How To Please a Pirate

by Mia Marlowe

  Last night’s passion was still fresh in her senses. Her whole body ached in a loose-jointed way, but it was a pleasant ache. It was as though her every knot had been untied, every kink pressed smooth. She was content as she had never been in her whole life.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Gabriel said as his hand crept around to cup one of her breasts.

  It didn’t take a gypsy fortune-teller to divine the direction of his thoughts, but she felt bound to ask, “What about?”

  “That treasure,” Gabriel said, absently thrumming her nipple with his thumb. “Seems to me there must be a way to turn it to our advantage.”

  “Well, of course, there is,” she said, wishing if he were going to make love to her he’d get on with it. After last night, she didn’t know how much teasing her body could bear before she was reduced to pleading. “We could use the treasure to buy new livestock and help your tenants improve their houses. There ought not to be old thatch on any roof on your whole estate by the time we’re finished.”

  “That’s not exactly—”

  Thinking of the possibilities presented by the dragon’s hoard of gold beneath the Caern, Jacquelyn pushed awareness of her growing arousal aside. “We could build a school, a new infirmary. Oh, there are any number of things that treasure can do.”

  “I meant something more personal.” Gabriel slid a finger under her chin and tipped her face up to his. “We both know I must marry. You are the one I want, Lyn. What good is that money if it can’t help me have you?”

  He wanted her! It wasn’t exactly a declaration of undying love, but her heart still did a jig against her ribs. Then reality lashed her and her brows knit together. There was no way for him to take her to wife and meet the Crown’s requirements.

  “You must marry a wellborn lady. I am the bastard girl-child of a courtesan.” She rolled over to give him her back. “No amount of money will render my birth noble.”

  “I still don’t see why that matters,” he said, raising himself on one elbow and running his other hand from her shoulder down past her waist. He edged closer to her, leaving a proprietary palm on her hip.

  “Believe me, it does,” she said. “All my life, I’ve known I was different. The head-mistress at Lundgrim’s Academy for Young Ladies of Good Family tried to insulate me from slights, much good it did. I believe she even circulated the tale that my mother was the widow of some minor French nobleman who’d retaken her English name upon his death and then died herself, but the rumors persisted. And when all the rest of the girls went home for Christmas, I stayed at school.”

  The old hurt throbbed in her chest, but when Gabriel pressed a kiss against her temple, it eased a bit.

  “Isabella didn’t have either the time or the space for me. She rarely visited the school and when she did, the head-mistress was clever enough to keep her out of sight of the rest of the students.” Jacquelyn bit her lip. “My mother is . . . not an inconspicuous person.”

  “You say you didn’t spend much time with her as you grew up, and yet it seems you knew her well. Probably better than I knew my father.”

  “Isabella was a great letter writer,” Jacquelyn said with a sigh.

  Whenever one of her mother’s missives arrived at the school, Jacquelyn was summoned to the headmistress’s office, where she was expected to read the letter and then surrender it immediately. The head mistress always burned them in her sight. Unlike the other students, Jacquelyn wasn’t allowed to keep the letters to pour over later, lest any of her mother’s ‘less than salubrious’ correspondence fall into the hands of ‘impressionable minds’ and corrupt any of the other students with ‘worldly vice.’ The immediate loss of her mother’s letters probably led Jacquelyn to absorb and remember more of Isabella’s words than she might have if she’d been allowed to keep them.

  But destroying the missives was probably a wise course of action, especially since Isabella took it upon herself to fully educate Jacquelyn about what passed between a man and a woman through several detailed letters. Ears tinted scarlet as she read silently under the head mistress’s watchful eyes, Jacquelyn learned about fleshly love from one who might be considered a true expert.

  ‘Ignorance,’ her mother had written, ‘is not always conducive to bliss.’

  “She wrote to me faithfully,” Jacquelyn said. “Isabella always said she filled her days with maintaining her correspondence because her nights were filled with . . . other things.”

