Suzanne Robinson (36 page)

He stood and shed his topcoat. Hurling it to the floor, he stomped over to her.

“You plotted this ruse between you. You wanted revenge. It wasn’t enough that I was alone, you wanted me to think of you together, making love.”

A keg of blasting powder went off in Kate’s head. Springing up off the mattress, she brought her fist around and punched Alexis in the stomach. He doubled over her arm, making an
oofing
sound. She raised her other arm, but he dodged out of reach.

“Damn,” he said. Puffing twice, he rubbed his stomach.

“Don’t say anything. Just don’t say anything.” She went to the end of the bed, opened a chest, and pulled out blankets. She tossed them at Alexis’s feet. “I don’t set out to hurt people, Alexis. That’s your favorite pastime, so keep your mouth shut. Maybe that way we can get through this night without killing each other.”

She got into bed again and tried not to watch Alexis as he took off his coat and socks. Rummaging in the covers, she found her book and bent over it. Her hair fell in a russet screen between her face and the man across the room. Why didn’t he find a place to lie down? He was standing there in the yellow glow of the lamp, facing her. She could see his bare chest and the scar that ran down one side of his ribs. The waistband of his pants rode low, and she could see the indentation of his waist.

He moved, and she fastened her gaze on the book. When the light shifted, she looked up. Alexis was standing beside the bed with the lamp in his hand, staring at something beside her head. She turned to see what he was looking at, but saw nothing. A look of wonder transformed his angry features. His eyes lost that hard, snarling-wolf expression and softened. Confused, she watched him raise the lamp and bring it near to her. He slowly reached out with his free hand and touched her hair.

“Like copper ingots cast at the sun,” he said in a whisper.

She scooted away from him. “You see? I’m not the one who’s fickle.”

He dropped his hand. “No, you’re not.” He put the lamp back on the table beside the bed. “I was coming to get you when Val’s letter arrived.”

“I don’t like you anymore, Alexis. And if you liked me, you would never have treated me like fool’s gold.” She shook her head when he tried to speak. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

Kate got under the covers, turned away from Alexis, and closed her eyes. The red blur against her eyelids disappeared as he blew out the lamp. Tears stole from the corners of her eyes. She wiped them away with her fingers while she listened to Alexis spreading his blankets. The tears kept coming, and she resorted to dabbing her eyes with the edge of a sheet. A sob welled up in her throat.
Desperate to keep silent, she fumbled with the sheet and buried her face in it.

Something landed on her back. She sucked in her breath and pulled the sheet from her face. Warm lips were pressing kisses to her ear and her wet cheek.

“Don’t cry, little savage.”

His breath tickled her ear and neck, and the tremor it set off in her body snapped her control.

“G-go away,” she wailed.

She tried to curl up in a ball, but the sheets and blankets grew wings and flew away. She was gathered in the hollow of Alexis’s body. His arms wrapped around her, and she couldn’t push them away. He ducked his head, found her lips, and assaulted them with little nips that spread to her chin and throat. In between pecks he whispered pleas and threats.

“Don’t cry, don’t. Forgive me, please. Dammit, I forbid you to cry. Please. You will forgive me. You have to.”

The demands sounded so bewildered and so helpless, she felt a fluttering in her belly and chest. The fluttering turned into a giggle, which escaped her at the same time that Alexis decided to put his tongue in her mouth. She felt his lips curl into a smile. In the darkness, she could hear his amusement.

“I sound as mad as I once claimed to be.”

“I feel a bit daft myself.” With no light in the cabin, she had to feel her way up to his face. “Your cheek is wet.”

“You cried all over me. If you hadn’t stopped when you did, I’d have needed an umbrella.” He took her face in his hands. “I will not allow you to hate me.”

“I’m afraid.”

“Will you still be afraid if I give you a promise?”

“What kind of promise?”

“I give you my word never to try to drive you away again, and never to lie to you.”

“Lie?”

He hugged her to his chest. “I haven’t been seeing Carolina.”

“Good.” She pulled her arms from between their bodies and wrapped them around Alexis. She heard him sigh with relief.

“Thank God,” he said.

They exchanged lung-crushing squeezes.

