The Least Likely Bride

Chapter Four

“So what does the message say?” The questioner put a spill to his pipe, and the acrid smell of strong tobacco filled the taproom.

“Jest that if’n we’re interested in sellin‘ what we culled, then ’e’ll be ‘ere in the Anchor at the end o’ the week.”

“And how does he know there was any culling?” The questioner was young, dark haired, swarthy of complexion. He was dressed in a suit of turquoise silk and wore his hair in the Cavalier style, tumbling to his shoulders in elaborate curls, glistening with pomade. He drew on his pipe in the smoke-wreathed room and surveyed his interlocutor through cold green eyes.

The man shrugged. “Doubt it’s a secret, sir. Message come the mornin‘ after. Thought you’d want to know.”

“Of course I want to know!” There was a snarl to the well-bred voice. “We need customers, you dolt! But how do we know it’s not a trap?”

The other man shrugged and lit his own pipe of rather more noxious tobacco. “Dunno, sir. Reckon that’s your business. Ours is to cull.”

The young man was silent in the face of this truth. “There’s been no one sniffing around? No awkward questions?”

“No, sir. ‘Twas pitch black that night an’ the storm was strong. Ship could ‘ave gone aground on ’er own. But the whole island reckons ‘twas a wreckin’ job,” he added. “Jest can’t prove it.”

“And whoever’s buying knows it was a wrecking job,” the young man mused. “And he knew whom to contact? Who brought the message?”

“Didn’t ‘ave no name, sir. An’ he was all swaddled in a cloak, with the ‘ood pulled down. ’Twas an ‘ot night too,” the man added reflectively. “But ’e was an island man. Spoke like an island man.”

“Mmm. Landlord, bring me a pint of porter,” the young man bellowed suddenly across the counter.

“Right y’are, sir.” The host of the Anchor, who had been listening to a conversation that held no secrets for him, slapped an overfull tankard on the counter before the customer. “I was expectin‘ me casks, sir,” he said in an unconvincing whine. “Any sign of when I might be gettin’ ‘em?”

“You’ll get them when I have them,” the other snapped, taking up the tankard. He drank deeply and stared up at the blackened ceiling rafters, watching the smoke curl from his pipe. He’d been expecting a delivery from the French coast for over a week, and it was hard now not to believe that something had happened to the boat. Her captain had always been reliable in the past, but the smuggling trade was far from a certain business. Which was why those who needed a more assured income and could banish moral scruple augmented their smuggling with wrecking. Godfrey, Lord Channing, had never been troubled with moral scruple.

He had customers for his smuggled goods, like George of the Anchor here, who had already paid well for the overdue consignment. If it didn’t arrive, he’d be facing an ugly situation. These were not patient men. He looked at the landlord with new eyes and didn’t like what he saw. The man had the face of a prizefighter overly fond of his drink, with a roughly broken nose, bloodshot eyes, and a complexion crimson with broken veins. His hands, busy with an ale keg, were massive.

Godfrey felt a faint tremor of alarm. If his unsatisfied customers on the island joined forces with their grievances, life could become most unpleasant.

But there was hope. If this interest in the profits of the wreck was genuine and not a trap, then he had a way out. Even after the wreckers themselves had taken their commission, there would still be a decent profit left for the brain behind the muscle.

“So, ye’ll be comin‘ to meet wi’ him, then, sir?” the landlord asked.

Godfrey didn’t deign a response.

“I’ll be able to point ‘im out to ye, sir,” the landlord continued. He shot a sly look at Godfrey. “Anythin’ I can do to ‘elp, like.”

Godfrey was not taken in by this generous offer. He slammed his empty tankard and still-smoldering pipe on the counter and stood up, regarding the landlord with distaste. He snapped, “I can take care of my own business.”

The landlord touched his forelock, radiating mockery. “Then I can expect me cognac soon, honored sir?”

“Damn your insolence! You’ll get your cognac.” Godfrey threw a coin on the counter. The door slammed on his departure.

A man who’d been sitting in the inglenook rose to his feet and left in Godfrey’s wake. He limped badly, leaning heavily on a stick. Yet despite his obvious disability, he caught up with Godfrey before he had mounted his horse.

