The Smuggler's Captive Bride (8 page)

“Believe me.” Laura picked her clothing off the floor and began to dress rapidly. “I’m not laughing.”

He watched hungrily as she lifted her arms to pull the shift over her head, then jerked his attention away. That was the kind of nonsense that had got him into this dilemma, and still his body spoke to him louder than his common sense.

She glanced at him, running her gaze down his form, then looked away.

He guessed the constant changes in his body spoke to her, too. Pleased that he had at least that much influence and convinced he could persuade her to free him, he asked, “Why would you want to do this?”

From the corner of his eye, he could see as she pulled on petticoats. “Perhaps you are Jean, the leader of the smugglers, as I first suspected.”

Damn the woman! She was a tiny thing, her waist so small he almost spanned it in his hands, with direct blue eyes and curly brown hair, and she was as stubborn and opinionated as his grandmother in one of her matriarchal moods.

How dare Laura not believe him?

Pulling himself up the bed by his wrists, he glared at her. “I
am
the Seamaster!”

Laura nodded without a smile and pulled her dress over her head. “If you are, as you claim, the Seamaster, you sent my brother after these smugglers when you knew the danger he courted. Regardless, you are responsible for his death, and I intend to make you pay.”

“Pay? How? By humiliating me?”

She had that stubborn thrust to her chin that he’d learned to recognize. “That, if you’re the Seamaster. Or by turning you over to the proper authorities if you’re Jean.”

The flawlessness of her plan left him speechless with admiration. Admiration, and fury, and an unquenched desire that made him determined to teach her a lesson — when he got untied. He tugged at the knots again and frowned when he saw that the strain only tightened them. Perhaps he could have ripped free from the wool band, but she’d been smart enough to use the leather strap from his coat, and that wouldn’t fail. “Now, dear.” He kept his voice low and soothing. “This isn’t a good idea. If you’d just think about it, you’d realize that. You don’t
really
believe I’m Jean, the man who killed your brother. If you believed that, you wouldn’t have turned to flame in my arms.”

She glanced up from her buttons to cast him a look composed of equal parts of alarm and disgust.

“You did, you know. This night has been a rogue’s fantasy.” That wasn’t what he’d meant to say. He didn’t mean to dwell on the pleasure of the dark. But the memory of her sweet passion still enfolded him.

She’d trapped him by recalling that gratification and promising more, but he should have guessed no woman as inexperienced as she had proved to be would be bold enough to attempt a seduction.

She folded her generous mouth tightly. Her color rose.

And he realized he had embarrassed her. He didn’t want to embarrass her now; he desperately needed her to stay so he could convince her to free him. Hastily, he steered back toward the logic he hoped would sway her. “If I’m the Seamaster, as you know I am, then Jean is still loose, still capable of murdering more people as he murdered Ronald. Surely there’s more satisfaction to catching him than in gaining a petty revenge on me.”

“I’m finding there is a great deal of satisfaction in petty revenge.” Pulling up her stockings, she tied her garters around her knee, and he strained to see the turn of her ankle. She lowered her skirts with enough haste to tell him she’d noticed, and she said, “You yourself told me you don’t think it’s possible to catch Jean tonight, that he’s escaped from this area.”

“I told you too damned much,” he muttered. He’d been overconfident, treating her like a woman who would be swept away by the scope of his passion.

She was completely dressed now, shoving her extra clothes into the carpetbag she’d hauled from under the desk.

He scowled at her. She
should
have been swept away by the scope of his passion, damn it.

Instead, he’d been swept away by hers. He’d never failed to get his way with a woman before; of course, he’d never neglected his duty for a woman before, either, and that made him uneasy. “Surely you know I’m not a man to falter in anything he sets out to do, don’t you? I’m determined to capture Jean, and I will. I’m determined to keep you safe, and I will.”

“Probably that’s why you remained here with me, wasn’t it? To keep me safe while your men hunted this infamous Jean.”

It was a indication of his perturbation that he wanted to snatch onto the shameful excuse and agree with her. Only her sarcastic tone kept him sane enough to say dryly, “Oh, yes, I’m that noble. Laura, surely you don’t imagine I’m going to keep quiet? I know Ernest. He’s been the innkeeper at the Bull and Eagle for years. I’ll shout and he’ll come to my rescue before you’ve walked across the taproom.”

She grinned at him smugly. “I don’t think so. We’re married, remember? Ernest won’t interfere regardless of what he hears.”

The phrase sounded familiar.

Then Hamilton recognized it. He’d said that to her when she’d threatened to scream. If he hadn’t been in such desperate straits, he would have laughed. But damn the woman! She couldn’t leave him here. “When I call Ernest,” he said, “he’ll come.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “You’re probably right.”

As she walked toward the bed, Hamilton’s heart leapt with triumph. “That’s a good, reasonable girl,” he said. “You’ll see. You’re doing the right thing.”

Stopping short of the dais, she leaned down out of his sight, and when she rose, she had gathered his clothes in her arms. “Yes, I think I’m doing the right thing, too.” Walking to the window, she opened it and threw them out.

“Hey!” His incredulous shout came a moment too late. “How could you?”

She shrugged. “I had to do something. Even if you do yell for Ernest and he arrives to help you, a lack of clothing will slow you down”

“Of course I’m going to yell for Ernest.” As loudly as he could, Hamilton bellowed, “
Ernest
!
Ern
—“

She pulled a pistol out of the desk drawer.

His shout died. Outraged, he asked, “Where the hell did you get that?”

She checked the small weapon in a manner that proclaimed her competence. “From my father. He taught me how to use it. I thought it best if I brought it, for I feared I would meet a villain.” Her gaze surveyed him directly, coolly. “I did, but I didn’t shoot him.”

