A half an hour later, after hot coffee, they both stood on the captain’s deck behind the wheel. Juliette was bundled up in his clothes, covered in oilskins and boots with a large southwester hat pulled down low over her head, and screaming in delight as the Sea Minx bounded over the roaring waves. It was a rough and wild ride and Harrison loved the fact that Juliette was loving every minute of the high waves and wind. He had certainly weathered more severe storms than this one, but it was a fairly strong squall just the same. It would not last much longer. Most people would be losing their breakfast over the side of the boat, especially a first-timer like Juliette. But there she stood, gamely hanging onto the railing, her blue eyes alight with excitement and a beaming smile on her beautiful face as she stared out at the ominous sea and clouds. She amazed him.
A blinding flash of lightning streaked across the sky, followed by a tremendous crash of thunder. Juliette did not flinch.
“You’re not even a little afraid, are you?” he called to her over the pounding rain.
She turned her sparkling eyes toward him. “Are we going to capsize?” she asked.
“Not a chance.” Not in a storm this weak they wouldn’t and certainly not on his watch. He would not risk having Juliette up on deck if he thought she was in any danger, which is why he had also insisted she wear a cork lifejacket tied over the oilskins.
“Then I’m not afraid.” She grinned at him, her angelic face wet with rain.
Harrison’s heart flipped over in his chest at her sheer bravery and beauty. He had never met a woman to compare to her.
When the storm abated, Harrison and Juliette returned to his cabin to change out of their drenched clothing.
As she plucked his oversized, wet shirt from her body, she chattered in excitement. “That was absolutely thrilling! I’ve never seen waves that high before! Oh, my heart is still racing! That was by far the most adventurous thing I’ve ever experienced. Everything on this ship makes me feel as if I am truly living!”
“Everything?” he asked, eyeing her naked, damp body. Slowly, he held out a dry towel to her. She was more than stunning. Last night in his arms she had been more than passionate. Juliette seemed to live every opportunity to its fullest.
She took the towel, her eyes lingering on him. “Yes, everything.”
The light in her eyes as she looked at him caused an odd sensation in his chest. He smiled back at her, watching at she modestly wrapped the towel around herself, covering her luscious breasts. “Why do you think that is?” he asked, unable to take his eyes off of her.
She cast him a triumphant smile. “Because for the first time in my life I am doing exactly what I want, without anyone telling me what I should or should not do. I have no mother or father scolding me about my behavior and how I should show more decorum and act more ladylike as my sisters do. I have no prim aunt or stuffy old uncle lecturing me on my deportment. I have no sisters or brother-in-law, however well meaning, warning me that I am causing a scandal. I am free.”
“You are forgetting someone.” With leisurely movements, he stripped off his own wet clothing.
“Am I now?” She stared back at him in blatant appreciation.
Because he knew she was watching him, he ran the dry towel over his naked body with deliberate slowness. “Most definitely.”
“I’m sure I don’t know to whom you are referring,” she responded in a somewhat flirtatious tone, her eyes lingering on his lower body. “I don’t believe I’ve forgotten anyone.”
“What about the captain of this vessel?” He gave her a wolfish grin. “Are you already forgetting that you must obey all his orders?”
“Ah, yes.” Her hands still clutching the towel closed in front of her, Juliette took a step toward him. Her blue eyes twinkled. “How could I forget? It seems I have a handsome sea-captain ordering me about.”
“Handsome, eh?” He liked that, coming from her.
“Oh, yes, handsome. Very.” She stepped closer, a smile playing around the corners of her mouth.
“It’s the rule of the sea. You must obey all orders from a captain.”
“All orders?” she questioned in mock surprise, her eyebrows arching.
“Yes,” he said. “To the letter.”
“I see.” She nodded at him, her eyes directly upon his.
Fascinated by the interplay between them, Harrison felt his body respond heatedly to her nearness. “Come closer,” he commanded.
She moved until she stood an inch or two from him. He could smell the sea spray in her hair, which hung in dark, damp tendrils around her face. God, but she was a beautiful woman. She stared up at him expectantly.
“Drop the towel.”
Her amused expression vanished as her sultry eyes darkened with desire. Without the slightest hesitation, Juliette let the white towel slip from her fingers. It fell to her feet on the floor with a quiet swish. She stood naked before him. He sucked in his breath at the sight. Her creamy white skin glowed luminous in the candlelight. He fought the impulse to touch her. For now.
“Now kiss me,” he murmured how, his voice husky with hunger for her. He held his breath, waiting to see if she would follow his order.
“Aye, aye, Captain,” she whispered before standing on her tiptoes to place a kiss on his lips.
