A Match for the Rebellious Earl

by Lara Temple

  He cast an apologetic smile at Genny and broke into a spate of Catalan. Genny’s Portuguese and Spanish had always been excellent, but Catalan was beyond her.

  Kit cursed and scrubbed his hands through his disordered hair. ‘Mary is asking for you. I’ll go...’

  ‘No.’ Genny stood and brushed down her skirts. ‘If she is feeling ill, I think she might prefer a woman to hold the basin for her. And you have a ship to sail, Captain Chris.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘I prepare a feast and no one is here to enjoy,’ Benja said morosely.

  Kit smiled distractedly at the display of roast fowl, pies, and an impressive pot of Benja’s speciality, paella.

  The choppy weather had held, preventing Mary, Emily and Peter from finding their sea legs. And, since his stepmother drew the line at having either him or his sailors hold a basin for her, poor Genny had been recruited to tend to the sick. Luckily Emily and Peter had not passed from queasiness to outright illness, but they remained in their cabin despite his attempts to convince them they’d do better on deck.

  ‘Well, at least that is the last time Emily will beg me for a pleasure cruise,’ he said, heaping some food on a plate. ‘Take this to Miss Maitland’s cabin and remind her to eat while she can. Mary is likely to throw something at me if I show my face. I’ll take a plate to my cabin and the men can come in here and do justice to this bounty.’

  Benja sighed as Kit took his plate and glass. He could have stayed and eaten with his men, as he usually did. He ought to stay with them and take the distraction they offered. A lonely dinner and a bottle of wine while his cock was aching for satisfaction was not a good prescription for a sound night’s sleep.

  He even tried to insert himself mentally into Mary’s sickroom, in the hope that envisaging the familiar sight of the contents of upheaved stomachs would douse the pulsing need he’d foolishly unleashed on deck.

  Instead he saw in his mind Genny leaning over a bed, her rounded backside shaping what looked more like a nightdress than the proper gown and pelisse that had separated them on deck. He turned her around. But now she was wearing that unfairly low-cut peach-toned gown she’d worn to the theatre. He stood there in his mind, as hard as a mast, and reached out to set loose her hair, watching the thick honey-brown waves unfurl over her shoulders, covering her beautiful breasts...

  No, not covering her breasts—he wanted those bared to his imagination. He reached out and gently brushed her hair aside. God, he could almost feel it between his fingers. He’d only touched that heavy, warm silk twice, but it was imprinted on him more deeply than an inked tattoo on a sailor’s skin.

  Her hair was now cascading over her shoulders, and he was free to take her hand, as he had on deck. But this time she guided his to her breasts, their fingers linked as they cupped the heavy warmth that rested in his palms—heavy, soft... But he could feel the skin tightening against his hand, just as it was tightening over his erection...

  He opened his eyes and pressed his palms together. This was not a good idea.

  Once they were safely at the Hall it would be easier to stick to the rules. There would be lots of guests, lots of servants...

  Lots of rooms.

  All those corners where he could...

  No.

  He kept forgetting that even though Genny might be unconventional, their worlds were utterly different. He might have begun by thoroughly disliking Genny Maitland, but somehow he’d come not only to desire her but to...to care for her...as a friend. He would not wish to see her harmed simply because he couldn’t keep his hands to himself. It was not worth it. A flirtation, even a kiss, was all well and good, but everything else would come at a high price for both of them.

  Still, he wished too that they could keep on sailing. A little longer. And while he had her in his world, he’d make damn good use of the armchair...

  His mind grabbed hold of that pleasant thought: his ground, his armchair...his woman.

  No—he amended—not his woman.

  Genny Maitland was her own territory. He was merely toying at her edges. He didn’t want to conquer her; all he wanted was to bed her.

  But, hell, he did want to bed her.

  The knock on his door was hesitant. He was about to send whoever it was to the devil when the certainty struck him that it was Genny. He was at the door and opening it before he realised he was dressed only in his trousers.

