Notorious Pleasures
Page 31
“I think it was when you kissed me at Harte’s Folly,” she whispered.
He snorted. “You thought I was Thomas.”
She laughed. “I didn’t! I was only teasing you by pretending I thought you were he—you’d made me so irritated. I’d never mistake you for—Oh!”
He’d leaned down and delicately taken her nipple between his teeth. She felt the flick of his tongue against the sensitive tip, and then he was sucking strongly on her.
She moaned, low and shockingly animal.
He let go of the nipple. “You were saying?”
“I’d never mistake you for another,” she whispered, watching him from beneath half-closed lids. “We talked about true love on that first night. Do you remember?”
“How could I forget?” He pulled the coverlet down another inch and exposed her other breast. Idly he played with her nipples. “I had an uneasy feeling, even then, that you were the one for me.”
She swallowed, having trouble forming words with his hands working so exquisitely on her. “You are my true love, Griffin, now and forever. Sometimes when I think how close I came to turning away from you out of pure cowardliness, I want to weep.”
“Hush,” he murmured, brushing kisses over her lips, still pinching and fondling her nipples. “You didn’t. We are together—and we’ll remain together. Forever.”
“Promise?” she whispered beneath his lips.
“Promise,” he said just before kissing her deeply.
When he raised his head again, she was wet and wanting, but he still had her pinned beneath the coverlet.
“Are you ever going to let me go?” she asked.
“No,” he said, looking very satisfied. “I think I rather like you in this position, unable to move or object to whatever I want to do to you.”
She squirmed a little, feeling the slide of the silken covers against her bare skin. “I do like this, but it does have one drawback.”
“What is that?” he asked absently as he traced circles on her breasts.
“I might find it hard to kiss you.”
“What do you mean? It’s easy enough for…” He trailed away as he obviously rethought her words.
“Not there,” she purred. Really, she’d had no idea she could make such a sound.
His gaze flew to hers, suddenly very green and hopeful. He was off the bed in a thrice, doffing his clothes eagerly.
Hero took the opportunity to remove the covers. She lay like a wanton, head propped on one hand, watching as her husband, nude and gloriously erect, turned to her.
His gaze swept over her naked form and came to rest on what she knew was the blush on her face. “I love you.”
“I love you as well.” She inhaled, feeling very scandalous as she crooked one finger. “Come here and I’ll give you a kiss you’ll never forget.”
And she did.
Epilogue
Queen Ravenhair walked into her stables and found there, away in the back, her stable master currying her favorite mare. “My suitors have all fled, Ian,” she said to the man.
The stable master looked faintly surprised. “You know my name, Your Majesty?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, drawing nearer. “I wonder if you might answer me a question?”
“I’ll do my best,” said he.
“What is in my heart?”
The stable master threw down the curry brush and turned to face the queen. He looked at her gravely with warm brown eyes. “Love, Your Majesty. Your heart is filled with love.”
She raised a haughty eyebrow. “Indeed? And will you tell me what is in your heart, Ian?”
He stepped closer and took her dainty, white hands in his own big, calloused ones. “Love, Your Majesty. Love for you.”
“Then I think you ought to call me Ravenhair, hadn’t you?” she murmured as she kissed him.
He threw back his head and laughed. “I am far from perfect, my darling Ravenhair, but I would be the happiest man in the world if you would take me as your husband.”
“And I will be the happiest woman in the world to be your wife.” She smiled back, her heart overflowing with joy, and rose on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear, “I don’t think I truly want perfection anyway.”
—from Queen Ravenhair
“Mamoo!” Mary Darling giggled as she knocked over the tin cups Silence had carefully helped her stack on the kitchen floor.
The cups fell with a great clatter, and the little girl clapped her hands in glee.
“Goodness! That was very loud,” Silence said fondly.
The baby bounced on her bottom. “Mo’! Mo’!”
“Very well, we’ll stack them once more, and then, young lady, I think it’ll be time for a nap.” Silence had found that though Mary Darling might protest mightily at the thought of a nap, she was much happier with one.
“You look cheerful this afternoon, sister.” Winter came in the kitchen and set down his bundle of books.
“Do I?” Silence was aware that Winter had been keeping a close eye on her since William’s death.
“Yes.” Winter made a sudden horrible face at Mary, which sent the baby into gales of laughter. “I think that cap becomes you.”
Silence smiled a little sadly. It wasn’t the cap, she knew. It was little Mary Darling. One couldn’t let oneself wallow in grief with an active baby to care for. And perhaps that was for the best. She stroked a finger over Mary’s downy cheek. Life had to go on, after all.
“Is it stew again?” Winter peered into the pot on the hearth.
“Beef and cabbage,” Silence replied.
“Good.” Winter never seemed to notice what was set before him, but like all men, he had a deep appreciation for tasty food. “I’ll just go and wash before luncheon.”
“Hurry,” she called after his retreating back. “I’ve still got to put Mary down for a nap.”
He waved over his shoulder to indicate he’d heard her.
“Let’s just hope Uncle Winter doesn’t start reading a book up there,” she confided to Mary.
