Almost a Scandal (46 page)

“No.” The quiet, but insistent, sincerity in his voice stopped her. “Like a woman. I never imagined you looking so very, very much like a woman. No. Like a
lady
.”

Sally held herself very, very still, as something too fragile to be hope tried to blossom in her chest. And in that moment, he stepped close, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath against her skin and the strength that emanated from his tall, powerful body.

“Ah, speechless at last. This would be my opening, then.” And he lowered his head toward hers.

Sally watched spellbound as his mouth came closer and his eyes fell shut at the first trembling contact of their lips. It was the barest of touches, so light and so bittersweet it was almost unbearable.

And then his lips firmed and softened all at the same time, and he covered her mouth, pressing heat and wonder into her.

It was too hard. It was too soon. If she opened to him and gave in to the opiate of her hope, she would never be able to come back.

But he couldn’t hear the words in her head, and his mouth was covering hers so she could not speak them. He pressed in, leaning into her, licking at her lower lip, teasing and worrying at it until she was kissing him back, inching the tip of her tongue forward to touch his. And then he was in her mouth, and it was bliss, and deliverance, and redemption and everything it could be. He was everything he could be, and everything she wanted.

She let her hands rise up, to run and fist his dark, glorious hair between her fingers, and press—

“Sally?” The warning voice came only a moment before the door swung open.

It was only Grace, thank God, and not her father. Or worse, her brothers. The moment it took for Grace’s eyes to adjust to the dim light gave Sally the time to spring away from Col and set herself to rights.

“My dear,” Grace said as she came in, reaching her hands out to Sally. “Are you quite all right?” Her glance darted between the two of them. “Oh!”

Sally felt the heat of a blush rush across her cheeks as awareness flared in Grace’s eyes. She shot a glance at Col, who had drawn himself into his usual attitude of stony indifference, though there was a flush of high color under the tan of his skin.

Grace took another step forward before she came to an abrupt stop. “Oh, I beg your pardon.” Her hand rose to her mouth to cover her shock. “I never imagined, but I should have seen. Of course. You’re in love.”

She grasped Sally’s hands and kissed her on the cheek before she began to back toward the door. “I’ll … I’ll see to it you won’t be disturbed. For a few minutes longer only, mind you. I’ll put the others off.”

And she hurried out to shut the door behind her.

Sally stood where she was, poised on that knife’s edge, between the past and the future. And for the first time in her life, she was too afraid to do anything, or even speak.

But Col wasn’t afraid. “It would seem, Sally Kent, that your real secret is at last out.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

She hadn’t smiled at him. Not once.

Col’s own smile had been knocked off his face by the sight of her, across the room, as he had entered her father’s house. He had not expected what he saw—a beautiful young woman laughing amongst her friends and family. Hadn’t she told him she was no good in a ballroom? Hadn’t that been why he’d come?

He had expected the girl he had left in the gunroom of
Audacious,
wounded and grinding her teeth to hold in the pain. He had expected the atrocious scar, which at the time he left her had waved its banner of black silk across her temple and cheek. He had expected her to be seated quietly by the side of the room, attended occasionally by her family.

He had expected, quite frankly, to save her.

But she didn’t need saving. She’d somehow already saved herself.

The situation made him feel the way he did when he had first put in at Plymouth, determined to come to her. The way he always felt on land—unbalanced and unsure. A fish very much out of water.

She hadn’t smiled at him. But she had kissed him.

It was promising. And it gave him a place to start. “Your secret is out, Sally Kent. Everyone knows you love me. Everyone but you.”

Her mouth, her lovely apricot-marmalade mouth, slid open in astonishment. She stood as if transfixed, suspended between two wants, holding herself back, as if she were both afraid of him and afraid he would leave.

Col decided to leave her in no doubt. He stepped close, and gathered her to him, sliding his hands around the small span of her waist. She had lost weight, which was scarcely possible, given how much better Cliff House’s kitchen was bound to be than any gunroom cookery.

