Pirate Wolf Trilogy (61 page)

She curled her
lower lip between her teeth and nibbled fitfully. “Yes, well ... my
reaction last night might have been a little over-wrought. As it
happened, you just chose the wrong time to test my patience.”

“Good God,” he
murmured. “Is that an apology?”

She stared into
the inky darkness of his eyes and felt a disquieting warmth at the
base of her spine. “It is as good as you are likely to get.”

“Then I shall
accept it... on the condition you accept mine.”

“Yours? For
what?”

“For not
knowing when to keep my mouth shut.”

The
self-deprecating bluntness brought a hint of a smile to Juliet’s
lips. It also brought a second rush of heat flowing through her
body, stronger this time, centered between her thighs, and as he
continued to stare at her, the pleasure intensified, spreading
through her body in the most extraordinarily soft waves.

“Spare me the
trial of a long answer, my lord, but what the devil are you doing
here? What could possibly have induced you to leave your cozy
hearthside in London when surely, as the twelfth duke of Harlow,
you could have appointed someone more suited to the rigours of a
sea voyage to take your place.”

“Harrow. And I
must suppose that the king considered me adequate to the task.”

“Which is ...
?”

He grinned
faintly. “I’ve not had that much rum, Captain.”

“Whatever your
business here, it will likely be explained in my presence
anyway.”

“Then that must
be by your father’s choice, not mine.”

Juliet expelled
her breath on an impatient puff. “Faith, but I am losing interest
anyway.”

“I can see
that. And if you rub my thumb any harder, you might just as well
wrench it out again, for the pain could not be any worse.”

She scowled and
flung his hand aside. “I hope you know how to swim, sirrah. If
Father finds your wit half as amusing as I do, you may have need of
the skill.”

Varian’s smile
hovered between amusement and curiosity. The only thing he had need
of at the moment was more rum, for it had dulled most of the aches
and pains in his body for the first time in two days. Moreover, he
found himself increasingly intrigued with this sharp-tongued,
clever-witted pirate urchin—and not just with her mind.

Several hours
in the driving rain had accomplished what a neglect for soap and
water had not, for the grime of battle was washed away, leaving her
face clean and smooth. Her hair, half in, half out of the braid,
was rid of its layers of dust and gleamed a rich dark auburn in the
lamplight. The long strands that curled down her neck lured the eye
into the deep, open vee of her shirt, and where the fabric was not
completely dry it clung to curves that would have been better left
to the imagination. Shapes and shadows that he had found unsettling
the previous night set the blood flowing thick and insistent
through his veins now, making him begin to entertain a notion that
she was even beautiful in a raw, untamed sort of way.

Varian forced
himself to look away, wary of the turn his thoughts were taking. If
there had been one redeeming benefit to this hellish voyage, it was
the refreshing absence of any women on board. Because of his
family’s wealth and prominence, he had been plagued for most of his
eight and twenty years by grasping females who threw themselves in
his path at every opportunity. In his youth, he had enjoyed their
attentions well enough, had enjoyed his share of mistresses through
the years. But after his brothers' deaths had made him the sole
heir, the efforts to bring him to ground had risen to almost
frenzied proportions. His own mother had been the worst of the lot,
haranguing him unceasingly about the need to choose a bride and
take the appropriate steps to produce a legitimate heir.

He supposed
Juliet Dante’s scorn had been justified when she said he had
finally just succumbed. The dowager had culled the herd of
potential brood mares down to the three richest virgins pure enough
to carry the St. Clare seed, whereupon he had simply chosen one.
All three had impeccable manners, the same faultless, flawless
education that prepared them for nothing more strenuous than being
the perfect wife, hostess, and chatelaine. In essence, they were
all replicas of the dowager herself: cool, beautiful, sexless in a
pale, elegant way.

Try as he
might, he could not imagine his intended, Lady Margery Wrothwell
letting him see her with her hair dishevelled, her shirt damp and
clinging to breasts that were practically begging him to tear aside
the damned fabric and bring them into his hands.