“A word with you, Lord Channing,” he said softly.

Godfrey spun around. “How do you know my name?”

The man who had addressed him regarded him with a malicious smile, his small brown eyes glittering. His countenance bore the deep lines of one who has known pain. At first Godfrey thought he was an old man.

“I made it my business to know,” the man responded, and his voice was that of a much younger man than his appearance indicated. “Wrecking and smuggling are not the best ways in which to improve one’s fortunes,” he observed conversationally.

Godfrey’s heart raced. Was he about to be arrested? He stared at his interlocutor.

“Don’t worry, I’ll not blab,” the man said with an unpleasant chuckle. “But I think I might be able to offer you a surer route to fortune.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Not yet, no. But let us walk a little and I’ll explain.”

Godfrey looped the rein again around the tethering post. There was something almost mesmerizing about the stranger, something in the eyes that drew him in. This too was a man not given to moral scruple.

“Forgive the slowness of my gait,” the man said, limping into the lane.

“What happened to you?”

“A duel,” Brian Morse replied, his voice low and grim. “I have a plan that will serve both our purposes, my lord, if you’ll give me a hearing.”

In the Anchor, the remaining customer mused, “Reckon that smugglin‘ boat of ’is has gone astray.” He stared hopefully into his now empty tankard. “Reckon it’s our friend what took it, don’t you, George?” He pushed his tankard around in a circle.

“You want another, you pay for it, Silas,” the landlord declared.

With a grimace Silas dug into his pocket for a farthing. He placed it on the counter with the air of one donating his life’s blood.

The landlord scooped it up, then picked up the tankard and refilled it from the keg, filling one for himself at the same time. “Aye,” he said, wiping foam from his mouth after a long draft. “Reckon it is our friend. But it’ll take more than that young lordling”-he gestured contemptuously to the door from which Godfrey had left-“to outwit im!”

“You know what I think…” the customer said, staring fixedly at the bottles behind the counter. “You want to know what I think?”

“I might if you’d up and say it.”

“I think, George, that you’d do best to switch yer orders to our friend, ‘stead of that clothes ’orse.”

“Aye, mebbe,” the landlord replied. “But answer me this, Silas. Is it better fer a man to deal wi‘ a greedy fool, or wi’ a man as dangerous clever as our friend? That’s what I asks meself.”

“You wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of our friend,” Silas agreed, nodding solemnly. “An‘ a man can always outwit a fool.”

“Aye, an‘ put the frighteners on ’im too. Can’t do that wi‘ our friend, I reckon.”

“No.” Silas shook his head vigorously. “An‘ any road, our friend ain’t in the smugglin’ business so much these days, is ‘e? Used to be there wasn’t a boat went over to France from the island wi’out ’is say-so, but he’s other fish to fry these days, I reckon.”

He gazed down into his tankard before pronouncing, “O‘ course, if’n a man wanted a cask of cognac an’ a morsel o‘ that Valenciennes lace fer ’is woman, our friend could get it fer ‘im, that’s fer sure. But ’tis not ‘is regular trade, like.” He looked up thoughtfully. “D’ye reckon our friend’s tried ’is hand at wreckin‘ an’ all? Pays better than smugglin‘.”

“Aye, could be, but there’s no tellin‘. Powerful close-mouthed, ’is men are,” George declared. He tapped the side of his nose and winked. “Howsomever, what d’ye wager it’s our friend what’s after that young lordling’s culling? He’s such a clever ‘un, it’d be like ’im to let someone else do the work fer ‘im.”

“Could be,” agreed Silas.

The two men drank to this consensus and lapsed into contemplative silence.

“Why don’t you go below now? You can barely keep your eyes open.” The pirate leaned back in his chair, a glass of cognac cupped in his hands, regarding Olivia with a slight smile.

Olivia stifled a yawn. It was true, she was very sleepy. The remains of dinner had been cleared away, and while Anthony sat savoring his cognac, she had been drifting in a half sleep to the music of the wind in the rigging and the motion of the ship on the gentle swell of the night sea.

“It’s such a perfect night,” she said, looking up at the sky. “You never see stars like this on land.”

“No, you don’t.”

“When will we get back to the island?”