“Do you know when I came to my senses?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“It was the night Fulke congratulated me on getting rid of Carolina. He started at me about purity and chastity topped off with port. After a few glasses, I found myself actually listening to him. He ranted about sin and iniquity, something about ‘He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith.’ I nodded like an old dowager at matins. And then we progressed to a catechism. You know, ‘renounce the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanity of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of the flesh.’ And then Fulke held up his glass to me and said, ‘Give not thy soul unto a woman.’ And I laughed.”

“You laughed?”

“Yes. Because at that moment I realized that Fulke was too late. I had already given my soul to a woman, and she was about to take it across an ocean with her.”

“Oh.”

Kate lost interest in Alexis’s soul, for his hand was sliding beneath her dressing gown and nightdress and slithering up her leg. It pinched gently at her waist before traveling on to cup her breast. He squeezed, and she arched her back. She couldn’t see him, but his face nuzzled at the neck of her nightgown, and she felt the heat of his skin and the rapid pace of his breathing.

His excitement reached out and trapped her in a web of eroticism. In turn, she tried to memorize his body with her hands. After only a few moments, Alexis both laughed and cursed while pulling away to snake down her body.
She felt a wet mouth on her ankle. It hopped up her leg and slithered along her torso. Shivering, she giggled and lunged for him. She wrapped her arms around his chest and heaved, catching him unaware. She twisted her body, bringing him down beneath her, and trapped his arms against the mattress on either side of his head.

“Katie Ann, let me go.”

“Never. Not ever, ever, ever.” She bent down, guided only by the sound of his heavy breathing, and found his mouth. Feasting on it, she heard no more objections.

Soon his hips began to thrust in a blind quest, and he pulled his mouth free. “Katie, my love, my mistress, my master, have pity.”

“Poor, poor marquess, has he suffered?”

“Agonies.” He arched his back, lifting her from the bed.

“Without relief?”

“My only solace took herself off.” He groaned, then swore. “I need you, Katie Ann. Now.”

“And I need you, my sweet, beautiful lunatic.”

Encircling Alexis with her arms and legs, Kate gave up teasing. He rolled her beneath him, and the cabin filled with whispers and small gasps, the rustling of sheets and finally cries of pleasure. After spending several hours in happy sin, they at last surrendered to exhaustion. Kate woke again before dawn when Alexis began twirling one of her curls around his finger.

“I do love you,” he whispered into the darkness. “I love you so much, I am filled with it to overflowing. I think I am more besotted than Romeo, Mark Anthony, and Othello all put together.”

Kate tried not to grin foolishly. “It’s all right,” she said, hugging him. “We’ll be besotted together. And think of how much fun we will have irritating Val and Fulke with our lovesick sighs and yearning glances.”

She felt Alexis’s chest bounce and heard him chuckle.
He gave her a kiss that landed on her nose. The second found her mouth. He put his lips to her ear.

“You can trust me with your love.”

“Ah, you have decided that you deserve me after all.”

“Yes.”

“Good, because by the time I got home, I probably would have decided to have you abducted and spirited to me on one of my ships.”

“We shall marry and sail to San Francisco for our wedding trip.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Insolent, teasing peasant girl.”

“Despot.”

He nudged his hips against hers, and she giggled.

“Very well,” he said. “We won’t go to San Francisco. I shall lock you in the Ghost Tower and ravish you whenever I wish.”

Digging her fingers into his buttocks, she wiggled against him until he groaned. “I tell you what. Let me abduct you and carry you off to the wilds of America, and I will let you steal me away and ravish me in the Ghost Tower.”

“It shall be as my lady desires. Now shut up. I need to practice my ravishing.”

Kate heard a loud growl, then Alexis caught her to him and rolled back and forth across the bed. She shrieked and wriggled free. Their laughter echoed in the blackness of the cabin, and neither of them worried about who would tell of the criminal conversation between Miss Katherine Grey and Alexis de Granville.

S
UZANNE
R
OBINSON
has a doctoral degree in anthropology with a specialty in ancient Middle Eastern archaeology. After spending years doing fieldwork in both the U.S. and the Middle East, Suzanne has now turned her attention to the creation of the fascinating fictional characters in her unforgettable historical romances.