He shifted his
legs, knowing the stirring he felt was mostly a product of his
rum-soaked meanderings, but he was troubled by it anyway. The
celibacy he had enjoyed for the past six weeks had its drawbacks
and he would be lying to himself if he thought he had reached a
state of pre-marital purity where the curve of a lush breast had no
effect on him.

Where the devil
was Beacom?

As if reading
his mind, Juliet glanced at the door and muttered the same
question.

“He has been
known,” Varian said lightly, “ to take a wrong turn at Harrowgate
Hall even though he has spent the past thirty years in service
there. Mind you, with sixty-five bedrooms and God only knows how
many main chambers, I have erred a time or two myself.”

She stared as
if he had just claimed to have flown to the moon and back.
“Sixty-five bedrooms?”

“A slight
exaggeration, but it is a very old estate.”

“And you live
there by yourself?”

“Myself and a
small army of about a hundred servants.”

Frowning, she
pushed her chair back and carried the pot of ointment back to the
sea chest. She found dry breeches and a clean shirt before she
closed the lid and propped one foot, then the other on top, using
it to keep her balance while she removed her boots. Next, she
unbuckled her belt and let it fall to the floor, then pulled the
tails of her shirt out of her breeches.

Varian watched,
his eyes hooded and heavy, his thoughts drifting, not really
grasping what Juliet was doing until she had drawn her shirt up and
over her head. When she set her fingers to the task of untying the
laces on her breeches, his eyes popped wide.

“I do beg your
pardon, Captain, but... what are you doing?”

“My clothes are
damp, they want changing.”

“Perfectly
understandable, but—”

She paused and
turned around, her hands resting on her waist. This time there was
nothing to fuel his imagination but warm, naked flesh and had
Varian been standing, his jaw would likely have sagged to his
knees. Her breasts were full and round, tanned the same olive shade
as her face and arms. The nipples were only slightly darker than
the surrounding skin, with tips that peaked naturally like small,
ripe berries. Her waist was trim, her hips taut beneath the
form-fitting black breeches.

Varian had seen
all manner of women’s forms, all shapes, all sizes, with or without
corsets, silks, and buntings, offered seductively, modestly, and
flirtatiously ... but this ... this unaffected, completely
uninhibited presentation took his very breath away.

She stood
unmoving for a full count of ten before she laughed that soft,
unmanning laugh and tipped her head like a cat observing a mouse.
“Have you never seen a naked woman before?”

“Yes. Yes, of
course I have, but I... I hardly expected to see you.”

“Well, unless
you know of another way to change garments, you will simply have to
bear up under the horror.”

When he saw her
hook her thumbs under the waist of her breeches to start peeling
the moleskin down, he forced himself to turn his face to the wall.
The rum as well as the temptation was raging through his blood,
strong and pulsing, urging him to simply look and be done with it,
but he dared not.

He heard each
leg of the breeches being stripped away, heard water spilling into
a bowl, a cloth being dipped and wrung, followed by the soft
whisper of damp fabric moving over bare skin. He closed his eyes
and ground his teeth together for he could feel himself growing
thicker, fuller with each swipe of the cloth. And although he could
not see it, he could easily imagine the shiny wetness left behind
on her breasts, her thighs, the sleek vale between.

“
If you
take your shirt and breeches off,” she said casually, “I can have
Johnny Boy wash them. Or replace them with something more suitable.
I warrant he will find something better than canvas breeks and a
homespun pinafore, even if he has to swim over to the
Santo Domingo
and raid the Spanish stores of
their velvet and lace.”

Varian groaned
inwardly and rolled all the way over onto his side, trusting the
shadows to conceal his discomfort. Even so, the pain from the bulge
in his breeches far outstripped the pain in his bruised hip,
prompting his reply to come out in a strangled whisper. “Tell the
boy not to go to any trouble on my account. Beacom can put me to
rights when he returns. I thank you for the offer anyway.”

Juliet shrugged
and shook out the clean shirt. “Suit yourself. But if you keep
straining those breeches without relief, your mother’s concerns
about a shortage of heirs will not be resolved by you.”