Her bare breasts brushed against his chest and he suddenly could not breathe. Harrison wrapped his arms around her, easing his mouth over hers in a slow and deep kiss. A small sigh escaped her as their tongues met. He could easily drown in the sweetness of her and not care if he ever came up for air again. Her fingers splayed through his damp hair, massaging his scalp in slow, easy motions sending shafts of pleasure through his body. Their lips clung together as his hands stroked the length of her back, reaching lower to caress the curve of her smooth buttocks. Her skin warmed under his touch and she seemed to melt against him. He lifted her easily in his arms and carried her to his bed. He lay beside her, placing delicate kisses along her cheeks, her nose, her chin, and down her soft neck to the hollow of her throat, aching to feel every inch of her with his mouth.
Harrison made love to her all afternoon as the Sea Minx sailed into calmer waters. Afterward, they dozed in each other’s arms and didn’t even dress when they finally roused themselves enough to eat. Robbie had brought food to the cabin, his eyes as wide as saucers when understanding dawned that Harrison and Juliette where in the cabin together. Undoubtedly they were the talk of the ship, but there was no help for it now. His crew would take it in stride, and Juliette did not seem to mind; at least not at the moment. But he would deal with that issue later.
Draped in sheets they sat in bed and shared a loaf of warm, crusty bread and fine cheese, paired with a bottle of wine that Harrison had gotten from a vineyard in France a few years ago.
“I feel so decadent,” Juliette whispered in a confidential tone.
“Because you’re naked with a man in bed?” he asked.
“No”—she shook her head—“because I’m eating in bed.”
He could not help but laugh at her before placing a kiss on her wine-sweetened lips.
“I’m very serious, Harrison,” she explained. “I’ve never spent such a lazy day.”
“I hardly think that last bit of exercise we engaged in could be described as lazy.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she giggled, a slight blush suffusing her cheeks.
“Forgive me,” he teased her. “I forgot you are used to toiling away the hours in a bookshop.”
“That’s true. I used to have to spend hours working in the shop day after day. But ever since Colette married Lucien, I am no longer required to tend the shop. Thank heaven!”
“I would have thought you would enjoy managing a store.”
Juliette took another sip of wine. “Well, I didn’t. To be honest with you, I detested it. Oh, Colette and Paulette, they loved working there. They lived for the bookshop and would have done anything to keep it, while I despised it.”
“Why i
s that?” he asked, breaking off a piece of bread.
She sighed heavily. “It was deadly dull. All those books! Ugh. I felt suffocated by the heaviness and weight of it all. I suppose I take after my mother. She hated the bookshop too, which did not help her marriage to my father.”
Harrison was aware that her father had passed away, but he had not met their mother while he was in London. “I seem to recall hearing that your mother is French.”
“Yes,” she nodded, “that’s why my sisters and I all have French names.”
“And you all look remarkably alike,” he offered. He remembered that distinctly from his visit to Devon House. In fact he had difficulty telling the extraordinarily beautiful Hamilton sisters apart at first, especially the two younger ones, but even from the little amount of time he actually spent in their company he had found all of them to be very intelligent and charming women.
Juliette gave him a lazy smile. “Yes, we’ve been told that we look alike.” She leaned back against the pillows, propped up by the massive headboard, and held out her glass to him.
Harrison refilled it.
“I like your accent,” she said to him.
“I don’t have an accent,” he retorted. “You have an accent.”
She giggled lightly. “Yes, but do you like my accent?”
“As a matter of fact I do.” He kissed the tip of her pert nose and then sipped his wine.
“Who is Melissa?” Her voice dropped to a whisper.
More than a little surprised by her abrupt question, he asked, “How did you hear about Melissa?”
Without the slightest hesitation or sense of shame, she confessed, “When I was locked in your cabin and went through your things looking for the key, I found a photograph of her. She’s very beautiful.”
Yes, Melissa was beautiful. Delicately beautiful. Heart-breakingly so. “She’s my younger sister.”
“Oh…” Juliette breathed. “She’s your sister.”
If he were not mistaken, an expression of relief crossed Juliette’s face. Or at least it gave him great satisfaction to think that was what is was. He nodded and drank some wine. He did not discuss Melissa with anyone, except Annie, because Annie took care of her and needed no explanations from him.
“Where does she live?” Juliette asked. “Is she married?”
“She lives with me. And no, she is not married.” Unfortunately. He doubted Melissa would ever get married.
“I see.” Juliette murmured, but clearly she did not see.
“Melissa is not well. I have a nurse looking after her.”
