Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch

She rested her chin on her knees, watching him. “Aren’t you going to ask again how I got into your room?”

He shook his head. “This is Naples, not my sister’s house. From the king on down, no one’s expected to behave with any sort of propriety. Most likely you have to bribe the servants here to be able to keep to your own room.”

She laughed. “Then I should have kept my money.”

“I like the surprise, anyway,” he said, shrugging off first his coat and next his waistcoat, tossing both onto his sea chest, followed by his neck cloth and his shoes and stockings. The room was warm, and like most sailors he felt more comfortable barefoot and with less clothing. After the weeks together in the tiny cabin, such casual familiarity before Caro seemed automatic. And yet because they now were in a bedchamber in an inn, an inn in Naples, he was aware of a new tension between them, a charged undercurrent swirling around them both. “And I was feeling a bit lonely, too.”

She smiled, thinking how he never would have made such an admission on that first night. She liked watching him move about the room, even his simplest gestures lithe and spare. He was so handsome, she thought with a little catch in her breathing, and she loved him so much, that what she was doing couldn’t possibly be wrong.

“I’m sorry about supper,” she said softly. “But I wanted to see you alone.”

She rose from the bench, and he stared. He couldn’t help it. She wore a dressing gown of deep blue silk, nearly the same color as the night sky behind her, that draped and slipped around her in rich, shimmering folds. Where the dressing gown fell open in front, he could see that she wore a night shift of palest blue, the linen so fine as to be almost transparent across the darker tips of her breasts and the shadowy triangle at the top of her thighs.

“You never wore that aboard the Raleigh,” he said, his voice low. He had never seen her in any color before save white or black. Hell, he’d never seen any woman dressed like this, tempting as sin itself, and he felt the temperature in the room rise another ten degrees.

“That’s because I bought it this afternoon.” The way he was watching her, his green eyes half-closed, made her shiver with anticipation. Before Jeremiah, she had found that raw, hungry look in men’s eyes disturbing, even frightening, but with him she felt only excitement. “The shops in Naples, it seems, respect the local sense of propriety.”

“Or lack of it. You couldn’t find anything like that in Providence.”

“Nor in Portsmouth, either.” She smiled shyly, daring to ask the question she knew was rhetorical. “You like it, then?”

“Oh, aye, I like it. I like it very much.” What the devil had that old woman said to her this afternoon? This time, there was absolutely no mistaking Caro’s intentions, and he found himself torn between wanting her with an intense desire that was almost painful, and the knowledge that to take her would be wrong, dreadfully, disastrously wrong for them both.

She lifted her arms to smooth her hair back from her forehead, her breasts thrusting upward through the sheer fabric, and he felt his whole body tighten in response. If he didn’t speak up soon, he wouldn’t be able to.

He forced himself to raise his gaze to her face. “Caro, sweet, listen to me. Tomorrow I’m leaving for Tripoli to try to find Davy and Frederick.”

“I know.” Her eyes were luminous, deep blue like the silk in the candlelight. “That is why—”

“No, lass, hear me out. The pasha there has declared war on America, and though that won’t stop me, it will make things damned difficult.”

In spite of his resolve, he reached out to her, tenderly cradling her jaw in the palm of his hand. “The odds aren’t smiling on us, Caro. The Barbary corsairs don’t follow the usual rules of war for prisoners, and the one that has Davy and your husband is the worst of the lot. He could have killed them both already, sweet.”

She shook her head vigorously, her unbound hair swinging across his wrist. “Lady Byfield says they’re alive. She’s had word through the envoys that all the prisoners on the list still live!”

“Pray she’s right, Caro.” He traced little circles on her cheek with his thumb, marveling as he always did at the softness of her skin. “Then pray for me, too.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because when I’m gone, sweetheart, I want you to remember the moonlight and the stars and the fishing boats with striped sails,” he said tenderly. “I don’t want you to regret a blessed thing.”

Her smile was unexpectedly bittersweet. “My whole life is too full of regret already. If I left you now, I would never forgive myself for what I had missed.”

“Be sure, Caro,” he warned, knowing that this time there would be no turning back for either of them. “Be very sure.”