And there were other, more subtle, changes as well. The breasts that he had spent so much time imagining were pushed high and round by the incredible gown. He wanted to tell her that with breasts like these, she needn’t worry about her scar. No man in his right mind would look at her face when there was such a glorious alternative.

But he had learned better than to tell such things to Kent. She would get indignant, and he would be told off and banished before he could use any of his better persuasions. And he had much better persuasions.

“When I close my eyes, I can scarcely recognize you at all. You feel different. And you don’t smell like a sailor any-more. You smell sweet and clean and—”

“Are you telling me I stank before? Are you saying—”

He stopped her mouth with a kiss. “Shut up, Kent. You smelled no better and no worse than any twenty boys living on a crowded orlop could do. No,” he contradicted himself. “You smelled of
castile
soap. But now you smell as you look—entirely of woman. Of something—” Words began to fail him. “Fresh and new.”

“It is only soap now. It’s nothing special, or magical.” She was shaking her head, preparing her arguments.

He refused to let her. He had come all this way, and endured so much, for one purpose. For her. He would not be deterred now. “No, it is only
you
. And it is unique.”

In response, she crushed her lip between her teeth, still trying desperately to hold back. He wouldn’t let her. He wanted to kiss her again, and bend her over his arms as he took her mouth, but she was stiff and unyielding—everything about her posture still warned him off.

He changed tack, shifting to windward. “And what about me? Do I not smell nice? Do I not look nice? I rigged myself up like this for you. Are you not pleased to see me? Have you not thought about me? Thought about how on earth I might be getting along without you on board to help me, and to see all the things that only you and I could see? Have you not worried about me, even a little?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I wanted to know. Of course I thought of you often. And you look just fine. Very fine, if you must know. But you do know, for you have a mirror and a brain, so you must know how uncommonly handsome you are turned out.”

“Thank you. It does me no end of good to know you find me handsome.” He grasped her hands, cold and white within his brown clasp. “You must know I’ve done it all for you, Sally Kent. To impress you. To remind you. To tell you. That I love you.”

Col could feel his pulse, his heart, slamming against the inside of his chest. He was open and exposed, luffing in the breeze, until she would decide which way to steer.

She was frowning, and shaking her head. “I think you love the person I was. If you love anyone, it’s Kent, not Sally. But I’m not Kent anymore. I’ve changed. Everything has changed.”

“How?” His voice was nothing but gravel. “To me your scar changes nothing. Damn my eyes, but I can barely see it.”

“No,” she said carefully, as if she were thinking her way through. “The scar is just superficial, and I will not allow it to be the measure of who I am as a person. But neither can I now allow my usefulness, or my seaworthiness—for lack of a better term—to be the sole measure of my worth, either.”

“Sally Kent, do you think I only value you for your
seaworthiness?
That I liked you—that I love you—because you’re useful?”

“Of course.” This time she was frowning at him. “Don’t try to deny it, because you know it’s true.”

“My darling Kent, you daft girl. I like Moffatt. I find him useful and highly seaworthy, but I’ve never thought of kissing him.”

“Well, that’s because he’s a man.”

“True. What about Long Peg? She was useful—eminently useful, according to many—and she’s certainly seaworthy.”

“Col, that’s not the point.”

“Which is that I like you because you are all those things and more. But mostly because you are simply you. You could do anything, or nothing. You could sit around and drink tea all day long from this day forward—although I would be very surprised if you did—being nothing but decorative instead of useful, and I would still love you. And I would still want to marry you.”

“Col. You can’t mean it?”

“Why not?” He kissed her to prove it.

He had told himself he would learn restraint with her. He told himself he would be gentle and loving, but everything about her tested his restraint. He kissed her like a man too long at sea who has forgotten the taste of freshwater. He dove into the softness and welcome of her mouth.

“Sally,” he began, reaching for the blazing splendor of her hair, all bound up in ladylike precision. He wanted to see it down. He wanted to let it slide through his fingers and see it fan out across a pillow. “Let me kiss you. Let me be with you. Let me take care of you and make you mine. Because whether you realize it or not, I am already yours.”

