Dance of Seduction (31 page)

She nodded. “And you were the best son you could be.”

The vise snapped, and he could feel his blood rushing freely again. She understood about his mother. Not even his otherwise understanding uncle had understood that.

Words poured out of him, words he couldn’t seem to stop. “I always gave Mother some excuse for where I got the money. I told her I got it plucking chickens for a poulterer or running errands for the painter next door or whatever I could think of.”

He snorted. “As if such jobs were to be had. Jobs were scarce enough during those tumultuous times, even for natives of Geneva. But I was a fatherless boy whom everyone assumed was the ‘English whore’s’ by-blow, so there were
certainly none for me.” He ruffled Clara’s hair. “And no Home for the Reformation of Pickpockets, either.”

“I wish there could have been one.” Clara tightened her arm about his waist. “No child should have to suffer such responsibility alone.”

The passionate outrage in her face on his behalf made a lump settle in his throat. “I wasn’t entirely alone in my hell, you know. I did have my mother.”

“Yes, but you couldn’t talk to her about it, and that makes all the difference. You had to bear the weight of your guilt alone.” She rubbed her cheek over his chest. “But were you never caught?”

“A few times. They didn’t find the goods on me, however, so I always managed to convince the judge I wasn’t guilty. But I spent the night in jail each time. I told my mother I stayed with friends. Since I often liked to be gone when one of her lovers was there, she accepted that explanation.”

“Are you sure? Many mothers know when their children are lying, although they may not admit it.”

“I think she chose to believe my lies. The alternative was facing the truth of how far we’d sunk, and she just couldn’t. It would mean acknowledging how badly she’d blundered by trusting her first lover. I suppose that’s why she didn’t tell me about the baron until the very end.”

Clara cast him a questioning glance. “Why do you call him the baron?”

Bitterness clogged his throat. “What should I call him—Father? He wasn’t father to me in any respect. Even after my uncle fetched me, the baron wanted naught to do with me. Uncle Lew was the one who administered my care from that moment on.”

“I don’t understand—your uncle sounds like a good man. So when things deteriorated in Geneva, why didn’t your
mother return to England? Surely her brother would have helped her even if your father would not.”

“I’ve often wondered about that. There were the practical problems of escaping Geneva during the Terror and then afterward, with Napoleon taking control…I suppose it would have been difficult.”

As Clara listened, she stroked him, wordlessly giving him her sympathy. And oddly enough, her coddling didn’t make him as uncomfortable as he’d expected. In truth, it soothed him.

“But it was more complicated than that,” he went on. “For her to come back, after having been pronounced dead, meant bringing shame upon her family. The truth would have come out, and they would have had to bear the scandal of her disgrace. At least in Geneva she was anonymous, and her shame didn’t stretch to anyone else.”

“Except you,” Clara said softly.

“Yes, but in England it would have stretched to me, too. They probably would have taken me from her, and I don’t think she could have borne that. I was all she had left.” He shrugged. “And Mother always had high hopes about the men who entered her life. She was always convinced that her latest lover was a good man who would set us up for life, treat her well, and take me under his wing. She was a woman of endless hopes until—”

“Until what?”

No, he couldn’t tell her about that. He just couldn’t. “Until she realized she was dying.” He dragged in a ragged breath, fighting down the pain. “Then she knew she had no choice but to provide for my future. So she wrote to my uncle, and he used his influence to gain passage into Geneva, since it was under Napoleon’s rule by then. That’s when we learned that Uncle Lew had never given up hope of finding
his sister, though he’d had no success tracing her flight from England. Thank God he had a few days with her at the last.”

“What did she die of?”

“Consumption.” The lie came easily. He’d said it often enough—to Sebastian, to Ravenswood, to whoever asked about his mother. Only he and his uncle knew the truth.

Clara cast him a searching glance as if she sensed he was lying. But how could she? Nobody else ever had.

