Swept Away By a Kiss (10 page)

“Are you teasing me now?” Her voice was not entirely steady.

“Of course not,” he said, tilting his head. “I am trying to express sympathy.”

Unbidden, a chuckle bubbled up in Valerie’s throat, and like salt in water, her anger dissolved, along with her plan to seduce him. With a few honest words and a lifted brow, he had disarmed her. No man had ever disarmed her. Except the earl. But this felt so different. It felt good.

As though marking the end of the conversation, Etienne sat on the chair and removed his boots. Valerie remained still, waiting as her heartbeat slowed, fixing her gaze upon his profile. The lamplight set his unique features in relief. She held back a sigh. In point of fact, he was the beautiful one. Heaven must have resounded with riotous laughter when God called this man to be a Catholic priest. How she ever thought herself clever for trying to tempt him, she didn’t know. Dozens of women had probably tried before, only to fail like her.

He shortened the lamp’s wick. He had arrived in the cabin with another lantern, brought from wherever he spent the day. Bebain, she mused, seemed peculiarly generous as a captor. Generous and cruel.

Valerie licked her dry lips, pressing her palm into the cool bed linen.

“You have promised now, you know.”

“Hm?” He sounded suddenly tired as he set his boot down.

“You hadn’t promised before. Now you have. You are honor bound to help me.”

Waiting for his reply, Valerie resisted the weakness seizing her again. Staring at him was a strange and delicious torment. Sweet, painful, and ceaseless.

“I am a man of my word, Valerie,” he said, his voice quiet but firm. “I will protect you. Whatever comes, remember that.”

“Whatever comes?”

He turned, and his gaze rested upon her in the hint of moonlight. “Whatever comes.”

She stared at his eyes, searching their amber depths. Only the barest trace of heat remained, cloaked in warm, lucid sincerity. She closed her eyes. She was not dead. And she was not vowed to celibacy. Etienne promised to protect her from Bebain. But Valerie had no idea who would protect her from her own foolish heart.

“Why did your father send you to Boston?”

The question hit Valerie with unexpected force. During two years abroad, she had never spoken of it. Her cousins in Boston knew, of course. Most of the
ton
did as well. There were plenty of witnesses to the event, and gossips loved scandal. But Valerie had never told anyone the story about her escapade that night at Vauxhall Gardens, not even Anna.

“I eloped with an impoverished Italian violinist. Briefly,” she added, certain that of all people, this man did not care. He hoped to engage her in conversation so she would relax and sleep. He considered her a responsibility.

“It came to nothing,” she added, “which was for the best. I only did it—” If she could not tell a priest, for pity’s sake, she might as well give up all hope of ever conquering her regret. “I only did it to anger the earl, so that he would pay attention to me. As punishment, he sent me to Boston. To be rid of me.”

Steven stared at the beauty on the edge of the bed, her eyes glimmering with the barest hint of starlight filtering through the window, and his veins ran with anger, directed at a man he had never met. He bit down upon the harsh words that came to his tongue. To suit his priestly role, he had been doing the same for years. But it had never proved so difficult. What sort of man would condemn his own daughter, a girl of Valerie’s spirit, will, and heart, to a foreign land for the sort of indiscretion she spoke of? It smacked of cowardice.

“Why do you call him by his title?” He kept his voice even.

“I never called him Father, except when my mother was still alive.” She paused. “I will never have the opportunity to again. He and my eldest brother died in a carriage accident just after I reached Boston.”

“Why are you returning home now, after so many months?” He didn’t know why he asked. In a few short days she would be on a packet headed for England, safe with her own kind.

Steven’s work among the crew had progressed swiftly today, despite his confinement to the infirmary under the close watch of the burly guard. But several of his men had come through the sickroom, supposedly checking on their ill mate, but mostly to convey messages to him about Bebain’s sailors. One by one they were turning away from the pirate. Only a handful of Bebain’s men were not accounted for yet. By tomorrow, they would be.

After Steven settled matters concerning Bebain, he would send Valerie on her way.

“I was ready to leave America,” she said softly, finally stretching out upon the mattress. She cradled her arm beneath her head. “I miss my brother and Anna dreadfully.”

“Anna?”

“A friend. Nearly my sister.” Her eyelids fluttered closed. His attempt to calm her was having its effect. She cupped her cheek in her hand, and a sigh of falling slumber escaped her lips.

She did not stir when Steven laid the blanket over her and brushed a stray lock of hair from her cheek.

He watched her, his blood rushing like waves in a coming storm. No matter how he willed it, he would not rest. Not with success so close at hand, albeit only in this preliminary round. Once they bested Bebain, he and Maximin had much more work to do before they achieved true victory.

But even if this part of their plan was not nearly complete, Steven still would not be able to sleep with Valerie’s ripe, enticing body inches away. For years, self-discipline had been his closest companion. But he was not by any means made of stone, as yesterday’s enforced contact with her barely clad beauty proved.

Rising carefully, he went to the chair. His glance flicked to the open chest and the lace night rail lying atop the pile of clothes. She was as bold as a woman with twice her life’s experience. But at moments she seemed like nothing more than a frightened girl. Desperation had driven her to do what she had tonight. And desire.

Steven took up the man’s linen shirt tucked beneath the lace and lowered himself into the chair. He sat motionless, watching her, relieved that Bebain remained disinterested in her.

