I didn’t grow up with a healthy respect for authority, which is an essential trait in a sailor.”
I didn’t, either. “Did it end badly?”
He downright grinned at that. “Everything I’ve ever attempted has ended badly. That’s the hallmark of a black sheep, don’t you know?” He was silent for a second, “Except…”
She watched him carefully. “Except? Except what?”
“There are only two things I’ve ever been truly good at.” His voice took on an almost wistful tone.
“What is the first one?” she asked, holding her breath.
His smile turned downright roguish. “Breaking the law.”
Danielle nearly choked. She peered up at him, examining his face. “You must be joking.”
“Absolutely not. I became proficient at it from a young age.”
“When you were in Elba, were you in the Navy or breaking the law?”
His grin didn’t diminish. “Both.” His white teeth flashed in the darkness.
The strains of the waltz faded and the music went silent. The musicians were no doubt taking a break. Cade released Danielle’s hand and with a small shiver she took a step back. She rubbed the gooseflesh that had popped up along her arms. Cade rubbed his hands along her arms, too. It was much too forward a gesture, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask him to stop.
He lowered his mouth to her ear and whispered huskily, “Better?”
She shook her head. “No … no actually, your touch is making it worse.” She dared a glance up at him. His brow furrowed.
“Worse?” The furrow deepened. “Why?”
“Because when you touch me … when you touch me, Cade…” She shook her head. “What’s the second?” she asked, breaking the spell between them.
“The second?” He searched her face.
“The second thing you’re truly good at.”
This time his grin was positively wolfish. “This,” he murmured right before he pulled her tightly against his body and his mouth descended to capture hers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Their mouths tangled, his slanting over hers. Her arms went up to reach around his neck. She forgot all about Grimaldi and the mission as soon as Cade picked her up and laid her on the bed. He came down on top of her, his mouth never leaving hers. His tongue plunged again and again until she was moaning and mindless.
His hips settled in between her legs, which she opened for him. They were both still fully dressed. It was the most erotic thing she’d ever felt, his hardness pushing against her softness through their layers of clothes. He ground his hips against her and his mouth continued to shape and mold hers. He cradled her face in his hands, whispering words in her ear. Dirty words. Words about what he wanted to do to her sans clothing.
His hands snaked up to her décolletage and tugged down the front of both her gown and her shift. One of her breasts popped free and his mouth moved down to claim it. She gasped as soon as his lips found her nipple. He bit, he licked, he brushed his hot tongue across it, making her arch toward his mouth and moan. He sucked it and Danielle nearly sobbed. She held his head to her while zings of white heat shot from her breast to the intimate spot between her legs, the spot he was rubbing against. His hips levered against hers in a primitive rhythm she didn’t want to end.
When Danielle finally found the will to push him away, his mouth came off her breast with a sucking sound. He released her arms, but continued to hold her close, his forehead pressed to hers, his breathing heavy, his shoulders heaving, his breath loud in the silence of the room. Tentatively, she raised her hand to his chest and pressed her palm against the soft linen of his shirt. His heart was pounding as crazily as hers was. Bien.
“Cade, I must go.”
“Let me feel you for a moment. Give me something to remember you by.” His hands moved over her shoulders and down to her bodice to cup her small breasts.
She didn’t want to deny him, but a glance at the little clock that rested on the table told her it was nearly half past. Grimaldi would have her head for being so late.
She grabbed Cade’s muscled upper arms and squeezed. In another time and place, in another world, she would do more than let him touch her. She’d have given herself to this man. If some madness overtook her and she married someday, her husband wouldn’t be the type who would care whom she’d been with before.
“It’s a pity,” she murmured, cupping Cade’s face with a still-trembling palm.
“What is?” He turned his rough cheek and kissed her palm, sending sparks shooting through her body.
She let out a throaty laugh. “I didn’t realize I’d said that aloud.”
“You did.” Cade pulled her hand away from his face and threaded his fingers through hers. “Now you must tell me … what’s a pity?”
They were holding hands. His strong fingers had captured hers and his thumb stroked against hers in a way that made all her thoughts scatter. What had he asked her? Oh, yes. What was a pity? What was a pity, indeed? She did her best to ignore the thrumming of her pulse and retraced her thoughts. What had she been thinking? Right. That. She arched her brow at him and gave him her naughtiest look.
“Now I must know,” Cade demanded, a thunderous expression on his face. He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed it.
Danielle took a moment to think. It would not be proper to tell him what she’d been considering. But when had she given a damn about being proper? She popped her lips together as she contemplated it.
“Go on,” he prompted, watching her carefully.
