A Most Unsuitable Groom by Kasey Michaels (19 page)

The corners of his mouth twitched as he looked at her. "Your hair is wild, your mouth is pink and swollen, your gown looks as if you dressed without a candle in the dark and we both probably smell of sex. No, Mariah, you don't look like the mother of my child. But I'm damn glad you are."

She wasn't as sophisticated or as wanton as she'd like him to believe. "Is there.. .is there time to wash?"

Now he chuckled low in his throat. "No, there's not. I thought you were only recently thinking about the benefits of becoming a fallen woman, as I think you called it. So—does the idea still hold as much appeal?"

"Now you're making fun of me," Mariah said, suddenly more than ready to get back to the business at hand and ignoring the slight soreness between her legs, the almost pleasurable heaviness low in her body. "And we're wasting precious time. Let me see this harness Clovis mentioned. What is it—what does it do?"

"Nothing. A small toy Court thought up some long winter night." He picked up the knife, slipped it up inside his sleeve to engage it and then held out his hand, his arm lowered. "Watch." Pressing his arm against his side three times, the knife appeared; a push on the lever exposed the blade.

Mariah goggled at the blade. "You call that a toy? Then you are expecting trouble."

"To not be prepared for trouble, as Ainsley says, is to invite it in and offer it a chair," Spencer said, repositioning the blade inside his sleeve. "No, don't smooth your hair, leave it as it is. Did you think to bring a cloak, madam, or just a pistol?"

Mariah shot him a look he felt fairly sure a wise man would do his best to avoid inciting again, and then retrieved a dark, hooded cloak from the cabinet she'd hidden herself in earlier. "What will the men...your crew say?"

"Ah, let me think. Women onboard are bad luck? Are you out of your mind, Spence?
You lucky sod?
Yes, looking at you, probably that last one."

Mariah felt her cheeks going hot. She'd go up on deck and every man there would know what had happened in this cabin. Very well. All right. Staring them down would be good practice, wouldn't it, if she was to play her part successfully when Spencer met whomever he was to meet. She would simply have to raise her chin, ignore the flutterings in her stomach and do what had to be done.

That's what her father had taught her. A person does what has to be done. Execute the order given- No thought, no question. Fear, indecision, could prove fatal.

"If you would be so kind as to wipe that inane grin off your face, Mr. Becket, let's be on with it. The sooner we begin, the sooner we finish."

"And the sooner we'll be back aboard ship. There is a bed in here, you know."

"Not that you remembered earlier."

Spencer nodded, acknowledging the hit. "You have no idea what it is to make love, do you, Mariah? Not really. First the rumblings of a man lost in his own fevered head and then the rutting boar of a few minutes ago. You've no notion of what it is to lie in a man's arms as he leisurely kisses you, strokes your naked body, wakes you, makes you yearn for the unknown. Brings you pleasures that spin you both into another realm, where there's nothing but your two bodies and the moment. And that's my fault, my mistake. One I intend to correct the moment we're back at Becket Hall."

He took three steps in her direction-—all that was needed in this small cabin to bring him close to her. He put a finger beneath her chin and lifted her face to within a breath of his, devouring her with his hot gaze, wanting her again and again and again. "I promise you, I'm not always so clumsy. I'm going to make love to you one day soon, Mariah, until the world goes away. Long and slow, until we're both mad with it, until you understand what it is to float above the earth, spin off into the stars, even as the world grows wonderfully small, centers on you...centers on me...and then explodes around us, between us...deep, deep inside us."

Mariah closed her eyes, swayed where she stood. "Don't..."

"Yes.
Don't.
You keep saying that, Mariah. And I never listen."

Thank God.
But she didn't say the words. It was possible she'd lost the power of speech forever. As long as she didn't lose her eyesight or else she'd never see this glorious, intense man again. That would be heartbreak....

The sound of the anchor chain unwinding, the anchor breaking the surface of the water, shattered the moment that Mariah believed might otherwise never end, she might want to never end.

"Are you ready?" Spencer asked, tying her cloak around her shoulders before reaching for his own. "We'll breakfast in the public room to make our presence noticed, then sleep for a few hours. Wait for our quarry to contact us. With any luck, we'll be back on board tonight or tomorrow morning with all the answers Ainsley seems to think he needs."

"Unless this Beales person or this Jules person recognizes you and you're fish bait," Mariah said, her fears returning even as she retrieved the pistol she'd
borrowed
and tucked it into the pocket of her cloak. "If you let that happen, Spencer, I'll never forgive you."

"A consequence I fear more than anything, madam," Spencer said. Then he opened the door and moved his arm in a flourish as he bowed her out of the cabin ahead of him.

The sun had already risen and Mariah squinted, shielding her eyes with her hand as she mounted the last stair and stepped out onto the deck.

"Miss Rutledge?"