He shook off the eerie sensation. “You know the rest of it, for the most part. After I left Geneva, I was sent to a school in Ireland until I was old enough to be put in the navy.” He smiled. “The navy proved perfect for me. All the discipline and all those pesky rules were just the thing to set straight the wild boy I’d become. I had an excellent captain who whipped me into shape—”

“Not literally, I hope. I know that there are harsh captains.”

“Mine wasn’t, thank God. He was a very good man. By the time we first saw battle, I was itching to fight, to prove myself to my uncle who’d saved me from a life in the streets of Geneva and to all the others who’d given me a chance. So I fought like the devil and distinguished myself.”

“Until you ended up a captain yourself.”

“Yes.”

“And a spy in Spitalfields.” She paused. “But you said you didn’t volunteer, and I get the distinct impression that this isn’t the sort of assignment you would have wanted.”

“No.”

“So why are you doing it?”

“Ravenswood has promised me a first-rater ship to command. It may be the only way for me to go back to sea.” He didn’t mention Ravenswood’s offer of a position in the Home Office. She would never understand why he’d prefer going back to sea to that.

She turned her head to stare off across the room. “And are you…very eager to return to the sea?”

He couldn’t mistake the hitch in her voice. She was certainly a Woman with Expectations. And what was he to tell her now that he’d ruined her? She had a right to her Expectations, after all. He might not be a gentleman, but he’d never been a cad.

“I’m eager to return to commanding a ship, that’s all. It’s been a few years now. The navy has been a bit perturbed with me, you see, because I…er…got into that sticky business with the pirates, and although I was cleared of blame—”

“Lord Ravenswood told me about that. And even if he hadn’t, I knew a lot about it from Lord Winthrop.”

“Don’t believe a word Winthrop says.” Morgan scowled. “I had naught to do with his being robbed. I was merely a sailor on the Pirate Lord’s ship, earning my way back to England. I didn’t receive a shilling of the prize money, yet Winthrop acts as if I masterminded the entire attack.”

She surprised him by laughing, then running a caressing hand down his thigh. “Yes, well, Lord Winthrop is a rather unpleasant man.”

“So I gather.” He paused, then added in as light a tone as he could manage, “He has his eye on you, it appears.”

With a teasing smile, she rubbed her foot along his calf. “Are you jealous of Lord Winthrop?”

He wished she would stop touching him so temptingly. It was rousing him where it shouldn’t, and she probably didn’t even realize it. “That arse? Certainly not.”

“You ought to be. My aunt is determined to see a match made between me and Lord Winthrop. She thinks the earl would make me the perfect husband.”

When she innocently laid her hand near his already bur
geoning erection, he sucked in a breath. “And what do you think?”

“I think that if I married him, I would either die of tedium or brain him with a poker within the week. The last man on earth I shall ever marry is Lord Boring. He possesses none of the qualities I desire in a man.”

“Oh?” he eked out as her hand inched in an unmistakable direction. “And what qualities might those be?”

“A quick brain. A good heart. A generous temper.” She caught his now rampant erection in her hand. “And a very sturdy instrument.”

She knew exactly what she was doing, the little witch! With a growl, he rolled her beneath him. Staring down into her laughing face, he rubbed his hard length against her soft nest of hair. “Don’t tease me, angel, unless you’re prepared to face the consequences.”

She smiled impishly, then entwined her arms about his neck and pulled him down to her. “Don’t tease
me
, sir, unless you’re prepared to face the same.”

He didn’t even attempt to fight her. Not when her concern for him made him desire her again with a fierceness bordering on pain. He wanted to lose himself in her warmth, bury his past in her soothing smile, find peace in her embrace. He didn’t know what god had sent him such an angel, but he was devil enough not to resist when heaven was handed to him.

Much later, when they’d finished a second soul-searing consummation and Clara lay asleep, he slid quietly from the bed and reached for his drawers. But before he could put them on, he spotted the blood smearing his thighs. It startled him. For a second, he thought his wound had started bleeding again.

Then he realized what it was. Clara’s blood. Her virgin’s blood.

Self-disgust roiled in his belly at the sight. Moving qui
etly so as not to disturb her peaceful sleep, he found a stray towel and washed the crimson stain from his loins.

