A Darker Shade of Dead (32 page)

Don't miss Elizabeth Essex's Brava debut,
THE PURSUIT OF PLEASURE,
coming next month!

“I
couldn't help overhearing your conversation.” He wanted to steer their chat to his purpose, but the back of her neck was white and long. He'd never noticed that long slide of skin before, so pale against the vivid color of her locks. He'd gone away before she'd been old enough to put up her hair. And nowadays the fashion seemed to be for masses of loose ringlets covering the neck. Trust Lizzie to still sail against the tide.

“Yes, you could.” Her breezy voice broke into his thoughts.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Help it. You
could
have helped it, as any polite gentleman
should
, but you obviously chose not to.” She didn't even bother to look back at him as she spoke and walked on but he heard the teasing smile in her voice. Such intriguing confidence. He could use it to his purpose. She had always been up for a lark.

He caught her elbow and steered her into an unused parlor. She came easily, without resisting the intimacy or the presumption of the brief contact of hiis hand against the soft, vulnerable skin of her inner arm, but once through the door she just seemed to disolve away, out of his grasp. His empty fingers prickled from his sudden loss. He let her move away and closed the door.

No lamp or candle branch illuminated the room, only the moonlight streaming through the tall casement windows. Lizzie looked like a pale ghost, weightless and hovering in the strange light. He took a step nearer. He needed her to be real, not an illusion. Over the years she'd become a distant but recurring dream, a combination of memory and boyish lust, haunting his sleep.

He had thought of her, or at least the
idea
of her, almost constantly over the years. She had always been there, in his brain, swimming just below the surface. And he had come tonight in search of her. To banish his ghosts.

She took a sliding step back to lean nonchalantly against the arm of a chair, all sinuous, bored indifference.

“So what are you doing in Dartmouth? Aren't you meant to be messing about with your boats?”

“Ships,” he corrected automatically and then smiled at his foolishness for trying to tell Lizzie anything. “The big ones are ships.”

“And they let
you
have one of the
big
ones? Aren't you a bit young for that?” She tucked her chin down to subdue her smile and looked up at him from under her gingery brows. Very mischievous. And very challenging.

If it was worldliness she wanted, he could readily supply it. He mirrored her smile.

“Hard to imagine isn't it, Lizzie.” He opened his arms wide, presenting himself for her inspection.

Only she didn't inspect him. Her eyes slid away to inventory the scant furniture in the darkened room. “No one else calls me that anymore.”

“Lizzie? Well, I do. I can't imagine you as anything else. And I like it. I like saying it. Lizzie.” The name hummed through his mouth like a honeybee dusted with nectar. Like a kiss. He moved closer so he could see the emerald color of her eyes, dimmed by the half light, but still brilliant against the white of her skin. He leaned a fraction too close and whispered, “Lizzie. It always sounds somehow…naughty.”

She turned quickly. Wariness flickered across her mobile face, as if she were suddenly unsure of both herself and him, before it was just as quickly masked.

And yet, she continued to study him surreptitiously, so he held himself still for her perusal. To see if she would finally notice him as a
man
. He met her eyes and he felt a kick low in his gut. In that moment plans and strategies became unimportant. The only thing important was for Lizzie to
see
him. It was
essential
.

But she kept all expression from her face. He was jolted to realize she didn't want him to read her thoughts or mood, that she was trying hard to keep
him
from seeing
her
.

It was an unexpected change. The Lizzie he had known as a child had been so wholly passionate about life, she had thrown herself body and soul into each and every moment, each action and adventure. She had not been covered with this veneer of poised nonchalance.

And yet it was only a veneer. He was sure of it. And he was equally sure he could make his way past it. He drew in a measured breath and sent her a slow, melting smile to show, in the course of the past few minutes, he'd most definitely noticed she was a woman.

She gave no outward reaction, so it took Marlowe a long moment to recognize her response: she looked
careful
. It was a quality he'd never seen in her before.

