The Danger of Desire (26 page)

“We got Stoval. Took him coming out of White’s.”

“Serves him right. Taken like a thief in the middle of St. James’s. Stupid bastard. Hope you checked those pockets of his.”

“Claimed it was all Falconer’s doing—that he had no idea Falconer was a French agent, only that he owed him money. So you were right, weren’t you, about it being either for the money or for the cause? Only you seemed to have found one of each.”

Meggs chose the better part of valor and refrained from crowing, “I told you so.” The captain’s mood didn’t appear to be receptive to such insight. “But what about Falconer? Did you get Falconer? He’s the dangerous one.”

“He has thus far eluded our net, damn his eyes. He’s likely halfway to France by now.”

“What?” No wonder his discontent was like sulphur in the air. And she wasn’t far behind him. “I can’t like that one bit. You’ve got to take him. He’s a nasty piece of work, that Falconer. He can’t be let off.” She shivered the creeping unease off her shoulders. “At least you can string up your toff for treason. They’ll give you back your ship for that, won’t they?”

“Perhaps. But it’s all to be dealt with quietly, so don’t start looking forward to any public hangings at Newgate. Bloodthirsty little wretch. I thought you might have some compassion for your fellow thief.”

That tore it, the captain calling her names. “If they’d a caught me, do you think they would have showed me any compassion? Falconer would have cut me into a thousand pieces and taken pleasure in doing it. And Stoval would have just watched. They deserve everything they should get, the pair of them. They ought to be strung up in the middle of Hyde Park so everyone could see. Dealt with quietly. They hang children for stealing little better than a handkerchief, and you’ll let these treasonous bastards, whose
nefarious
deeds may have cost hundreds of soldiers—and sailors, don’t forget the sailors—their lives, let off quietly. If that doesn’t just fuck all.”

“I didn’t say
I
wanted to let them off. I happen to agree with you. But I take orders same as you. And I do what I’m told.”

“Well, I done my part, what I was told, and if you didn’t get your man, then it’s no skin off my back. I ran the rig neat and square. No one could say I didn’t.”

But the captain wasn’t saying anything else, good, bad, or indifferent. He just wolfed around, watching her bathe without the slightest awareness of her body. Of her nakedness. Of
her
. Of the massive impropriety of his presence in the room. Jesus God, he wasn’t her bloody brother.

When he ranged closer to the tub, she looked up to see his face, ruddy and dark in the heat of the room. “You look like God’s revenge against murder.”

He took another ruminative sip of his drink and then reached out to finger the blunt, uneven edges of her wet hair, his voice rough with some dangerous anger. “You’re no good to me as a boy.”

That was bloody rich. She wouldn’t be treated like a blasted piece of equipment that needed to function to suit his needs and his moods. Well, he could have his bloody mood. She’d been chased across half of London, scared and wet, and she had been cold and tired for hours doing his work for him, and she was fed up with belligerent men thinking they could stalk into her bath and intimidate her.

She stood straight up in the tub, water sluicing down her body and splashing on the floor, naked as the day God made her. “Don’t bloody well look like a boy now, do I?”

He was on her, over her, picking her slick, wet body up and carrying her the two steps backward, up against the wall before he could even think about what he was doing. But he was so tired, so bloody, fucking tired of thinking. So he wasn’t going to think at all.

At that moment, after such a night, the only sane thing to do was feel. Feel the warmth of her body, heated and slick from the bathwater, and let his hands roam where they would—everywhere he longed to touch but had for so long denied himself. Up her sides, past her heaving ribcage, over the seemingly fragile strength of her collarbone and shoulder, along the line of her jaw, up into the blunt ends of her chopped-off hair, down the slide of her sleek flanks. Each a marvel of warm, wet silk.

But it was her mouth. Her filthy, heathenish, taunting, tormenting mouth. He fell on her like a starving man, made ravenous and crude by unreasonable hunger, eaten up with lust and longing. He was empty of finesse. He could take no time to savor the solace of her chapped, gasping lips. He pushed aside his promise that it would be nice, and tender, and sweet. She was no tender, delicate flower, and he had nothing of sweetness left in him. He was beyond, already delving deep into the honeyed warmth of her mouth, fastened to her like a succubus, taking every ounce of heat and pleasure he could from her.