  And now Jacquelyn was intimately acquainted with those ‘other things.’ Sharing her mother’s passionate nature helped her understand Isabella better, but Jacquelyn still resented her for placing her own needs above her child’s.

  Gabriel spooned his body around hers and whispered in her ear. “That treasure is worthy of a king. What if we were to use it to provide a dowry for your mother? Wouldn’t that induce your father to wed her and claim you? Surely that would settle your nobility sufficiently for those who care about such things.”

  “First of all, I don’t know who he is,” she said testily, trying to ignore his erection pressing against her bottom. “Perhaps Isabella doesn’t either. Not for certain. And second, even if she does know who he is, he’s no doubt already married. I don’t think my mother ever took a lover who wasn’t. In that respect, she was very particular. She always said married men were ‘more generous and less complicated,’ whatever that means.”

  “Well, then we’ll use the treasure to lure some other titled gentleman to wed her and claim you.” He planted a wet kiss behind her ear. “Lord knows, men have done far worse to gain a fortune.”

  “It would take too long. We’d have to travel to London.” She noted with surprise that his body stiffened slightly at this. “Then I’d have to try to convince Isabella to go along with the scheme. I doubt she would.”

  “Why not? Don’t most women want marriage more than anything?”

  “My mother is not most women,” she said, grinding her teeth. Gabriel had slid his arm around her and started teasing a nipple with one hand while he traced her ear with the other. “She’s what French philosophers call a free spirit. She says marriage is a brand of female slavery. The only way a woman can maintain her dignity is to belong to herself.”

  “Well, that’s an original view,” he said. “Though I gather she didn’t mind accepting gifts from men.”

  “Oh, no, that was never an issue. ‘Take money from a man,’ she’d say. ‘Jewels and carriages, a house if you can manage it, but don’t take his name.’”

  Jacquelyn sighed.

  Gabriel stopped teasing her breast and tightened his grip around her, but said nothing. She was grateful for his wordless understanding.

  “Even if my mother gave consent to the ruse, we’d have to find an agreeable gentleman she’d be willing to settle on. Besides, they would have to declare that they’d been married secretly all these years, since before I was born, or I’d still be considered a bastard. ” Jacquelyn mentally tallied up the months left before the Drake barony would be declared extinct. “It would take too long. You must wed soon.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Before the season turns.”

  “Only if we stay here,” he said.

  “What?” She rolled back to face him.

  “If there’s one thing my stint at piracy taught me, it’s that the world is wider than I ever imagined,” he said. “We could leave England with that treasure, Lyn, and set ourselves up for lady and gentleman anywhere in the world.”

  The possibilities dazzled her speechless.

  “Think of the places we could go. Some of the islands in the Caribbee are beautiful beyond belief—green and blue jewels rising from the turquoise sea,” he said wistfully. “And there are even a few dots of land left there where I haven’t outstayed my welcome. Or if island life isn’t to your taste, we might make for the Colonies.”

  “I can’t picture you hacking out a homestead in the wilderness when our own little war party of savages has already bested you here,” she said, belly
jiggling as she remembered the girls’ farcical rendition of aboriginal Americans.

  “No need, when I have the coin to fit out a fleet of ships. We could settle in Boston or Charleston,” he said, warming to the idea. “I could turn respectable and run a legitimate shipping business.”

  “From pirate to merchantman?”

  “A shorter step than pirate to titled gentleman, believe me. But to have you by my side, I’d even return to piracy,” he said, planting a kiss on her cheek.

  She decided to put scripture to practice and turned the other one to him as well. He complied and then moved up to kiss first one closed eyelid, then the other.

  “To hear Mr. Meriwether tell it, that would be no sacrifice at all,” she said as pleasure washed over her. “‘A merry life and a short one’ is how he described piracy. But a pirate vessel is no place for your nieces. Would you abandon them to some boarding school?”

  “No, we’ll take them with us wherever we go,” Gabriel said with a grin. “So piracy is out then, though I suspect Daisy has an aptitude for it.”