She nodded, almost afraid to meet his gaze. Briefly her courage faltered. What if he said no? What if he dismissed her, or worse yet, laughed in her face? But she wanted more memories of Naples than moonlight and fishing boats. She needed this night with him to keep her warm through the lifetime of emptiness that remained before her at Blackstone House.

“You and I are always pretending we’re what we’re not, aren’t we, Jeremiah?” she said, hesitancy and daring mingled in her voice. “But tonight I would pretend one more time with you. I will be your Caro, yours alone. I will be innocent again, the girl I once was, untouched by any man except for you.”

His eyes narrowed as he listened, lingering over her lush, rounded body in the blue silk, a woman’s body, not that of an untried girl. Yet the game intrigued him, outlandish as it was; to pretend she was still a virgin was to make her husband and her marriage magically vanish. If this was what it would take to ease her guilt, than so be it. He wanted her too much to care any longer. Besides, the idea of being her first lover, even as a game, was enough to make his body quicken with growing interest.

“And what role am I to play in this, eh, sweetheart?” he asked, his voice low and intensely male. “A highwayman again, come to rob you of your virtue?”

“Oh, no, Jeremiah,” she whispered breathlessly, realizing he was agreeing. “You must be yourself.”

“Easy enough.” He slid his hand back along her jaw to bury his fingers in the silvery silk of her hair. She let her head fall back, luxuriating in the pressure of his hand on the back of her neck, and unconsciously her lips parted, red, full, waiting for his.

He kissed her gently at first, his lips barely brushing against hers, sensitizing them enough to make her sigh with delight. Her hands slid down his shoulders, her fingers digging deep into the muscles as impatiently she pulled him closer.

“Don’t be in such a rush, sweetheart,” he whispered. “By my reckoning, we’ve all night before us.”

Her hands stilled, her eyes so large with uncertainty that he chuckled. She was as good at this ruse as she’d been at all the other bits of playacting he’d seen from her. Maybe better. He could almost believe she’d never done any of this before.

Lightly he touched his finger to her lower lip, moist from his. “I’m not telling you to stop, Caro. I’m only reminding you that the journey can be every bit as fine as the destination.”

She smiled tremulously and he lowered his mouth to hers again, dipping deeper to savor her sweetness. His tongue met hers, coaxing and caressing as he urged her to join him. She shifted closer to him, seeking more, and he gathered her into his arms, reminded again of how soft and willing she was to hold as his lips moved from hers to the little hollow beneath her ear.

Her laugh of sheer pleasure was almost girlish. “Come back,” she ordered softly. “You taste too good to let go.”

“It’s only the rum,” he murmured, taking his time to reach her lips again. “Middling rum at that, just like you’d taste on any other sailor.”

“No one’s like you,” she whispered vehemently. “My own Jeremiah.”

He had never belonged to anyone, and he was surprised by how deeply her words touched him. Was it only part of the game, he wondered, protecting himself against the pain of feeling too much, or did she really wish to be his alone, if only for this night?

When he kissed her now, he forgot about teasing and coaxing. Now he wanted to make her his in the one way he knew how, to possess her and mark her in a primal male way, and his mouth moved relentlessly across hers. He knew from the way she opened to him, drawing him deeper still, responding with the heat he remembered so well, that she felt the same need, moving against him with an urgent abandon that only inflamed him more. They had both waited so long for this.

Ruthlessly he pushed the dressing gown off her shoulders and down her arms, and he felt her shiver as the silk slid across her skin like another caress. The shift beneath was even more insubstantial than he’d first thought, held together only by tiny ribbons at the shoulders above her bare arms. The sheer linen was no more than a mist across her body, tantalizing him with how much it simultaneously revealed yet covered, and he felt his body, already aroused, grow hotter still.

Yet, though her face was flushed with excitement, her lips swollen from his kisses, there was an uncertainty in her eyes close to alarm. The game, he reminded himself, of course, it was part of the game, and he tried to tamp down the rising fire in his blood.

“Forgive me if I frightened you, sweetheart,” he said gently, touching only her cheek to reassure her. “God knows I’d never want to hurt you.”

