Lord of Devil Isle (8 page)

She whirled around to face him and her eyes flared wide. Her lovely mouth formed a gasping “Oh!” as she grabbed up the towel to cover herself.

“What the devil do you think you’re doing here?”

“I should think that’s obvious.” His gaze swept slowly over her exposed wet skin.

Then his eyes narrowed, refusing to be distracted by the glistening tops of her breasts and the length of her shapely bare legs. He thanked God for small towels as he strode around the privacy screen and grasped her shoulders. He turned her around to get a closer look at the devastation of her back.

“Who did this?” he demanded again, yanking the towel down so he could see the full extent of the damage.

“If you don’t leave this instant, I’ll scream,” she threatened over her shoulder as she tried to wiggle free of his grip.

“If you were going to scream, you’d have done it already.” He shook his head at the way her perfect flesh had been marred.

He ran a fingertip along one stripe that started below her left shoulder blade and ended at the bottom of her right rib cage. Tiny muscles shivered under her skin. She’d been put through hell and her ravaged flesh retained a memory of the nightmare in its very fibers.

Rage boiled through his veins. A muscle ticked at his jawline.

“Name the man who did this, Eve.” His tone was silky and even, but laden with menace. “Wherever he is, I’ll find him. And I’ll take great pleasure in gutting the bastard. Slowly.”

“I don’t know his name.”

She twisted out of his grasp, leaving only her towel in his hands. Naked, she skittered around to the other side of the privacy screen and wrapped her fingers over the top of it.

“Don’t come any closer.”

As if that thin piece of silk could stop him if he was determined to follow.

He looked at her lost towel and then back to her, raising a quizzical brow. “Why haven’t you screamed, by the way?”

“I…I’m not the excitable sort. I didn’t scream about the shark, did I?”

“No, you didn’t,” he admitted, but he’d wager the
Susan Bell
she’d screamed while those stripes were being laid. He’d seen men he judged to be tougher than he try to keep mum during a flogging. To a man, they’d ended up wailing and pleading, their spirit completely broken along with their flesh.

“Now, please leave and I’ll not mention this to—”

“Oh.” He snapped his fingers as the realization dawned. “Now I know why you don’t scream. You don’t want anyone else to see your back.”

She looked away from him and he knew he was right.

“That’s why you insist on wearing gowns that lace up the front,” he said. “That’s why you don’t have Daya attend you in your bath as the others do. I’ll have you know she came to me the other day very concerned that you were unhappy with her service.”

Eve worried her bottom lip.

“You need privacy, even from your lady’s maid, so you can keep your secret.”

She glared at him. “Expecting others not to invade my bath doesn’t seem an unreasonable demand.”

“I didn’t invade,” he reminded her. “I knocked and you invited me to enter.”

“I assumed you were Daya.”

“My dear Miss Upshall, I cannot be held to account for your assumptions.” He leaned toward the privacy screen till he caught a whiff of her clean, jasmine-scented skin. She smelled good enough to eat. “Just as you are not to blame for my assumption that you were a gently bred lady. But I won’t hold the truth against you.”

“I’ve told you the truth.”

“Perhaps,” he allowed. “However, I can think of no reason why a lady of quality would bear the marks you bear.”

She turned her face away, unwilling to meet his gaze.

“Unless you are not the lady your dress and demeanor proclaim you to be,” he said, dipping his toe in the unexplored water of that new idea. If she weren’t a lady of good family, the impediments to her becoming his mistress dwindled by the moment. He took a step toward the edge of the privacy screen. “Shall we test that notion?”

“Another step and I
will
scream, I promise you.”

“No, you won’t and we both know it,” Nick said. “So as long as you’re in this delightful state of undress, we’ll remain unmolested because you can’t chance anyone else seeing your back.”

“So you intend to take advantage of a lady’s misfortune,” she accused, her eyes narrowed to slits. “You loathsome toad. You’re absolutely despicable.”

“Alas, dear Eve, you have no idea.” His hand shot to
his chest as if her barb had struck home. Then a wicked grin tilted his mouth. “However, even the depths of my depravity do not extend to forcing myself on an unwilling woman.”

“What do you call this then?”

“Negotiation,” he said with a grin. “A parley over the terms of surrender, if you will.”

“I am not yours to be had for the asking.”

“No, you’re actually mine for the taking.” He stepped around the edge of the screen and panic contorted her features. There was no cloth close by, so she covered her breasts with one arm while her other hand shielded her sex from his view. Tears trembled on her dusky lashes.