Finally, after what felt like an infinity, she broke the moment. “You didn't answer. Why are you here? After all these years?”

Her quiet surprised the truth out of him. “A funeral. Two weeks ago.” A bleak, rain-soaked funeral that couldn't be forgotten.

“Oh. I am sorry.” Her voice lost its languid bite.

He looked back and met her eyes. Such sincerity had never been one of Lizzie's strong suits. No, that was wrong. She'd always been sincere, or at least truthful—painfully so as he recalled—but she rarely let her true feelings show.

“Thank you, Lizzie. But I didn't lure you into a temptingly darkened room to bore you with dreary news.”

“No, you came to proposition me.” The mischievous little smile crept back. Lizzie was never the sort to be intimidated for long. She had always loved to be doing things she ought not.

A heated image of her white body temptingly entwined in another man's arms rose unbidden in his brain. Good God, what other things had Lizzie been doing over the past few years that she ought not? And with whom?

Marlowe quickly jettisoned the irrational spurt of jealousy. Her more recent past hardly mattered. In fact, some experience on her part might better suit his plans.

“Yes, my proposition. I can give you what you want. A marriage without the man.”

For the longest moment she went unaturally still, then she slid off the chair arm and glided closer. So close, he almost backed up. So close, her rose petal of a mouth came but a hairsbreadth from his own. Then she lifted her inquisitive nose and took a bold, suspicious whiff of his breath.

“You've been drinking.”

“I have,” he admitted without a qualm.

“How much?”

“More than enough for the purpose. And you?”

“Clearly not enough. Not that they'd let me.” She turned and walked away. Sauntered really. She was very definitely a saunterer, all loose joints and limbs, as if she'd never paid the least attention to deportment and carriage. Very provocative, although he doubted she meant to be. An image of a bright, agile otter, frolicking unconcerned in the calm green of the river Dart, twisting and rolling in the sunlit water, came to mind.

“Drink or no, I meant what I said.”

“Are you proposing? Marriage? To me?” She laughed as if it were a joke. She didn't believe him.

“I am.”

She eyed him more closely, her gaze narrowing even as one marmalade eyebrow rose in assessment. “Do you have a fatal disease?”

“No.”

“Are you engaged to fight a duel?”

“Again, no.”

“Condemned to death?” She straightened with a fluid undulation, her spine lifting her head up in surprise as the thought entered her head, all worldliness temporarily obliterated. “Planning a suicide?”

“No and no.” It was so hard not to smile. Such an arch, charming combination of concern and cheek. The cheek won out: she gave him that feral, slightly suspicious smile.

“Then how do you plan to arrange it, the ‘without the man' portion of the proceedings? I'll want some sort of guarantee. You can't imagine I'm gullible enough to leave your fate, or my own for that matter, to chance.”

A low heat flared within him. By God, she really was considering it.

“And yet, Lizzie, I think you may. I am an officer of His Majesty's Royal Navy and am engaged to captain a convoy of prison ships to the Antipodes. I leave only days from now. The last time I was home, in England, was four and a half years ago and then only for a few months to recoup from a near fatal wound. This trip is slated to take at least eight. Years.”

Her face cleared of all traces of impudence. Oh yes, even Lizzie could be led.

“Storms, accidents and disease provide most of the risk. Don't forget we're still at war with France and Spain. And the Americans don't think too highly of us either. One stray cannon ball could do the job quite nicely.”

“Is that what did it last time?”

“Last time? I've never been dead before.”

The ends of her ripe mouth nipped up. The heat in his gut sailed higher.

“You said you had recovered from a near fatal wound.”

“Ah, yes. Grapeshot, actually. In my chest. Didn't go deep enough to kill me, though afterwards, the fever nearly did.”

Her gaze skimmed over his coat, curious and maybe a little hungry. The heat spread lower, kindling into a flame.

“Do you want to see?” He was being rash, he knew, but he'd done this for her once before, taken off his shirt on a dare. And he wanted to remind her.