  She swallowed a laugh. “You may be right.” Then her face grew serious. “And what of Mrs. B?”

  “She could come, too,” he conceded. “Meri would insist upon it if only to insure the continued flow of cherry pies to his belly. Besides, we’ll need Mrs. B. to ride herd on the girls.”

  “And what about Timothy? And Father Eustace?” she said pensively. “And all your tenants and crofters? With you gone, the Crown will have an excuse to appoint a protector of the estate. A new lord who cares nothing for the old families here might well raise their rents so high, they’d be forced off the land to starve.”

  “Seems to me I was once almost murdered to avoid that very calamity,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. “And yet none have suffered under my benign neglect. Surely a new lord would be similarly inclined.”

  She didn’t find him funny. Or convincing.

  “It’s not a chance you can take. Like it or not, you are no longer the second son of a gentleman who may pick and choose a life for himself. You are Lord Drake of Dragon Caern,” she said softly. “Nobility has its privileges, but it also comes with duties. It is your obligation to care for these people.”

  “Even if I will it otherwise?”

  “Especially if you will it otherwise.” She palmed both his cheeks, the rough stubble of his beard pricking her skin. The truth pricked her heart even deeper. “If you do only what pleases yourself, you’re no better than a tyrant.”

  “Remember who you’re talking to, Mistress.” He turned his head and pressed a soft kiss into her palm. “A pirate has no rule but his own wishes.”

  “You are no longer a pirate,” she said, willing it to be true.

  “And neither am I a lord by any measure but name,” he said. “Not yet.”

  “But you will be,” she said with assurance.

  Gabriel tipped her face toward him and she thought he was going to kiss her. Instead he just looked at her as if he were trying to burn her features into his mind.

  “Do you ever tire of being right all the time?” he finally said.

  “Frequently,” she admitted. “But only since I met you.”

  He lowered his mouth to hers in a kiss of bittersweet regret. It wasn’t the flame of passion they’d shared in the night, but the connection between them in the gentle brush of their lips was even more real for its lack of blinding desire. When he pulled away, she blinked back the tears that threatened to salt her cheeks.

  “Kiss me again,” she urged.

  “That might lead to another. You’ve a naked man in your bed who generally wakes in a friendly frame of mind even without the benefit of a beautiful naked woman beside him.” A wry grin tugged at his mouth. “Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep.”

  “I never do.”

  He took her mouth again and she melted into him.

  And for quite some time, neither of them made any promises at all.

  Save the promise of pleasure, given and received.

  Chapter 24

  “If I want anything done right, I must do it myself,” Catherine Curtmantle muttered under her breath as her coach breasted Dragon Caern’s drawbridge. “As usual.”

  Hugh was no use whatsoever. The worthless twit couldn’t even manage to debauch a virgin and get himself decently killed over the debacle. Instead he’d muffed the ravishing, lost a swordfight to Gabriel Drake and been humiliated before the nobility of a dozen shires by that horrid, unruly gaggle of Drake children. If Hugh couldn’t oust Lord Drake from the Caern, whether by guile or by force, Catherine decided she would have preferred widowhood.

  A weak husband was decidedly worse than no husband.

  So now it was up to her to make certain Gabriel Drake never married.

  The obvious choice was to seduce him.

  Catherine patted her new wig with feline smugness, enjoying the irony. Tight-fisted Hugh had to part with some of his carefully hoarded coin to outfit her in the latest fashion so she could seduce the man her husband hadn’t been able to kill.

  Not that Hugh was privy to her plans, of course. Hugh didn’t have the intelligence to appreciate the subtleties of their situation. He was perfectly willing to commit adultery himself. But Catherine knew Hugh would be far less sanguine about his wife doing the very same thing.