If he listened to his cock, he’d cheerfully toss her on the bed and swive the living lights out of her. She was clearly in need. With only a little skillful bedplay, she’d remember that her body was clamoring for a man’s touch. Hadn’t he caught her with her cunning little fingers trying to satisfy the ache between her legs in the bath?

But while his cock spurred him on, his conscience flayed him. He wanted this woman. Wanted her with a desperation that bordered on madness, but not like this.

He wanted her soft and willing. He wanted her begging for him. He wanted her to need him just as desperately as he was coming to need her.

He ran a feverish gaze over the hills and valleys of her form. A pleasing arrangement of soft and slender, she was all that was woman. A joy to his eyes and a siren’s call to his throbbing cock.

But there’d be no joy in forcing her. He’d take her willing or not at all.

“Fortunately for you, I do possess a few scruples,” he
said softly as he draped the towel over her shoulders and turned around to give her privacy. “But only a few, so don’t tempt me further.”

He heard the padding of her bare feet on the polished heart-of-pine floor and the rustle of fabric. When he turned back around, she’d pulled on a wrapper and knotted the belt at her waist. Since the sight of her body was still burned in his brain, the thin fabric offered her no shield from his imagination.

But the disturbing image of her scarred back reared up to slap him.

“Flogging is a serious punishment, reserved for serious crimes,” he said, propping a hip on the edge of her bed. “What did you do?”

“Nothing.” Her chin quivered, but she raised it slightly. “I did nothing to merit the lash. And I did not lie to you. I
am
wellborn. My father was Sir Anthony Upshall of Kent. I am a lady born and I expect to be treated as one.”

“If that’s the case, the insult done to your back must have carried a double sting,” he said. She’d have been bare-breasted while that sort of punishment was administered, he was sure. Stripped to the waist and paraded to the stake with a crowd of onlookers jostling for the best position. His fingers itched to strangle the lot. “What were you accused of, then?”

Her lips thinned into a narrow line. “If I’m innocent, what does it matter?”

“It matters to me.” The words slipped out before he thought better of them. They were dangerously close to a declaration that she meant something to him. “I mean, your pain matters. Um, naturally when someone…anyone really…is unjustly accused…it should matter to…all civilized people.”

Christ, that was eloquent.

She had him as tangle-tongued as Higgs. He did
not
have feelings for this woman. He would not allow it.

This was just about the bedding he richly deserved from her. Nothing more.

“In this instance, you are an exceptional case, Captain. You’d be surprised how little people care for another’s pain if it affords them a bit of entertainment.”

“I wish I’d been there to stop them,” he said through clenched teeth. Anger and lust coursed through him so hotly and so intermingled that he was at a loss to separate them.

“I wish you had, too.” She turned away from him and leaned on the open French door, looking out onto the little private garden. She sighed and breathed in the perfumed air.

He hoped the riot of flowers gave her solace. Hannah had certainly loved them.

Where the devil did that come from?
He’d often gone for months without thinking of his dead wife. He banished her quickly to the back of his mind. No point living in the past when there was every chance he might soon coax this warm, vibrant woman before him into his bed.

“You seem to enjoy my gardens,” he said, coming up behind Eve. Her hair was tumbling from its topknot in beguiling little tendrils along her nape. He brought one lock to his lips and inhaled deeply. Her skin looked so soft, his hands were on her shoulders before he realized it. “I’m glad the flowers please you.”

She flinched under his touch, but surprisingly, she didn’t pull away.

“It is beautiful here,” she admitted.

Was it his imagination or did she lean into him by the slightest of measures?

“Beauty for the eye has a way of healing the soul, I’m
told.” Encouraged, he kneaded her shoulders softly. She sighed again and bent her head toward first one, then the other shoulder, as if working out the cricks in her muscles. “Perhaps being here will ease your pain. I can help you forget. Let me try, Eve.”

The wrapper slipped off one shoulder and he lowered his lips to taste her flesh. Her breath hitched as he delivered a string of baby kisses up to her ear before he took the soft lobe between his lips and sucked. He considered it a minor miracle that she didn’t pull away.

Instead, she made a small noise of pleasure, so faint he couldn’t be sure if he’d only imagined it.

His cock sprang to jubilant life, just in case.

Nick could scarce believe his luck. He ran his hands down her arms and then slid one around her to pull her closer to him. Surely she could feel his desire pressing against her bottom, but she didn’t object. He purposely positioned his hand beneath her breast, poised to cup it. Nick teased along the lower crease with his thumb instead of grasping her immediately. Rushing this woman had been ineffective. Perhaps a campaign of stealth would yield the reward he sought.