The baby chortled and knocked over a tin cup.
“Mrs. Hollingbrook!” Joseph Tinbox, one of the home’s older boys, ran into the kitchen. “Look what I’ve found on the step.”
He held out a small wooden box.
Silence stared at the offering like it was an adder. Their step had been mercifully free from any gifts since the morning of the riots, and she’d been hoping that perhaps the giver had forgotten them.
“Shall I open it?” Joseph asked eagerly.
“No,” Silence said a little too sharply. She inhaled. “Shouldn’t you be at your afternoon lessons?”
“Aw!”
She lifted a brow. “Now, Joseph.”
Joseph wrinkled his nose but slumped off obediently to his lessons.
Silence picked up the box with trembling fingers. She prized open the lid and stared inside. A lock of hair lay there, tied with a scarlet ribbon. She picked it up between thumb and forefinger, but no note was hidden underneath.
“Whose do you suppose it is?” she whispered to the baby.
It was a black lock, the hair so dark it shone blue-black. In fact, it was very like Mary Darling’s own hair. Now that her curls had grown in thickly, they’d revealed themselves as inky black. Silence held the lock to the baby’s head experimentally as Mary bent over her tin cups.
The hair was a perfect match.
But the lock didn’t come from Mary Darling’s head. Silence would know if someone had cut it, and besides, Mary’s hair was still too short. No, the lock of hair was long and curling, and really rather beautiful. A woman with hair like this—
Silence suddenly dropped the lock in shock.
Or a man. She knew of one man who had long, curling, inky-black hair. She gazed in horror at the baby playing before her. The baby she’d nursed and played with and sung to like she was her very own for the last seven months. The baby she’d given her heart to.
Mary’s hair matched Charming
Mickey’s hair exactly.
Impoverished, lovely, and kind, Silence
Hollingbrook once desperately needed help… and trusted the wrong man.
The notorious pirate Mickey
O’Connor sees people as mere pawns to be manipulated, until a secret from his past drives him toward Silence—
the woman he betrayed.
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Chapter One
LONDON, ENGLAND
JANUARY, 1738
Wolves, as Silence Hollingbrook well knew, are savage beasts, little given to pity or honor. If one must face a wolf cleverly disguised in human form, it did no good to show fear. Rather, one must throw one’s shoulders back, lift one’s chin, and stare the damned beast down.
That was what Silence told herself in any case as she eyed Mickey O’Connor, the most notorious river pirate in London. As she watched Mr. O’Connor, he did something far more alarming than any real wolf.
He smiled at her.
Silence swallowed.
Mickey O’Connor lounged like the pirate king he was on a throne of gold and red velvet at one end of a lavishly corrupt room. The walls were lined with sheets of gold, the floor was a fabulous mosaic of different-colored marble, and around her, piled high, were the spoils of thieving: trunks overflowing with furs and silks, crates of tea and spices, and treasures from every corner of the globe, all of it stolen from the ships that came into London’s docks.
And Silence stood before him like a petitioner. Once again.
Mr. O’Connor picked up a sweetmeat from a tray held by a small boy, holding it between long, beringed fingers as he examined her. One corner of his wide, sensuous mouth curled in amusement. “ ’Tis always a pleasure to gaze upon yer sparklin’ hazel eyes, Mrs. Hollingbrook, but I do wonder why you’ve come to see me this lovely afternoon.”
His mocking words strengthened her spine. Silence narrowed her eyes at the beastly man. “You know very well why I’m here, Mr. O’Connor.”
The pirate lifted elegantly winged black eyebrows. “Do I, now?”
Beside her, Harry, one of Mickey O’Connor’s guards and her escort into the throne room, shifted his weight nervously. Harry was a big man with a battered face—a man who’d obviously lived a rather rough life—yet he was just as obviously wary of Mickey O’Connor.
“Easy now,” he muttered to her beneath his breath. “Don’t want to get ’is anger up.”
Mr. O’Connor popped the sweetmeat into his mouth and chewed, his black eyes closing for a moment in pleasure. He was a beautiful man. Silence could see that even if she found him quite repugnant herself. His eyelashes were thick and black, surrounding dark, liquid eyes, his complexion a smooth, dark olive, and when he smiled… well! The dimples that were revealed on his cheeks made him look both wicked and as innocent as a small boy. Had a Renaissance master wanted to paint all the seductive allure of Satan, he would’ve painted Charming Mickey O’Connor.
Silence inhaled. Mr. O’Connor might well be as evil as Satan himself, but she’d braved him once before and survived—even if she hadn’t walked away entirely unscathed. “I’ve come for Mary Darling.”
The pirate’s eyes opened lazily as he swallowed his sweetmeat. “Who?”
Oh, this was too much! Silence felt her face heat as she shook off Harry’s restraining arm and marched right up to the foot of the small dais the ridiculous throne stood on. “You know very well who! Mary Darling, that sweet little baby girl I’ve taken care of for nearly a year. Mary Darling, who knows only me as her mother. Mary Darling, who you took from the foundling home where we both live. Give her back to me at once!”