Danielle reluctantly and slowly pulled her hand from his grasp. She tried to memorize the details, what the rough calluses of his fingertips felt like, how his thumb turned out at the tip.
She rolled out from under him and stood up. Cade stood, too, and watched her as she dragged the pelisse she’d been laying on from the bed, straightened the coverlet, and repositioned the note on the pillow. She arranged the garmen
t over her shoulders, looked up at Cade, and blinked. “I must go.”
Cade reached for her. “Not before you tell me what the pity is.”
She sidestepped out of his reach and bit her lip to keep from smiling. She grabbed the crumpled note from the desk, took a few steps toward the door, and scooped up her valise.
“Danielle…” Cade drew out the word in a warning tone.
Her hand on the knob, she paused to look at him over her shoulder, a smile she just knew was impish resting on her lips. “I was going to say…” She paused, enjoying this moment of teasing him. “I was going to say it’s a pity that we never spent the night together.”
With that, she flew from the room.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Cade waited until the music began again. He waited until the breeze coming through the window took on a decided chill. He waited until the thrumming in his balls subsided and the cockstand he’d had since pulling Danielle into his embrace slowly descended.
Only then did he take a deep breath and move. Otherwise, he might have believed the last half hour was nothing more than a dream. Even worse, that the words the woman had said, the words that had sent blood rushing through his veins and heat pouring through his hardened body, was the notion that it had been a figment of his imagination.
“It’s a pity that we never spent the night together.” He’d heard it correctly, hadn’t he? He wanted to ask the empty bedchamber. Never had he been more aroused by a woman’s words, especially words that clearly indicated they were not going to sleep together. She was leaving and, damn her, she hadn’t explained where she was going or why. How in the devil’s own bollocks had the woman been able to say something like that to him and then leave?
Cade shook his head. Under any other circumstances, he would not have let her leave the room and he certainly wouldn’t have stood there for minutes afterward like a damn fool staring out the window into the green leaves of the elm tree outside. Under any other circumstances, had the woman he’d been fantasizing about for the past several days informed him she found it a pity that they hadn’t spent the night together, he would have whirled around, slammed the damn door, and had her up against it, kissing her until she was out of her mind with lust and ready and willing to right that egregious wrong. That would have been his reaction had Danielle not so thoroughly distracted and surprised him, not just with her words but with the fact that she was leaving and refused to tell him why.
He shut the window, muffling the strains of music he’d been so keen to hear minutes earlier. He pushed a hand through his hair and turned back around, expelling a breath. His eyes fell on the note on the pillow. He’d noticed it earlier but hadn’t said anything for fear Danielle would remove it. Lady Daphne was written on the outside and it was sealed. He should not read it.
Good thing he was a scoundrel. He smiled as he plucked the piece of parchment off the pillow and broke the seal with his finger. He unfolded it. His eyes scanned the words. Only two lines. Two scant, short lines that didn’t offer much. Damn it. Where was she off to with such haste? Had she got news that her mother had taken a turn for the worse? He should have asked her, should have offered to help. But she wouldn’t have told him, nor would she have accepted his help.
Danielle was fiercely independent. Fiercely independent and full of secrets. Most women of his acquaintance wanted something from him. They wanted him to stay, to commit, to promise things. Other women had been sources of pleasure but he never stayed long enough to form an attachment to any of them. The minute a woman wanted more, he took off, never to be seen or heard from again. Amanda had been particularly deft at hunting him down and she’d been amusing for a while, but she was the perfect example of why he should leave before either party formed an attachment. Things got messy after that.
Danielle, however, didn’t want an attachment. Instead, she’d denied him her bed and she was the one running off and leaving him. The irony of that made him shake his head again. He folded the note and placed it back on the bedspread near the pillow where he’d found it.
Pausing, he picked up the pillow, put it to his nose, and breathed in deeply. Orchids. Like the ones in Elba. He’d hedged telling Danielle why he’d been to Elba. Mademoiselle LaCrosse wasn’t the only one with secrets. The scent sent a wave of memories through him, most recently that of her dark hair. He’d never be able to smell orchids again without thinking of her. Good God, he was resembling a lovesick fool. He groaned and rubbed his forehead, letting the pillow fall back to the bed. He turned away from the letter before remembering a letter of his own. A completely different one. Not the note he’d written Danielle earlier in the library, but the one tucked away inside his coat pocket. The one O’Conner had given him at the tavern.
