His to Hold (Regency Scoundrels Book 1) (3 page)

“Christ’s teeth, woman, you are pushing me toward the brink!” She stilled for just a moment, and then resumed her struggling.

“Well, that’s bloody good for me, then!” Her voice was laced with hard-edged malice, and he nearly dropped her at the intensity of it. To think that she was the same tame and timid creature, he had fallen in love with at Lady Belmont’s Ball. Apparently, she acted much differently when under the watchful eyes of her aunt.

“I wouldn’t be saying that. In case you still haven’t figured out who I am, then you will be discovering one of my identities in due course. And, I will not be surprised if you faint dead away.”

“I have a strong constitution, sir. I do not faint like so many of my sister women.”

“Aye, and I’m a bloody saint!” he snorted, and then grunted when her elbow slammed into his gut. He stepped onto the plank leading up to
The Valiant
, and caught the perceptive eye of his cook. His men were singing shanties while they went about their work.

“Welcome aboard, Captain,” his cook said, eyeing Elizabeth with inquiring eyes. He puffed on the pipe he held in his heads, and silently sized Elizabeth up. “I take it, that she’s the booty we came for?” Seamus Riley’s Limerick accent was thick, and sometimes hard to understand, but this time Mallory understood him completely.

“Aye,” he answered, earning a reprieve from Elizabeth’s magnificent struggles, when she stopped to inspect Seamus.

“You are an Irishman,” she declared, seemingly perplexed.

“Aye, an’ you are an uppity young miss,” Seamus rebutted, “Captain, you’re going to have a time of it with this one, she looks like trouble,” he said, chuckling as he left the deck to go down into the galley.

“Do you always speak so eloquently?” Mallory asked, as one of his men handed him some rope.

He placed Elizabeth down on her feet, and pulled her hands out in front of her. Her reticule still hung around her wrist. He slipped it off her wrist, and tied her hands together.

She was nearly spitting molten fire now, and he was enjoying every moment of it. He dragged her down to her cabin. Pushing her into it, he slammed the door, and locked it. Tucking the key back into his pocket, he opened the reticule, and peered inside.

Hells Bells, but the woman confounded him. Nestled safely inside of her reticule was a small pistol, the sort that was made just for a lady.

Elizabeth paced the cabin restlessly. By the looks of things, her blond Adonis’s men had already filled Captain Treacher’s cabin with their captain’s belongings.

Blast the man!

She had to find out what his Christian name was. Either that or she had to continue searching her tired brain for his identity. She knew she’d met him at some previous time, and it was not as one of her father’s employees. All that she had to do was hit the nail on the head.

You must think, Elizabeth. Just think!

Searching her mind, she turned around to walk the length of the cabin. She was pacing, a sure sign that he had affected her deeply. She chewed on her lower lip, and glanced down at the rope that was tied around her wrists.

Arching her eyebrow, she tried to fight against the bonds. She let out a shocked gasp, when the ropes slithered away from her wrist, at the teeniest of tugs.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” Pitching the rope across the cabin, she stalked toward the door.

This time when she placed her hands on him, she’d make sure that some bodily damage was done. She stopped mid-step, and reached out with her extraordinarily perceptive hearing.

Voices murmured right outside of the cabin. She recognized the one voice as her bloody kidnapper. The other voice, however, was one she did not recognize.

“I hope she’s worth it, Captain,” The foreign voice said in a barely audible tone.

“Oh, she’s well worth it,” Rafe answered.

So that was her captor’s name.

“Rafe.” She rolled it over her tongue, and it came out as the barest of whispers. She shrugged at the caress in her voice.

Maybe in different circumstances, she would have been willing to better acquaint herself with him. But as it was, she had to reach
Her Ladyship’s Kindness
. Unbeknownst to her father, at the age of fifteen, she had recruited her own spies and planted them at
Her Ladyship’s Kindness
, and at several of their other estates and plantations.

Her spies had been ferreting information back to her ever since. In their little game of cat-and-mouse, she’d been forced to hire her own spies as a mere survival strategy.

Her father had put her through hell and back, and she’d be damned if he’d rob her of the inheritance her mother had left her—the inheritance her father controlled until his death. She had informants on both sides of the pond, and on their scattering of estates in the Caribbean. Her grandfather never should have endowed his daughter with such a hefty dowry. If he hadn’t…none of Lady Susan’s money would have gone to her bastard of a father. Her father had used the money to amass a financial empire. As the youngest son of a British viscount, he’d inherited precious little from his father’s estate.

