The Trouble With Virtue: A Comfortable Wife\A Lady by Day (39 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

S
IR
N
OAH
WAS
WRONG
. She would never forget Ahmet. But even more than that, she would never forget Noah.

“La, Josephine, you haven’t heard a word I’ve said,” Honoria complained as she peered through a glass case at a collection of tiny jeweled boxes. “Whatever is the matter? But never mind—I daresay I already know what’s the matter. Sir Noah is leaving.” Honoria looked up, took Josephine’s hands and lowered her voice. “I know I’ve done little else but joke you about him, but it’s only too plain that you have real feelings for him. Please, Josephine, don’t deny it. I can see in your eyes that you’re hurting. I don’t know when I’ve seen you so drawn.”

Josephine felt drawn. Her chest ached with the feeling that her last chance at true happiness would disappear the day Sir Noah sailed out of the Thames.

But that was ridiculous. It had to be.

“Has Sir Noah not considered staying?” Honoria pressed on. “Has he given no hint that he might be interested in buying Mr. Woodbridge’s shipyard for himself?”

“I
adore
London.” The words ripped from Josephine as if she’d been holding them on her tongue for ages.

Honoria’s delicate dark brows dove quizzically. “That’s never been in doubt. Has it?”

Oh, yes. Yes, it had—from the moment that ship had arrived from Gibraltar all those years ago. From the moment she’d been forced to marry Mareck and make her home with him, knowing that he was busying himself between the legs of any number of women about town.

“It has.” Honoria realized this aloud, and moved Josephine away from the glass cases and the too-curious gaze of the shopkeeper. Now she gripped Josephine’s hands all the more firmly. “Listen to me, Josephine.If you love Sir Noah, you cannot allow him to simply sail away.”

Josephine stared at her, and for a terrifying moment the truth sat on her tongue:
I want to go with him.
Abandon everything, turn her back on Lettie and Pauline, disregard the effect her actions would have on them and on Charlotte.

“I don’t love him,” she said, pulling away.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Honoria whispered fiercely. “One has only to look at you to see the truth.”

“A fanciful infatuation. Nothing more.”

“And he shares your feelings. It is only too obvious.”

“I have no idea. That is to say, I have no feelings to be shared.”

“La, Josephine, you are the worst liar in London. You must find out.”

For a wild, reckless moment the entire story filled her mouth, demanding to be told. Her girlhood love for Ahmet. Her secret yearning for Gibraltar. The feelings for Sir Noah that had grown to eclipse both of those, and her fierce desire to sail away with him. To watch the sun set over the Mediterranean. To make a place for herself in his villa.

“Only imagine what everyone would say if they thought I was having an affair with Sir Noah.” The words were barely audible. Over by the glass cases, a man and two ladies occupied the shopkeeper’s attention.

“
Are
you having an affair with him?”

“Certainly not.” One encounter—one
mistake—
did not add up to an affair.

“I daresay they would have a great deal to say about it, as they do about everything. But you can’t conduct yourself according to that, for heaven’s sake.”

“Can’t I?”

“Josephine! Is that all that’s keeping you from him? The raised brows of the ton?
You?
”

“
Wisdom
is what’s keeping me from him.”

“La! Wisdom!”

“A virtue, or so I’ve always understood.”

“And therein lies the trouble with virtue,” Honoria said firmly. “It does not account for happiness.”

“I
am
happy.”

“Are you? I’ve only just begun to wonder.”

Josephine tensed. “Honestly, Honoria, it won’t do to imagine things.”

“Only look at you—always a pillar of perfection, never a flaw to be seen. Always just the right words on your lips. Flawless entertainments. A perfect hostess. Always kindness toward others, even when they aren’t there to hear what you say. Even after Mareck’s accident, you were the picture of poise. No one in the world could find fault with you.”

“I’m not perfect,” Josephine whispered suddenly. Harshly.

“No?”

The truth came pouring out. There was no holding it back. “If I could, I would leave London tomorrow. I would sail to Gibraltar. I would buy myself a small cottage on a hill, surrounded by olive trees and lemon trees and flowering vines, overlooking the sea, where I could watch the ships come and go.” Honoria would know everything now—almost everything—and there would be no taking it back. “I would take a lover—someone exotic and exciting who would worship me like a goddess. I would spend my afternoons wearing flowing gowns from the Orient and sipping mint tea and gazing out at the turquoise blueness of the sea.”

Honoria’s green eyes glistened with tears. “Oh, Josephine.”

Disappointment, naturally. It was all she could expect now. But it hurt—oh, how it hurt, even though she’d always known what would happen if any of her friends knew the truth. “You needn’t stay,” she said. “But if you would keep my confidence, I would be forever grateful.”

