The Smuggler and the Society Bride (23 page)

But she'd been right; just the suggestion that her virginity was already forfeit made desire flame hotter in his eyes. ‘You are sure?'

In answer, she leaned up and captured his lips.

W
ith every bit of nobility he could summon, Gabe tried to resist her, while her hands caressing his face steadily sucked away his will, swamping him in desire like the surf undercutting the sand beneath one's feet on the beach.

His heart was already thundering against his ribs, his pulse roaring in his ears. His skin felt so hot, he wondered that his shirt didn't smoulder, while need built and built, bubbling up until it threatened to overflow, like a cauldron of caulking pitch left over too hot a fire.

He felt her hands against his face, scorching as a brand, and knew he must back away before the remains of his control snapped like a bowsprit in a high wind. She was the storm, a gale blowing away all sense, all reason, sweeping him into a whirlwind of passion that would carry away every lifeline that tied him to his careful, solitary existence. Until, in the blinding force of that gale, he could see and feel and sense only her, only him, only now.

And then her lips touched his and he knew he was lost, no more able to resist her than his ship could defy the power of the sea.

She teased his mouth as he had teased hers. Brushing, nuzzling, nipping at it, until she electrified him by trailing the moist wet blade of her tongue along the outline of his lips.
When he gasped at the rush of sensation, she slid her tongue past his parted lips, into the willing warmth of his mouth.

And then he was kissing her just as hungrily, revelling in the taste of her, renewed shocks of sensation jolting through him as she captured his tongue and sucked it lustily and everything within him melted and crackled and burned.

Dizziness swept through him and he took a faltering step backward, nearly falling. Laughing softly, she broke the kiss.

‘Shall we go somewhere safer?' she asked. ‘I don't want to fall into the surf and drown.'

Her willing slave now, he would have agreed if she'd wanted to strip him naked on the sand. Instead, she led him back to where the crags overhung the beach, the continual dampness softening the stones here with a carpeting of moss and lichen. Tossing down her cloak, she pulled him down beside her, her mouth already on his again as she urged him to sit, his back against the sloping, vegetation-covered rock.

Her touch now was deft, unhurried, and he gave himself up to it utterly, giddy senses swimming as with lips and tongue she made love to his mouth in every variation possible, nipping, licking, sucking, penetrating deeply, then withdrawing to lick teasingly with the lightest of touches around the very edges of his mouth. It didn't seem possible he could be pushed to the very brink of climax merely by a kiss, yet he had to fight to keep from going over the edge, though she touched him only with her mouth.

His erection straining almost painfully against his breeches flap, he could have gone on letting her simply kiss him forever… But then he felt her hands at his chest, pulling loose the knot of his cravat and thrusting the cloth aside, plucking open the buttons of his waistcoat. Plunging her tongue deeply again in his mouth, she tugged the tails of his shirt out and worked her fingers under the fine linen, rubbing and stroking along his belly and ribs until her questing fingertips reached his nipples. There she raked her fingernails across the sensitive tips in rhythm to the thrusts of her tongue.

Just when he thought he could stand no more without exploding, she swept her fingers downward. Withdrawing her tongue, she gave him the lightest of tiny butterfly kisses along the outline of his lips, over his chin, his eyelids, while very, very slowly she edged her clever fingers down the taut skin of his belly, then lower still, beneath the waistband of his breeches where his erection throbbed, thick and heavy.

He was barely able to breathe now, every muscle tensed, but instead of taking him in her hand, stroking him as he quivered in expectation, her fingers sought instead the smooth curve of his hipbone, the hollow where leg met trunk, excruciatingly close, yet not touching, the plump rounds and rock-hard shaft.

Then, still giving him feather-light kisses, she removed her hand entirely. While he moaned an incoherent plea, she began plucking open the buttons of his trouser flap, until in a turgid rush, his shaft sprang free.

A shiver of sea air blew across the exquisitely sensitive tip, dewed now with the desire he was the thinnest of threads from losing all control over. And when at last, at last, she took him in both hands and stroked from the base down to rub her thumbs over the moist aching tip, he exploded in a mind-melting burst of sensation that sent ecstasy rushing to every clenched muscle in his body.

He hadn't recovered wit enough to feel shamed that she'd brought him to the peak alone, when, dazed, dazzled, he realized she had laid her head against his sweat-soaked shirt, her cheek over the wild beating of his heart. A purity of joy he could never imagined suffusing him, he wrapped his arms around her and cradled her to his chest.

They sat together for some time, the wind whispering a blessing and the surf humming a little song of gladness, before he finally felt he could trust his brain enough to summon words. But when he opened his lips to speak, knowing he couldn't begin to express the peace, joy, wonder of being here with her, she pressed a finger against his lips.