So great was her ire that Silence found herself out of breath at the end of her little tirade and pointing her finger nearly in Mr. O’Connor’s face. For a moment she froze, her finger still only inches from his nose. Everyone in the room seemed to hold their breath. Mickey O’Connor had lost his smile, and without that expression to lighten his face, he looked quite, quite frightening.
Silence let her hand fall.
Slowly, the pirate straightened from his chair, his long limbs uncurling silently like a predator. He stood, his polished black jackboots thunking to the floor, and stepped down from the dais.
She could’ve backed up, but that would’ve shown fear—and besides, Silence thought she might’ve become rooted to the spot. The scent of lemons and frankincense drifted about her. She lifted her chin in defiance as Mickey O’Connor’s smooth, tanned, bare chest nearly touched her nose—the man was so vain he left his extravagantly ruffled shirt unlaced—and looked him in the eye.
Mr. O’Connor bent, his mouth nearly touching her ear, and murmured, “Well, and why didn’t you say so in the first place, darlin’?”
And while Silence gaped up at him, he straightened, his gaze still locked with hers, and snapped his fingers.
A door opened and Silence finally found the willpower to tear her gaze from those black, fathomless eyes. And then she forgot all about Mickey O’Connor. A servant girl had entered, and in her arms was the sweetest, most wonderful being in the whole world.
“Mamoo!” Mary Darling shrieked. She began a frantic bouncing in the servant girl’s arms. “Mamoo! Mamoo! Mamoo! Up!”
Silence rushed to catch the toddler before she could completely squirm from the girl’s arms. “I have you. I have you, my love,” she murmured as Mary Darling wrapped soft, pudgy arms about her neck and squeezed.
Silence breathed in the scent of milk and baby, tears pricking her eyes. When she’d found her gone… when she’d feared that she’d never see Mary Darling again, her heart had seemed to shrivel.
“Mamoo,” Mary Darling sighed, and unwrapped her arms to pat Silence’s cheeks.
Silence ran her hands over Mary Darling’s black curls, touching and squeezing and rubbing, making sure the little girl was as well as when she’d last seen her, half a day before. The last six hours had been the most frightening of her life and she never wanted to repeat—
“Ahem,” a masculine voice murmured nearby, and Silence suddenly remembered where she was.
She clutched Mary Darling to her breast and whirled to face Mickey O’Connor. “Thank you. It’s most—most kind of you to have given her back to me. I really can’t thank you enough.” Silence took a step backward, afraid to take her eyes from Charming Mickey’s face. “I-I’ll just be leaving—”
Mr. O’Connor smiled. “Oh, certainly, sweetheart, do as you wish, but the little one will be a-stayin’ with me, I think.”
Silence froze. “You have no right—!”
The pirate lifted one inky eyebrow and reached out to finger Mary Darling’s black curls. His hand was large against her little head. “Oh, don’t I?”
“Bad!” Mary Darling glared at Mickey O’Connor, dark eyes meeting dark eyes, black curls framing a face that might’ve been a feminine miniature of Mr. O’Connor’s own.
The resemblance was quite devastating.
Silence swallowed. Mary Darling had been abandoned on her doorstep eleven months ago. At the time she’d thought that the baby had been left with her because her brother ran the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children. Now she wondered if there had been a much more diabolical reason.
“You don’t love her,” she tried.
“No.” Mickey O’Connor let his hand drop. “But I’m a-thinkin’ that doesn’t matter all that much when you do, Mrs. Hollingbrook.”
Silence felt the breath catch in her throat. “Let me leave with her.”
“No.”
Mary Darling squirmed again, with one of those mercurial shifts of moods that toddlers are prone to. “Down!”
Silence let her slip from her arms, watching as the little girl carefully stood against one of the huge trunks of booty. “Why are you doing this? Haven’t you done enough to me in this lifetime?”
She jerked her head out of his way.
His hand dropped.
“Why, then?” She folded her arms and faced him, though she kept Mary Darling within sight.
He shrugged, the movement making his shirt slip further off one tanned shoulder. “A man in my position has many an enemy, I fear. Nasty, mean creatures who don’t let the thought of innocence or youth stop them from doin’ terrible, murderous things.”
“Why take her now?” Silence asked. “Are these enemies new?”
His mouth curved into another smile, this one entirely without humor. “Not at all. But me enemies have become more… er… persistent in the last month or two, you understand. It’s merely a matter of business, one that I hope to soon tidy up. But in the meantime, should my enemies find the wee child…”
Silence shivered, watching as Mary Darling grabbed for a dark fur and pulled it half out of the trunk. “Damn you. How could you have put her in this danger?”
“I didn’t,” he said without any signs of conscience. “I gave her to you, remember.”
She shifted her gaze to him and was disconcerted to find him only a foot away. The room was big, and besides Harry and the sweetmeats boy, a gang of pirates sat around Mr. O’Connor’s throne. Was he worried they’d be overheard?
“Then let me keep her,” Silence whispered. “She doesn’t know you, doesn’t love you. She’s been safe with me for nearly a year. If you have any decency in you at all, you’ll let her go with me.”