Cade pulled open the side of his coat and fished out the missive. He read it by the light of the small wax candle that had yet to burn out. Bloody hell. He should have read this blasted note earlier. Should not have allowed his promise of a dance with Danielle to distract him. He glanced at the clock. He was late. Quite late. He folded the paper, jammed it back inside his pocket, and took off toward the door with ground-devouring strides. Just as his hand touched the knob, he paused, jogged back to the bed, and grabbed the pillow. Seems tonight was also his last night in this house. The Elenor sailed with the dawn and he was her captain.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Danielle ran as fast as she could. Her slippers splashed in puddles, her stockings got muddied, her hair came loose from its pins and fell into her eyes, and the valise banged against her knees with each lunge, making them nearly buckle. Still, she didn’t stop. She hoisted her skirts in one hand and ran blindly down two different alleys and three streets until she located the hackney on the corner where she’d been told to meet Grimaldi. Grimaldi was never late.
She glanced around. The light from nearby town houses highlighted the coach’s silhouette across the muddy road. Gasping for breath, Danielle paused only long enough to yank up her skirts again with her left hand and readjust the valise with her right. She dashed across the road, nearly getting mowed down by a fine carriage no doubt on its way back from the theater or the opera or some other fine amusement the residents of Mayfair preferred.
Glancing up and nodding at the driver, she rapped twice on the door. It opened immediately and only a second ticked by before she found herself grabbed bodily and hoisted up, valise and all, into the interior of the rented coach. She found herself splayed across the seat opposite a furious General Grimaldi. His eyes blazed dark fire and his nostrils flared menacingly. “You’re late.”
Danielle scrambled into a sitting position. “I know.” There was no use trying to explain. That would only end in embarrassment. Grimaldi didn’t take kindly to excuses.
He tossed a bundle to her. She caught it in both hands with a decided oompf and fumbled to pull it apart. She already knew what it was. A shirt, breeches, cap, stockings, and shoes. The garb of a cabin boy.
“Get dressed,” Grimaldi barked. He turned his back to her and pulled the brim of his hat down over his eyes to give her privacy. Danielle fought the urge to use the crude hand gesture a deckhand had taught her when she was fifteen. She’d found it useful on innumerable occasions. Grimaldi wouldn’t see. He would never be so ungentlemanly as to peek. Not the stone man himself. Danielle doubted he’d had a moment of fun in his entire regimented life. He probably didn’t even know the meaning of the word. He wouldn’t look even if she informed him she was on fire. She was momentarily tempted to do so, if only to test her theory.
No. She didn’t give the man a crude hand gesture because she was clearly in the wrong. She had been late and for a completely self-indulgent, ridiculous reason. But oh, it had been worth it to see the look on Cade’s face when she’d told him it had been a pity they’d never spent the night together.
Mark Grimaldi wouldn’t for a moment understand his top spy being late to a mission because she was dancing with a suspected criminal in the moonlight. As she kicked
off her shoes and peeled off her muddy stockings, she amused herself with the thought of telling him. What would stick-up-the-arse Grimaldi reply to such an admission? A moment later, she was no longer smiling as she realized she had a … situation.
“I’ll need help with my gown.” She turned her back to him, exposing the buttons of her dress, and looked at him over her shoulder. “I could do it myself but it would take much longer.”
He slowly tipped up his hat. A look of pure disgruntlement rested on his fine features. His lip was curled. Grimaldi would be downright handsome, Danielle thought wistfully, if he wasn’t so … Grimaldi.
“Bloody hell,” he mumbled, but his fingers went to the buttons and made quick work of them. Quite quick, Danielle noted with surprise. Hmm. Seemed the general knew his way around a woman’s clothing. How very interesting. This discovery was further reinforced when Danielle was obliged to add, “And now my stays.”
“Jesus Christ,” Grimaldi ground out.
Danielle plunked her hands on her hips. “It’s not my fault you had me traipsing around Mayfair dressed as a lady’s maid. Had to look the part, didn’t I?”
The only answer was a sort of unhappy grunt, but his deft fingers made quick work of the shift’s laces as well.
“Anything else? Need help with your hair?” he grumbled.
“Why, General, did you just make a jest?”
“No.” He shoved his hat back down and turned away again, folding his arms across his rigid chest.
“Don’t worry,” she called in a singsong voice. “I can manage the tapes of my drawers myself.”
“That’s a damn relief.” The general grunted before rapping on the door that separated them from the driver. At the man’s “Yes, guvna?” Grimaldi snapped, “The docks and make it lively.”
The driver called to the horses and snapped the reins and the conveyance took off down the street.
Danielle spent the ride to the docks removing the rest of her maid’s clothing and replacing it with the garments of a cabin boy. By the time her shoes were buckled and her hat placed atop her head, with her hair tucked up inside, the hackney was pulling to a stop near the docks. Danielle rolled up the clothing she’d been wearing and stuffed it into the valise.
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