“If the wind holds fair, we’ll sight land by noon tomorrow.”

“And will it hold fair?”

He shrugged and smiled. “That’s hard to say. The wind is a fickle mistress.” He called softly to the helmsman. “What do you think, Jethro? Will the wind hold fair for us?”

“Might drop towards dawn.”

“What am I to say at home?” Olivia cupped her chin on her elbow-propped hands. “How am I to explain things?”

“Why don’t we cross that bridge when we reach it?” Anthony leaned over and brushed the curve of her cheek with a fingertip. “Are you so anxious to break free of entrancement, Olivia?”

She shook her head. “No, but this is just a dream and I must wake up sometime.”

“Yes, you must. But not before noon tomorrow.”

“I suppose there wouldn’t be much point waking up yet, since I’m still kidnapped,” Olivia observed gravely.

“Precisely so… Go to bed now.”

Olivia pushed back her chair and rose reluctantly. “I would like to sleep under the stars.”

“You would be cold.”

“Even with blankets?”

“Even with blankets.”

Olivia continued to hesitate, looking at him as he sat at his ease swirling the cognac around the crystal. He returned her gaze, that smile deep in his eyes, and something else that she couldn’t read. It was a promise of some kind. She was aware of a quiver in her belly, a strange tightening in her thighs.

She turned to the steps leading down to the main deck. “Good night.”

But he didn’t return her farewell.

The cabin had been cleaned and tidied, the lantern above the bed lit, throwing a soft golden glow over the polished wood and the rich colors in the Turkey rugs. The windows had been closed and damask curtains drawn across them.

Olivia pulled back the curtains and flung open the windows again. It was too fresh and beautiful a night to shut out. She turned back to the cabin. There was clean linen on the bed; the covers were turned down invitingly. She fingered the emerald sash at her waist, then untied it, folded it carefully, and replaced it in the cupboard in the bulwark. She began to untie the ribbons at the neck of the nightshirt when her eye fell on the chessboard.

Anthony had set up another chess problem, she remembered now. She went over to look at it, twisting the silken ribbons around her fingers as she gazed down at the pieces in frowning concentration. It was definitely not as immediately solvable as the previous one.

A deep yawn took her by surprise, and Olivia lost interest in the problem. In the morning, when her mind was fresh, she’d solve it in a minute. A problem she couldn’t solve in a minute was what she was to sleep in. Her makeshift gown felt too much like a gown now to do double duty, and besides, she would need it in the morning.

She’d slept naked ever since she’d arrived on Wind Dancer, and Olivia, on reflection, could see no reason to do any different tonight. She pulled the nightshirt over her head, folded it as carefully as she had folded the sash, and put it away, then she climbed over the wooden sides and into the bed. The sheets were cool and crisp and the bed was wonderfully familiar.

She turned onto her side and closed her eyes only to realize that the lantern was still lit. But what did it matter? She was too tired to be bothered by such a soft glow, and it would go out in its own time when the oil was burned…

When she awoke, it was to a pale darkness. And she was not alone in the bed. Something heavy was holding her down into the deep feather mattress. Olivia investigated and found that it was an arm across her waist. And it was another leg that was tangled with her own.

As she lay, rigid with shock, she could hear her bedmate’s deep, even breathing. She investigated further. He was as naked as she was.

“Did I wake you?” the pirate asked sleepily.

“You’re in my bed!”

“Actually it’s my bed.”

Even through the tendrils of sleep, Olivia could hear the laugh in his voice.

“But I’m sleeping in it,” she objected, wondering why she wasn’t screaming her maidenly outrage. Maybe it was the magic again, but she was utterly aware in every fiber of her body of the powerful physical presence beside her. This was not entrancement, it was reality, and the reality held only fascination.

“It’s been my bed for three nights… or is it four?” she murmured.

“This would be the fourth,” he said, his breath rustling against the back of her neck. The arm around her waist moved so that his hand flattened on her belly.

Olivia’s stomach contracted involuntarily. She tried to push his hand away with as much success as an ant trying to move a mountain. But then, she didn’t seem to be pushing with true conviction. “You didn’t sleep in it before,” she protested.

