Sparhawk's Angel (9 page)

"Y
ou want me to teach you how to please Lord Eliot?" repeated Nick, completely, totally stunned. "Oh, Rose, you don't know what you ask."

"Yes, I do." Her chin rose another fraction higher. Now that she'd begun, it wasn't as difficult as she'd feared, the same as bargaining for any other commodity. Of course taking him by surprise like this again certainly helped, too. "I know all about what husbands and wives do together. Lily explained some of it, and Aunt Lucretia told me the rest."

"Did they now?" He could not believe he was having this conversation with her, her earnest little mouth only inches away from his. Earnest and unbelievably enticing, and slowly he lowered himself back into his chair and marginally farther from temptation.

"Of course they did," she said with wounded indignation. "I may be inexperienced, Captain, but I am not ignorant. While the whole arrangement sounds rather foolish, it doesn't sound particularly difficult,
especially for the wives. Much easier, say, than riding a horse."

Nick gulped. Lord help him, she was imagining herself riding a blessed
horse
. How much wine had she had to drink, anyway? He'd hoped to relax her defenses, true enough, but he'd never dreamed things would come to this.

"Therefore," she continued, "if Lord Eliot honors me by giving me his name and his protection, then I should try to be as agreeable to him as I can. Which is where I believe you can help me. That is, if you lose the next game."

Nick groaned. "Which you bloody well know I'll do."

"Well, yes." She shrugged, not in the least contrite. "I was rather counting on it."

Nick swore under his breath, drumming his fingers on the edge of the table and trying not to stare too obviously at how her shrug had made the coral silk slide delectably down her white shoulders.

He told himself he should be rejoicing, that things were progressing with her even better than he'd expected, but he couldn't. There was something about Rose that made the coolheaded seduction he'd planned impossible. It wasn't only that she'd neatly managed to turn the tables on him again, just as she had with the draughts game. It went deeper than that, beginning with her description of her hideously wrong betrothal and followed by this ridiculous proposition of hers. He felt
sorry
for her, for heaven's sake, which had to be the worst possible emotion for unentangled debauchery.

Damnation, next he'd be considering himself too nice to fire anything bigger than a green pea at the British, At this rate he'd have Lily with him forever.

"Rose," he began, "Rose. I know you've given this all some thought, but—"

"Hardly any, really." She smiled proudly, refilling her wineglass yet again. "The notion came to me only a moment or two ago, yet it does make sense. I may not be beautiful, but I am more clever than most women
—
cleverer than most men, says Papa—and I learn very quickly. I believe it won't take more than a lesson or two for me to be sufficiently skillful to impress Lord Eliot."

As she gazed across the table at him, her smile turned dreamy, the wine casting everything in the cabin with a golden haze. Not that Captain Sparhawk needed any further polishing in her eyes. When the servants had brought dinner they had also lit the two brass lanterns hanging overhead, and the warm light swung gently back and forth over him, highlighting first one side of his perfect face and then the other. She might have forgotten Lord Eliot's face, but she'd always remember Black Nick's.

Especially if he kissed her now. Dear, sweet, merciful heaven, she prayed silently, this once in my life let me kiss a man of my own choosing!

But he, for his part, seemed in turn to be having an inordinately difficult time meeting her eye, and as she wondered why, the first tiny uneasiness began to creep around the edges of her well-being.

He cleared his throat with a rumble. "Miss Everard, this may come as a surprise to you, being so clever, but most men prefer brides that aren't skillful. Prize it, in fact. That's why virgin brides are generally the rule, or at least they are where I was born."

"Oh, my, I never meant for us to proceed so far!" Amazed he'd believe that of her, Rose felt her face grow hot. And here she thought she'd been explaining it all wonderfully well! "That is, I believed the preliminaries should be sufficient. Kissing and that sort of thing."

Her smile wobbled. "I shouldn't expect more, you know. Not for a single game, even with forty pistoles in the balance."

That unsteady smile nearly did him in. That, and the flush that began on her cheeks and went clear down to the tops of her breasts above the gown.

"The devil take your game," he said gruffly. "I don't like the stakes, and I don't kiss women in exchange for gold."

