A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (6 page)

So Will prowled down the dimly lit hallways looking for a more likely place to moor up. There had to be a suitably masculine room—one that contained a drinks tray—along one of these damned endless corridors. His long-legged stride took him around another corner, where the low, orange light shining from beneath a door led him to the perfect haven—a private library, its walls covered in bookshelves and its tall windows mercifully cracked open to the bracing, damp night air.

The room looked to be a wood-paneled sanctuary—a safe, snug harbor where he could while away the evening until he was called to escort his mother and sister home. If there were a just God, the room would house a decanter of brandy.

He shut the door behind him and made for the tray beside a couple of deep armchairs near the low-burning hearth, when a small noise—the faint clinking of glass—made him swivel toward the bookshelves.

Well, damn his lucky eyes. It was
she
—the girl from the dance floor. The one who had knocked Gerry Stubbs-Haye down with a carronade of a right. Miss Antigone Preston, the girl with the name straight out of myth—literature’s first true heroine, who had to choose between dishonor and death.

In the half dark of the firelight, she looked much less the athletic Amazon than she had standing over old Stubby’s prone form. At this distance, her chin, though tipped up defiantly, had a definite wobble.

And, if the dark, liquid shine in her eyes was any indication, she looked near tears.

Oh, fuck all. Will had a definite weak spot for young women in distress. Half the whores on Gibraltar knew that all they had to do to earn a coin was gift him with a tear and a tale of woe. But if there were to be tears and tales of woe, a decent drink was an absolute necessity.

Before he could recover his gentlemanly instincts, she brightened. “Oh. It’s you.” And without another word, she turned her back and bent down to peer into a cabinet.

Which treated Will to an absolutely spectacular view of the young woman’s backside. In the current fashion of the moment, she was clothed in a soft, high-waisted gown of some indeterminate, virginal color, which ought to have appeared demure, but which flowed over her body in a foamy, liquid wave. He tried not to stare, but her lean curves appeared very nice indeed, especially the way they seemed to dissolve into a pair of very long legs.

This was a sight for which the land seemed admirably suited, and one which he had not had the pleasure of viewing for quite some time.

William’s curiosity, as well as another, less cerebral part of his anatomy, was piqued.

It took him a moment to drag his brain, and his voice, back up into his throat. “May I be of some assistance to you?” It seemed only polite to ask while he stood there perusing her lovely derrière.

“I doubt it.” She didn’t even spare him a second glance, but continued to rattle through the cabinets.

“What are you doing?” Not that he minded the view.

“Getting a decent drink,” she said with some asperity. With that she stood and turned, bottle in hand, having excavated one of Lord Barrington’s finer French cognacs from the dark recesses of the cabinet. In the low light, the strong architecture of her almost plain face was thrown into relief. She looked as ardent as a ship’s figurehead, long and slender in her flowing gown, with her chin tossed up, daring him to gainsay her.

Not in a thousand years. “Well done,” he said instead, and turned to cross the dark, patterned carpet to the tray, from which he selected two crystal glasses. “I hope you don’t mind if I join you?”

Her surprise was evident in the look she gave him—a combination of chary, narrow suspicion, with her lips pressing together and her eyes creasing ever so slightly at the corners and the beginnings of a smile. Whatever it was, it forestalled the tears. “You’re not going to fuss?”

He shook his head even as he smiled. “No. Should I?”

One straight brow bowed up and away over that pert smile, telling him she knew just as well as he that young ladies ought not drink anything stronger than punch, or perhaps wine at dinner. And certainly not clandestine cognac. “Or tattle?”

As long as she didn’t cry, or giggle, he didn’t give a cold damn what she drank. But she certainly didn’t look like a giggler. She looked a bit plain, and wounded perhaps, but somehow interesting in a very direct way. And she had the bottle.

Will raised his hand in solemn pledge. “I am an officer of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. I do not ‘tattle.’ I assure you, you can trust me.”

She made a sound that was very nearly a sneer. “Trust. I don’t think I should trust anyone.”

“Then you are smart. And I like clever girls. I like girls who have cognac even better.”

“Do you?” Her eyes flicked over him, up and down—a quick appraisal.

He gave her his best version of a charming grin. “Yes. I consider your intention most refreshing.”