CHAPTER
SEVEN

Varian was
wakened by the sound of Beacom’s rattling snores. The cabin was
dark, indicating it was still night, and when he rolled over to
check the source of the light behind him, he saw that it was caused
by the faint wash of moonlight coming through the gallery windows.
The seas were not nearly as rough as they had been earlier though
the ship still leaped like a spirited filly from one wave to the
next.

Juliet Dante
had apparently gone topside again. Did she ever sleep, he wondered?
She obviously ate, for the remnants of a huge platter of food
littered her desk. All that was left of a small feast was a half
eaten biscuit turned nose down in a congealed pool of grease, a
triangle of yellow cheese turning waxy at the edges, a few torn
pieces of mutton that were marbled with globs of hard white fat. He
knew this because he rose carefully out of the berth and went in
search of a crumb or two to ease the rumbling in his stomach.

It
occurred to him, as he munched on cheese, that he had eaten very
little since coming on board the
Iron Rose
. Most of his sustenance had come from various
bottles.

The line of
stitches on his cheek, when he gently prodded it, was swollen and
throbbing. His shoulder ached and the rope burns on his hand, while
not uncomfortably painful, smelled of liniment. He had almost
forgotten the lump at the back of his skull, but it did not forget
him and he bowed his head between his shoulders, rolling it back
and forth to ease the pressure. From that position, light or no
light, he could hardly help but notice the dark stains on his
shirt. The coarse homespun had been wet when he bled on it and each
drop had mushroomed two and three times its size, turning almost
the entire front of the shirt red.

Mindful of his
hand and shoulder, he lifted the shirt up over his head and crushed
it into a ball. He debated, for a moment, throwing it at Beacom,
resentful of the snores that continued with irritating regularity.
Resisting the urge, he tossed it on the berth instead, then limped
over to the washstand and sponged his chest clean in the same bowl
Juliet had used earlier. The stand had a commode cabinet—he
supposed the captain’s share-all attitude did not extend to hanging
her bottom over a hole in the beakhead—and while he was there, he
relieved himself in the enamel pot. When he was finished, it was
more than half full and, anticipating the look on Juliet Dante’s
face if she lifted the lid and found it well used, he turned
instinctively to Beacom again. This time the servant’s name was a
rumble halfway up his throat before it was rammed back down
again.

Emptying
chamberpots was about as far below his station as he could possibly
imagine, but when taken in perspective with all else he had endured
recently, it seemed a trifling thing.

With fingertips
only, he slid the pot out from beneath the wooden seat and carried
it onto the stern gallery, a narrow balcony that ran the width of
the cabin, good for little other than catching a fresh breath and
emptying the contents of thunderpots.

And, it would
seem, for slinging a hammock under the stars.

Evidently
Juliet Dante did sleep, for she was stretched out on the canvas
sling, one arm resting above her head, the other tucked alongside
her hip. One leg was folded at the knee, the other hung freely over
the side of the hammock, the bare toes gleaming like little pearls
under the moonlight. Varian had been provided with one of the
hellish devices the previous night and had fallen out twice before
managing to master it. But the captain looked as comfortable as a
kitten in a basket, rocking gently with the motion of the ship, her
hair out of its braid and trailing over the side, the ends drifting
like a dark cloud as she swayed to and fro.

His hands
tightened on the enamel pot and he knew he should retreat with all
haste before she wakened and saw him standing there. His feet did
not respond to his command to take him back inside, however. His
eyes proved to be rebellious as well, choosing not to look at the
incredibly clear sky or the river of phosphorescent seawater that
unfurled in a silvery path behind the ship. They preferred to
linger instead on the pale arch of her throat, to follow the edge
of her shirt where it had become twisted to one side and lay open
over her breast.

As much as her
offhanded stripping act had affected him earlier, this moonlit
display of casual nudity nearly had him coming out of his skin
again. For that matter, he could not remember the last time he had
seen a woman’s bare toes, or even a foot not hastily tucked under
covers or into a slipper. She had fine, trim ankles too. Supple
calves. And thighs that had already shocked him once with their
sinewy strength.