  She stared at his chest, opened her mouth, turned away, turned back, and frowned at the floor. Luckily, her eyes skimmed past the evidence of his lack of self-control.

  She planted her legs a little wider, rushing into speech. ‘I’m terribly sorry to intrude. I did ask Benja, and he assured me I would not be disturbing you.’

  He would have to have a word with Benja about his sense of humour. To Genny he said, ‘Has anything happened? Mary?’

  ‘No, no. She is finally asleep. But I’m afraid she will wake again and I thought it best to have a book with me when she does, to take her mind off her stomach. Mr Fábregas told me the books are in your cabin. I did ask if he could...but he said he had to hurry on deck...something about sandbars? I didn’t know there were any so far out.’

  Neither did Kit. Nor were there. And Benja knew full well there was a shelf of perfectly suitable books in the map room.

  Damn him.

  Or bless him, depending on the state of Kit’s fast-fraying morals.

  He opened the door. ‘Come in and choose.’

  ‘I... Perhaps you should?’

  ‘I wouldn’t presume. I’ll even put my shirt back on.’

  ‘I... Don’t on my account. Though...aren’t you cold?’

  She stepped into the room and he shut the door before she could reconsider.

  ‘No. No, I’m not cold.’

  He went to pick up his shirt and she moved cautiously towards the shelf of books, her brows rising as she moved along the shelf.

  ‘You have a great many books.’

  ‘There is a great deal of time to read on a ship.’

  ‘True. Are you ever bored?’

  ‘Sometimes. I don’t mind, though. Boredom is a privilege. Some of my best ideas come to me when I’m bored.’

  She gave a slight laugh and ran her finger down the spine of one of the books. It seemed to shiver down his spine as well, and his erection rose against the confines of his trousers.

  ‘I remember often being bored when we were billeted in one place for a long time,’ she said to the books. ‘I wanted to be doing something. Not sitting with Serena and the other women and gossiping.’

  He could well imagine that. Genny had never belonged in such a setting any more than he had. He felt a twinge of heat a couple of dozen inches north of his erection and rubbed at it. Empathy was not what he wanted to feel right now. He wanted her to ask him to fetch a book for her from the top shelf, while she stood very, very close.

  ‘Take a book or two,’ he suggested. ‘It might be a long night.’

  Damnably long.

  ‘I don’t think I shall have time...’ She took a book and clutched it to her like a Quaker with her bible, her hair a tangle of waves over her shoulder, glinting gold and dark wine in the flickering of the lantern.

  He reached past her to pull out a volume. ‘As You like It.’

  ‘As I like...?’ she echoed, her voice hollowing.

  ‘It,’ he completed. ‘Shakespeare. Rosalind is my favourite of his heroines. “I shall devise something.”’

  ‘Oh.’ She took the book and added it to her shield.

  He reached to her right, nudging her aside very gently. ‘No, not A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I think. That will likely give you nightmares. Measure for Measure? A little dark, and there’s a beheaded pirate there, so we shall pass on that. What of...?’

  ‘These two shall do, thank you,’ she said hurrie
dly.

  They both fell silent.

  ‘I didn’t tell you before, but this is a lovely room,’ she added.

  ‘Thank you. I bought the Hesperus from an American privateer. He liked his comforts.’

  ‘Like you. It is impressively neat too. Everything in its place.’ Her eyes flickered up to his with a hint of laughter.

  ‘I was born and raised on a ship. When you live at the mercy of the elements and with hardly any room of your own you come to appreciate the benefits of order and comfort.’

  ‘I wasn’t making fun of you, Kit.’ She looked absurdly contrite.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. It is merely nice to see your human side... Oh, Lord, that didn’t sound right...’

  ‘My human side? You find me cold, Genny?’

  ‘That isn’t what I meant and you know it. Shouldn’t you don your shirt?’

  ‘Should I? One of the benefits of being on my ship, in my cabin, is wearing what I want. Or, in this case, not wearing it. If my state of undress offends you so, you can, of course, choose to leave. Yet here you are.’