“In the opinion of your physician, you were too ill for a bedmate,” he responded solemnly. “The medical opinion has now changed.”

The hand on her belly remained still and warm and curiously unthreatening. Olivia felt his other hand now on her back, moving up between her shoulder blades, clasping her neck firmly, pushing up into her hair, cupping her scalp. It felt wonderful and strangely familiar, as if sometime he’d touched her in this way before.

“Let yourself go,” he instructed softly. “Just lie still and feel.”

He pressed his lips into the groove at the back of her neck, and the hand on her stomach moved upward to cup her breasts. Her nipples hardened as if she’d been dipped in cold water. Olivia felt herself slipping back into the dreamworld of the past days, where her mind was adrift and her body merely a sensate shape floating in feathers.

Fingers caressed the curve of her hips, danced down her thighs, played in the little hollows behind her knees. She could feel the length of him against her back, and she could picture his body as vividly as if she were facing him. The small nipples so different from her own, like little buttons in the broad expanse of his chest, the indentation of his navel in the concave stomach, the darker line of hair drawing her eye down to his sex.

But what had once been quiescent was now rampant. Olivia could feel the hard length of his penis pressing into the crease of her thighs. Jubilation… wicked, outrageous, delicious… throbbed in the secret places of her body.

And then she stiffened, straightening her legs. “I’m not going to marry,” Olivia said. “Never. I’m never going to marry.”

“A laudable determination,” the pirate murmured into her hair as his flattened hand slid between her thighs. “One that I share.” He caressed the inside of her unbandaged thigh until she relaxed once more, her body softening against him.

“But we can’t do this if we’re not going to marry,” Olivia protested.

“Celibacy is not the same as chastity,” Anthony reminded her, touching his tongue to her ear, nibbling her earlobe. “We had this discussion once.”

“But… but I might c-conceive,” Olivia murmured, wondering why it should be that such considerations seemed to have lost all urgency. “Then we would have to marry.”

“I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen,” he said, and he was laughing, she could hear it in his voice. “You’re still an innocent despite all your learning. Intellectual experience is no substitute for reality, my flower.”

Olivia made no reply. She was incapable of reply.

Anthony turned her onto her back. She saw his face in the pale starlight from the still-open window. He bent to kiss her mouth and she gave a tiny sigh against his lips.

They were wonderfully pliant lips, soft and yet muscular. His tongue pressed for entrance and her own lips parted. He tasted of wine and cognac and the salt spray from the waves that lifted Wind Dancer and the wind that filled her sails.

She sucked on his tongue with sudden greed, and he held her face, probing deeper into her mouth. The length of his body was hard against her own softness. She put her hands in his hair. No longer confined in the black ribbon, the locks, gold as guineas, fell to his shoulders. His face was a wedge of light in the moon’s glimmer from the window as she pushed the hair away and in her turn held his face.

“I am dreaming you,” Olivia said.

“No, no dream.” And he parted her thighs with his knee.

Olivia felt her body open, a liquid rush filling her loins with an anticipation of delight. His hands slid beneath her bottom, lifting her. The stab of penetration shocked her for a second and then there was only this wonderful liquid fullness and her body closed around him. She raked her hands through the golden fall of his hair, caught his mouth with her teeth, lifted her hips to meet the steady thrusts of his body.

“You are miraculous,” Anthony said.

“You are a dream,” Olivia replied. “But it was a dream I was always going to have.”

“And I,” he replied. He withdrew to the very edge of her body.

“Am I supposed to feel like this?” Olivia ran her hands from his buttocks along his hard muscular thighs as he held himself above her. “In the interests of intellectual inquiry?”

“I believe so.” He moved slowly, burying himself within her again. Then he touched her. The hard little nub that Olivia had never known she possessed. He brushed it. Touched it. Rubbed it. And he moved within her.

Olivia was no longer Olivia. She dissolved into myriad parts. She was lost in the Milky Way. She thought she cried. She clung to the body that was her only connection to reality. She clung and she was held, tight, warm, safe, until she came to herself.

Anthony gathered her against him. He had known, known from the first moment she’d been delivered to his waterside doorstep, that Olivia Granville was going to govern his life in some impenetrable, unfathomable fashion.