It was inevitable. He had known it from the start. He had wanted her like this, flushed with passion and writhing against him, from the very first moment he had seen her long, trim calves and delicate ankles.

She was kissing him back, her hands raking through his hair, clutching him to her sleek, animalistic body, her improbably soft, full lips greedy and wanton opening to his. He slanted his mouth across hers to deepen the kiss. She tasted of rain and clean cold, and her essence mingled with the Scotch whiskey in his mouth to create a potent, heady brew. He was drinking her in like a man dying of thirst, parched to his core and gasping for the solace only she could give.

She made a hungry sound, and he swallowed it into his mouth as she arched against him, begging with her body for his touch.

And he could not wait. He could not breathe. He had to be in her.

There was no time for preliminaries. His fingers were at the buttons of his breeches and freeing his rod. His hands were too impatient to ascertain anything more than the glorious heat and slick entry to her body, before the blunt head of his cock found her unerringly. All he could do was appease the black vortex of his want and drive home into her with all the force of his raging need.

Yes. Oh, God, finally yes.

“No!” The shocking, inarticulate but unmistakable noise of agony and betrayal bounced off the walls of the small room, piercing the haze of his lust.

Hugh opened his eyes and pulled back enough to look at her, to see her, pinned against the wall by the force of his body. She was strung as taught as a bow, not daring to move, her eyes shocked wide open. Not even daring to breathe.

And he knew. He felt. He understood.

She was, improbably, insistently, unmistakably a virgin. And he had fucked her against a wall.

“Christ,” was all he could manage. He was appalled. He had acted appallingly.

And like that, he eased his brutal grip of her hips and let go. He stepped back. “I’m sorry.”

“No, please,” she gasped.

He could only see the misery he had brought as she hid her face and slid down the wall, her arms wrapped protectively around her middle to shield herself from any more of his brutality.

It was all his fault. She was his charge. His responsibility. He should have had greater restraint. He should have understood her protests. He should have been a gentleman.

“I’m sorry. Please. I’m leaving,” he reassured her. “I won’t bother you—I’m sorry.”

He turned away and shoved himself back inside his breeches and buttoned up the fall as quickly as possible. Two more steps and he was at the door and through it. Leaning back against the stout wooden panel to catch his breath, to pull himself together.

The kitchen was mercifully and suspiciously empty. There wasn’t a sound in the house, as if the boards and plaster were holding their breath to see what further havoc he was going to wreak.

What had she done? One moment he was kissing her and she was kissing him, every touch of his lips against hers felt like sparks exploding under her skin, and then he was gone. He had lit a bonfire in her body and then just walked away, leaving her charred to a cinder. He said something and turned on his booted heels and simply left. He didn’t even have the good graces to limp, as if he’d been thoroughly worked over. As thoroughly worked over as she. He simply left her like she was garbage he no longer wanted to deal with. Worthless. Not worthy of his consideration. Once more, abandoned.

The pain reached all the way through her, from the sharp shock inside her belly all the way out to her fingertips. She felt as if he had left her in a hundred broken pieces, scattered over the floor like shattered glass. She would never fit back together again.

But she
had
to scrape herself together. She had to move and get away before he came back. She’d be damned if she ran out of another house into the rain with nothing but the clothes on her back. She’d be damned. She had warm, substantial clothing upstairs in her lovely attic room. And money. Enough for a hackney. Enough to get her a night at an inn. And she could go to see Mr. Levy in the morning to get her the rest of her money. There was no stopping her from having that.

Once in her room, she piled on everything woolen she owned. She didn’t care that he had bought and paid for them. She had bloody well earned them, and she had every right—
every right
—to take them with her. The job was done, and it was time for her to move on.

Timmy wandered up with a slice of orange in his hand. “Whatcha doing?”

“Get your things,” she ordered. “We’re leaving.”

“Don’t be daft, Meggs.” He laughed.

She snapped back, “Don’t be bold. I told you to get your things.”

“Jesus, Meggs. Why do you want to leave? It’s warm and dry here. He feeds us up, every day, and the jobs are dead easy.”