Her smile vanished as she struggled to read his expression. His face was set and rigid, his green eyes intense with some sort of inner fury. What had she done? she wondered miserably, and all the old inadequacies that had made her a perennial wallflower wilting in Lily's shadow came rushing back.

With a sigh she pushed her chair away from the table and slowly stepped around it, trailing her fingers along the edge of the cloth. She stopped directly before him, studying the sharp line of his chin and not daring to meet his eye.

"It has nothing to do with the game, does it," she said sadly, "and everything to do with the woman. I understand perfectly if you do not wish to kiss me. No gentleman ever has. I am small and scraggly and too pale and—"

"Don't," he ordered, his hands reaching out to take her lightly by her narrow shoulders. "You're Rose, and that's enough."

"Captain Sparhawk—"

"Nick," he said. "You can't ask me to kiss you and not call me by my right name."

"Nick, then." Bewildered, Rose forgot to breathe as his hands glided from her shoulders along the curve of her throat to the pulse that throbbed below her ear. How was it possible, she marveled, how could hands so large, so strong, touch her as lightly as a feather upon her skin? She shivered, still staring at his chin and no more, and his hands slid around the curves of her face, his palms cradling her cheeks as his fingers threaded deep into her hair. Under his spell she swayed forward, pliant as a willow, as he drew her face closer to his. Sensation overwhelmed her, and her eyes fluttered shut.

"Look at me, lass," he murmured, his voice dark as night and his breath like another caress upon her cheek as his fingers moved restlessly through the heavy waves of her hair. "Don't hide from me now."

"I can't," she whispered, afraid not of what he'd do but that he would stop before he'd done it.

But he didn't, and in the next instant she felt his lips brush against hers, gently, so gently. She gasped, not so much with surprise as with wonder, that he above all men would wish to kiss her. Uncertainly she began to answer him, her lips moving across his, and her wonder grew as he responded, deepening and melding his kiss with hers. Wonder, and a joy rare to her, for with him she wasn't awkward or plain. His touch made her miraculously beautiful, flooding her entire body with a warmth she'd never dreamed existed.

Instinctively she looped her hands over his shoulders, and as she did he curled his arm around her waist and drew her onto his lap with a rustle of petticoats and silk. Even beneath the layers of her skirts she was aware of the hard, corded muscles of his thighs as she slid across them, moving closer to his body as his arm tightened around her waist. She heard him groan, deep in his chest, and she, inexperienced though she was, knew it was a sound of pleasure, an animal-like growl that somehow she'd managed to bring to him. She knew because she felt the same, and with a shy eagerness she parted his lips further.

But to her surprise, he broke away, easing his mouth free of hers.

"Sweet little Rose," he said raggedly, his voice at once both rough and gentle. "What are we doing, eh?"

He brushed his fingers across her lower lip, still sensitive from his kiss, and she shivered. Her breath felt tight in her chest, and the warmth he'd brought to her body remained, deep in her belly, lingering though the kiss had ended.

He shifted slightly so the lantern light played full
across his face, and she saw how his green eyes had gone cloudy while his face seemed oddly tense. A heavy lock of his black hair had fallen across his forehead, over the scar, and watching her, waiting for her to answer, he hadn't bothered to shake it back.
Self-consciously she took her hands from his shoulders, and held them curled into tight little knots in her lap.

Maybe she'd been mistaken. Maybe all of this was no more than drinking too much of the sweet wine. Maybe he'd felt nothing, and she was the only one left giddy with the world singing and spinning around her heart.

"What are we doing? I cannot answer for you," she said in a small voice, "though I'd rather thought you were kissing me. And I—I'm but collecting a wager for a game I never played."

"Then you're just as clever as you claim, and I'm the greatest cully you've ever cozened." He didn't try to hide the disgust he felt for himself. One more time she'd turned the tables on him, her ingenious young girl's kiss making him as weak-kneed as any greenhorn boy. In his life he'd dandled more women than he could count on his lap before he'd followed them into his bed. Why should this one be any different?

