Seducing the Rake (Mad, Bad and Dangerous Heroes) (10 page)

At first the plan had appeared to backfire.

The warlord had studied Chessy’s slim, budding body hungrily, fascinated by the tale Morland had spun.

Then there had come an even more harrowing moment when the warlord had demanded to verify these claims for himself. Morland had finally convinced him that with even one touch he would be damaged for life.

The warlord let them go ten minutes later, bestowing a gift of twenty taels of silver upon Tony in gratitude for the horror he had just escaped. On the way back to their boat, Chessy had asked Tony how he had convinced the warlord she was
not
a virgin.

He’d given a low oath in answer.

Later that day, by dint of questions directed to the girls in the local Chinese fishing village, Chessy had learned exactly what a virgin was, in explicit detail.

She had avoided Tony for a week after that, as gut-wrenchingly embarrassed and ashamed as only an adolescent of fifteen could be.

Finally he had taken her aside and told her to forget the whole business. He assured her that he liked her far too much to sacrifice their friendship to a bunch of missish airs or misplaced modesty.

Besides, he would be leaving in a month. He wanted to enjoy every moment of time they had until then.

Chessy had fallen prey to his charm then, just as she had again and again during that halcyon summer. The month had become two and then three. And she had never expected how it would end.

How precious were those memories…

Right up until the night Tony had stumbled across her while she lay on the smooth foredeck, studying the constellations spread like winking jewels across the black sky. That night he had said her name with surprise, with gruff tenderness—and with something that might almost have been regret.

Then he had kissed her.

Just once. Softly and slowly, as if the kiss were pulled from him against his will. Even now, Chessy remembered how her heart had dived to her stomach, how her throat had turned hot and achy at his touch.

Most of all, she remembered how thoroughly
right
that intimate slide of lip and tongue had felt.

And how much more she had wanted from him.

Innocent that she was, she hadn’t understood when the kiss had changed, when a simple gesture of friendship had exploded into something entirely different.

Something hot and reckless, as dark and potent as the midnight currents streaming beneath their boat.

In that one swift moment, friendship had turned to unguarded passion. Morland had pulled her roughly against his urgent body. His fingers had dug into her hair while he guided her to meet the hot search of his tongue.

To her shame Chessy had responded, with an instinct as old as time. With a hunger that matched his own.

But the kiss had been over before it ever began.

Cursing harshly, Morland had wrenched free of her trembling fingers and stood frozen in the soft starlight, in the warm tropical wind.

His face had been as hard as glass.

He had left the next day, without a word of explanation or farewell.

And Chessy’s heart had broken cleanly, irrevocably in two.

She had sworn she would never forgive him, and she had not.

Nor had she forgotten.

For ten long years she had carried the memories, not by design but because she had no choice. They were indelibly carved on her young heart.

Now here the man was again, with the same devil-may-care charm, with that same damnable ability to twist her up in knots inside.

Worst of all, he had the same knack for making her feel like a grubby and very clumsy fifteen-year-old.

Which was precisely what she
had
been, Chessy thought. But she was no longer. Now she was a woman grown, with enough strength and skill to fell a man in seconds.

She straightened and stared up at the Englishman, treating him to a full dose of the hauteur she had acquired in the last ten adventurous and sometimes hair-raising years. “No one calls me Francesca anymore, my lord. I would be pleased if you would remember that. It is
Miss Cameron
to you.”

A hint of wickedness flashed in Morland’s eyes. “Of course,
Miss Cameron.
I quite forgot. Perhaps it was the sight of all that soot on your cheeks. Or possibly it was the baggy gown. No, on second thought it was the memory of you brawling with that coal merchant.”

“Brawling! I
never
brawl, you—”

Chessy broke into a liquid stream of volatile Mandarin, which raised pointed questions about Morland’s parentage and antecedents stretching back twenty-three generations.

Morland listened appreciatively. “You always did know your way around a full-blooded curse.” His lips curved in a smile. “Thank the Lord I never learned much Chinese during my stay in the Orient. I’ve a feeling what you just said would blister my ears.”

But this time Chessy made no answer. It seemed her exertions had finally caught up with her. Her pulse came light and ragged, and she was finding it strangely hard to breathe.

Fire and fiddle!
All she needed was to eat and then rest a little. It hadn’t helped that she’d been up before dawn studying the outside of the next house she was to enter.

Lord Morland’s house, in point of fact.

Then on her return there had been bills to discuss with Swithin and two local urchins to interview about the habits and peculiarities of Morland’s household. After that she had had to pick out an elaborate ormolu clock and a length of fine wool worsted as a gift to be sent back to one of her father’s antiquarian friends, who was a high government official in Canton. Before she could rest properly, she had encountered that wretched tradesman. She had paid his last bill, of course, but the man had seen her vulnerability and pressed for an extra two months’ of payment besides.