“Just get your clothes. Put them in here.” Between them they probably didn’t even have enough to fill the portmanteau.

“But Meggs, we ain’t even ate. I don’t wanna—”

“Shut up. Stop arguing. Just shut up and come.”

“Jesus, Meggs.” Timmy backed away, hurt and bewildered. She had never spoken to him like that before. She had never acted like that before. She had never felt like this before. As if she were simply broken. “I don’t wanna go. I’m not going,” he argued. “I’m gonna stay with him.”

Meggs could no longer hide the feelings blistering to the surface. Everything, absolutely everything, was falling apart. Everything she had hoped and dreamed and planned was ruined. They were never going back to Tissington. She was never going to get married and have a quiet, happy life. Her life was ruined, and it was all
his
fault. God, she hated him. She hate, hate, hated him, and she couldn’t spend another moment under his roof.

“Fine.” She turned her back on Timmy, so he couldn’t see the rush of useless tears filling her eyes, and finished her packing. The money took longer. She had salted it about the room, a few pounds here and there, under the lantern, stuffed in the mattress, under a drawer. The bulk was beneath a floorboard that didn’t want to be pried up. It didn’t help her eyes were so full of hot, angry tears she couldn’t see.

She headed down the stairs, quiet as a dead mouse, but there he was, the captain, coming up the way she was going down. Timmy was with him, looking up at her. Traitor. He pointed, and the captain looked up to see her.

Damn him. He’d taken the only person she had to love.

“Meggs?” As the captain called up the staircase, she bolted for the backstairs.

“Meggs. Don’t.” His voice chased her up the stair. Tears were blurring her eyes, and she grabbed up her skirts and ran the whole way down, out into the kitchen past Mrs. Tupper and out the passageway toward the garden door. If she could make it to the gate—

“What on earth?” she heard Mrs. Tupper exclaim.

She had almost reached the door. The latch was under her hand. The door was open an inch, and the cold, damp, coal-fired smell of the night was filling her nose. And then his hand was over hers, pushing the door shut.

“Meggs. I’m sorry.” His voice was at her ear. He was directly behind her, his hands wrapping around her upper arms, trying to hold her back. “I’m sorry.”

“Let me go. Let me go. Why can’t you just let me go?” She was crying now, damn her eyes. Sobbing like a ninny. She ought to be ashamed of herself, but it hurt so bad, all that raw feeling piled up high in her throat as if she had swallowed glass. Cut into a thousand pieces and leaking salty, stinging tears.

“I can’t let you go,” he whispered. “You know I can’t.”

He turned her by the shoulders and hauled her against his chest, and she was pressing herself into the wall of warmth, trying to hide. Sniffing and snuffling, and gasping for air like a bleeding mackerel.

“I’m sorry,” he said over and over. “It was all my fault. I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t—I’ll make it up to you. Only don’t go. Please. Stay.”

“Please stay, Meggs.” That was Timmy behind him, somewhere down the passage.

“Come now, lad,” Mrs. Tupper chided. “You leave them be. Our Meggs isn’t going anywhere this night. Catch her death out in this cold and damp, why I shouldn’t be surprised ...”

Her head was still bowed against his chest, the ends of her hair hanging down lankly around her ears. Hugh held on to her, crushing her against him, physically preventing her from leaving. He didn’t have the words to convince her—all thought was drowned out by the furious panic clawing at his chest when he realized he had driven her away. He had done this.

But he could undo it.

“Please, for your own sake, at least stay the night. You can’t go out into this filthy weather. If you still want to leave in the morning, I’ll make arrangements. But please, don’t just leave.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath and turned her head to lay wearily against his chest, not fighting anymore. He lowered his lips to her forehead to try to show her with his mouth what he could not put into words—despite what he had done, she was precious to him.

His lips met her skin and came away singed. Hugh replaced his mouth with the back of his hand. She felt scorched. “Ah, Meggs, you’re burning up. We’ve got to get you to bed.”

“No!” She shot her hand out against the doorjamb.

“For God’s sake, Meggs, I’m not going to bed you. I’m going to put you into a bed.” Hugh scooped her up and carried her all the way up to the bedchamber adjoining his, the one that should have belonged to the lady of the house.