Her spies had supplied her with invaluable information over the years, and she couldn’t make do without them. She had her now deceased grandfather to thank for giving her the means to employ these people. He had hated the fact that his daughter had married a monster, and lost her fortune to Geoffrey, upon marrying him.

The last damning piece of information had reached her about a month ago. In the detailed missive, her hired man had told her that her father’s health weakened with each passing day.

The news hadn’t come as a surprise to her. Her father gorged himself on wine and rich food. And he bedded a different woman nearly every night. He was a pig of the foulest sort.

She had to reach
Her Ladyship’s Kindness
before he croaked it, because if she didn’t, she might not be there for the reading of the will. If she wasn’t present, she couldn’t be assured that someone would not tamper with it.

She lost interest in their conversation as Rafe had quickly changed subjects. He was a sharp man, and he had probably guessed that she would be listening at the door. Ever so quietly, she walked toward the door, thanking God for blessing her with lightness of step. Extracting a pin from her hair, she was about to slip it into the lock when she heard heavy footfalls approaching.

Backing away hastily, she slammed into a large trunk.

“Bloody hell!” she cursed. The door swung open. In stalked her captor. Her arms were flailing about as she tried to keep herself from falling on her ass. Rafe reached out for her, and caught her before she fell to the floor. “Don’t think I’m going to thank you.”

She pulled away from him, and served him with her best withering stare. It had always served to intimidate everyone else that she knew, and yet he stared back at her with a neutral expression on his face.

Then, to gall her even further, he chuckled. The throatiness of it caressed her, and in some weird way it appeased her. Crossing her arms over her chest, she stared up at him through half lowered lashes.

“‘Course you wouldn’t thank me. Because then I’d start thinking you were a proper young lady, befitting a woman of your gentle birth.”

She bristled even more at his sarcastic remark. He still held one hand behind his back, and when he held it out toward her, her breath caught in her throat. She reached eagerly for her rose coloured reticule, but at the last moment, he pulled it out of her reach.

“You needn’t seem too eager,” he whispered, his voice at a dead calm. “I have taken the liberty of extracting your pistol. What bothers me, my dear, is why you didn’t choose to use it on me before.”

Uneasily, she looked away from his penetrating gaze, and scraped the toe of her traveling boot against the floor. “If you give it to me, I’ll use it now,” she said sarcastically.

He chuckled again, but this time it snowballed into full out laughter. His laughter boomed out around her, filling the intimate space. She huffed out a large gust of air, and took a voluntary step toward him.

“Pray, hand over my reticule. I don’t give a fig where you stuffed that blasted pistol. I don’t need it. I’ll get away from you without it. I don’t even care if you’ve stolen the coins I had inside. I realize the temptation would have proved to be far too great for a man such as yourself. I mean you are basically a thief, aren’t you? Besides, I shan’t bother you for long…I shall escape from you in due course.”

His eyes sobered at that remark, and he stopped laughing.

“I can assure you, Miss Elizabeth, that there is nowhere you can run to that will hide you from me. I’m like a bloodhound, and I have caught your beguiling scent. You need never fear that I shall ever forget it!”

His fervent declaration, made her heart begin pounding against her ribcage. It thundered so loudly, that she feared he might hear it. She’d had many suitors, but there had only been one man other than Rafe that had affected her so deeply.

She had danced with him several times at Lady Belmont’s Ball. Whenever she thought of Lady Belmont, she fondly remembered the plump matronly woman, with a crown of graying hair.

Shame flooded her face, and she knew she was as red as a hot poker, as she remembered what that delicious man had brought her to the brink of that night. She had not even known his name, and yet she had acted wantonly with him. She had allowed him to lead her out to the estates maze.

They had lost themselves within, and he had begun making ardent love to her. But he hadn’t been the only one participating in the ravishing. She had responded in kind, and had become more alive in his arms than she had ever felt.

He was just about to take her maidenly honour, when another amorous couple had rudely interrupted them intent upon their own illicit assignation. Unfortunately, the man in the couple had been a friend of her aunt’s. She had been hauled out of the maze, and she had never laid eyes on her mystery lover again. She’d acted like a wanton hussy with him, and hadn’t regretted one moment of it.

She sighed mournfully, and then stared up at Rafe. He gazed at her in the most unusual way. He seemed about to gobble her up, with his eyes. Swallowing thickly, she gestured toward her reticule.

“Might I please have it?” She yearned to fold her hands around the reticule. Inside rested one of her most cherished possessions, something that she valued above anything else in her life.