He nibbled back down her neck, noticing the way her breath caught. When she reached up a tentative hand to ruffle his hair, he nearly whooped in victory, but settled for a love bite on her neck instead.

She moaned softly.

It was time for a strategic advance.

He moved his hand up, brushing her breast lightly. She arched her back, pressing her softness into his palm. Her nipple was already tight, but when he parted the wrapper to touch her bare flesh, he purposely avoided that taut peak. Instead, he circled it slowly, tormenting that needy bit of flesh with the anticipation of his caress.

“You’re beautiful, Eve.” He slid the wrapper off on
one side and bent his head to place a soft kiss on her scarred shoulder blade.

A muffled sob escaped her lips when his lips touched her ruined back.

He’d intended to claim her nipple with his fingers at the same time that he kissed her back. But before he could capture that tight bud, Eve turned in his arms and palmed his cheeks. Without seeming to notice or care that her robe was open and nearly off, she raised herself on tiptoe, never taking her aqua eyes from his. She tilted her mouth up and kissed him, softly at first and then with an urgency that thrilled him to his toes.

She’d struck her colors and run up the white flag. Eve Upshall was as good as his.

Foolish, foolish, foolish,
Eve chanted to herself even as she chased his tongue with her own. She knew it was beyond folly to give in to the terrible cravings this man stirred in her. Every ounce of reason argued against it. But reason was no match for the urges of her body.

He’d seen her back and still called her beautiful.

He’d pressed a healing kiss to the horrible scars.

Something inside her she’d thought shriveled and dead rose up. Her battered heart sang.

His mouth found her breasts, tugging and suckling. Desire streaked from her nipples to her womb. The deep call of need that she’d started to assuage in her bath and then denied in frustration and loneliness, began afresh in a low drumbeat between her legs.

His hands were everywhere. Her skin danced where his rough calluses nicked it. The stubble of his cheek against her ribs, his tongue, warm and wet as it dipped into her navel—she was drowning in a wash of sensation.

Then he dropped to his knees before her and covered her with his mouth. Her knees nearly buckled, but his hands massaging her buttocks kept her upright.

His tongue found her cleft and sweetly divided her. He found her aching nub and teased it.

She was dimly aware that words were pouring from her throat, profane and earthy words, slipping out in tender tones as if they were endearments. He seemed
encouraged by them, for he positioned both her legs over his shoulders, hefted her up and carried her to the bed, still tonguing her. She grasped his head to stead herself, giddy with pleasure. When he dropped her on the feather tick, she laughed aloud for pure joy.

Nicholas grinned down at her, his face flushed, his lips glistening wetly.

“So you can laugh! And a right pleasant sound it is, to be sure.” He chuckled. “I’ll have to make sure you do it more often.”

He dived onto the bed with her and settled his hips between her splayed legs. Taking her head gently between his palms, he tipped her mouth to his. She tasted herself on his lips, musky and hot. She groaned with need.

Pound, pound, pound.

No, wait! That wasn’t her heart.

The loud knocking on the door was a dash of cold water. She wrenched her mouth away from his.

“Evie, are you all right?” Sally’s voice came through the heavy pine.

“I’m fine,” Eve called back, squirming under his weight. He took the hint and rolled off her.

“Why is your door locked?”

Eve’s gaze snapped to Nick.

He shrugged. “A prudent man plans ahead.”

“Keep quiet,” she hissed before climbing out of bed and hurrying to the door. She pulled her wrapper up over her shoulders again and belted it closed. The desperate ache between her legs still throbbed. “I’m just finishing my bath.”

“Is someone with you? I thought I heard voices.”

Eve balled her fingers into fists. “You must have heard me…talking to Daya.”

“Well…”

There was a long pause and Eve fervently prayed to whatever God protected liars that Daya wasn’t currently standing at Sally’s side.

“Tell her to hurry with your toilet,” Sally said. “We need to be leaving soon or we’ll be late! Do you want help with your hair?”

“No, dear. I can manage.”

Sally had already helped her more than she knew. The madness was passing and Eve was thinking clearly once more.

Giving in to Captain Scott would have been just as weak as giving in to that cockney jailer at Newgate in exchange for a ration of unmoldy bread. She’d resisted then when her very survival hung in the balance.

Surely she could resist now, even though only her maidenhead was in jeopardy.

She glanced over at Nick, who still lounged full-length across her bed. He smiled lazily at her, but his eyes were lit from behind with a dark fire.