For the first time, Hamilton faced an ugly truth.

He wasn’t going to get his way. She wasn’t going to free him. She was going out into the dark and rain to escape him.

And Jean was still free and no doubt bent on mischief — and worse. Smuggling was a serious crime, but one the government more often than not turned its back on.

Espionage was something else again. England was at war with France, and secrets leaked from this coast to the French command and into the ears of Napoleon himself.

Hamilton knew all about it, because Hamilton was the man in charge of maintaining security in the government.

Ronald Haver had worked for Hamilton, not as a secretary as his sister originally believed, but to ferret out the source of the leaked information. The son of a career soldier killed serving in India, Ronald had been competent, daring and courageous — a family trait, Hamilton had discovered later — and it was Ronald who’d discovered where the information exchange was made.

Hamilton hadn’t believed it at first. The smugglers landed on the very beaches of his own manor? Did Jean knew his identity and mock him by using his home? Or was it simply serendipity, the fact that his beaches had always been and would always be the best place to land with smuggled goods, with caves in the cliffs above to stash the contraband?

Ronald’s diary had given him the answer he sought, as well as posing a question — who was Jean’s accomplice?

“Laura, don’t go,” Hamilton begged. “I’m not the villain you should fear.”

“I can take care of myself.” She slipped the pistol into her cloth purse and hung it around her wrist. “I’ve been doing it for longer than I care to remember.”

It was true. Ronald had spoken of his sister in glowing terms. He mentioned her competence, her good sense, and her skills, and before he met her, Hamilton had formed a picture in his mind of a brusque, broad, homely woman.

Ronald had requested that, in case of his death, Hamilton care for his sister, and Hamilton had been determined to do precisely that. He would give her a pension and keep her in comfort for the rest of her life.

Then for the first time Farley had ushered Laura into his office, and Hamilton had been knocked back on his heels. It wasn’t that she was gorgeous or sweet. Quite the opposite. She was too short, too thin, too fierce, too … right for him.

The wanting had shaken him to the core. He’d always kept his passion well in control. He chose mistresses for their experience and he planned to chose his wife for her suitability.

Laura was not particularly suitable. She dressed well, but that was because she was a seamstress. A seamstress! Poverty obviously hovered close. Her father had been the younger son of a baron with not even a knighthood.

But for Hamilton, those matters were trivial compared to his desires.

Yet he had hesitated to make his love known to her. For she had viewed him with suspicion, although he had not understood why. So he formulated a plan; he would find and arrest Ronald’s killer and present him to Laura as a nuptial gift. She would have Hamilton then.

Instead Jean slipped through the trap set for him, and on entering the inn, Hamilton had been hailed as Laura’s bridegroom by Ernest.

At that moment, his whole life changed. The calm, rational, duty-bound man he was became an opportunist, and he’d forcefully seduced an innocent.

He grinned. He still couldn’t work up one shred of regret.

After donning her redingote, gloves, and hat, Laura walked to the settle and picked up the diary.

At that reminder of Ronald and his fate, Hamilton’s smile faded. “Laura, please don’t do this. Leave me tied if it makes you feel safer, but don’t go out tonight.”

Going to the door, she twisted the knob. “It’s locked again. Did you instruct Ernest to make sure I couldn’t easily escape?”

Bristling, he said, “I can control you without any man’s help.”

She inserted the key in the lock and turned it, then looked back at him stretched naked and defenseless. “I can see that.”

“I’ll find you, Laura,” he said.

And he meant it.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

HAMILTON’S PROMISE echoed in Laura’s ears as she walked down the hall.
I’ll find you
. Yes, he probably would, but not tonight, and that would give her a much-needed reprieve. She’d take a horse from the stable and go to another inn to catch the stage back to London. She would wiggle her way through the government bureaucracy until she found someone to listen to her concerns, and if they told her Hamilton was the Seamaster, well …

Oh, he was the Seamaster. What was the use in fooling herself? He was the Seamaster and just as he claimed, he no doubt hunted Jean.

Pausing at the top of the stairs, she listened for sounds from the taproom.

She heard nothing.

Carefully she crept down, avoiding the squeaking step.

Hamilton couldn’t get Jean tonight, and tonight she needed to get away and try to accept the fact she lusted after the man who’d sent her brother to his death.

Yes, she lusted after Hamilton.

She also wanted him to pay for his determination and her loneliness with at least a measure of mortification.

In the taproom, the fire had burnt down to almost nothing, and the complete and eerie silence spooked her. She wanted to run back to her chamber, to the safety that Hamilton represented. Instead, she stiffened her spine. She was, after all, a Haver, and worthy to carry the banner of her father and her brother.

Then a burst of shouting from the kitchen made her stumble backward and she found herself on the top landing again.

Two men. Ernest and … another.

“Those are important papers!” the unknown shouted.

While Ernest answered, “Ye can’t have my lord.”

Something crashed. glass broke. There was a hoarse cry. Then silence.

Hastily Laura crept back down the stairs, keeping to the wall, listening with all her might.

That unknown voice spoke again, this time lower and with enough menace to make the hair stand up on her head. “I can have anything I chose,” he said. “Need I remind you that should your beloved earl of Hamilton discover what you’ve been doing with me, he’ll tack your ears to the stocks?”

Laura put her hands to her mouth to stifle her gasp.

Ernest didn’t reply to the man’s accusation; he didn’t rush to deny it.

Then she heard an explosion of sound, like air escaping a clogged passage, and someone gasping in deep breaths. She’d seen enough violence done on the streets of London to recognize this.

The unknown man had been choking Ernest.

“They took my cargo, those damned government men, and some important papers which I must recover.”