Honoria moved in next to her. “How can you have held this in? It’s the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Not so heartbreaking as what would happen to Lettie and Pauline if my errant desires were made known.”

“Nonsense!”

“I won’t have their reputations tainted, not in any way.”

“Tainted? Because their widowed aunt has decided to
travel?
”

But what Josephine longed for was more than mere travel. “As soon as Sir Noah is gone, it will be as if he was never here. I’m sure I shall hardly think of him at all.”

* * *

E
XCEPT
THAT
THE
thought of Sir Noah leaving occupied her thoughts incessantly.

The reality of it throbbed with a small headache in Josephine’s temple during the evening’s entertainment at the theater, at which Captain Ryson and Mr. Crumley joined them in their box—and at which Sir Noah was nowhere to be seen.

It clutched at her heart later that night, when Josephine summoned Pauline to her dressing room to tell her the news.

“I thought you would want to know that Sir Noah will be leaving England within the week,” Josephine told her, reaching for Pauline’s hand as they sat on the settee in their nightgowns. Bentley jumped up with them and curled up in Pauline’s lap. “He and Mr. Woodbridge have come to an understanding about Sir Noah’s shipyard in Turkey, and Sir Noah will be returning home to see the project under way.”

Home. To that beautiful villa on the Turkish seaside with its fountain and its orange trees and its private, sunny courtyards.

“I see,” Pauline said, and sighed a little. “I hope he will be very successful.”

“I have no doubt that he will.”

Pauline smiled a little and stroked Bentley’s wavy, silver fur. “Only imagine how triumphant he will feel to see his first ship set sail on the Mediterranean.”

It was too easy to imagine the satisfaction that would settle into his blue eyes. The way he would shout with triumph and raise his fist into the air at the sight. The flash of his teeth as he grinned, victorious.

“Only imagine the sails, clean and white and new against the blue sky and sea,” Pauline said, pulling her hand from Josephine’s, resting her elbow on her knee and her chin in her palm. “Think of the waves splashing the hull for the first time. The spotless cannons at the ready.”

Josephine tucked a wisp of hair behind Pauline’s ear. “Why do I suspect it was Sir Noah’s ships, and not his qualities, that caught your interest?”

Pauline leaned back and sighed. “It won’t matter now, because I shan’t have either.” She toyed a little with Bentley’s ears. “Mr. Crumley wishes to ask Papa for my hand. And I already know Papa will approve.”

Josephine tried to be happy at the news. “Mr. Crumley is...very amiable.”

“
Very
amiable.”

“He will make an excellent husband.”

“Yes.” Pauline was very quiet. And then, “I know it isn’t right for a girl to think of ships and faraway lands.”

Josephine opened her mouth to say very firmly that there wasn’t anything wrong with it at all, except the effect of that could be disastrous, and Charlotte would never forgive her. “You’re hardly the only one who thinks so, or there wouldn’t be so many sensational tales of pirates.”

“Mother says you had the same flights of fancy when you were my age, and that it has caused you a great many regrets. Please forgive me if I’ve distressed you with my behavior.”

“You haven’t distressed me, Pauline.” Regrets? It wasn’t difficult to imagine what Charlotte had been telling them. “And you don’t have to marry Mr. Crumley just because he’s showed an interest. There will be others. There is still time.”

“Mother won’t be happy if she learns I turned down Mr. Crumley.”

No, Charlotte would not be happy. “We wouldn’t have to tell her.”

Pauline smiled up at her, but sadly. “Thank you, Auntie Josephine. That means a great deal to me, really it does, but we can’t be sure there
would
be anyone else, or that if there was, that he wouldn’t be dreadful. I can’t imagine anyone less objectionable than Mr. Crumley. But I’ve told him he must speak to you before he makes any declarations to me.”

“Pauline, are you certain?”

“Yes, Auntie Josephine. Although I am sorry that Sir Noah is leaving. For your sake.”

“Dearest, there’s no reason to be sorry.” There wasn’t. Because Pauline was courageous enough to do the right thing.

Recklessly following one’s heart regardless of the consequences—that hardly required any courage at all.

* * *

J
OSEPHINE
ENTERED
E
LIAS
’
S
dressing room to find him seated by the window with a book.

“What are you reading?”

He grunted. “Nothing of importance.” He fumbled the book closed and set it aside. “Impossible to find a skilled periwig-maker these days. Berwick! Bring my powdering gown.”

Josephine helped him out of his chair, glanced at the book’s spine.
A History of Turkey and the Ottomans
.