She turned to see Anguish standing nearby looking, well, anguished. The man's name suited him. "Good morning, Anguish. Lovely day, isn't it?"

"I.. .um.. .that it is, Miss Rutledge, it is that, indeed. Par...um...pardon me, ma'am," he stammered, backing up all the while until he collided with Clovis.

"Here now, catch yourself up, lad. It's an arm you lost, not a leg," Clovis said, righting him. His grip on the man's upper arms seemed to freeze in place for long moments as he caught sight of Mariah. "Ma'am," he finally said, looking past her to Spencer. "Lieutenant, sir. It's...I...that is...forgive the interruption earlier, sir. Beggin' your pardon."

"Don't mention it, Clovis," Spencer said, slipping an arm around Mariah's waist and pulling her close against his side. "And I mean that, most sincerely. Now, the name is
Mr. Abbott,
remember, not
lieutenant,
and this is not Miss Rutledge but—"

"Lily,"
Mariah said quickly, grabbing at her mother's name and hoping lightning bolts weren't about to come crashing out of the sky to strike her dead. "You're to address me as Lily, Clovis. I'm.. .I'm his...that is, I'm—"

"Allow me, please," Spencer cut in, returning interruption for interruption. "Lily here, Clovis, is my doxy, my light-o-love, my recreation. She will be at my side at all times, making a perfect spectacle of herself as she lends credence to the notion that I am a very foolish man with more money than sense—and one who will probably end with a whacking great dose of the clap for his indulgence before this short visit is completed. Anguish, close your mouth and check on the longboat. I want to be onshore in the next fifteen minutes or know the reason why I'm not."

He kept a smile on his face, doing his best to ignore the fact that Mariah had been surreptitiously grinding the heel of her half boot into the top of his foot since he had begun speaking.

"Yes, sir, Mr. Abbott, sir," Anguish said before turning about smartly and making himself scarce.

"Clovis, if you'd be so kind as to go down to the cabin next to mine and retrieve Jacob Whiting from the cabinet and untie him—and then forget you've done either thing?"

Clovis took in a deep breath, let it out slowly. "For-gettin' a lot, sir, it seems. Shoulda listened to my ma, sir, and stayed home in Dorset, working in the cobbler shop like my da before me, if this is what wantin' to go out and see the world gets for a person."

"And what would that be that you get, Clovis?" Mariah asked, unable to hold back a smile.

'Troubles, Miss—Lily. Piles and heaps of troubles."

By this time the rest of the crew had been alerted via whispers and surreptitiously pointed fingers that Miss Rutledge was aboard and looking a bit queer and bawdy like while she was at it, too.

But these were Ainsley's men, Becket men, and they asked no questions. They just went back to the rigging, the lowering of the longboat. After all, they'd seen stranger things and would probably see stranger things still before they were finally carried off to bed on six men's shoulders.

They walked across the hard-packed sands toward the city spread out in front of them. An alert Clovis and Anguish followed a good ten paces behind, Spencer holding tight to Mariah's hand as he pointed toward Notre Dame Church, then Fort Risban and the impressive Tour de Guet.

They could have been only two more of the several dozen recent, obviously English, arrivals, stopping only briefly in Calais before heading on to frolic in a Bonaparte-free Paris, a Bonaparte-free Europe. A carnival atmosphere filled the air, save for a few well-dressed ladies who still appeared to be feeling the effects of a choppy crossing of the Channel only to wilt even more beneath the hot Calais sun.

As they left the sands Mariah's ears were assaulted with a dozen different languages; they all blended together, one indistinguishable from the other.

On the streets, the women of the city all seemed to wear silly high caps that covered every bit of their hair and tight, short jackets, looking far different than she did in her hard-worn cloak and bare head. Even the men were more exotic birds; a few of them wore earrings in their ears, and one remarkable fellow had a colorful tattoo decorating his face from his cheeks upward to his hairline. Happily, everyone seemed to smile as they passed by, welcoming them to Calais.

The smell of frying sausages set Mariah's stomach to rumbling and when she saw a cart on the street she stopped to take in a deep breath.

"If you're not opposed to taking your meal standing up in the street, we could have some of those sausages, then adjourn to the shops," Spencer told her. "I'm finding, madam, that I cannot quite banish the knowledge of your state of undress beneath that skirt."

"And your mind should be on the business at hand," Mariah agreed, squeezing his hand tightly as she began pulling him toward the cart.

Ten minutes later, the roof of her mouth only, slightly singed from the half-raw, half-burned sausage she'd downed more quickly than she should have, Mariah found herself inside a small bow-window fronted shop filled with shelves crowded with bolts of material that stretched from floor to ceiling. There were large pots on the floor, jammed full with tall, multi-colored feathers and open boxes spilling over with lengths of ribbon and fine lace.