Because
she
was, different from any other woman he'd met. It was as deceptively simple as that. With her silver-gray eyes and her odd mixture of confidence and insecurity and her coltish legs sprawled over his and her little pink mouth, the devil take him, the fire she'd started in him with that little mouth—no, he couldn't begin to explain it. All he knew was that he wanted her, wanted her so badly that his whole body ached, and yet something deep inside of him, even deeper than the desire, forbade him to do anything about it.

"Oh, Rosie," he said, sighing with frustration as she shifted her plump little bottom across his thighs. "You truly are as innocent as you pretend, aren't you?"

She ducked her chin, certain he was ridiculing her. "I told you before that no man had ever wished to kiss me, or had done so," she said, both wounded and defensive. "You are the first. If I've done it so poorly that I've offended you, I am sorry, but I did give you warning that—"

"That's enough, lass." He touched his fingers again to her lips, this time to silence her. "Don't tempt me to make hackneyed jests about roses with thorns. You were fine, sweetheart. More than fine, in fact. If you kiss your lord of a husband like that, you'll make him happier than he's any right to be."

"Really?" she asked breathlessly.

"Really," he said. Unable to help himself, he had begun to run his open hand up and down her back, gently stroking her as if she were a cat, and like a cat, she stretched and arched against his hand. Through her dress he could feel the stiff, stitched linen and whalebone of her stays, stays he knew she didn't need, and imagining the feel of her lithe young body without the fashionable armor shot another bolt of desire ricocheting through his body.

"I am glad of that." She shut her eyes for a moment, trying to focus on Lord Eliot instead of the lazy, seductive way Nick's hand was gliding along her spine. "I want him to be happy, you see. Aunt Lucretia says that most gentlemen—and Lord Eliot most assuredly is a gentleman, even though he's in the navy—most gentlemen keep mistresses after they're wed and I must be understanding and turn a blind eye, but I'm not sure I could. It's selfish of me, I know, but I'd much rather he stayed happy with only me."

"He'd be a fool not to," said Nick. Effortlessly he tipped her into the crook of his arm, bringing her to rest against his chest. Lord help them both, why did she have to trust him like this? It was that trust that was his undoing. How could he tumble her when she had simultaneously asked him to and trusted him to do otherwise? Desperately he hoped Lily wasn't within hearing, that she was off instead on some other sort of angel's business or another. Otherwise she must be laughing herself ill at his expense.

"Besides," he said as evenly as he was able, "you could always play draughts."

"I suppose we could." She sighed, nestling against his shoulder. She liked the way he smelled, salty like the sea and something more elusive and intensely masculine, and cradled in his arms like this she felt warm and protected. "But I believe I'd rather kiss."

"Well, hell, so would I." He'd like to do that with her and a good deal more besides. He smoothed her hair away from her ear, brushing his fingertips tenderly over the downy curve of her flushed cheek as he wondered what the devil was happening to him.

"I meant what I'd be doing with Lord Eliot." She chuckled drowsily, at last succumbing to the wine and the warm circle of well-being. "Though you were very nice to kiss, Captain. I mean Nick. I don't see how he'll be able to improve upon it."

"Thank you," said Nick. "He won't."

But Rose was too sleepy to hear the bitterness in his voice, and with a contented sigh she let her eyes drift shut, her last wistful thought of her sister. How much she wished she could have told Lily how she'd been finally, wonderfully, perfectly kissed!

Nick, too, thought of Lily, but without her sister's wistfulness. For a long time he sat with Rose in his arms, watching her sleep and drinking by himself with the uneaten dinner cold on the table before him. She was soft and warm against his chest, and when he'd gently smooth her hair or brush her cheek with his fingers she would stir and smile in her sleep, private little smiles that made him smile, too, since they were given to him alone.

Yet still he wasn't happy. Last night, thanks to Rose, he'd finally been convinced he wasn't mad. Tonight, again because of her, he'd begun doubting anew. No woman had ever had this effect on him before, and it worried him.

He listened to the bells from the deck above that marked the hours of the watch, and the shadows in the corners of his cabin beyond the lanterns' light deepened as the day faded into dusk, then night. No one disturbed him; his orders had been explicit, though that, he thought wryly, had been when he'd been confident of a far different outcome for the meal.