  “At least I’m not seducing a child,” Catherine said, basking in the glow of moral superiority. Then she reached into her bodice and hitched her breasts up a bit. She looked down to admire the effect. She was sure it wouldn’t be visible straight on, but from this angle, one pink nipple peeped from behind a froth of lace at her bodice. If it weren’t daytime, she’d have dabbed a bit of rouge on it, to make sure the alluring little nub stood out. But the real trick to artifice was that it should seem not to be so.

  A seduction should proceed naturally, at least as far as the man knew. They might own everything and think they held all the power, but a wise woman could control every

  encounter. Catherine knew with the right motivation, a woman could turn a man’s head as neatly as she directed the biddable gelding she rode for pleasure, with a tug on his bit and the judicious use of spurs.

  It shouldn’t be too hard to arrange for Gabriel to view her from above. After all, he was a tall man.

  If she could manage to meet with him in his library, she might open one of his many tomes and invite him to peek over her shoulder at some fascinating passage. If she held the book just so, he’d not be reading very long.

  Men were so blessedly predictable about such things.

  She thought about inching the other nipple up as well, but decided that while one might be taken for an innocent error in her toilette, two exposed love buttons would be a tad too fast, even for a seduction. Satisfied with her preparations, and slightly excited by the sight of her own tight nipple, she drew a deep breath as the coach rumbled to a stop.

  The door opened and she allowed the gawky stable boy to hand her down from her seat. When she murmured her thanks, he blushed dark enough to fade his freckles.

  Must have caught a peek, she thought smugly.

  The round housekeeper met her at the tall arched entry and escorted her to the solar with instructions to wait there upon ‘the master’s pleasure.’

  Yes, indeed, the master’s pleasure was her chief aim. Not only would she keep Gabriel from marrying, she’d enjoy the process.

  He was still as darkly handsome as the day she jilted him for Hugh Curtmantle. And if Catherine did say so herself, she was still considered the local beauty. Two such pretty people would doubtless find mutual attraction undeniable. She’d long since lost interest in Hugh’s grunting attentions, but the chase was always the most delicious part of any affair.

  She was determined to lead Gabriel Drake a merry one. And once she’d seduced him into bed, she was even prepared with one those cunning ‘French Letters’ to protect herself against another confinement or some horrid disease. Even though G
abriel Drake looked the picture of health, who knew where a pirate might have dipped his wick.

  Catherine was determined that any ‘votary of Venus’ who breached her defenses would find himself sheathed in the little lamb’s bladder she had secreted in her reticule. She’d even imagined the naughty game she might play when she drew the pink ribbons of the condom tight on Gabriel’s erection.

  All in all, this was shaping up to be a capital plan.

  “Oh, Baroness Curtmantle! There you are.”

  It was the chatelaine who breezed into the solar, out of breath and flushing prettily. She ducked a quick curtsey. Catherine had met her at the ball. What was her name?

  No matter.

  “I’m here to see Lord Drake,” Catherine informed her loftily. “The housekeeper was supposed to deliver the message that I’ve come calling, but perhaps you might see to his lordship’s whereabouts and apprise him of my presence. I cannot believe he’d keep me waiting longer than a snatched breath.”

  “Actually, Lord Drake sent me to fetch you with his compliments,” the chit said. “He is elsewhere engaged at present, but wonders if you’d be pleased to join his party in the garden.”

  Catherine pursed her lips. “Why? Are his nieces producing another play?”

  The young woman had the grace to look chagrined. After all, it was not often one had to endure the sight of one’s husband being nearly roasted alive. Catherine would have been thoroughly humiliated had not most of the ball guests chosen to believe Hugh was a willing participant in the charade. He was declared a ‘damned good sport’ by one and all. Catherine had wanted to sink into the very earth.

  “Actually, yes,” the young woman said. “Some families sing. Others recite bad poetry. The Drake children seem to be gifted in the thespian arts. The girls are performing for Lord Drake’s guests this very moment.”

  “How droll!” Catherine waved her fan languidly before her. “And whom are the little darlings threatening to immolate this day?”