“I know that,” she said softly, her trust so touchingly genuine that it wrenched at his heart, “and you won’t.”

She turned her face into his hand to brush her lips across his palm, her eyes remaining turned toward his, their expression suddenly impish. “But it isn’t fair that you are still so…covered.”

Wryly he looked down at his shirt and breeches. “I’m afraid I haven’t anything in my sea chest to match that shift.”

“I’d rather see you,” she whispered, her voice husky with shy suggestion.

He grinned wickedly and cocked one skeptical black eyebrow as he yanked his shirttails free of his breeches. “I don’t think a modest young maid would want to see a naked man quite this soon.”

“This one would.” She took his wrist to unbutton the cuff of his shirt, the color of her cheeks stained darker despite her assurance. She stepped away as he drew the shirt over his head, tossing it carelessly across the back of a chair, and shook his thick, black hair back from his forehead. She swallowed as he unbuttoned the fall of his breeches, painfully aware of how he watched her face for her reaction.

And by the light of the two candles, he was well worth watching. A lifetime ago, in her mother’s apartments, she had been shown men without their clothing, and she thought she knew what to expect. But Jeremiah was different from those men. Very, very different.

As he stood before her, comfortable with himself and enjoying her scrutiny, his shoulders seemed broader, his waist and hips even more narrow. There was not an ounce of extra fat on him, his body honed to lean muscle and sinew by a hard life. That life had left other marks on him, too, not only in the long, jagged scar across his torso but in a half-dozen older ones, as well. They covered his body, arms, and legs, reminding her again of how lucky he’d been to survive this long—long enough to find her. Finally she let her gaze drop lower, following the tapering path of dark, curling hair from his waist.

“Still not frightened?” God knows she should have been if she truly were the virgin she was pretending to be. Sweet heaven, he’d never wanted a woman as much as he wanted her now, and the proof was unmistakable, hard and throbbing before him.

She shook her head, her face on fire. It was, she knew, far too late to turn back, nor did she want to, but she’d never really considered exactly how large a man he was. Yet at the sight of him, she felt the heat he’d already brought to her blood grow hotter still, her palms damp and her heart quickening with anticipation, her breasts oddly tight and yearning for his touch.

Her reaction, he thought, was almost perfect, and another time he might have been able to laugh about it. Almost perfect, but not quite. No virgin’s eyes would have shone so brightly as she faced her own ruin, the flush of desire spread across her throat and breasts. Sweet heaven, he’d never known a woman who responded this freely to him!

“Satisfied?” he asked, the single word rasping with the strain of holding back. “But now, Caro, I’d say you have the advantage of me.”

She tipped her head to one side quizzically, not understanding. He reached across the small distance between them to untie the little bow on her left shoulder. Her eyes widened but she didn’t flinch as the soft fabric slipped from her shoulder, stopping just above the swelling curve of her breast.

“Better,” he murmured, “but there’s better still.” His fingers trembling, he slowly tugged on the end of the second bow, watching the satin ribbon slide across her skin as the bow gave way. With a little shush the sheer linen dropped to her ankles like a pale cloud.

“Oh Caro,” he breathed. “You’re so beautiful I’m almost afraid to touch you.”

“Don’t be.” She looked down so he wouldn’t see the tears glittering in her eyes as she slipped her arms around his waist. “I’m here, love, and I’m yours.”

With a deep groan he took what she offered, drawing her close. As his mouth found hers, his fingers sank deep into the soft curve of her hips, fitting his body against hers. She tasted his kiss like liquid fire, searing her blood, as the pressure of his body against hers overwhelmed her senses. When he lifted her against him, she moaned into his mouth, her nipples tightening as they brushed against the rough hair of his chest and the hard, hot power of his arousal against her belly.

He swept one arm beneath her knees and she gasped with surprise, clinging to his shoulders as he carried her the few feet to lay her on the bed. After the hard bunk of the Raleigh’s cabin, the feather bed felt light as dandelion down beneath her and the linen sheets were faintly redolent of rosemary. Alone, Caro looked questioningly up at Jeremiah as he shoved back the bed’s curtains, the rings scraping along the iron rod.