Guilt tore through her. “I have news,” she said brightly. “I’ve hired Mr. Lind. He started this afternoon at the shipyard.”

“Glad to hear it,” Elias grumbled, searching the pockets of his dressing gown and finally coming up with a handkerchief.

“He had excellent references.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Elias dabbed his nose, tucked the handkerchief away and pushed himself out of his chair when Berwick arrived with the gown and powder. “By the way, I’ve offered Sir Noah any assistance he requires with his new shipyard. I believe he’ll set sail in a matter of days.” He sat in his favorite powdering chair while Berwick settled a new wig on Elias’s head. Soon a cloud of powder filled the air around him.

Readying for another debauch at the Dewy Petal, or perhaps he’d tired of that one by now.

She thought of Sir Noah’s villa, of the obvious regard Sir Noah had for Elias, of the warm, dry Mediterranean climate.

“Yes, he told me,” she said. “I saw him at the shipyard.”

Elias wanted to go with Sir Noah. As if that book wasn’t evidence enough, she’d seen it in the animated way he spoke when Sir Noah visited. The questions he’d asked, the interest he’d showed in Sir Noah’s shipyard plans. These days, even food barely interested him.

Berwick finished, and the air around Elias began to clear. “Rather ride a horse backward to Bath than sail from here to Turkey,” he grumbled.

It was a lie. She should tell him she knew it, and she should tell him he was free to do as he pleased.

But if she did, Elias would go with Sir Noah to the Mediterranean and she would stay behind, because she was too afraid to go herself. And she would be completely, entirely alone because he was the only person in the world who truly knew her.

Berwick removed the powdering gown, and Elias stood. “Perhaps I ought to send
you
along to make sure he doesn’t mistreat my men.”

“Uncle—”

“A joke, Josephine. Merely a joke. Stop looking so terrified.”

“I’m not
terrified.
” She stood abruptly.

“You don’t fool me, Josephine.” Elias reached out and touched her cheek, and she stood perfectly still while her heart swelled into her throat and made each breath a struggle. “I’m not going to leave you,” he said. “If you won’t go, then neither will I. We’re family, Josephine.”

“You and Noah are family, too.”

“Yes. But Noah knows his way around the world. He’ll do fine.”

She wanted to say that she would do fine, too, if Elias went with Sir Noah. That she knew her way. That she loved Elias too much to keep him in London when he was so clearly intrigued by other possibilities— possibilities that put a fresh spark in his eyes when for so long that spark had been gone.

But old fears bubbled up like hot tar, smothering and suffocating her and sucking her under. She imagined a shipwreck, a heart attack, an accident. The horror of receiving a letter from Sir Noah bearing the dreadful news.

“Yes,” she said, and kissed Elias’s cheek. Her stomach tightened, and she felt a bit ill. “I daresay Sir Noah will do fine.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

J
OSEPHINE
LAY
IN
bed that night, trying not to think of Noah leaving, wanting him so desperately the very sheets were a torment against her skin. Was it only days ago she’d nearly let him carry her here and make love to her?

She rolled to her side, plumped the pillow beneath her head. Her breasts grazed the inside of her nightgown, sending white heat searing to a dozen intimate places.

After tomorrow, the possibility of ever making love with Noah would be gone.

She reached out and caressed the pillow next to her, as though she caressed
him.
Firelight flickered over her skin, and she imagined the way it might flicker over his if he were here. What he would look like lying next to her. Moving over her.

Inside her.

God in heaven. The flesh between her legs pulsed hard, as though he were already there. She shifted, and her thighs brushed together.

You could go to him.

It would be a mistake. Oh, it would. To open herself to him that way... To watch his face as he moved inside her body and feel him there, deep inside her... She would be lost.

But she wanted him there more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. Needed him there, as if there was a place deep inside that would never be fulfilled unless he touched it.

She shifted restlessly beneath the linens, wanting. Needing. She turned onto her stomach and felt it even more keenly with her breasts pressed into the mattress beneath her. She parted her legs slightly and remembered something Mareck had used to want, something she hadn’t cared for. But perhaps...

The idea burst to life and now she imagined Sir Noah behind her, moving powerfully between her thighs, urging her up—

God in heaven, yes.
Yes
.

It would be perfect. There would be no looking at his face, no gazing into his eyes when he filled her. There would only be Noah, inside her, giving her the one part of him she might dare to take.

She could take that memory, just the way she’d dared to take the memory of Ahmet. And just as her memories of Ahmet had carried her through her awful marriage, her memories of Noah would carry her through the quiet, lonely years ahead.