  ‘The books...’

  ‘You are holding two perfectly serviceable books—masterpieces, even. Yet you are still here. Could it be you are contemplating another...impulse?’

  ‘Right now I’m contemplating your chest,’ she blurted out.

  He planted his hands flat on the shelves on either side of her. ‘I would love to do the same. Must you cover the most spectacular masterpiece in this room with all those layers?’

  A laugh bubbled out of her. ‘Kit. This is very improper.’

  ‘If you were very proper, you wouldn’t have sat on my lap and kissed me on an open deck just a few short hours ago.’

  ‘I didn’t...’

  ‘You most certainly did. I was there.’

  ‘I meant I didn’t mean to be so brazen.’

  ‘You weren’t brazen; you were honest. You asked for what you wanted; I asked for what I wanted. So if you wish to play on equal ground, this is how it is done. At any time, no matter what, you can walk out through this door. I would never stop you.’

  She swallowed. ‘That almost sounds like a threat.’

  ‘Freedom is threatening. We’re beasts that like boundaries. We feel safe inside them.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘I mistrust them because they are too often used against me. I’d rather risk my fate outside them so long as I don’t hurt people I care for. But that’s my choice; you make yours.’

  She took a couple of deep breaths, her eyes fixed somewhere in the area of his right shoulder. ‘So...if I would like another kiss, I could ask you?’

  His elbows threatened to give way and close the distance between them. He almost said, You could ask me anything.

  He pulled his sagging mental faculties back into some semblance of intelligence and nodded. ‘You could. That isn’t to say I would agree. The same applies to you.’

  ‘Of course.’

  She shifted her eyes up to his. They were a deep, metallic grey now, the pupils dilated. He very much hoped that meant she was strongly considering being impulsive.

  ‘I really should return to Mary,’ she said, hefting her books higher against her bosom.

  Ah, damn.

  ‘But first...fair is fair. Hold these, please.’

  She gave him the books and then untied her cape, draping it over his braced arm as if he was part of the furniture. Beneath she wore a demure cotton nightgown, secured with blue ribbons at the neck. The simple cream-coloured fabric clung to her curves as lovingly as he would happily have done. She wore a chemise beneath, but no stays, and even through the double layer he could see the tight pressure of her nipples beneath.

  Then she drove home the knife with a slow tug at the laces and the fabric fell open, revealing the plump curves all the way to the dark hollow between them.

  ‘What is it with men and bosoms?’ she asked as she watched him, her voice caught between laughter and embarrassment and a tamped heat that echoed his.

  ‘I don’t know, Vivi, but it’s deep. Especially when faced with such perfection.’

  ‘They’re hardly perfect.’

  ‘Exquisite.’

  He allowed his eyes to sweep over her, gathering images—the outline of her thigh under the cotton, the rise of her hip, the faint echoes of freckles across the bridge of her nose, the warm, generous curve of her mouth. And her eyes... Perhaps they were the most damaging to his sanity. They glistened like liquid mercury...mystical and dangerous.

  ‘And not just them, Vivi. Every inch of you. Utterly exquisite.’

  ‘Now you are being foolish. Mary and Serena are exquisite. I’m short and passable, with a bosom that seems to distract men and make them say silly things. It is nothing to be proud of.’

  ‘Mary and Serena are pretty like a hundred other women are pretty. Like that vase on the table is pretty. I have absolutely no urge to populate my wicked waking dreams with pretty. They are thoroughly occupied with absolutely...utterly...exquisite.’

  He allowed himself to gently brush his fingers over her shoulders and the soft skin at the side of her neck before he regretfully tied the ribbons again and draped her cloak about her shoulders.

  ‘Once we’re at the Hall we won’t be able to...to flirt like this,’ she said, her eyes skimming past him to the rumpled bed.

  A spear of fire cleaved through him—fierce and demanding—but instead of pushing him over the edge, it held him back.