“You’re too fair to hide away in the dark, sweetheart,” he explained, thinking how a real virgin would have pulled the sheets up tight beneath her chin instead of curling so invitingly naked against the bolsters the way Caro was now. “Whether by candlelight or moonlight, I want to see you. If it’s not, of course, too much for your poor maidenly innocence?”

She chuckled, throaty and more alluring to him than she realized with her silvery hair tumbled across the pillow. Watching him with the same hunger that filled his eyes, she slid across the mattress to make room for him.

“Nay, Caro, not so fast.” Lying down on the bed beside her he curled one arm around her waist and pulled her back, rolling her deftly beneath him. “No scuttling away from me now.”

“Whyever would I want to?” she asked breathlessly. Although he supported most of his weight on his elbows, she liked the feel of his body on hers and the way the mattress gave gently beneath them. Exploring, she rested her hands on his lower back to feel the bunch of muscles there, the little indentations below his waist. She reached up to kiss him, teasing light as a feather.

“No reason on earth that I can consider.” Past teasing, he caught her lower lip in his teeth, working it gently as his hand found her breast, and felt the tremor clear through her body. Beneath his fingers her nipple rose firm and taut, delighting him with her response. With a broken sigh, she arched her back into his caress, her hips instinctively rising beneath his to rub against him in a way that tore at his selfcontrol.

“Easy now, sweetheart,” he growled, intensifying the caress as her fingers clutched convulsively into his shoulders. His heart was pounding in his ears, his blood fevered, and the tension that had swirled around them all evening focused now on the beautiful woman beneath him. “My sweet, hot Caro.”

“You make me feel so—so perfect, Jeremiah,” she whispered raggedly, and closed her eyes with the heat that his touch brought her. She had never dreamed there could be so much pleasure in the world, so much sweet, agonizing pleasure.

“Almost there, love, almost there.” He raised himself up just long enough to ease her legs apart, his hands gliding across the soft skin of her inner thighs until she trembled. When he touched her, wet and hot and ready, she whimpered, her legs curling around his hand as she desperately sought the release her body craved. “Almost home.”

He opened her legs wider to take him and she stared up at him wildly, her eyes dark with passion and her breath no more than ragged gasps. “You won’t—you won’t hurt me, will you?”

He was so close he could feel her heat welcoming him, guiding him. He was long past playing games, long past pretending, past anything but the intense reality of her need waiting for him. Groaning, he buried himself in her with a single stroke, into her heat, deep into her velvety sweetness, and, unbelievably, through the very real barrier of her maidenhead.

Chapter Thirteen

“Caro.” With the need pulsing in his veins and every nerve on edge, he couldn’t say more than her name alone. How could he, when she was so hot and tight around him? Her eyes were squeezed shut and she’d stiffened beneath him, her breathing so shallow it was almost panting. Damnation, he’d hurt her, and he’d never wanted to do that. If only she’d told him the truth!

“Don’t stop,” she whispered with ragged, incoherent urgency, lifting and twisting her hips to meet him. “Oh, please, Jeremiah, don’t stop!”

It was all the encouragement he needed, and she gasped as he began moving in her again, slowly at first and then faster, more demanding, in a rhythm she soon learned and answered. The first tug of pain she’d felt had vanished, and she curled her legs over his broad back, slick with sweat, drawing him in as deeply as she could. Hot tension coiled tighter and tighter in her belly, aching for a release that only he could give, and she cried out and clung to him desperately as they rocked closer to the edge.

“Oh, love, I’m sorry,” he gasped, his face taut as he drove into her. “I’m sorry, but it’s just too good. You’re too good, Caro!”

She wanted to tell him it was all right and that she loved him, but he shifted higher, touching her deeper, and all her thoughts shattered and vanished before the wave of sensual pleasure. She had never dreamed her body was capable of this, and fleetingly she remembered all the ribald winks and leers from her mother and her friends so long ago. But this was different, because this was her Jeremiah, and she felt herself hurtling over the edge, crying his name, the exquisite ecstasy of her release beyond imagining.