“I don’t need you to take care of me.”

“Kent. Haven’t you been listening? I need you to take care of
me
. To watch my back. No one else can possibly do it. No one else ever has. Only you. We can take care of one another. Please, Sally.”

He could see the change in her the moment she started to consider the possibility. Her face began to clear. The warm colors, hidden beneath layers of rice powder, began to fill back into her face, like a painting taking shape before his eyes.

“Oh, Col.” She smiled at him slowly. That impish, mischievous, gamin smile that spread like the rising dawn across her face. “For God’s sake, call me Kent while you’re kissing me.”

He grabbed her up in her arms. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

*   *   *

They were married within the solid stone walls of the Church of King Charles the Martyr, as generations of Kents had done before, on a day so very much like the first—streaming down with rain—that Sally took it as a propitious sign.

Grace had found another perfect dress—a blue watered silk that made Sally feel elegant and strong, and did not prompt her brothers to make unflattering alliterations.

Col surprised her entirely by wearing a blazingly new uniform of a post captain, his gold epaulettes shining in the watery light streaming through the stained-glass windows.

She did not even wait until she and her father had reached the altar. “Col! You’ve made post!”

In answer, he gave her one of his slow, unfurling smiles, and spread his arms wide. “As you see.”

“But I thought—”

“Dearly beloved,” the rector began.

“Why did you not tell me?” Sally asked over the prayer.

“It was meant to be a surprise. A wedding present.”

“It cannot be a wedding present if there is no wedding,” her father reminded her.

Sally was not in the least chastened. She may not have eaten millers, but she’d eaten colder stares for breakfast. She kept her eyes on Col. “Do you have a ship?”

“Miss Kent,” the rector intoned severely. “If you would please postpone your inquiries—”

“I think not. Grace tells me there are to be no secrets between a husband and wife, so I think I ought to know exactly what my bridegroom’s prospects are before I marry him.”

“You’ll be happy to find I’m quite rich,” Col offered. “I’ve earned a very respectable fortune from some very nice prizes. You would be very pleased to know that a xebec frigate pays out well, but not nearly as well as a French 74. We got a very high share of that one. And then there was a very fine yacht that I have fond memories of.”

“Fond?” But she wouldn’t be sidetracked even if her skin was heating inside the fine silk of the dress. “What about a ship?”

“A ship? Yes. Did you know
Swiftsure
has been taken back into the fleet? You will be happy to know our Captain McAlden has been gifted with the command of her.”

That did indeed make her very happy. “How wonderful. She was a wonderfully stout-built ship. Perhaps he will be posted to the West Indies so he might see his Lady McAlden more often. She must be missing him.”

“Yes, but you must attend to me, Kent, or you’ll never get your answers or your wedding.”

“Sir!” the rector interjected.

But Col sailed on. “Now, where was I?”

“You were speaking of
Swiftsure
being taken back into the fleet.”

“Clever girl. Yes, as the Admiralty had already commissioned a new
Swiftsure
while she was with the French, he’s had to rename her. Do you want to know what he’s christened her?”

“By all means, if it will get you to your point.”

“
Irresistible
. I thought he had named it after you, but apparently he was thinking of
his
wife.”

“Col.” She gave him her happiest smile.

But he was Captain Colyear, and he was standing at the altar, so he continued on in his wryly grave, straightforward way. “And don’t you want to know who has command of
Audacious
?”

“You can’t mean— Col!”

“I can. How soon do you think you’d like to go aboard, Mrs. Colyear?”

Sally did not know how she could be any more happy, like that honeybee buzzing with the nectar of happiness. “Very soon. But we had best attend to the business of making me Mrs. Colyear first.”

“Thank God,” the rector and her father said together.

“Although”—her smile was still all for Col—“now that I think on it, perhaps I would prefer to make a scandal.”

“Too late.” Col smiled back. “You’ve had your chance at that. And when I take you aboard
Audacious
this time, I mean it to be for good.”