Suzanne lives in San Antonio with her husband and her two English springer spaniels. She divides her time between writing and teaching.

SUZANNE ROBINSON
loves to hear from readers. You can write to her at the following address:

P.O. Box 700321
San Antonio, TX 78270-0321

Don’t miss Suzanne Robinson’s next thrilling historical romance
,

T
HE
R
ESCUE

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“Nightshade!”

A gentle voice behind her said, “Yes?”

Maudie yelped and whirled around to scour the shadows. “Nightshade.” Her throat was dry and her lips stuck together. “Nightshade.”

“I already know my name, Maudie,” came the whisper that sent tiny, sweet spikes of pain into her muscles.

Maudie licked her lips, then licked them again because her mouth was so parched. Finally she was able to speak. “You back again, then?”

“I do so detest people stating the obvious. You know that.”

He hadn’t moved from the shadows. Maudie recovered enough to be annoyed with herself for allowing Nightshade to get the better of her so soon. But how could she be blamed for it? He was but a tall shadow topped with gleaming ebony hair. Most of his face was shrouded in darkness; dim candlelight revealed his eyes, dark and hard, like topaz in desert sunlight. They said he got his dark coloring from a grandfather who’d been a Spanish sailor. Perhaps his disturbing intensity, that air of being on the verge of violence, from his grandsire as well. Whatever the case, Nightshade himself had earned his name, for he was as deadly and as subtle as that herb.

Some said he’d been given the appellation because, like nightshade, he was the servant of the devil. Who but a servant of the dark one could appear and vanish at will? He certainly made people think of Satan—dark of color, vicious of tongue, with all the benevolence and mercy of a guillotine. And he was back after having vanished for so long. Maudie and everyone else had thought him dead. Only the devil could do that.

Rubbing her hands on her apron, Maudie eyed the tall shadow. “Inigo Ware’s men are here. You know him, always ready to do you a mischief since—”

“A curse on his head and black depth on his heart. Inigo Ware’s of no interest to me.”

At last Nightshade moved out of the shadows, and it was as if a sorcerer had fashioned an incubus from the blackest void. Maudie’s senses sharpened as he drew alongside her. She felt the tug of his physical presence, the pain of meeting a gaze that captured, mastered and commanded in the length of a sigh. Then he was past her, and she was released from that glinting prison of the soul. Maudie cursed herself as always, irritated that a woman of her years could let a younger man turn her into a slack-jawed twit.

She watched Nightshade drift like mist into the crowded room. His name hissed its way around the tavern, but was soon given tongue by Gin Ginny, the first woman to catch sight of him.

“Nightshade, my love!”

“Choke me dead, it’s Ginny,” Nightshade said with a grin.

Ginny shrieked and hurtled at him, throwing herself into his arms and planting a gin-soaked kiss on his lips. In an instant he was surrounded by women. One or two of Inigo Ware’s men scuttled into the shadows and vanished. Badger Scoggins trotted over to the shrieking group of women surrounding Nightshade. He was followed by Prigg and most of the sailors. Nightshade called for a round of ale for all, and a shout of approval rose throughout the tavern. Revelry erupted, fed by Nightshade’s liberal use of his purse, and not many hours passed before the Maudie had an establishment full of stumbling, befuddled customers. Then the moment came for which she’d been watching. Nightshade untangled himself from Ha’penny Hazel and Alice Treacle and strolled over to her.

“Same room as always, Maudie?”

“Right.”

Without looking back, Nightshade vanished into the back room that led to the kitchen. A few minutes later, Badger trotted after him, then Prigg. When she’d made certain that their leaving hadn’t been noted, Maudie left the bar in Mayhew’s charge, went through to the kitchen and up the back stair. In the last room down a dark hall, Nightshade was sprawled on a rickety bed, his legs crossed at the ankles on the
footboard, his gaze fixed on the tips of his boots. His head was propped on his arms, which rested on a pile of her best pillows. Her only good pillows.

Maudie shut the door, put her back to it and crossed her thick arms over her chest. “Why are you back?”

“Dear Maudie,” Nightshade said without looking at her. “As subtle as pig’s dung. I’ve missed you too.”