Afterward she held him as they lay tangled together, gently stroking the long length of his back as his breathing calmed and his body relaxed. She knew she’d done the right thing, knew with all her heart. At this moment, their bodies still joined so intimately, she felt closer to him than she’d ever been to another person. But though she longed to ask him if he’d experienced the same joy from their lovemaking that she had herself, his face was turned away from hers, toward the pillow, and she fought back lonely tears of disappointment. Could she really have misjudged him—and herself—so badly?

Finally, with a sigh, he rolled to one side, propping his head up on the pillow to look at her, his hair falling damply across his forehead. There was, she thought unhappily, certainly no joy to be found in that grim, handsome face now.

“Caro,” he said with more gentleness than she expected. “Why, love? Why?”

She swallowed hard, reaching for the sheet to cover herself. The way the shadows fell across the bed curtains hid his eyes, and she wished desperately she could see them now and know what he was thinking. Once again that single word of his could be the beginning of so many questions with so many different answers, but she gave him the only one that mattered.

“Because I love you,” she said, her words quavering, “and because I dared to believe that you love me, too.”

“But, damnation, Caro, what about your blessed husband?” There was confusion in his voice, and more than a share of anger. “You’ve been married to the man for fourteen years. I can’t believe in all that time he never made love to you once, especially considering—well, considering the circumstances.”

“No, go ahead and say it,” she said bitterly. “Considering that Frederick paid five hundred pounds for my maidenhead, he should at least have had the privilege of taking it.”

“Aye, something like that.” He reached out then to brush his finger across her cheek, and only then did he realize she was crying. “Why, sweetheart?”

Another why, and this time the answer wouldn’t be as simple. She turned her face away from him, instead staring up at the canopy overhead, and let the hot tears slide down her cheeks to wet the pillow.

“I was nothing when Frederick bought me,” she said softly. “Only the fourteen-year-old bastard of a second-rate whore. There must be hundreds like me born every year, but at least I was lucky enough not to be tossed out to die on the dustheap, and instead was sent to live in the country. It was, I think, the one kind thing Mama did for me, and I thank her still. At least I grew up healthy and strong. But my only ‘education’ was what she forced into me during the last fortnight I was in her care, and oh, I was such an ignorant little girl!”

She smiled bleakly through her tears, remembering how much of an innocent she had been. “If Frederick hadn’t bought me, I would have followed in my mother’s path, and I would have died years ago, from the pox or consumption or some midwife’s quackery. Frederick saved my life, and for that I shall always love him.”

“But not as a wife?” asked Jeremiah gently, and she shook her head against the pillow without looking at him, her fingers twisting the sheet.

“That isn’t what he wanted. Frederick was—no, is—above the desires of the flesh. That’s what he called it—the ‘baser side of man’s animal nature’—and he promised he’d never sully our love that way. After what I’d learned from Mama, I wanted no part of it, either, so we suited each other famously. I would have if he’d wanted me to, yet he never did.”

“Then why the devil did he marry you?”

“He said it was to protect me. No one would dare slander the Countess of Byfield to her face, and if I outlived him, Frederick knew I’d be safe with his name. Oh, I know what is said of me in Portsmouth, but I was more his daughter than his mistress, let alone his wife. It was enough for me, and I was happy. Happy, that is, until Frederick disappeared. And then I met you.”

“Come here,” he said gruffly, and with a shuddering sigh she went to him, curling her body against him as his arm circled protectively around her. He should have guessed it all. The more he thought about what she’d told him, the more he realized she’d given him enough hints that a blessed idiot could have figured it out, just as he was ten times a fool for not realizing how much he was in love with her before this.

“I can’t help but believe that what we’ve done will only make things worse, sweetheart,” he said, “but you won’t see me wishing it undone, either.”

She searched his face. “You don’t?”

“How can I?” He sighed again, stroking her cheek. “I love you, Caro, and that’s the first time I’ve ever said that to any woman.”

Her smile was magical. “You do? Truly?”

He brushed away the tangle of her hair and kissed her gently, sweetly. He could imagine few situations more futile than falling in love as he had with another man’s wife, yet with Caro in his arms he still felt blissfully happy. “I do, truly, and more’s the pity for us both.”