Pleasures of a Tempted Lady (41 page)

Meg and Will stepped out into the bright November morning, and they stopped on the lawn in front of the chapel. Meg looked up at her husband and smiled at him.

“We’re married,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes. “Tell me it’s not a dream.”

“I promise you, Will, you’re wide awake.”

“Thank God.” He opened his eyes. “We are married.
Finally
.”

And he kissed her as all their friends and loved ones poured out from the chapel doors to wish them happiness.

Epilogue

M
mm.” Jessica wrapped her arms around her husband and brought him down for another kiss.

“I can’t get enough of you, Jess,” David murmured, his voice rough.

Jessica smiled. “Good, because I can’t get enough of you, either.”

The ship rocked gently beneath them as David’s mouth moved across her jaw and down her collarbones to her breast. They were on the
Freedom
, heading south toward warmer seas for their honeymoon.

She arched up, giving him easy access to her breasts, stretching her body languidly. “I could never have imagined how good that would feel.”

He chuckled. “No? You could have done it to yourself, couldn’t you?”

“Heavens, no. There would have been no way for me to replicate your lips and tongue—”

His wicked tongue swiped over her nipple as if to
prove her statement, and she gasped and wiggled as pleasure wended its way through her. His hand came down over her bare hip, pinning her in place.

“And there would be no way at all for me to have the experience of your unshaven jaw moving over my skin.”

He looked up at her, his blue eyes so dark they looked almost black. “Does it hurt?” he asked in a soft voice.

“It doesn’t really hurt badly, but it does hurt… in the very best way possible.”

His frown deepened into a scowl. “That makes no sense.”

“But it does, David. Everything about our lovemaking is like that for me.” She reached down and combed her fingers through his hair. “Pleasure with just the slightest edge of something else. Something
more
.”

She shuddered as his chin rasped the side of her breast as his mouth lowered over it again. Then, he bit down gently on her nipple, and pleasure raced through her.

“Yes, like that,” she gasped. “Just like that.”

She felt his smile against her skin. “God, woman. I love you so damn much.”

“Good,” she said. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

And she loved him, too, more than anything. Life with this man was going to be a challenge she’d relish every second of every day.

His mouth moved back up her body until he was kissing her again, his lips so commanding as they moved over hers that her toes curled. He moved against her, and she could feel the hardness of him—of his erection—sliding against her thigh.

With a sigh, he drew back from the kiss. “It is after
noon. Your sister and Langley will be at the table for luncheon, wondering where we are.”

“Oh, I doubt they’ll wonder,” she said saucily, pulling him to her again. “Make love to me, David.”

And they made love again on the soft bed in their cabin, with the sea rolling under them and Will and Meg not doubting for a second what they were doing. They emerged to a starry sky, looking so engrossed and so in love with each other that everyone left them alone to stand on deck and enjoy the warm air as the ship clipped along in a brisk evening breeze.

Meg glanced at the bow of the
Freedom
, where David had his arm around her sister, and they were deep in conversation as they gazed over the moonlit sea. “They look so happy,” she murmured.

Will’s hand slipped into hers. “Are you happy?” he asked.

She turned to him. “What makes you ask that?”

He shrugged. “I know it wasn’t your choice, to be at sea again. God knows you’ve spent enough time on the ocean.”

“That was different. I was always in the cabin I shared with Sarah and Jake, then. I hardly dared go on deck. Being here on the
Freedom
is so very different from being a prisoner on one of Caversham’s ships.” She chuckled. “I think you named this ship very aptly, Will.”

“Are you sure you’re happy?” Will frowned down at her, worried. “We can go back to England… spend our time elsewhere. We don’t have to take this tour…”

“Jessica wants this… And do you know what? I don’t care where we are, or whether we’re on land or on sea. All I care about is being with you.”

He gazed at her, searching her eyes in the lantern light that splashed in a golden glow across the stern of the
Freedom
.

“So you are happy?” he murmured.

She leaned against him, and he slipped an arm around her like David’s was around Jessica and pulled her close.

“So happy,” she said, “I think I must be the happiest woman in the world.” The warm, golden glow of happiness pulsed through her with every beat of her heart. How could a woman be happier than she was? How could Will not see it?

She had kept Jake safe and had grown to love Thomas, who was just as sweet and loving as Jake was. If anyone or anything could heal Jake from those horrible years he’d spent being abused by his father, Meg knew that it would be her and Will and the family they, along with Thomas and her sisters, would provide for them.

She had her family back—all of them. Her twin, Serena, the most important person in her life for eighteen years. Olivia, whose bedside she’d attended constantly when they were girls and whom she’d worried about incessantly over the years. Phoebe and Jessica, who’d grown into beautiful women. And even her mother, who loved them all in her way.

And she had Will. The captain everyone thought was perfect, but who had made a mistake he never repeated and was never likely to recover from. A part of Will would always be repentant for what he’d done to Eliza Anderson, and for his betrayal of Meg. But despite his mistake and in spite of all the years they’d spent apart, she’d never stopped loving him. He had always been the only man for her.

And… the most amazing, most miraculous bit of all was that he loved her, too. Unconditionally. Without hesitation. He’d part the seas for her, just as she would for him.

She glanced at his handsome face framed by dark hair ruffled by the breeze. “I’m not only the happiest woman in the world, but I’m the luckiest, Will. Because I have Jake and Thomas, and I have my family, and most of all, I have you.”

He bent his head and touched his lips to hers.

And slipping through the waves and powered by the silent force of the wind, the
Freedom
sailed south toward sandy coves and warmer waters. But that didn’t matter to the two newly married couples on board. What mattered was they were heading into new lives, together, strengthened by the power of their love.