‘No talk now. Only loving.' And kissing him again, she reached down to cradle his flaccid member in her hands.

Good lad that it was, it began instantly to rise back to full attention. This time, she let him use his lips to make a leisurely exploration of her cheeks and brows, nose and ears, shuddering as he licked inside the delicate shells and nibbled on her earlobes. While he ministered to her, she rapidly rekindled desire from a slow simmer to a boil, gripping him lightly with both hands and sliding them from the hilt to the tip; tracing that same journey with a barely perceptible touch of one fingertip. Caressing just the taut skin of the head.

This time, however, he didn't intend for her to be a mere spectator. While he kissed her and she stroked him, he slipped a hand under her skirts and gradually worked up her legs, over the silky smoothness beneath the anklebone, around the lush fullness of calf to the tender skin behind her knee, then to the velvet of her inner thighs.

He delighted as her breathing went to little panting gasps that grew sharper as his fingers played across her thighs, creeping ever closer to the centre of her desires. She squirmed on the cloak, parting her legs wider for him, but he refused to be hurried, tasting the salty tang as the skin of her neck dampened and she moved urgently against his fingers.

She cried out when at last he parted her moist folds and delved within, running a finger tip over the plump ridge in a series of light strokes that pulled moans from deep in her throat.

But though he knew he'd not last much longer, before he readied her, his shaft swelling at the thought of the hot wet channel it would soon chart, he simply had to taste her. He tugged up her skirts to give him access, glorying in the sight of her pale naked limbs gleaming in the sunlight.

She played the wanton for him, letting her legs fall apart, gifting him with a full view of her soft, blonde-tufted mound and the pleasure-swollen lips beneath. Urging her sideways so
as not to lose the feel of her fingers against him, he leaned down to ply her sweet depths with his tongue, echoing the pattern he'd created with his stroking fingers. She strained against him, uttering incoherent breathy sounds of pleasure.

Finally she pushed him away, urged him back to a sitting position. After bending to take him briefly in her mouth—all soft pressure and exquisite heat—she rose on her knees to straddle him.

While her mouth sought his again in greedy abandon, she lowered herself on his waiting shaft. After a brief, initial check, her hands clutching his shoulders, she moved lower, slowly, slowly taking him deeper while he vibrated with tension and delight. Finally she began to move against him, rocking him deep, setting off with each stroke little explosions of delight, each a precursor of the culmination to come. Until finally, clenching his shoulders again, she cried out and tensed around him, while he exploded in another brain-melting scorch of heat that sucked from him breath, thought, wits.

Sometime later, his brain focused to the delightful reality of his lady reclining on his chest, her intimate moistness still cradling his satisfied member. He sighed deeply, thinking despite the sharpness of the rocks behind and beneath him, he could recline here forever, cradling her body and wrapped in her luxuriant heat.

Knowing his time to do so was rapidly running out, as she dozed against his chest, he caressed the softness of her naked thighs and bottom. It would be worth a smuggler's boatload of gold, he thought dreamily as his fingers stroked and gentled, to wake every morning like this, with Honoria, his Honoria, dozing on his chest, his shaft nested deep within her.

Except she wasn't
his
Honoria. He'd meant what he'd told her earlier. Though he guessed what she'd wanted to say—the same words that his heart cried to speak—it would be better if nothing were said, or promised, until after he'd finished untangling the mystery of her ruin. Though he would never be
able to bring himself to regret loving her, it had been unwise. And if he could produce proof of her innocence and win her a chance to reclaim her former life, what they had shared here today would remain his cherished secret.

Even though he now began to suspect she'd deliberately misled him about that innocence. Though she had been as ardent as he could have imagined, as his brain gradually resumed functioning, he recalled her gasp and the sudden bite of her nails into his shoulders when she first welcomed him into her body. With a little frown, he realized he had almost certainly been the first to breach her maidenhead.

Should he take her to task over it? he wondered, nuzzling his chin against her hair. She'd understood him well enough to know he would have resisted her every attempt at seduction, had he believed she was still untouched.

That sense of awe and humility welled up in him again, that she not only desired him, but had entrusted him with such a gift. It also spoke to how little faith she had in her chances of vindication.

Which only made him that much more determined to obtain it for her. No matter how desperately he wanted her future given into his hands.

If she had a family worthy of the name, they must respond to evidence of the vile trickery perpetrated against her by mounting an all-out campaign to restore her to her rightful place. He'd deliberately refrained from voicing his feelings to forestall her making promises she'd later feel compelled to keep. If he made much of being the first to claim her, she might feel honour required that she not accept her family's assistance, even though she'd hardly be the first maiden to go to her wedding couch no longer a virgin.

