by Brenda Novak
“If you are planning to treat me to a view of the rest of you, don’t bother.” Jeannette scowled, trying to feign disinterest when she really hoped he’d do exactly that.
“My, you have a waspish tongue this morning.”
Unable to wipe the glower from her face, she said, “Have some modesty, please.”
“But I am a rake.” He stopped disrobing after pulling off his boots, but his breeches fit snugly enough to outline his narrow hips and firm, well-rounded buttocks. The manly bulge that swelled in front left little to Jeannette’s imagination, especially when linked with her vivid recollection of the night before.
Someone knocked and Jeannette climbed into the wardrobe where she could watch what went on through the crack in the door but couldn’t be seen.
Treynor strode to the portal and motioned whomever waited outside to come in.
A lad not much beyond fourteen hauled a large empty barrel that had been cut in half across the floor. Other servants followed, carrying buckets of water to fill it.
When they were gone, Treynor shut and locked the door, and Jeannette stepped out, allowing herself a sigh of intense longing. “Is this your surprise?”
“It is.”
“Is it seawater?”
“No. Sweet and fresh.”
She knew those caskets were inaccessible to most. “Whom did you bribe?”
“Everyone,” Treynor said simply.
“I must say you were right. I would do anything for a bath.”
“Anything?” He cocked an eyebrow at her.
“Almost anything.”
“Then a kiss should not be too much to ask. A kiss for first bathing rights.”
A kiss? Dared she accept? No, he was too dangerous to her peace of mind. “I cannot.”
“Then you don’t want to go first badly enough.” He clucked his tongue and pulled off his breeches, causing Jeannette to flush and turn her face to the wall. She focused on the letters she’d found to keep her mind off what was going on behind her.
“I am curious,” she said. “Who might the marchioness be to you?”
She heard Treynor step into the water, heard him moan as he folded his long legs and sank in. “I thought you weren’t reading my letters.”
Her fingers knotted in the tails of her shirt. “I didn’t read them. I just …happened to see the return address.”
“Hmmm.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“Does it matter?”
“No, I was only curious.”
“Well, we can’t have that.”
She heard a smile in his voice. “So?”
“Would you believe she is my mother?”
Jeannette cast a surprised glance over her shoulder, then immediately turned back. “Really? The one who attended my wedding?”
“Yes, but don’t get excited, sweet. I scarcely know her. You will gain no ties to the English aristocracy through me.”
There was that arrogance again…. “Must you make it all so …mercenary?”
“I am certainly not the one who made it that way.”
“What about your father?” She changed the subject before they could argue.
“I know nothing about him.”
The gruffness of Treynor’s voice was a warning, but she persevered. She wanted to know who he was, what had shaped him, where he came from—for memory’s sake, she told herself. Someday her adventure on the frigate would be over, and she would have to go back to living the life she once knew, which did not include the company of handsome lieutenants. As much as she hated to admit it, she would miss him.
“Who raised you?” she asked.
“I was pawned off, so to speak, to a farmer by the name of Cayle Abbott.”
“Do you keep in contact with him?”
“No.”
More bitterness. “You have no love for him.”
Silence.
“Lieutenant?” For a moment, Jeannette thought he’d gone to sleep on her mid-conversation, but when she turned, she found him staring off into the distance, the muscles of his jaw clenched.
“No, I have no love for him,” he said at last. “I was beaten. Often. He showed me no mercy. No kindness.”
Jeannette remembered the scars on Treynor’s back. “I’m sorry.”
He met her gaze and opened his mouth to say something. Jeannette was sure it would be flippant, to mask the hurt in his eyes, but he wound up saying nothing at all. There was simply a moment when something passed between them, when her pain for his wounds somehow registered and he accepted her sympathy.
“How long were you there?” she asked when the silence stretched.
“I ran away at fourteen.”
Fourteen? Had he suffered the whole of that time? Jeannette couldn’t stomach the thought of it. “Those scars on your back, the old ones, they’re not—”
His voice, when he broke in, was ragged. “A couple are burns. Cayle amused himself by touching a hot coal to my back more than once. And he thought it entertaining to beat me with a shovel. The rest are from his belt buckle, most likely. Ugly, aren’t they?”
There was nothing ugly about Lieutenant Treynor except what had happened to him. Jeannette winced at the thought of a young boy being treated so cruelly. “And your mother didn’t know?”
“I once sent word through a country parson, begging her to come and get me. She never did.”
Tears filled Jeannette’s eyes, but she struggled to blink them back. Treynor was a proud man. He wouldn’t respond well to her pity. But at last she understood. She had been raised in luxury and, until the Revolution, had never heard an unkind word. She represented all he could have had but was denied by his mother. Or perhaps it was even simpler than that. Perhaps he viewed all women as uncaring creatures little different from the marchioness.
Treynor closed his eyes and leaned back in the tub, but he looked far from relaxed. Jeannette imagined he was remembering the past and longed to make him forget.
After crossing to stand behind him, she rolled up her sleeves, retrieved the cake of soap, and began to wash his back, careful not to scrape the scabs left over from his flogging.