  The thought of exploring Genny’s excitability might be threatening his sanity, but it wasn’t the hypocritical Carrington morals that stood in the way of taking what she was contemplating offering.

  Genny deserved far, far better—and that was precisely what he couldn’t give her.

  No, to be fair, it was not that he couldn’t—he wouldn’t.

  If there was one thing his father’s two marriages had taught him, it was that marriage should either be entered into with all one’s heart and soul and conscience, or not at all.

  ‘No, we won’t be able to,’ he finally agreed.

  Fantasy would have to remain fantasy.

  She nodded and took the books, pressing them to her chest again. Then she rose on tiptoe and brushed her mouth over his, lingering for a moment. His arms were already rising when she sank back down and slipped past him and out through the door.

  He stood there for a while longer, staring at the books on the shelf. The gilt lettering of Love’s Labour’s Lost twinkled in the candlelight, mocking him and the long night ahead.

  He put on his shirt and boots and went up on deck. With any luck it would rain.

  Chapter Fourteen

  How strange.

  He’d forgotten how lovely Carrington Hall was.

  In his boyish memories the house had been dark, brooding, oppressive. Since their arrival yesterday he’d only seen part of it, but he’d yet to find a dark corner.

  The house was a large grey stone affair in the classical style with two wings, set in a slight valley that protected it and the lush spring gardens from the worst of the sea winds.

  It was a resolutely English sight, cheerful and even comforting, but the jewel in the crown was the horseshoe-shaped bay which nestled below rocky cliffs and was accessible by a narrow and seldom used cliff path.

  Tomorrow he would indulge in the only happy memory he had of the Hall—swimming. The cold water would be useful.

  He felt strangely cheated. He’d been nursing a boy’s resentment for well over a dozen years and now it had fizzled like a wet candle wick.

  He walked through the gardens, wondering if he could identify the place where he’d constructed the fort Julian had invaded when they were boys.

  ‘Good morning, Lord Westford.’

  He turned at Serena’s voice. She was c
oming out of the rose garden, carrying a basket filled with fully blown roses and peonies.

  ‘We’ve missed the best of the peonies already while in London,’ she said with evident regret. ‘They were Charlie’s pride and joy.’

  ‘They are still beautiful,’ he said, and she smiled happily at the flowers. It was the first time he’d seen a true smile on her face since his return to England, and he realised with surprise that Genny’s sister was still deeply in love with Charlie.

  In Spain he’d thought her rather shallow, both in intelligence and emotion. He still had no idea about her intelligence, but he rather thought her emotions ran deep—and they ran in the river bed she’d forged with sweet, straightforward, and ultimately gullible Charlie.

  He encouraged her to talk about his cousin, watching the joy pour out of her just as the peonies were threatening to tip out of her basket, and he wished once again that Charlie had survived and was here, where he ought to be, as husband to this grieving woman and as rightful head of the Carringtons.

  ‘He liked you, you know,’ Serena said after falling silent for a moment. ‘Very much. He always felt he’d been caught between you and the others and never quite knew how to be. That was why he was so happy when you both found yourselves in the same regiment in Spain. He even thought of asking your advice when he realised how bad matters had become.’

  ‘Why didn’t he?’

  ‘He didn’t know where you were at the time. Mary said the last letter she’d had was from somewhere in the East Indies. In any case he felt...he felt he had to fix it himself. To prove to everyone that he was not...weak.’

  ‘Goodness isn’t a weakness, though it is sometimes preyed upon.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said earnestly. ‘That is what I told him. But he wished he were like you or Marcus. Men who insisted on what they wanted. But he was a good man—the kindest I knew. That is why I love him...but he never valued himself as I did.’

  ‘Then he was a very lucky man.’

  ‘I was the lucky one. I only wish...’ Her smile wavered and she stopped by the kitchen path.

  ‘Would you like to go live in the Dower House again?’ he asked impulsively, and her face lit.