So he would say nothing. He'd bend every effort to giving her back a choice over what she wished to do with her life…and try to ignore the little voice within pleading for her choice to be him.

She woke then and stretched lazily, the movement creating a delectable caress of his nether regions that caused them to stir enthusiastically once again. Best that they both get dressed before the intoxicating elixir of desire she concocted so effortlessly bewitched him into taking her yet again.

‘Though I'd rather stay here all day, we should go back. Father Gryffd and Eva will be worried if you do not appear at the school.'

‘'Tis early yet,' she whispered, her kiss-reddened lips impossibly seductive. ‘Once we arrive at the school, our time will be over. No—' she put a finger over his lips ‘—don't say anything. Most especially, don't apologize or make me any noble speeches. You said it best: we will talk no more about this until after you've found the Gypsy. Now, I ask just one more thing.'

He would give her the moon to hang as a pearl broach at her throat, if she wanted it. ‘What, sweeting?'

She started unhooking the clasps of her habit's jacket, each tug moving her against him in a series of small gliding motions that sent pulses of pleasure through his rapidly hardening member. Pulling off the jacket and tossing it aside, she shucked her shirt, then said, ‘Undo my stays. I want to feel your mouth on my nipples.'

As she arched her head back to give him access, fully erect once again, he bent to comply.

T
hree weeks later, a grimly determined Gabe rode back into London. After questioning everyone in Sennlack who'd been acquainted with the Gypsy, he'd worked his way from Penzance to Falmouth, Truro to Bodmin, Launceston to Exeter and from Cornwall along the route to London, finding evidence of Beshaley's trading with jewellers and merchants, but not the man himself.

He'd searched out Gypsy encampments, too, and although one could never be sure they would give a straight answer to a
gadje
, he was reasonably certain none of them were harbouring the man. Which meant, unless he had overseas connections—Gabe recalled the massive turbaned butler—he must be in London. This time when he paid a call on Bloomsbury Square, Gabe would refuse to accept ‘not home, Sahib' as an answer.

Much as he tried to concentrate only on his quest, Honoria's lovely face kept recurring in his mind's eye, the echo of her laughter murmuring in his ear. Speculation about where she was and what she was doing crept back into his consciousness whenever he relaxed his vigilance. Each time his disobedient thoughts returned to her, he ached with longing—probably a hopeless longing—that she might one day be his.

In the dark of the few hours he allowed himself to sleep, dreams invaded his mind, transporting him back to the cove. He awoke to vivid images of reclining once again on a bed of moss-covered rocks, joined with her, her soft body straddling his, her cries of pleasure thrilling him as he emptied himself into her.

A wave of guilt flooded him. It truly had been madness to succumb to her. If a child were to result, she might have no alternative but to throw in her lot with him, forfeiting the opportunity to regain her former life he was working so hard to give her.

However, after three weeks of fruitless searching, an insidious little voice had begun urging him to give up the quest, acknowledge the Gypsy was not to be found and accept there was nothing further he could do. It urged him to return to Cornwall, inwardly rejoicing that, with Honoria still disgraced, her high-born family might actually countenance the suit of a commoner like him.

Thinking of the vast gap in rank between the Earl of Narborough and titleless, landless Gabriel Hawksworth, he smiled grimly. But just what position did a disgraced gentlewoman occupy?

Perhaps one
not
so far above his, that same voice whispered.

Impatiently, he shut it out. He would think no more of the future until he had tracked down the Gypsy. If Beshaley were not now in London, he would almost certainly return there sometime. Gabe could wait—what else had he to do, now that the
Gull
had been taken back by her previous captain? While he waited, he could look into purchasing a ship of his own, establish trading contacts, contemplate where he might set up his business so as to have ready access to his sources—mitten-making schoolgirls and a certain precociously gifted artist—without embarrassing his family.

But even if he were eventually successful in proving Honoria's innocence and seeing her restored to her former
status, a growing sense that they belonged together, strengthened a hundredfold after lying with her, had started gnawing away at his resolve to do the honourable thing and walk away. A certainty welling up from deep within had begun asserting that they were as inextricably linked as a ship and the sea. Despite the fact that he could never offer her the advantages that were hers by birth, he was growing less and less certain he could, or should, leave her without first confessing his love.

Truly giving her a choice between her old world—and his.

But first, he must find the key to the past that only the Gypsy possessed.