After five years in the West Indies, Serena Donovan is back in London. But so is the one person she never expected to see again… Jonathan Dane—her very own original sin.

Please turn this page for an excerpt from

Confessions of an Improper Bride

Prologue

Off the coast of Antigua

1822

S
erena Donovan had not slept well since the
Victory
had left Portsmouth. Usually, the roll of the ship would lull her into a fretful sleep after she’d lain awake for hours next to her slumbering twin. Her mind tumbled over the ways she could have managed everything differently, how she might have saved herself from becoming a pariah.

But tonight was different. It had started off the same, with her lying beside a sound-asleep Meg and thinking about Jonathan Dane, about what she might have done to counter the force of the magnetic pull between them. Sleep had never come, though, because a lookout had sighted land yesterday afternoon, and Serena and Meg would be home tomorrow. Home to their mother and younger sisters and bearing a letter from their aunt that detailed Serena’s disgrace.

Meg shifted, then rolled over to face Serena, her brow furrowed, her gray eyes unfocused from sleep.

“Did I wake you?” Serena asked in a low voice.

Meg rubbed her eyes and twisted her body to stretch. “No, you didn’t wake me,” she said on a yawn. “Haven’t you slept at all?”

When Serena didn’t answer, her twin sighed. “Silly question. Of course you haven’t.”

Serena tried to smile. “It’s near dawn. Will you walk with me before the sun rises? One last time?”

The sisters often rose early and strode along the deck before the ship awakened and the bulk of the crew made its appearance for morning mess. Arm in arm, talking in low voices and enjoying the peaceful beauty of dawn, the two young ladies would stroll along the wood planks of the deck, down the port side and up the starboard, pausing to watch the sun rise over the stern of the
Victory.

What an inappropriate name, Serena thought, for the ship bearing her home as a failure and disgrace. She’d brought shame and humiliation to her entire family.
Rejection, Defeat,
or perhaps
Utter Disappointment
would serve as far better names for a vessel returning Serena to everlasting spinsterhood and dishonor.

Serena turned up the lantern and they dressed in silence. It wasn’t necessary to speak—Serena could always trust her sister to know what she was thinking and vice versa. They’d slept in the same bedroom their entire lives, and they’d helped each other to dress since they began to walk.

After Serena slid the final button through the hole at the back of Meg’s dress, she reached for their heavy woolen cloaks hanging on a peg and handed Meg hers. It was midsummer, but the mornings were still cool.

When they emerged on the
Victory
’s deck, Serena tilted her face up to the sky. Usually at this time, the
stars cast a steady silver gleam over the ship, but not this morning. “It’s overcast,” she murmured.

Meg nodded. “Look at the sea. I thought I felt us tossing about rather more vigorously than usual.”

The sea was near black without the stars to light it, but gray foam crested over every wave. On deck, the heightened pitch of the ship was more clearly defined.

“Do you think a storm is coming?”

“Perhaps.” Meg shuddered. “I do hope we arrive home before it strikes.”

“I’m certain we will.” Serena wasn’t concerned. They’d survived several squalls and a rather treacherous storm in the past weeks. She had faith that Captain Moscum could pilot this ship through a hurricane, if need be.

They approached a sailor coiling rope on the deck, his task bathed under the yellow glow of a lantern. Looking up, he tipped his cap at them, and Serena saw that it was young Mr. Rutger from Kent, who was on his fourth voyage with Captain Moscum. “Good morning, misses. Fine morning, ain’t it?”

“Oh, good morning to you, too, Mr. Rutger.” Meg smiled pleasantly at the seaman. Meg was always the friendly one. Everyone loved Meg. “But tell us the truth—do you think the weather will hold?”

“Aye,” the sailor said, a grin splitting his wind-chapped cheeks. “Just a bit o’ the overcast.” He looked to the sky. “A splash o’ rain, but nothin’ more to it than that, I daresay.”

Meg breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, good.”

Serena pulled her sister along. She probably would have tarried there all day talking to Mr. Rutger from Kent. It wasn’t by chance that Serena knew that he had six sisters and a brother, and his father was a cobbler—it was
because Meg had crouched on the deck and drawn his life story out of him one morning.

Perhaps it was selfish of her, but Serena wanted to be alone with her sister. Soon they would be at Cedar Place, everyone would be furious with her, and Mother and their younger sisters would divide Meg’s attention.

Meg went along with her willingly enough. Meg understood—she always did. When they were out of earshot from Mr. Rutger, she squeezed Serena’s arm. “You’ll be all right, Serena,” she said in a low voice. “I’ll stand beside you. I’ll do whatever I can to help you through this.”

Why?
Serena wanted to ask. She had always been the wicked daughter. She was the oldest of five girls, older than Meg by seventeen minutes, and from birth, she’d been the hellion, the bane of their mother’s existence. Mother had thought a Season in London might cure her of her hoydenish ways; instead, it had proved her far worse than a hoyden.

“I know you will always be beside me, Meg.” And thank God for that. Without Meg, she’d truly founder.

She and Meg were identical in looks but not in temperament. Meg was the angel. The helpful child, ladylike, demure, moral, and always unfailingly sweet. Yet every time Serena was caught hitching her skirts up and splashing at the seashore with the baker’s son, Meg stood unflinchingly beside her. When all the other people in the world had given up on Serena, Meg remained steadfast, inexplicably convinced of her goodness despite all the wicked things she did.

Even now, when she’d committed the worst indiscretion of them all. When their long-awaited trip to England for their first Season had been cut sharply short by her stupidity.

“As long as you stand beside me,” Serena said quietly, “I know I will survive it.”

“Do you miss him?” Meg asked after a moment’s pause.

“I despise him.” Serena’s voice hissed through the gloom. She blinked away the stinging moisture in her eyes.