Blast them all! She refused to be beholden to Morland for anything, even if it meant no fuel for cooking, no water for drinking, and no clothes to cover her hungry, trembling body…

Chessy frowned. She was most definitely trembling.

Above her Morland’s face seemed to blur. His hard, etched features seemed to streak away in streams of color.

Oh, this was
very
strange…

A strong hand cradled her neck. “Come, Cricket, you’re not going to faint on me again, are you?”

At the sound of that long forgotten endearment, Chessy felt a tremor work through her throat. “Of—course I’m not, you—you wretched aristocrat. I simply feel odd.”

And with a ragged groan she collapsed against the settee, lost to the world for a second time that day.

~ ~ ~

By all the saints, she had to be the most stubborn, the most impossible—the most
infuriating
female he had ever met!

Ten years hadn’t changed
that,
Anthony Morland thought.

But other things about her had changed, and those things he found
very
hard to ignore.

Carefully he lifted her cool hand and felt for a pulse.

Light but steady.

He shook his head as he stared down at her white cheeks. The woman was beyond believing! He had saved her from the greedy maneuvers of the rascally coal merchant, and her only response was to round on him like a mad bull.

And now
this!

Now what?
a quiet voice asked.

Why should she welcome you back into her life with open arms? You knew what you were doing when you left Macao. You knew exactly why you were doing it too.

You could have gone back at least once over the years. You could have found someone to carry a letter and see that it actually reached her.

Morland frowned.

He hadn’t done
any
of those things, of course.

First there had been his father’s illness. Then had come the war and all the problems with his brother and the estates. Somehow there had never been time or opportunity for—

Liar.

This time Morland didn’t fight that mocking voice. For that was true, too, of course, The fear had stopped him, fear that if he saw her again he wouldn’t be able to leave …

He looked down and saw that his fingers were still holding the side of Chessy’s wrist. Unconsciously they were tracing soft circles against her delicate skin.

Had he lost his bloody
mind?
Was the madness happening all over again? Morland shoved her hand back under the coverlet and jerked to his feet.

What was the matter with him? She was just Chessy, after all.
Chessy.
The awkward, sunny, entirely unpredictable daughter of an old and charmingly ramshackle friend. He could be
comfortable
with her.

Morland found that he could not look away from her pale brow, from the dark half-circle of lashes brushing her cheeks.

From the gentle rise and fall of the breasts only hinted at by the shapeless gown she wore.

Lord, those breasts…

He still remembered that night on the deck when he had kissed her and felt their soft, budding curves. The night when he had been on the verge of doing much, much more than simply kiss her…

With a curse he stalked to the door. There was nothing at all comfortable in how he felt about her. He had to put her out of his mind! Otherwise he would be kissing her again, unconscious or not.

And the saints only knew what he would do after
that.

The kitchen was every bit as hopeless as Morland had feared it would be. An old soot-covered open range dominated one wall of the basement room. Empty wooden crates filled most of the remaining space.

Morland kicked the crates away. When he jerked open the cupboard nearest to the range, a mouse scurried into the darkness. But she had flour at least. Miraculously, it looked untouched by whatever other rodents and uninvited guests might be hidden nearby.

Quickly Morland assessed the rest of the cupboards and the small stillroom next door.

Not good. But not so terrible either.

An odd smile played over his lips as he rolled his cuffs over his bronzed forearms. Soon he had assembled a meager store of supplies and was beating milk into a chipped earthenware bowl full of flour.

It had been far worse at Badajoz, he thought. But fighting wasn’t all he had learned during his Peninsular campaigns. Foraging had been nearly as important as the fighting. Morland had vowed to see his men through, and so he had.

Up until Salamanca…

Suddenly, as he stood in the shadowed kitchen, his hands white with flour, Morland heard the distant rumble of French artillery. Once again he caught the pungent smell of sun-warmed wheat and the smoke of bread baking in Spanish cooking fires.

But most of all, he was remembering what it felt like to be hungry, so hungry one’s stomach lurched and heaved in an agony of emptiness and pain. Until warmth and reality bled away and one’s energy simply fled.

His hands froze on the chipped bowl.

It had been a long time since Salamanca, but apparently it hadn’t been long enough.

There were still too many memories, too many ghosts from those long, bitter weeks that Morland would rather have forgotten.

 Swithin staggered in, bent nearly double beneath a huge sack of provisions. Morland helped him maneuver the bundle onto a dusty sideboard. “Miss Cameron is still upstairs. If you would be so good as to scout me out a pan and start a fire in that lamentable excuse for a cooking range, I will make myself useful.”

A low rustle brought both men about. Pale and unsteady, Francesca stood framed in the rear doorway.

“
Chessy!”
the two men shouted together.

“You really needn’t yell. I’m feeling much better. Some tea would be very nice.” She moved carefully toward the long table opposite the range and sank into a rickety chair.