Soon it would be over. She would return home, reunite with her family, and marry some respectable English lord. If she chose her husband, she would no doubt select one who could appreciate her strength of spirit. But Steven did not know her brother. Perhaps he would give her to a man ill suited to her.

Rubbing his hands over his eyes, he silently scolded himself. It did not matter to him whom Valerie wed. Let the drawing room biddies bother themselves with those sorts of concerns. His worries had nothing to do with that sort of domestic nicety.

She lay upon her side, her form graceful under the thin blanket. Beneath smooth lids, her eyes moved, busying their mistress in a shadowed reality. She had dreamed heavily the past two nights, as well. Steven’s grandfather believed in the prophetic power of dreams, another lesson in destiny Steven gladly ignored.

Valerie’s breathing quickened, and her face pinched. Her dreams distressed her. If they were anywhere else, if the threat of Bebain’s peculiar, jaded interest did not hang over her head, Steven knew what he would do. He would lie down behind her, wrap his arms around her delectably curved body, and stroke her shining hair until she stopped dreaming and slept undisturbed. He longed to do that innocent thing.

He never could, no matter how chaste his intentions.

Because those intentions would remain chaste for mere moments. Once he put his hands upon her, he would sweep them up her slender waist to her young breasts and tease them to arousal, to peaks tighter and darker than her stirrings of awakening the night before. He would set his mouth upon her neck, tasting her as she stretched willingly, allowing him freedom upon her silken skin, along her throat where flesh became tender, feminine beauty. His hand would move reverently over her rounded hip, between her thighs, and she would welcome his touch.

She wanted him as much as he wanted her. When she watched him and her heart beat rapidly, the fluttering fabric across her breast betrayed her, the delicate flush in her cheeks, the moisture on her unconsciously parted lips. And when he touched her last night, she had gone damp with need for him so quickly he barely managed to pull away.

In the moment the ropes had come off and she was free, with nothing between her need and his, Steven experienced the first flash of panic in his life. He didn’t even remember what he said to her then, only that he spoke to keep his hands still, to bolt his feet into place on the opposite side of the cabin. It had taken every ounce of his willpower to resist her, and again tonight.

He hadn’t much willpower left to spare.

He forced himself to focus on the shirt in his hands, to study the fine fabric and tiny stitches, its clean-washed texture. Maximin’s latest purchase at port, no doubt, probably Portuguese. It would do. Steven liked his mother’s people’s way of keeping clean, and he could no longer bear Europeans’ slatternly habits.

He had spent ten years of his childhood in that other world. Valerie’s world. But he hadn’t given it much thought since then, except on the day nearly five years ago that he received the letter from his uncle’s solicitor. His solicitor now. Of course, his aunt’s letters occasionally reminded him of that distant place. She never suggested he should return, though; she knew him well enough to realize he never would. His steward was an honest, capable man, and Steven had a lifetime of work to do here.

He unfastened the buttons of his cassock and the shirt beneath, then pulled the garments over his head and hung them upon the bedpost. He’d worn them for so long, the shirt bore the imprint of his body, just like his buckskin breeches. Men of the cloth, be damned. Steven fully appreciated the basic material comforts, including clean clothes and baths.

Taking up the linen towel, he dipped it in the basin of fresh water. He ran the damp cloth over his skin, cleaning away salt and sweat. Bebain probably supplied the water for Valerie, wishing her to be as neat as possible when he finally took her to his bed. It was the sort of thing the fastidious madman would value.

The thought slid through Steven’s blood like ice. He glanced at the woman whose fate currently obeyed Bebain’s erratic will. She lay completely still as before, but her half-lidded eyes shone like obsidian in the hint of lamplight, her gaze trained upon him. She met his look unflinchingly.

Then her gaze shifted downward.

Chapter 11

T
he caress of her hungry stare seared Steven’s skin and beneath it, swallowing his breath like a hurricane wind. Heat swept through him, surging into his groin. In mute ecstasy, he watched her discover his scar. Her brow creased, her gaze traveling the length of the jagged relic of Steven’s youth, from his waist to his ribs.

She must see the swift pounding of his heart, the flush of his skin everywhere her gaze lingered. He was unmasked, as he had not been in years. Decades.

Need burned rough and urgent in him as her gaze stroked, her lips parted, tiny sighs escaping as her breasts moved with deeper breaths, each moment sheer agony for him.

He could not speak. Could not make his mouth form the words that would end it, that would drag her away from this submerged passion that blazed between them, reminding her that he was not a man to be tempted. That he was a man who could not be tempted.

Struggling, he opened his mouth to speak firm, clear phrases, anything, as he had done for years with ease, playing his part.

Her gaze dipped, and his futile efforts disintegrated.

He ached. Ached with the pressure of hard heat, ached knowing he could do nothing about it, could not stop her from looking or her eyes from widening in female awareness, could not stop himself from needing her with every drop of his blood. He was not a celibate by any means, but he had never wanted a woman with this craving, this pain.

But alongside the pain, he was unbound beneath her scrutiny, heady almost. He had hidden his desires for so long behind disguises, seeing after other people’s problems and needs. Her bright gaze stripped him of pretense, delving into his soul as deeply as it sank beneath his skin. For a precious, intoxicating moment, he felt free.

His hands shook. Trying to contain the tremors, he drew the linen shirt behind him and shrugged his shoulders into it. Not trusting his unsteady fingers, he pulled the garment across his chest and waited.

Valerie’s hooded gaze slipped back to his. For a moment she stared at him through long lashes. He held his breath.

Her eyelids dipped, and closed.