“Really?” She tried to look down her pert nose at him. “It was meant to be appalling.”

William could feel a laugh build in his chest. She certainly was a saucy little piece of brightwork, and just the sort of wayward girl he liked. Which was to say, she appeared to be unlike every other insipid miss lining the country’s ballrooms, with their simpers and mealymouthed smiles.

“You’ll have to do better than that, if you hope to appall me. Because you’re holding a bottle of very fine, aged French cognac, and I very much hope I can persuade you to share it.” He held out the glasses in supplication.

“Said the spider to the fly.” Her look was unflinchingly direct. “Don’t think I’m not watching you. Try anything and I’ll knock your daylights out, too.”

“How delightfully bloodthirsty of you to offer, but as fond as I am of a good mill, this evening I am in search only of a decent drink. I’m a sailor, you see. We’re a notoriously thirsty lot.”

His ridiculous pronouncement took her sails aback, and knocked the last of the wobble out of her chin. “Who
are
you?” she breathed.

“Well, I thought you knew. You said, ‘It’s you,’ and I assumed we’d met.” Will waited for her response before he said more. Who knew what sort of plan she might be engineering behind those woefully innocuous, deep blue eyes? One mention of his family name and she might turn into one of the female fortune hunters.

But the bright sheen in her eyes didn’t appear to be of avarice. It was more like wounded defiance—a look he knew all too well. He’d been a defiant young midshipman once himself.

“No,” she finally admitted. “We haven’t been introduced. I only recognized you from the ballroom. You were the only one who—” She shrugged the rest of the sentence away, perhaps still trying to stave off those tears with an attitude of indifference.

“The only one who was impressed?” he offered cordially. “Surely not.”

Her eyes slid up to meet his, dubious but curious. “Were you? Impressed?”

“Yes. And amused. I’m Will Jellicoe. Formally Commander William Jellicoe, of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, but at the moment I’m just another half-pay sailor with a powerful thirst.”

Her chary suspicion didn’t ease, but she nodded, as if she were storing that little piece of information away in her brain. “If you’re in the navy, why aren’t you in uniform?”

“Against the rules. Especially for relatively junior, half-pay officers. Especially when my mother commands me otherwise. And my brother, who is apparently an arbiter of male fashion, said my coat was too shoddy. In fact, he said the damn thing still reeked of tar and black powder. For myself, I hadn’t noticed.”

The girl looked at him for a long moment, her gaze holding steady with his, trying to decipher him, as if his trustworthiness were writ across his forehead. Then she slid a glance toward the door. “Did you lock it?”

Well, damn his eyes. Perhaps
she
was an heiress wary of fortune hunters. Or perhaps she was something else entirely.

While that possibility was vastly intriguing, it was also dangerous. Will may have been the second son, but he was not in the market for a rich wife—nor any wife for that matter. And he had absolutely no intention of getting himself in an untenable position by locking himself in a room with a young miss. “No, I assure you, I have no intention of—”

But she was walking away from his disclaimer, crossing to the door to try the handle. Yet, she didn’t open the door, as he had expected, and as propriety demanded. Instead, she turned the key and then dragged a chair up and jammed the back securely under the door handle so it couldn’t be depressed. “There,” she said as she stepped back. “Now you’re safe.”

He
was
safe
? Locked in a darkened room with a wayward, pugilistic young female who seemed quite experienced at jamming chairs under doors to prevent unannounced entry? Holy hell. His cravat hitched itself tighter. He’d felt safer at Trafalgar.

But damn his eyes, not half as intrigued.

And he was certainly intrigued now, as well as thirsty. And then the wayward girl cemented her appeal by returning directly to uncork the bottle, and pour him a very generous portion of Barrington’s finest, before she took the other glass from him, and retreated a safe distance to fill her own.

And while she did so, her surreptitious gaze took a long, meandering trip from the tip of his polished boots to the top of his sun-bleached head.

William decided to sit back in the deep leather chair and let her look. He hadn’t any idea what game she played, but he was interested enough to see the hand out. She seemed prudently wary of him, keeping her distance, but there were ways around that—patience and charm.

He raised his glass in a toast. “To appalling acquaintances.”

