A Most Unladylike Adventure

‘I’d curtsy to acknowledge your extraordinary graciousness,’ she told him in the hard, cynical voice she thought Eloise would use to protect herself from her enemies, ‘but somehow I’ve forgotten to be suitably servile these last few years.’

‘Aye, it’s easy to grow accustomed to luxury and money. Harder than I hope you’ll ever know to manage without them when they’ve become such a part of your life you can’t imagine losing everything,’ he said and she wasn’t fool enough to think he was worrying about her future.

‘I started out with nothing more than the clothes I stood up in, Captain, but you fell a lot further, I think?’

‘You may think what you wish, but don’t expect me to confirm or deny your fantasies,’ he told her abruptly, the story of his sorry downfall obviously forbidden ground.

‘I can pick out the nob in a crowd any day of the week, so don’t try to pretend you’re not one, Captain.’

‘Then be content with being right and leave it at that, my dear.’

‘Again, I’m not dear to you in any way, Captain Darke. Let’s stick to the truth as often as we may.’

‘And if that’s as often as usual, it won’t be heard much.’

She shrugged and reminded herself how little she wanted him to know her true self, even if she would dearly love to know his. ‘So be it,’ she said carelessly.

‘Not much point in me asking what you’re really doing here then, I suppose?’

‘Not much,’ she confirmed with a nonchalance she hoped masked her shudder at the thought of what she’d escaped tonight—and how she’d done it.

‘Well, I suppose we’re done with each other for now then, at least until morning.’

‘Yes, I really suppose that we must be, Captain.’

‘For good, if I had my way, Miss La Rochelle,’ he informed her gruffly enough for her to know he still wanted her and bitterly resented her for it.

‘Now your way would be downright boring and I make it a rule never to be so tedious that gentlemen of my acquaintance truly prefer my room to my company,’ she fantasised cheerfully.

Perhaps from now on she would be herself, as she’d seldom dared to be while she had tried to move amongst his true kind as if she belonged—and blatantly did not. Whatever it cost her to be the girl who’d belonged nowhere in particular once again, that girl was who she was. And to be that person she had to sleep. At least she’d be safe from the predators who stalked the night-time streets, so until it was too early for Charlton and his ilk to be abroad, she could allow herself the luxury of sleep and hope she’d have resolve enough to take up her new life come morning.

She took the candles he carefully didn’t offer her and lit a new one off them, after fetching some from Kit’s dusty and unused drawing room, handing the guttering ones back to him and giving him a significant look she recalled her mother darting at her when she wanted her to go to bed and saw no reason to tell such a grown-up girl to actually go there. By saving herself the fact and almost the feel of his all-too masculine gaze on her nether regions, outrageously outlined as they were by Charlton’s breeches, she had to watch his lithely masculine legs, narrow hips and lean body as he effortlessly scaled the stairs ahead of her instead.

She decided she was turning into some sort of female satyr and felt herself flush at the wicked thoughts the sight of his muscular form roused in her rebellious body. Tonight she’d felt powerfully male limbs so intimately against her own and not even wanted to flinch away; she’d known the astonishing novelty of actually yearning for the thrust and rhythm of that very particular man deep inside her, to show her what no words could ever tell her about the wild, sweet potential of it all. Never mind her unwanted success among the polite world, tonight she’d gone from schoolgirl to woman and never mind the physical fact of her virginity, still exactly as it had always been.

Tonight Captain Darke had taught her to truly want; even now part of her did so as she undressed in Kit’s second-best spare bedchamber, did her best to perform a brief toilette, then blew out her candle and slid between cool linen sheets. She shifted in protest against that unfulfilled need as she stretched luxuriously on the feather mattress and decided her terrifying climb to freedom had been worth every precarious step. Tonight she’d found out exactly why Charlton Hawberry wouldn’t do as her husband, even if she wanted one. Now all she had to do was find out the Captain’s quirks and qualities if she was to take him to her bed and maybe even her heart. That thought sobered her, as she considered the impossibility of Captain Darke ever returning so huge and compelling an emotion as love, even if she had no more desire to be trapped into marriage than he did.

Could any woman reach the last traces of gentleness and vulnerability that must still exist under all that armour of indifference and cynicism, or why would that armour need to be so strong? A colder, less ardent soul than the one he’d sought to bury under layers of pack-ice, or drown in a brandy bottle, would survive without the embittered shell Captain Darke had grown to survive, but could she get inside it if all she found out when she got there was how much he refused to trust his emotions? And how on earth would she ever persuade him she was worthy of his trust if he found out when he took her to his bed that Eloise La Rochelle was as big a lie as hard, embittered and dangerous Captain Darke?