“You, my dear, are very fortunate that you resemble your mother, more than you resemble your father. Although the black hair…that might come from your father’s side. Though I daresay that Lady Susan favoured her mother’s side over her father’s side.”

“How do you know so many intimate details of my life?” she demanded. Crossing the short distance to him, she managed to rip the reticule from his lax grip.

“I’ve studied you and your family well. You might say that I know your maternal grandmother’s side of the family, as well as I know the back of my hand.”

“You, sir, are a dirty rotten bastard.”

“Well, shall we chalk that up to another one of your colourful insults thrown at me? You seem to have an endless supply.” He extended his hand toward her, and gently tilted her face up so that he could look at her straight in the eyes. “Why, are those tears glimmering in your eyes?” his question was spoken in a soft, and almost tender voice.

She jerked her chin out of his gentle hold, and took an involuntary step backward.

“You have brought sentimental memories to the forefront of my mind. Pray, do not flatter yourself, you were not the source of my tears.”

She grimaced, as one large tear escaped its watery prison. She quickly reached her hand up to brush it away, but she was too late, for he beat her to it. She had shown him a sign of weakness, and now she hated herself for it!

“I should bloody well hope not!” He turned away from her, and folded his hands behind his back. “You shall occupy the cabin next to this one. I can see that it was built and decorated with you in mind, from the beautiful pianoforte to the lovely little writing desk that would be far too delicate for a man to like. Far be it for me to get in the way of your comfort. I am well aware that you are accustomed to being pampered like a spoiled little princess.”

“Yes, I’ve always been lavished with untold riches.” Her voice was flat, and he turned around to toss a curious expression at her.

“Many would be delighted to be in your boots,” he murmured, staring down at her feet.

“Do you not think that I am grateful for the life that I have? Well, I am!” She lifted her chin proudly. “After all, who wouldn’t want to be the daughter of a man that takes cruel pleasure in other’s suffering? And, who wouldn’t want to be a girl prized only for her heavy coffers?

“You needn’t fear. I know how blessed I am. Indeed, my family knows how blessed I am, and my aunt campaigned quite a great deal to marry me off to her only son as a means to keep the money in the family, greedy little wretch that she is!

“You, see, she didn’t exactly take kindly to my grandfather breaking up his estate and giving me half of his fortune. She believed it should all be for her precious Raleigh. I suppose that’s when life started to change for me in England, when I started to feel like a stranger in my own home.

“My cousin for his own part loves me true…or at least I believe he does. He could just be a better thespian than my aunt…I never know. The only two members of my family upon whom I could always trust loved me with no caveat, was my precious Mama and my beloved Grandfather. My Mama always had my best interests in my mind. Oh, how I miss her. She has been in the ground for over ten years. So, you needn’t lecture me, sir. I know what is important in life!”

*****

Mallory had experienced the ferocity of Elizabeth’s passion once before, but never had he seen her so inspired. Her eyes flashed with untold fire, and her face was glowing like that of an angel. He yearned to gather her into his arms. But he had time to lure her into his bed. He just had to make sure that he cajoled her into his bed before they reached the shores of England.

“If you would come with me I shall escort you to your cabin.” He gallantly offered her his arm. “Do not get any foolish ideas in that pretty little head of yours. We have already left Chesapeake Bay. You will find yourself overboard in the ocean, if you try to flee from me. I’d warrant the sharks would find you to be a tasty little morsel.”

He almost grinned, at the shudder that passed through her.

“You may be assured that I will not be as idiotic as to try and throw myself into the sea. I do possess a brain.”

“Aye, I know that. It’s your possession of a heart that I’m worried about.”

She served him with a pinched up constipated expression, and damn it all, he nearly laughed.

*****

“Rafe, you are the one that requires the donation of a heart.” Even though she’d muttered her insult beneath her breath, she could see by his body language that he had indeed heard her. Fear rippled through her. She didn’t know if she feared his touch… or what she would feel when he touched her.

*****

Mallory stopped abruptly, and turned to gaze down at her in disbelief. He would be sure to watch his step around her from now on, for he had not banked on the keen intelligence that she obviously possessed.

“You, my dear, should be an agent in His Majesty’s Secret Service.” His tone was dry and held the slightest irritation. He had hoped to be able to reveal his true identity to her in due course.

In the meantime, he’d allow her to call him Jack. Jonathan was one of his many given names, and some of his chums in England had come up with the nickname. His family, however, always called him Mallory. And that was how he wanted it. Having various identities was a feather in his cap. He could distance himself from the people he didn’t care about, and when he returned to England, he could assume the identity of a penniless duke.