* * *

H
ALF
OF
AN
afternoon and all of an evening was plenty of time to move his ship from its moorage at the shipyard to the London docks to begin reprovisioning. It was not enough time to come to terms with the fact that he would be leaving London without what he’d come for.

It was an hour till midnight, and Noah stalked the decks of his ship like a restless specter, checking lines and sheets and guns and anything else that could easily wait for morning, but he felt a pressing need to look at now. In the dark. When the only light came from the lantern he carried and the taverns along the river.

I’ll make sure you have everything you need,
Elias had said.

That was impossible. He needed not to return home alone.

You need Josephine.

No. He didn’t
need
Josephine. He
wanted
Josephine. There was a difference.

But God, he wanted her as he’d never wanted anything. The hot depth of her body around his fingers nearly killed him every time he remembered it.

He splayed his hand in the near darkness and looked at those fingers now. They’d been inside her, as deep as he could push them. She’d climaxed around those fingers.

God.

He dropped his hand and shook it as if it had caught fire. Inside his breeches, his cock swelled.

Perhaps he did need Josephine. He needed to make love to her before he left London. Finish what they’d begun in that library—but without losing any more of his control than he already had.

And there were ways to make it less personal. An image ignited in his mind—Josephine with her back to him. Smooth, satin skin, round inviting buttocks. Bending over the edge of the bed, giving him perfect access to her body without the risk of having to look in her eyes—

His breath came hard. Labored. He gripped the starboard railing, digging his fingers into the wood.

Yes. He could do it.
Would
do it.

He would have Josephine tonight, and he would leave London with at least one thing he wanted.

He turned abruptly from the railing and started across the deck. Stopped. Someone was coming up the gangplank—a cloaked figure he would recognize anywhere.

* * *

T
HIS
WAS
NO
time for rational thought, and Josephine was determined not to have a single one as she walked up the gangplank. Clouds churned in a teasing hide-and-seek with the moon, and there was Sir Noah: blond hair in the moonlight, white shirt fluttering in the breeze, miles of lines crisscrossing the yards above him.

A mad tangle of nerves quivered in her belly at the sight of him, knowing why she was here and what she planned to do.

But she wasn’t going to turn back now. She could have this one thing. She
would
have it. And after he was gone, she would treasure it like a secret jewel.

She walked the rest of the way up the gangplank. Sir Noah caught her by the hand and helped her aboard.

“I was just going to come find you,” he said.

“You were?”

The words scarcely left her lips before he kissed her—a deep, intense moving of his mouth over hers, demanding the reason she’d come, telling her exactly what he planned to do about it.

“I can’t leave London without making love to you, Josephine,” he said roughly against her lips, and her breath caught in her throat. “I won’t.”

Somehow she managed to laugh, but it came out low. Breathy. “That’s not your choice to make.”

“No.” He looked down at their joined hands and toyed his thumb across her knuckles. Looked up. “It isn’t.”

The wind kicked up with a fierce gust that pulled at her careful coiffure and flipped back one side of her overskirt. His light grip on her fingers lured her like a silken snare.

This was not going to turn out the way she’d planned—she knew it now the way she knew her own heartbeat. Giving herself to Sir Noah, and then returning to her town house and her London life... It was going to be the most painful thing she’d ever done.

More painful than the last sliver of Gibraltar disappearing in the distance.

More painful than that last glimpse of Ahmet out the carriage window as her family had ridden away from the docks.

More painful, even, than those desolate months of loneliness after the wedding when it seemed there was nobody in the world who cared for her except Elias.

Noah put a hand on her face and brushed her cheek with his thumb. “You shine on me like the sun in Tangiers, Josephine.”

She closed her eyes, feeling his heat like the very rays of the sun he spoke of.

He pressed his cheek to hers, brushed his lips over the sensitive skin by her ear. “Allow me inside you tonight, and I could die a happy man without ever touching another woman as long as I live.”

The words were ridiculous. Exaggerated. And they shot straight to an intimate nerve that pulsed hotly, urgently, in precisely the place he wanted to touch.

Waves whipped by the wind lapped against the hull. Ships all around them creaked and lolled. Somewhere a bell rang, and another, fading into the distant shouts of revelry in the night. They were not alone. But the wall supporting the upper deck gave them privacy from the riverside.

Beneath her cloak, she wore a simple gown not meant to be seen outside her dressing room—but one that would be very little obstacle. Under it she wore only her shift, and her breasts hung heavy and yearning beneath the fabric. She parted the cloak and let him see her state of undress. His eyes dropped instantly to her body, and a sudden, hot impulse had her bringing her hands up to pull the fabric aside and expose her breasts. Immediately, the sharp wind kissed her nipples into hard nubs.

