Regency Vows: A Gentleman 'Til Midnight / The Trouble with Honour / An Improper Arrangement / A Wedding By Dawn / The Devil Takes a Bride / A Promise by Daylight

“I’m well aware of that,” Millicent shot back. “Nobody aboard this ship has any say in matters but you.”

“Watch your tongue, Millie,” Phil advised. And then, to Katherine, “Trust me, dearest, praising yourself won’t be necessary. It will be the easiest thing in the world to innocently let it be known what happened, and in a single morning’s time all of London will know.”

“And then I shall be showered with invitations and good will,” Katherine said dryly.

Philomena laughed. “And then you shall place yourself in proximity to Captain Warre at every opportunity, and let the news work its magic. The two of you together will be a sensation.”

“Promise me you won’t expose him without me there,” India said. “I want to see the expression on his face.”

So did Katherine. And she needed to expose him before the voyage was over, when she still had the advantage of being in command. But deciding how and when to do it wasn’t easy—except that one place it would not happen was in front of India.

She hadn’t the means on board to give Captain Warre what he truly deserved. But she could at least have the pleasure of exposing him. The timing should be perfect. Time, however, was running out. Soon—very soon—she would have to confront him whether the time was right or not.

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#ulink_4e33f127-6dd6-5e65-a801-7d06976dbd6d)

THE MISTY BLUE of midnight surrounded Katherine with an eerie breeze. Beneath her feet, Dunscore rose monolithic above the sea. A man stood on the ramparts with the wind in his hair, looking out as if commanding the mist. She moved toward him. He held out his arm, and she took his hand. Kissed it, as though paying homage.

And she was his. Only his.

His arms came around her, capturing her body, drawing her in. Possessing her. Her head fell back and his mouth came down, down, hard on her lips, branding her. She sank her fingers into dark waves of silver-streaked hair, drank in the smell of the sea on sun-browned skin.

He touched her body and her clothes melted away. Strong hands slid over her skin, closed around her breasts, touched her most secret places. She cried out and pushed herself against him, rocking.

Rocking.

Creak...splash.

Creak...splash.

Katherine’s eyes flew open in the dark. She awoke on her stomach with her chest heaving into the bed, gripping her pillow with both hands, being tossed by the pitch and roll of the ship. Heat throbbed between her legs, slick and pulsing.

Captain Warre.

She closed her eyes and breathed into the pillow. The dream fogged her mind, and the blend of damp moor and salty sea air lingered in her nostrils. Misty tendrils of longing curled through her: Dunscore. Home.

Captain Warre.

On a ragged breath she pushed herself up, pushed her hair from her face and felt a damp sheen along her hairline. Her breasts hung heavy and yearning beneath her nightdress. Her lips tingled with the knowledge that his knuckles were warm, his fingers strong and callused. Her skin burned as though his hands had really touched her.

Her heart ached as though she’d really stood on Dunscore’s ramparts once again with the wind in her hair and the ancient stones of her ancestors beneath her feet.

Home.

Her cabin was dark. Shadowy. The palest moonlight filtered through the windows, just enough light to see, and she reached for the familiar surroundings as though grabbing a lifeline. She forced herself from the bed, felt the cool wood floor beneath her bare feet.

This was reality. This was home. Here. The Possession. With Captain Warre merely being ferried to Britain, and she carrying out a plan to secure Anne’s future. That was all.

She got a drink of water and stood listening to the ship’s soft creak, but still the dream’s temptation thrummed in her blood, blurring the line where Captain Warre ended and Dunscore began.

This was unacceptable. As if Dunscore were his. As if she were his. Agitated, she paced to the window. His eyes betrayed his desire each time she caught him watching her. He wanted to touch her. To do in the flesh all the things he’d just done in her dream.

Oh, God. If the dream hadn’t ended, within moments he would have been inside her.

Her body pulsed hotly, and she fisted her hand against the pane.

It was time—past time—to confront him. That he believed she thought he was Lieutenant Barclay, who would have no reason to hide his thoughts, only made everything worse. Even his berthing with the crew was not enough—not when her eyes still sought him out and her ears still listened for the sound of his voice. If he knew she’d learned the truth, he would be more guarded.

She needed more of a barrier between them than this game of mistaken identity afforded.

You realize this changes everything. Phil’s words lilted through her mind. Katherine shivered in the darkness as the night air began to cool her skin. She didn’t want to capitalize on their acquaintance. She wanted to exterminate him from her thoughts. And judging from the slice of moonlight on her floor, he was on deck this very moment for the midnight watch.

She turned from the window to her chest and yanked open one drawer, then another, quickly pulling loose trousers over her hips, pushing her arms through silk shirtsleeves, aware of every brush of fabric against her skin as she stepped into a pair of sandals. With gritted teeth she let herself silently into the passageway and climbed the stairs into the cold night air.

The sails billowed in the moonlight, making the Possession glow like a ghost ship on a midnight-blue sea. Voices drifted from the bow, but she spotted him on the upper deck. She moved quietly across the quarterdeck, nodding to another sailor on midnight watch, and climbed the stairs. He had his back to her while he put his full weight on a line and made an efficient knot. He worked this ship as though it belonged to him. As though he knew it as well as she did.

As though he were the captain here.

Captain.

That one word would put an end to this folly and erect a barrier between them too thick for illicit yearnings to penetrate.

Yes, she would do it. Now.

“Captain,” she said sharply, while she still had the element of surprise on her side. She was not disappointed.

He stopped. Turned. “I fear you must be sleepwalking, Captain,” he said. The moonlight let her see his face but not his eyes—not enough to judge his thoughts. “You should return to your cabin.”

“I am not sleepwalking, Captain.” She took a step closer, letting her tone bite him. “Did you really believe you could fool me on my own ship?”

“You must have been having wild dreams indeed.”

Her heart skipped a beat. She mentally reached behind her ribs and squeezed it into submission. “No doubt you’ll say you’d planned to tell me eventually,” she said.

“I confess, you have me at a loss. Tell you what?” He walked past her, leaving her to follow him to the other side of the deck while he repeated the procedure he’d just done and tied another knot.

“The celebration of your homecoming would have exposed you.”

He turned to face her, and she thought he smiled a little. The sea was an eerie midnight surge behind him, crisscrossed by scores of shadowy lines that shot up to the masts. The dream washed through her like a wave spreading across the beach.

“You do realize the insane are poorly treated in England,” he said. “You ought to have a care.”

She laughed away both his suggestion and the dream’s temptation.

“Tell me, Captain...do you deny it out of self-preservation or shame?”

He stepped so close that his warm breath, tinged with a hint of the rum her crew favored, wafted over her face. “You can hardly blame me for concealing my identity when you’ve made little secret that I would not be as welcome a guest as my lieutenant.”

A shiver coursed over her skin.