He wished he could wash it from his conscience as well, but that was impossible. How could he have deflowered a woman he admired so much? He’d stolen from her what most people of her station prized, and without offering so much as a promise of marriage.

Such a promise must be given now, no matter what difficulties it presented. He’d often ignored his uncle’s teachings about gentlemanly behavior, but one stricture he’d always abided by: no man worth his salt took advantage of a woman.

If he did—as Morgan in a moment of weakness had taken advantage of Clara’s sensual nature—then he paid the consequences. Very well, Morgan would marry her. He refused to be like his mother’s lovers, satisfying his own needs at the expense of a woman’s reputation and future. Whatever it cost him, he would make it right.

And if she refused his suit? Morgan eyed her thoughtfully as he drew on his drawers. From what he’d heard, she’d never sought a husband.

But then she’d never bedded any man either. No, she was too sensible not to accept his suit. Women like her didn’t take lovers, and if they did let themselves be seduced, they prayed that their seducers would marry them.

So Morgan would marry her, even if the thought scared him witless. Marriage to Clara…oh, God. She would try to make him into a replica of Ravenswood and his brother, a gentleman in truth instead of in name. She would meddle in his affairs, expect him to come to heel, want him to behave as his station demanded.

And care about him, fuss over him, cradle him in her welcoming arms.

That was worst of all. Because he craved that too damned much, and craving something was the surest way to lose it. It
was safer not to yearn—he knew that in his head. Yet he still hadn’t driven the yearning from his heart.

It was this cursed Spitalfields, where the yearning was amplified in every person around him. It hung in the air like fog, seeped into house and tavern. It drove boys to steal, women to sell their bodies, men to drink. And it drove him to desire things he’d given up on long ago. Love. Children. Happiness.

He had none of that at sea. He didn’t want it or miss it there. Once buried in the routine of ship life, breathing air that smelled of naught but salt and fish, he could function like a cog in a wheel. Something always needed doing on a ship. Battles must be fought, ports explored, maneuvers attempted. He could forget for months at a time all the things he craved so badly.

All the things Clara made him crave again. That’s why he must marry her and return to sea before she found out what he really was and turned from him in disgust. Before he was lulled into thinking his cravings might finally be satisfied.

Yes, he could handle that sort of distant marriage. She could live here and take care of her beloved Home, and he would see her between his sails to Africa and Gibraltar and wherever duty took him.

So why did that prospect seem suddenly so unappealing? Casting her a quick glance, he sighed and moved toward the front shop. He had to get some air. He needed to make plans that didn’t involve holding her close every night for the rest of his life, and he couldn’t do that with her lying there so sweetly sleeping, making his blood thunder in his chest and his throat draw tight with longing.

He started for the front room of the shop, then halted to grab his knife as an afterthought. Sliding it inside the waistband of his drawers at the small of his back, he left the back room and closed the door behind him. He felt his way to the
side door and found the candle he usually kept there, the one he should have looked for when they’d first come in. Lighting it, he walked to the front and set it on the counter.

As he stood in the shadows near the window, he started out at the nearly deserted street. A glance at the clock said it was 3
A.M
. Soon he’d have to wake her. No matter what she said, he refused to have her leave his shop in broad daylight when anybody might see. If she covered her head and face, he could easily sneak her into a waiting hack tonight, and she could go home.

Home, away from him. And she’d have to stay away from him for as long as his investigation continued. Unfortunately, it might be months before this mess was settled, and that presented another problem. What if after tonight she found herself with child? What then?

The thought of Clara carrying his babe filled him with a yearning so intense it terrified him.
Bon Dieu
, but he should never have gone so far with her. He should have kept his damned prick in his breeches.

A knock at the side door broke into his thoughts. He tensed. It must be the Specter, which meant it was time to return to business. Checking to be sure the door to the back room was firmly closed, he strode to the side door and opened it.

The hooded figure who stood in the alley a few feet away bore little resemblance to the one Clara had described. For one thing, there was no hint of a face beneath the deep hood, not a single flash of the pale, clean-shaven chin Clara had spoken of.