“Is this what you wanted to touch?” she asked, scarcely recognizing her own voice.

Hunger flared in his eyes, and then he was touching her, kissing her, with her exposed breasts crushed against his coat and his hands gripping her waist and his tongue battling fiercely with hers. He tasted of anise liquor and forbidden pleasure, smelled of distant, sensuous lands.

The wind whipped around them and he closed his hands over her breasts, moving his thumbs hungrily over her nipples, biting at her lower lip, devouring her.

“Your hair,” he said against her mouth. “I want to see it.”

“Good God,” she breathed, “you have no idea—”

But he was already tugging, pulling, tossing pins aside, plundering her hair until it came tumbling free. He lifted it up and shook it in the wind until it was completely liberated—a wild, tangled mess falling around her shoulders and teasing her flesh.

“You are,” he said roughly, pulling her close, touching her lips with his fingers, drawing them across her chest to brush the hair from her breasts, “the most beautiful woman in all of creation.”

She dug her fingers into his hair and pulled him down, urging, gasping when he took a nipple in his mouth. The sweet pull seared every nerve. Her most secret places pulsed with hot need.

She reached for him, for his breeches, and closed her hand over his shaft. He groaned, freed himself with one hand, and her fingers met hot flesh.

He sank to his knees and pushed her skirts up and then—

Oh, God. He pressed his face between her thighs and his seeking tongue thrust into her folds, finding its treasure. Thick, strong fingers found her passage and pushed inside, stroking into the wetness of it.

She clung to his shoulders, dug her fingers through his hair, gasped uncontrollably until... Until...

A ragged cry tore from her throat, and she pulsed, pulsed, pulsed. And then he was standing. Pushing his breeches farther past his hips with the fiercest, most feral expression she’d ever seen. She was desperate to reach for him, but somehow through the fog of pleasure she remembered what she’d planned. She started to turn, only to have him hurry her on, turning her to face the side of the staircase that led to the upper deck. She braced herself against the wood. Felt him lift her skirts. Grip her hips.

Her passage throbbed, slick and hot and ready. His phallus brushed her buttocks on its way to what it sought: entrance.

The tip of him found her. She felt him groan—he was pressed that closely against her. She widened her stance, bent forward just a little. Felt him penetrate. Stretch.

Enter.

Thrust.

The wind caught her ragged cry and carried it away as he plunged inside her deep, deep, deep.

And then he was pulling her back, flush against him, pressing fierce, hot kisses against the side of her neck. She felt him slip from her body. Felt him turning her, shoving her skirts up again, lifting her, carrying her three steps to the wall that enclosed the cabins, urging her legs around him even as he pinned her against the wood.

And then he was inside her again, face-to-face, kissing her and gripping her buttocks and oh, oh,
oh.
She dug her fingers into his hair, kissing him as if she could swallow him whole. His erection thrust deep inside her yet all she wanted was to be closer.
Closer.

“Noah.”

All restraint fled. He speared inside her and she was completely, utterly open. She gasped against his mouth. Opened her eyes and looked at him—at that face she could stare at for a lifetime—and took all of him inside her, feeling herself shudder and climax again, and even then she wasn’t close enough to him.

She wanted more. She wanted him forever.

* * *

B
Y
THE
TIME
Josephine left Noah’s ship, the night was nearly over and her entire plan was in tatters.

They’d made love again on the bed in his cabin—slowly, sweetly, with long, deep kisses that mimicked the stroke of his body inside hers. With murmured endearments. She’d watched his face as he moved inside her. As he’d climaxed in her body, finally spending himself completely.

There wasn’t an inch of him she hadn’t touched. Tasted.

There wasn’t a single place on her body he hadn’t explored, and that didn’t pulse and ache even now as she sneaked into her own home a disheveled mess.

The moment she came in the door, Edgar met her with a note. His eyes widened a little at the sight of her, but beneath her cape he couldn’t see the half of it.

“The wind is fierce tonight,” she said, unable to quite look at him.

“Indeed, your ladyship,” he replied with complete lack of inflection.

The note was from Trowe.

Mr. Woodbridge badly injured. Please come immediately.

She looked up, her heart racing, the evening’s activities suddenly forgotten. “The coach. Immediately. And send a footman to the docks to tell Sir Noah he must come to Mr. Woodbridge’s house at once.”

Moments later she was clattering down the streets still in her cloak and disheveled undress, desperately trying to wind her tumbling hair into some sort of order but having no pins, praying Elias was all right.