Not bothering to check in first at a hotel, Gabe rode directly to Phillips Jewellers on Bond Street. Anticipation and excitement mounted in his chest when the proprietor confirmed he had indeed dealt with Mr Hebden recently. In fact, he'd just purchased some exquisite gems—if Gabe cared to see them?

Gabe did not. Thanking the man and promising to return upon another occasion, he reclaimed his horse and set off for Bloomsbury Square.

By the time he reined in before the modest town house, blood lust, frustration, longing and righteous rage had him primed and more than ready for a fight. If that butler did try to fob him off, he intended to discover just how good the Indian was with his dagger.

The same turbaned servant answered the door. ‘Is Mr Hebden at home?' Gabe demanded.

After looking him over carefully, the butler replied, ‘I regret, but the Master Sahib is not at home.'

Shouldering past him into the house, a feat possible only because the Indian had clearly not anticipated he would attempt such a move, Gabe said, ‘I'm sorry, too, but that's not good enough. You will please tell “Sahib” that Gabriel Hawksworth is here to see him on behalf of Lady Honoria Carlow. If he truly isn't at home, I shall wait. You are, of course, welcome to try to prevent me.'

Shifting his weight onto the balls of his feet, hands fisting at his sides, Gabe waited expectantly for the Indian to reach for his dagger.

Before the man could move, however, a voice behind him said, ‘Stay, Akshat. I will receive Captain Hawksworth.'

Garbed in an immaculate black coat, spotless cravat and tight buff breeches, seeming, but for the lilt in his voice and the slight exotic darkness of his skin, every inch the English gentleman, Stephano Beshaley—Steven Hebden—walked into the entrance.

‘Won't you come into the library, Captain? Akshat, bring wine.'

‘There's no need,' Gabe said curtly, not at all pleased at being robbed of his chance to have a go at the butler. ‘I've come on business, and it will not take long.'

Hebden inclined his head. ‘As you will.'

He escorted Gabe into the room, a modest space with a modicum of leather-bound books on mostly empty shelves behind a large desk. ‘I take it this visit does not indicate a desire to invest in diamonds?'

‘No.'

‘Clever of you to have tracked me down. You come on behalf of Lady Honoria Carlow, you said. Just what is your connection to the lady?'

‘I should rather ask you that. I met her in Sennlack under the name of Miss Marie Foxe.'

He had the pleasure of seeing surprise flicker on Hebden's face before the expression of amused hauteur settled over it again. ‘Marie Foxe? Posing as a relation of old Miss Foxe of Foxeden? How interesting.'

‘Perhaps, though I'm more interested in the part you played in sending her there. What happened the night of Lady Dalrington's ball? Who hired you to assist in luring Lady Honoria into the garden? I'm willing to pay for the information—or beat it out of you.'

Hebden wrinkled his nose in distaste. ‘Please, Captain, your offer of payment is insulting. I'm not a common tradesman. And I'm no man's hired lackey.'

The Gypsy's last comment struck him. ‘If you weren't hired to assist at the ball, why were you there? Did one of Wardale's kin put you up to it?'

‘Ah, you know about the scandal? Perhaps I underestimated you, Captain. Something others have often done of me, to their eventual sorrow.'

He looked at Gabe condescendingly, the self-satisfied smugness of his expression making Gabe yearn to plant him a facer. ‘The plan was such a marvel of perfection, I see no need to deny my part in it. Indeed, I wasn't approached by Wardale or anyone else; the design was entirely mine from the start.'

‘
Entirely
yours?' Gabe asked incredulously.

‘You have difficulty believing that?' Anger flashed in Hebden's eyes. ‘I see I shall have to explain. It all began with my father's murder.'

‘So you
are
Framlingham's lost son!' Gabe cried.

Hebden inclined his head. ‘Yes. Hebden's Gypsy brat, his half-breed by-blow. The son who, upon his father's brutal murder, was ripped from everything familiar and sent to a foundling home. Have you any notion what life is like in a foundling home, Captain?'

‘Far less comfortable than in a nobleman's house, I imagine,' Gabe replied.

Hebden laughed shortly. ‘Far less
comfortable
.'

‘I thought the building burned to the ground, killing everyone within it,' Gabe said.

‘A few of us escaped. There followed some edifying years living on the street, then the voyages to foreign lands that led to my trading in gems. But always, I knew one day I would fulfill my mother's destiny by punishing those who caused my father's death.'

‘Your mother cursed all the families involved,' Gabe remembered.

‘And everything is now unfolding as she foretold. Guilt
is
eating them alive. Have you met Lady Honoria's father, the earl?' Hebden asked, malice in his eyes. ‘In very poor health—as well he should be. And, as my mother predicted, the children will pay for the sins of their fathers, till justice destroys the wicked.'