The cockney jailer had been missing several teeth and had sported a bad case of head lice, so even his appeal to her empty belly hadn’t made her succumb.

But Nicholas Scott was enough to tempt a nun.

Still, Nick was using her own body against her, too. He was just aiming a bit lower than her stomach to accomplish his seduction. Not only was he more devilishly handsome than any mortal had a right to be, his bed skills promised to be beyond her wildest imaginings. Was there anything more wicked than that man’s mouth on her—

Eve snipped off that thought before the memory of his tongue on her delicate private parts began to heat her blood once more. She leaned against the door.

“Why don’t you see if Mr. Higgs has brought around the coach?” Eve suggested to Sally. “I’ll be along directly.”

“All right. If you’re sure. But please hurry. This is my first ball and I don’t want to miss anything.”

Eve listened at the door till Sally’s footfalls faded away completely.

“Come back to bed, Eve,” Nick patted the space beside him. “Poor Miss Munroe. She doesn’t realize the party has already started right here.”

“No, Sally’s correct. I need to get dressed if we’re to arrive at the ball in a timely manner.”

Nick frowned. “I’m the host of that blasted ball. They’re not likely to start without us.”

She didn’t budge.

He sprang from the bed and closed the distance between them, pinning her between his body and the stout door with his long arms cutting off any escape.

“Eve, I want you.”

His words made her throb. She’d never felt so empty, so achingly needy. So sure he could still the madness coursing through her. All she had to do…

His hot gaze seemed to peek into her soul. “And I know you want me.”

“It’s not that simple.” She couldn’t bear to look at him any longer.

“It is if you let it be.” He cupped her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. “As I suspected, you’re a passionate woman, Eve Upshall. It’s wrong to deny your own nature.”

She laughed again, this time with no joy at all. “I don’t think I need look to someone like you to tell me what’s right and what’s wrong.”

“Pray tell, what do you mean by ‘someone like you’?”

He leaned close so she could feel his hard maleness pressed against her. Her belly clenched with renewed desire, but she tamped it down.

“A rogue, a smuggler, a drunkard, a scoundrel—”

“I see Higgs has been bragging about me again.” His ribs jiggled against hers with a deep chuckle. “Eve, this is simply about pleasure.”

His fingertips slid down her arms and found her hands. He brought one to his lips and placed a lover’s kiss in her palm. Then he hooked one of her fingers in his mouth and sucked. She closed her eyes as her body wept fresh dew between her legs.

“If you say I wasn’t giving you any pleasure, I’ll know you for a liar.”

Her body throbbed in response to his rumbling tone. He could make her entire being sing, but she had to stop before things moved past the prelude.

“Pleasure is beside the point.” She shrank back, pressing her spine against the door.

“On what continent?”

“A lady—”

“A woman,” he corrected, running his fingertips along her cheek, down her neck and over the swell of her breasts. She drew a shuddering breath. “A woman knows when her body will be well served. That should trump any notions of ‘ladyness’ all to hell.”

“Well, it doesn’t.” She straightened her spine and met his gaze squarely, willing her body to keep from melting into him. “I am sufficiently covered now, Captain, so believe me when I tell you that I’ll scream my bloody head off if you don’t release me right this moment.”

He covered her lips with his, trying to lure her back into his lusty fantasy. Warmth pooled in her groin, but she fought not to answer his summons to that dark hot place.

It took every ounce of will she possessed not to respond.

Just when her last shred of self-control was frayed to the breaking point, he pulled back and narrowed his eyes at her.

“Very well, Miss Upshall.” He threw back the bolt on her door. “I shall leave
your ladyship
to diddling yourself in your bath. Though I noticed that you don’t seem to have much talent for self-gratification. But since I’ve helped you along the way, there shouldn’t be much further to go. I wish you a happier conclusion on the next go-round.”

“Why, you—”

He was out the door and slamming it behind him before she could find a sufficiently foul oath for him. His voice came through the door to her.

“But there’s no time to dawdle. Be quick about your diddling this time,” he snarled. “We have a damned ball to attend.”

Peregrine Higgs wanted to drive the coach down the steep track toward town, but the captain wouldn’t have it. Instead, Pere rode beside his employer on a sorrel mare. They formed the rearguard of the coach, which lurched far too quickly around the tight corners for Peregrine’s peace of mind. He’d have taken the slowest pace possible, mindful of the precious cargo traveling inside.

The only liberty he’d been allowed was handing the women into the waiting coach.

Miss Upshall was a fetching sight in her emerald gown, but a pair of deep grooves marred her brow. By rights, she ought to have been delighted with the world this night. After all, the ball was her idea, wasn’t it?