At first, the soap stung the blisters on her hands but the pain eased quickly.
He tensed as if he might refuse her ministrations, but gave himself over to the pleasure of her fingers when she left off with the washing and began to rub his shoulders where the skin was unmarred.
“What are you doing to me, Jeannette?” he murmured after several minutes.
He wasn’t talking about her massage. Jeannette knew that instinctively. She smiled. The implacable lieutenant didn’t know what to think of her.
“What could I do to you?” she said. “You are immune to women like me. You hate us, remember?”
“I wish to God I could hate you,” he muttered, but moaned as her hands rubbed slower, more sensuously.
Jeannette closed her eyes, reveling in the solid feel of Treynor’s body beneath her hands. Surely this was heaven. Surely the world could end right now and she would be content….
“Jeannette?”
She opened her eyes to see that he’d twisted his head to look up at her. “What?” She was wondering what he would do if she kissed him. He’d asked her to, not very long ago.
Her gaze dropped to his mouth, only inches away, and she remembered how wonderful his lips felt pressed to her own.
He drew a ragged breath. “What is it you want from me? What are you hoping to gain?”
His doubt and bitterness stabbed her to the heart. Did he think she was using him, trying to manipulate him? Regardless, he didn’t trust her, couldn’t trust her. And deep down, Jeannette knew he had no reason to. His mother had wronged him terribly, and he viewed her in the same light.
Summoning her pride, she pulled back out of reach. “I just wanted to make you forget,” she said.
He watched her warily. “Forget what?”
“The past. The future. Who and what I am, too, I suppo
se. But that could never happen. You know me too well.”
* * *
Treynor regretted his cutting words, especially when he witnessed the hurt they caused. Damn, Jeannette confused him. One minute she was defiant and the next she did something so sweet that he longed to pull her into his arms and hold her forever. He was angry at her for leaving him wanting, angry at himself for not being able to resist her effect on him, and frustrated by the whole situation. He never should have helped her. He should have turned her in to the captain posthaste.
Except he didn’t really feel that way. Not after learning what St. Ives had in store for her. He applauded her courage and determination and vowed to see her safely away from her powerful husband, but to do that meant he had to keep her safe from him. She’d never get an annulment if he took her virginity. It was the only weapon she possessed.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
He dunked his head and washed his hair. Then he warned her that he was getting out and stepped over the edge of the tub to towel himself off. “The bath is yours.”
He promptly dressed. He wanted to take Jeannette into his arms and kiss away the damage he’d done, but he told himself things were better this way. She would be safer if she kept him at a distance.
The way he was feeling, she couldn’t get far enough away.
* * *
Jeannette waited for Treynor to dress and turn his back before she removed her clothes. It wasn’t easy to ignore his presence, or his unkind words, but she concentrated on the water that would wash the grime from her body and give her a reprieve from her dirty boy’s costume.
Treynor stood in the corner, feet spread wide, as he finished buttoning his shirt. His thick, wet hair fell partway down a back that was straight and true. He’d asked what she was doing to him, but Jeannette could have demanded the same of him. This so-called bastard had turned her whole world upside down. He invaded her thoughts, her dreams, and sometimes even …her hopes.
She swallowed against the lump that had lodged itself in her throat and sank into the barrel. The water was tepid, as if some attempt had been made to warm it. Better than that, it was as fresh as he’d indicated.
“Did you really bribe everyone?” Hoping to establish a truce between them, she leaned back and closed her eyes. “Everyone else bathes and washes their clothes and hammocks in seawater, yes?”
Several seconds passed before he answered. “Not most of the officers. Mrs. Hawker collects rainwater for me. She uses it for my laundry, and I use it to bathe in.” He sounded distant, composed.
For a moment, Jeannette resented his indifference, especially when her heart still raced at the memory of holding him in her arms. But it had been kind of him to share the luxury of his rainwater bath. She opened her eyes to thank him and caught him watching her in the mirror.
A slow smile curled his lips when their gazes met and locked in the glass. Evidently he wasn’t so unaffected after all.
“At least have the decency to look away now that I have caught you.” She gave her words plenty of starch, but the way she’d worshipped his body only minutes earlier stole any basis she had for real indignation—that and the relief that she wasn’t the only one feeling what she was feeling.
“I have been quite the gentleman so far, despite my low birth. You certainly can’t begrudge me a view of your loveliness in return for my bath.”
Jeannette smiled. She was growing weary of Treynor’s damned restraint and, perverse though it was, she somehow wanted to punish him for it. “As you wish.” Standing, she lathered her body, purposefully ignoring him as she worked her hands around her breasts.
Treynor didn’t say a word, but Jeannette caught him staring at her with slack-jawed appreciation.
“Do you not have work to do, Lieutenant?”
His eyes narrowed. “You are playing with fire, Jeannette. I am not one of your drooling beaux. I am used to getting what I want.”
“I didn’t ask you to stand there and ogle me.”
“And yet you tempt me to do far more.”