And everything changed. She smiled, a slow, secret grin that spread full across her face, and made dimples appear deep in her cheeks. In the low glow of the firelight, the deliciously impish grin made her look pretty and devilishly sweet. The kind of sweet he wanted to taste.

The impulse caught him out of the blue, but when she smiled, she didn’t seem so plain, or ordinary. Her shuttered, defiant face came alive with warm color and humor, and she became much more of a fey, mischievous woodland creature—all sleek, sandy brown hair and twinkling, knowing eyes the color of the Atlantic on a fine day.

Eyes which she raised to his, as she took a seat in the opposite chair. She held up her own glass in reciprocal toast. “Yes. To appalling acquaintances.”

Well, damn his interested eyes. William shifted uncomfortably in his seat, aware that his body was demonstrably betraying his thoughts. He must get a grip on these unbidden urges. One didn’t go about tasting strange young ladies, trim, nimble, and wayward or not. Their parents invariably didn’t approve, and he didn’t imagine the parents of such a wayward girl would approve of any part of this meeting, from the lack of chaperone right down to the cognac.

But then again, that was what made the wayward ones the only ones worth knowing.

William tipped back his glass and bolted down a goodly portion, letting the sweet fire spread down his throat and into his belly, suffusing his mouth and nose with the pungent, earthy fumes of cognac. Anything to replace the appallingly sudden urge to move closer to her. Anything to douse the low heat building deep in his gut.

One did not taste young country misses. One did not even share a drink with them.

With that admonition in mind, he was entirely surprised to see her take a healthy swallow, without affectation or bravado, inhaling through her nose as she eased the mellow liquid warmth down her throat.

He had half expected her to choke and wheeze at the first delicate sip. But she wasn’t gasping, or even so much as breathing hard. She was smiling that lovely, secret smile he’d seen only moments ago. This was clearly not her first time.

Oh, he liked her.

William smiled back, a large just-beat-the-bloody-French-into-flotsam-and-couldn’t-be-happier, ear-to-ear grin. It was one thing to be physically attracted to a girl, but another thing entirely to actually
like
her.

“You’re to be congratulated.” He raised his glass again. “This is quite superior. I’m very glad you thought of it first, because I would have just settled for the sherry on the tray, and not bothered myself to dig out the good stuff.”

“‘Claret is the liquor for boys,’” she quoted, “‘port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero—’”

“‘Must drink brandy.’” He raised his glass again in salute. “You read as well as drink. Dr. Johnson is a good choice, but hardly the usual fare for young ladies.”

She picked up the volume on the table. “It was he who sent me in search of the brandy.”

“Cognac, to be correct. The Frogs are particular about that, but since we’ve beaten them into flotsam, I reckon we ought to let them have this one little bit of distinction. So you don’t normally drink?”

“I do now,” she answered with a low laugh.

“Then I would advise you to go slowly.”

She held the glass up in front of her, carefully considering it. “Do you know, I think I’m through with ‘slowly.’ And ‘advisedly.’ And ‘obediently,’ for that matter. I think I’d much rather go heedlessly and wrongly and recklessly.”

Oh, he liked her.

“You were smiling just like that,” she observed. “In the ballroom. Laughing at me.”

“At your handy display of pugilistic skill? Yes, I was smiling. But I was not laughing at you. I was admiring.”

She made a small noise of amused disbelief. “You and no one else.”

“Not so. My sister, Claire—do you know her? Well, my sister, Claire, was also all admiration for your ability with your fives.” He made a milling motion with his fists, just in case she didn’t understand his lapse into the vernacular. “I take it you don’t have brothers?”

“No. Why?”

“Well, normally, it’s the sort of thing a girl asks her brother to do, drop old Stubby to the deck like a drunken sailor. Claire tells me Stubby is quite notoriously ‘handsy’—her word, not mine, but it does seem apt.”

There was the slow spreading smile again, lighting her eyes until they all but danced with amusement. “Very apt.”

“But now I think on it, if you don’t have brothers, wherever did you learn to throw a punch like that? You don’t look like you weigh more than a hundredweight—old Stubby must outweigh you by eight stone. A little thing like you doesn’t get that handy with her fives unless she’s got reason, or brothers. It’s usually only boys always pummeling the tar out of each other.”