The woman’s a squall waiting to happen or I’m a Chinaman,
Higgs thought. He tossed a glance at Nicholas Scott, who was riding in silence beside him.
Come to think of it, the captain don’t look much sunnier than Miss Upshall.

When two wicked weather fronts threatened to collide, a prudent seaman charted a course for the nearest port.

Miss Smythe had been surprisingly comely in her yellow gown. She was so quietlike, it was hard for a man to take much notice of her when a beauty like Miss Munroe was about, but this night Penelope Smythe was pretty as a buttercup in a meadow. She’d thanked Higgs in her soft tone as he handed her into the coach. He predicted Miss Smythe would not sit out any dances unless she pleaded that her feet were wore slick.

But Miss Munroe had looked like a bit of spun sugar in her new pink gown. She was rosy and fresh, as sweet a treat as any confectioner could fashion. Peregrine’s mouth watered when he caught a fleeting glimpse of her neatly turned ankle as she climbed into the coach.

He’d shut the coach door, sealing the ladies in, feeling agreeably male after the sight of so much feminine folderol. He was justifiably proud of himself for making at least two of them very happy. He had been instrumental in shepherding this ball into existence, after all. Peregrine figured he’d laid the groundwork for his assault on the affections of Miss Sally Munroe.

Once they reached the town hall, he realized he was sadly mistaken.

Men from all over the islands, some from as far away as Irish Isle, had made the trip. The finest families were there, even the Tuckers, though Peregrine was grateful the captain’s former friend, Saint George Tucker, was safely in the Colonies. “Saint” gave no quarter when it came to charming the ladies, which might have been why the captain and Saint George parted ways. Higgs wasn’t sure.

But all those in attendance hoped to meet and suitably impress the three women Captain Scott had
“snatched from the jaws of death.” Word of their beauty had been stoked by the retelling of their harrowing experience in the deep. Now it seemed half the unattached men on Devil Isle fancied themselves taken with one—or all three!—of the newest additions to their pink-sand shores.

In the few minutes it took Higgs to see to the horses, the ladies’ dance cards were completely filled. He couldn’t have bought a reel with a single one of them, even if he’d had a chest full of doubloons to offer as payment.

So he helped himself to a cup of grog and moped by the open double doors. All he could do was watch as Miss Munroe tossed her golden curls, flirting and laughing with her dance partners. Each one of them seemed to believe that smile was especially for him.

Blast!
There went gravel-voiced Tatem sashaying by with Miss Munroe beaming on his arm.

The captain came and stood beside him in silence for a while. Lord Nick watched the festivities with such a grim face, folk might think he was presiding over a hanging instead of the merriest ball the islands had ever seen.

“Belay that lubberly grog, Higgs.” The captain pulled a silver flask from his vest pocket and handed it to Peregrine. “This night’s work calls for sterner stuff.”

Higgs noticed Captain Scott’s gaze rarely left Miss Upshall as she performed the intricate steps of a minuet. She was paired with Archibald Snickering, the governor’s pasty-faced secretary. Miss Upshall smiled politely at her partner, but turned her head to the side when the dance called for a stylized kiss on the lips.

Miss Munroe did not turn hers.

Peregrine tipped the flask and let the whisky scald his throat in several eye-watering gulps.

“Y-you were right, sir,” he admitted. “A house party would have been the w-wiser course.”

“That ship’s already sailed, Higgs.” The captain clapped a sympathetic hand on Peregrine’s shoulder. “Give it no more thought.”

But it was hard not to wish back the moment when he’d offered to arrange this ball. He’d thought to win Miss Munroe’s favor by it, but instead the woman who tormented his dreams was flaunting her charms before every man in the place except him.

He took another pull on the flask.

“Easy, lad. Check your bearings.” The captain relieved Higgs of the spirits. “You’ve a long night before you.”

The captain nodded at several other guests. “It seems I’m expected to act as if I’m the host of this debacle, so I’ll leave you now.” He started to push his way into the crush of people, then turned back. “Pace yourself, Mr. Higgs. And don’t do anything foolish.”

Too late.

Higgs was already doing something foolish. He couldn’t seem to keep his eye from following Miss Munroe around the dance floor.

She never glanced his way once.

Higgs had stood night watch in the pouring rain with more cheer.

After the fiddler played three reels in a row, suddenly Peregrine found Miss Smythe standing before him, red-faced and fanning herself.

“Mr. Higgs.” She bobbed a quick curtsey. “I’m so glad I found you.”