‘Justice!' Gabe cried. ‘What kind of
justice
is it when someone entirely innocent is made to pay for her father's supposed crimes? Lady Honoria was but a child at the time!'

‘As was I, when the Herriards cast me out!' Hebden retorted. ‘The symmetry is quite perfect, do you not agree? In return for a Hebden son losing his home and his place, a Carlow daughter loses hers.'

‘And you arranged this?' Gabe asked, incredulous that any sane man could justify such a travesty.

Looking pleased with himself, Hebden nodded. ‘I was at the jeweller's the day she quarrelled with her fiancé, Lord Readesdell. A spoiled, selfish chit already known to be wild to a fault! The merest slow-top could have predicted she would seek to punish him. Quite amusing to involve Lord Barwick, who'd been sniffing around her skirts for some time and been roundly snubbed for his efforts.'

‘How did you involve him?' Gabe asked, trying to control his rage long enough to ferret out the truth.

He'd thought he might have to coerce Hebden into revealing it, but with pride in his tone, the man replied, ‘Quite easily! Wardale, formerly Lord Leybourne, was hanged with a silken rope, the usual practice for convicted peers. 'Twas another reason to choose Barwick, whose amorous perversions were well known. A silk rope dispatched along with a note on Carlow letterhead, requesting that he meet Lady Honoria for a little, ah,
restrictive
love-play, and it was done. All that remained was to hire a footman to give first him, then her, a
message to meet in the garden and arrange for them to be discovered. Very neatly handled, if I do say so.'

‘How could you coldly ruin an innocent girl—you, who know what it is for the guiltless to suffer!'

‘Oh, she wasn't so innocent. If she hadn't already made herself a byword for behaviour just short of scandalous, Barwick wouldn't have believed she sent the note, nor would her sanctimonious brother Marcus have imagined her capable of arranging the rendezvous. A just God, whose instrument I am, ensures that only the guilty come to harm.'

Hebden laughed, further incensing Gabe. ‘Did the jade feed you some pathetic falsehood about her purity?' Hebden made a scornful noise. ‘The hot-blooded wench probably enjoyed Barwick's attentions!'

The memory flashed into Gabe's head—Honoria, jerking out of his embrace, white-faced and trembling. The anguish in her eyes as she haltingly described what Barwick had done to her.

With a growl of rage, he charged Hebden, fists raised.

But before he could land the first blow, Hebden doubled over with an anguished cry, both hands clutching at his head. While Gabe halted, puzzled, Hebden staggered backward, stumbled blindly into a chair and went down.

Gabe stared at him, mystified and disgusted. Much as he thirsted to feel the Gypsy's face bleeding under his fists, there was no way he could strike a downed man.

In the next moment, the library door burst open. Dagger raised, the Indian charged in, a murderous gleam in his eyes, two more men following on his heels.

Gabe wheeled to meet the butler's attack, arms up to deflect the first slash. From the corner where he'd fallen, Hebden moaned, ‘No…Akshat. Just get him out.'

The butler checked his blow, while the other two cornered Gabe and grabbed him roughly by the shoulders.

‘Don't worry, I'll leave in peace,' Gabe told him. ‘Who
gave you the power to judge anyone's innocence or guilt, you contemptible muckworm? You can't right a wrong by perpetrating further injustice! I'd be careful about trying to strip vengeance from the Almighty's hands, lest that righteous God you claim to represent strike back at
your
kin!'

Jerking free of the two men restraining him, Gabe gave Hebden one last disgusted look and stalked from the room.

As he exited the town house, he noted that it was barely past noon. Possessed now of all the facts, with plenty of day light left to track down his final quarry, he vaulted into the saddle and directed his horse toward the Carlow residence on Albemarle Street.

 

The butler who answered the door tried at first to fob him off, saying that neither Lord Narborough nor Lord Stanegate were receiving visitors. But when Gabe curtly told him that he came on business related to Lady Honoria, the servant's manner abruptly changed. Escorting Gabe to a small ground-floor receiving room, the butler told him he would inform Lord Stanegate of his presence.

‘See that you do,' Gabe said, barely repressing the rage simmering in him.

As he waited for Honoria's brother to appear, Gabe paced the room restlessly, noting the handsomeness and quality of the furniture and hangings. Finally he halted by the window, which overlooked a small back garden, where roses were blooming.

A melancholy longing pierced his restless anger. Vividly he recalled the day he'd met Honoria, approaching her aunt for an introduction and then audaciously bearing her off to view the roses in the vicarage garden. From the first moment he'd seen her striding into the waters of Sennlack Cove, she'd captivated him. His Miss Foxe.