Hugh woke reluctantly and groped for his pocket watch even as he bit back a loud moan at the brightness of a new spring day and the lying promise of a London sky washed clean of all its sins, until it besmirched itself again with the smoke and stink of a great city. He might be less cynical about the day, he supposed, if the sharp sunlight wasn’t falling across his eyes unveiled by shutters or curtains, just as he’d so often fooled himself he liked it. Might be, but he doubted it, as full memory of the night before kicked in again and another shot of agony tore across his aching forehead at the very thought of Miss Eloise La Rochelle, who was very likely waiting to torture him over the breakfast table at this very moment. If she could find it under all the detritus he and Coste had deposited there, of course.

Rubbing an exploring hand over his villainously rough chin, he winced at the idea of having kissed even that intrusive and annoying gadfly of a woman in such an ungentlemanly state, even though he’d been drunk and driven by some unholy need he still couldn’t fully comprehend by the light of day. She might not be a lady, might not have been accustomed to respect and good manners from her seducers before she encountered his friend Kit and decided to hang on to him with both hands, but Hugh had once been a gentleman so it was a matter of honour not to harm a woman of any stamp. He should have taken a second shave of the day to insure that he didn’t hurt her soft skin, if only he’d known he’d be kissing such a wanton siren last night. ‘Failed again, Hugh,’ he scolded himself cynically. ‘Proved yourself a rogue once more, as per expectations.’

Not bothering to even make the effort to cling to well-bred restraint in the face of so many failures, he hauled himself out of bed and gave vent to a heartfelt groan as his own heartbeat pounded fists of pain into his suffering brain at the sudden movement. Reaching blindly for the water jug, he gulped a lukewarm draught directly from it and groaned as he waited for the thundering in his ears to abate and the pain in his temples to dull to a bearable throb, then splashed water on to his face to try to relieve the ache behind his eyes.

‘Damned petticoat-led idiot,’ he castigated himself as he glared at his bleary-eyed reflection in the fine mirror his friend had furnished this guest bedchamber with, as he dried his face on the fine towel provided for more appreciative visitors than he was proving to be. ‘And just what would you think of me if you could see me right now, my friend?’ he speculated as he contemplated Kit Stone’s outspoken disgust at the spectre he’d made of himself.

And that was before Kit could even begin on the subject of kept women and which of them was keeping her. Hugh shook his head, despite the fierce clash of pain it cause, frowned fiercely at his reflection, then realised he didn’t even want to meet his own eyes in the mirror any more, let alone imagine holding his friend’s dark and yet somehow steely gaze when he finally came home and took back his empire and his woman from such faulty hands as Hugh Darke’s had proved to be.

‘Abel Coste! Where the devil are you?’ he went to the door and bellowed, in the hope his drinking companion of last night was in a better state of preservation than he was himself this morning, which would hardly be difficult, given that he felt as if he’d been trampled half to death by a herd of wild horses.

‘Whatever is it?’ his unwelcome visitor demanded impatiently from below.

‘I want Coste,’ he snapped back.

‘Well, you can’t have him, he’s busy.’

‘Since you certainly don’t need a shave, I can’t imagine how,’ he mumbled disagreeably, but she obviously possessed hearing a cat would have been proud of.

‘And if you were planning to let him shave you, then you must be even more addled than I thought, considering the sorry state he’s in this morning,’ she told him, as if she was some sort of stern maiden aunt rather than a brazen hussy.

She was still looking like a barbarian princess in her ill-fitting breeches and that ridiculous black shirt, her silken mass of dark chestnut hair falling down her back like a promise of all kinds of sensual delights. He knew she was no better than she should be, yet she made him ache to feel the luxurious wonder of her against his naked skin while he played idly with that wanton hair as they lay, momentarily sated, in each other’s arms. The last thing he needed was this burning desire to make her scream with desire and passion such as she’d never known before, and now he came to think about it, a mild shout of satisfaction might well blast the top of his head off and do permanent damage to his feeble brain just now.

Damnation take it, he shouldn’t even think of her in extremis like that. Not only was he in no state to pleasure even the most undemanding of houris, but he was also an ungrateful bastard who suddenly really wanted to at least try to drive her wild with mutual lust and see if such exquisite gratification could cure his hangover.