Finally embarrassed by her own behavior, she ducked down. He had her acting like a common whore one minute and a nun the next. She hardly knew herself anymore. But, when she pictured herself with child and returning to her parents, unable to hide her shame, she had sense enough left to know that she wouldn’t thank him for taking advantage of the situation.
Something had to be done, before it was too late. “I am going to the captain,” she said, her newfound resolution giving her strength. “Certainly we are far enough from England now.”
A frown settled on Treynor’s face. He looked as though he would argue with her, but he didn’t. “Perhaps that is best for both of us,” he said at last.
When Jeannette got out of the bath and dried off, she quickly pulled on her clothes and fled.
Chapter 14
A fire raged in the hearth of the drawing room at the baron’s London townhouse. Percy sat before it with Thomas Villard, staring pensively into the flames. Jeannette had been gone for nearly four days. He had men scouring the teeming city and every route into it, but to no avail. They had given him a report as soon as he arrived an hour ago.
Something must have happened to her. Or had she outsmarted him after all?
Sir Thomas cleared his throat. “Providing your lady is alive and well, why not proceed with an annulment so you can seek a new wife? Hard as an annulment is to obtain, you might be better off,” he said, lifting his glass of brandy to the light of the fire where he could better examine the golden liquid.
Percy turned a scowl on his friend. “And admit to being impotent? We both know that is likely what it would require, and I will do no such thing. How would I ever get an heir?” He shook his head. “No, I am committed to this path. Jeannette is ideal for my purposes. I knew it the moment Lord Darby contacted me about her.”
“He contacted you?”
“Indeed. He was so eager to be rid of his poor French relations that he wrote to say he thought she would make me a perfect wife. He all but begged me to marry the chit.” He watched Sir Thomas drain his glass. “And what we arranged is no less than fair. You have to give me that.”
“I agree, of course.”
“I ask Jeannette’s forbearance for one night,” Percy went on. “What is one night? In return she and her family are provided with financial security. Her sons will inherit all I have.” He shifted to ease the pain in his foot. “She could never do better. She had no dowry besides a nominal amount from Darby.”
Thomas reached for the brandy decanter on the table next to him. “I remember.”
“And she is beautiful, which makes your job easier, does it not?” Percy imagined his wife’s young, supple body lying naked on the sheets as Villard drove into her.
“The ‘job,’as you call it, would be easy enough were you not going to be there watching every move.” Thomas grimaced. “I have never had another man in the room before. I am not sure I will like it at all.”
“Whether you like it or not is of no matter to me. I have to make sure I get what I am paying for.” Percy admired Thomas’s tall, thin build and the other physical characteristics he would like his son to have. “You were more than willing when I first approached you—eager enough to offer your brother a chance to participate. That foolish decision is at the root of all our problems.”
Letting his gaze drop to the carpet, Sir Thomas loosened his cravat. “How was I to know he would refuse? You said you were looking for a number of men. I tried to help you find likely candidates, those with acceptable bloodlines.”
“You should have known Richard better than that!”
“The money tempted him. I have no idea what went wrong. I think he refused just to spite me. Anyway, I did what I could to remedy the situation.” Thomas’s words had fallen to a mumble. “Her parents believed us, at least.”
“That is what I am paying you for, is it not? Quick thinking and discretion?
Unfortunately for me, those commodities do not come cheaply.”
Sir Thomas smiled ruefully. “They come cheaply enough. The money goes too fast.”
“Just remember that there is more where that came from when the deed is done.”
“Then I shall do my part the moment you retrieve the sacrificial virgin.” Thomas smiled and leaned his head back against the soft leather of his seat. “And what of Desmond?”
“He is with us still.”
“I am not surprised. He is the type to enjoy you sitting next to the bed, urging him on when he lifts your wife’s skirts. Putting on a show is his forte, not mine.”
Just the mention of the spectacle he had anticipated ever since he’d met Jeannette caused a spark of arousal to leap through Percy’s veins. Impotency was becoming a problem for him, but not when he pictured watching Sir Thomas with Jeannette. Perhaps he would be able to take a turn after all.
Thomas smiled at his silence. “Does the thought of having other men rock your marriage bed excite you, my lord?”
“Begetting an heir excites me,” Percy snapped, irritated that he had been so transparent. “Do you think I will let Hawthorne House and all I own go to a distant cousin? And one I loathe at that?”
Sir Thomas covered his mouth against a belch. “Evidently not. But your new wife has certainly complicated our plans. I doubt her parents will give you the unbridled freedom they would have before.”
Percy’s desire turned to a dull ache in his joints, reminding him of his age and making him angrier still. “It won’t be difficult to discredit her or her parents. When Lord Darby hears Jeannette’s accusations, he might pay me a cursory visit, but he would hardly allow himself to lose face by trying to wrench her back. And by the time he does, it will all be over anyway. She will be with child, a child she will relinquish to me the moment it is born.”
“Providing, of course, that we find her.”
Percy rose from his chair and moved to where Sir Thomas sat, farther away from the fire. He grasped the man’s arm, curling his nails, clawlike, into Villard’s flesh. “No girl makes a fool of me. I will find her,” he promised. “And when I do, she will cooperate. Then you will give me everything I have paid for, too.”