How could he even think of turning on the man who’d rescued him when everyone else had left him to rot in the gutter by trying to steal his woman? He’d better convince his baser self he didn’t want the confounded woman as a matter of urgency, then at least he’d be ready to conduct Kit’s business for the day instead of standing here fantasising about seducing his mistress.

‘I wasn’t planning on letting Abel or anyone else near my throat with a razor,’ he drawled in a deliberate echo of the insufferably cocky aristocrat he’d once been, ‘but to shave myself properly I need hot water and Coste is much better at lighting the range than I am.’

‘You must be atrocious at it then, since he made such a sad business out of it with all his moaning and groaning and constant “oh deary, deary me, but I don’t feel at all well,” that I found it a good deal quicker to deal with it myself,’ Miss La Rochelle told him so disapprovingly he was reminded of his sister’s steely-backboned governess in a particularly formidable frame of mind. He made the mistake of grinning over an image of his gadfly in breeches, instructing the daughters of the nobility in good manners and proper behaviour. ‘It wasn’t in the least bit funny to be expected to light your confounded fires for you as well as sober up the only help you seem to have left in the house in order to get some breakfast,’ she snapped.

She then subjected him to a hostile glare that should reduce him to abject penitence. Wise enough to know it would be counterproductive to tell her that her ire was a boon rather than a bane to his aching head, he kept a grin from his lips with a mighty effort and did his best to look crushed. In his experience, the only way to deal with a female on the rampage was to agree with whatever she said and go his own way when her back was turned.

‘Of course not,’ he agreed. ‘It’s probably a disgrace as well—did you forget to tell me that or have my aching ears left out some listening?’

‘Men have a very peculiar sense of the ridiculous,’ she informed him with regal contempt, obviously not inclined to gratify him by rising to his baiting.

‘And most women don’t have one at all,’ he let slip, then corrected himself. ‘Except for the odd honourable exception, of course,’ he told her with a would-be placating smile that must have come out as a mocking grin since she glared at him, before marching back to the domestic regions. He didn’t even have time to muse on feminine unpredictability before she was back with a steaming jug.

‘Here’s your hot water and don’t scald yourself,’ she ordered him as she thrust it into his hands. ‘I suggest you make yourself decent before you come downstairs, if that’s not too much to ask of a man with trembling hands and a brandy-addled constitution like yours,’ she told him before she rounded on her heel and strode towards the kitchen while he gazed owlishly after her.

‘Managing female,’ he muttered darkly to himself.

‘I heard that!’ she shouted back improbably and he amended her hearing up to bat-like sensitivity and resolved to tell the truth about her only when he was safely on the opposite side of London in future.

He kept trying not to smile as he shaved more deftly than he could have believed possible when he woke up this morning, and had to force a suitable blandness on to his reflected features in order not to cut himself. Usually the sight of his own face froze any inclination he might have to smile, but this morning even that didn’t seem as bitter a spectacle as expected. Last night he met a ladybird in the dark and now he was grinning to himself about her like a lunatic, despite a painful state he would prefer to deny existed that ought to be beyond a man in his condition. He reminded himself he couldn’t have her, even if she wanted him to, and poured his cooling shaving water with its unattractive bloom of shorn whiskers and used soap back into the can.

Hugh set the jug by the door to take downstairs once he was dressed for a morning in the City, spent attending to his employers’ business affairs and grimaced at the thought of the hours of checking tallies and reviewing accounts lying ahead of him. Somehow even the thorny task ahead of him couldn’t blot out the dangerous sense of anticipation he felt at tangling with the woman downstairs one last time. He even caught himself whistling, before realising she would hear him. Eyeing himself—cravat decently tied and stockings and knee-breeches unwrinkled—he shrugged into a very sober waistcoat and gave himself a mocking bow. Today he was almost unrecognisable as the renegade captain of the Jezebel and resolved to avoid the haunts of the ton on his way to the City, lest someone recognise him even got up like a respectable cit. He shrugged off the prospect of being known for someone far less worthy, decided breakfast took precedence over old sins and let the smell of Miss La Rochelle’s cooking lure him downstairs once more.

Chapter Four

‘My guess is that you’re a better cook than Coste or I will ever be,’ Hugh observed as he strolled through the propped-open kitchen door.

‘Which wouldn’t be difficult, given the state of the saucepans and skillets left in the scullery,’ the most unusual cook in England muttered irritably in reply.

‘We never claimed to be domesticated,’ he admitted with a casual shrug.

‘You’d be arrested for fraud if you did.’