Juliette thought for a moment before asking, “Didn’t you tell me you had two sisters? And a brother as well?”
“Yes.”
She would not let up. “Where are they?”
“My brother Stuart is aboard a ship on his way to China. He is employed by my company. My sister Isabella is married to a clothing manufacturer and lives in Boston.”
“How old were you when your parents died?”
He paused. His family was not a topic he discussed readily. “I was fifteen when my mother died.” The day his mother passed away filled him with regret. He was sailing off Cape May and had not been able to return in time to say good-bye to her.
“And your father?”
“I never knew my father.”
Juliette’s puzzled expression forced him to explain.
“You see, Juliette, my sisters, brother and I all had different fathers.”
Her voice rose an octave in surprise. “Your mother was married four times?”
He smiled ruefully at her naïveté. The familiar shame he felt about his childhood welled uneasily within his chest. “Unfortunately, my mother was never married. She was a prostitute.”
“Oh, Harrison.” She stared at him, her blue eyes wide in astonishment yet filled with compassion. “I don’t know what to say.”
Harrison looked away from her. “There is nothing to say. Unfortunately, it’s not an unusual or new story. My mother was an uneducated but pretty young woman struggling to survive under terrible circumstances and she did the best she could.” He shrugged lightly, surprised that he had divulged as much as he had to Juliette.
Yet for some reason, he felt compelled to continue, to explain. “Apparently she loved the man who was my father. He simply did not love her. She was the daughter of a small farmer near Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and he was a farmhand who worked there one summer. When he learned she was going to have a baby, he disappeared. So at sixteen her father banished her from her home and she ended up traveling to New York with another gentleman, George Fleming, who eventually became Melissa’s father. My mother gave me his name when I was born. He was a salesman of sorts, of housewares. She stayed with him for some time, but they never married, because he already had a wife back in Philadelphia. They rented a small tenement apartment in New York City and that’s where I was born and spent the majority of my childhood.”
“Then what happened?”
“Eventually Melissa was born, and we were a happy enough family for a time. George taught me to read and write. He even tried to teach my mother to read but she was hopeless. He had odd spells of melancholy when he would not leave the house for long periods of time. My mother would cry and try to coax him out of his dark moods. Then suddenly, he would be fine and things would go back to normal. During one of his particularly dark moods when Melissa was six years old and I was eight, George Fleming shot himself in our kitchen. Melissa and I found him first, covered in blood and lifeless on the floor.”
Although her blue eyes widened, Juliette said nothing, but reached out and took his hand in hers. In spite of the look of horror on Juliette’s face, he continued. He could not seem to stop himself from telling her things he had never told anyone before.
“My mother had a very difficult time after that. Practically illiterate and possessing no skills, she did the only thing she could. She found another man to take up with. This one only lasted long enough to father my brother, Stuart. I barely even remember him. Then she met an Irish dockworker named Dan O’Malley, and he was a big bear of a man. He took a liking to me and showed me around the ships that he helped to load and unload. I adored him and would have followed him anywhere. He was very good to us and more importantly good to my mother. The only time I remember my mother really laughing was when Dan lived with us.”
Harrison paused and drank more wine. “But Dan ended up in jail, accused of stealing from one of the ships. I don’t know if he was truly guilty or not, but we never saw him again. After she lost Dan, I think that’s when my mother truly turned to prostitution. She never knew who Isabella’s father was. But she loved us and kept us safe for as long as she could. And when she died, as the oldest I took over the job of looking out for my younger brother and sisters. I never wanted the girls to have to go through what my mother did.”
“Oh, Harrison,” she murmured, full of anguish.
The compassion in her voice forced him to continue. “I wanted to have some semblance of a family. So I did what I had to do to protect them. I worked hard and I learned everything anybody taught me and I saved every penny I could. When my mother died we moved in with an older woman who lived in the same building. She was like a grandmother to us. Her name was Margaret. She watched over my sisters and Stuart and taught them to read and write, while I worked on the ship. Whenever I made any money I sent some of it to Margaret to help with my sisters and brother, and I saved the rest.”
“And you bought your first ship?”
“No.” He cast her a reluctant grin. “No, I won my first ship in a card game. I was nineteen.”
“That’s quite impressive.”
“Partly.” Harrison shrugged. “And partly very good luck that my opponent was extremely wealthy and too drunk to play well.”
Juliette stared at him, her expression one of awe and respect. He felt an odd tingling sensation in his chest at the thought of her admiring him.
“You are a ver
y remarkable man.”
Surprised, he shook his head. “No. I just did what I had to do.”
Which he did, while making the decision that he never wanted to be without money. He wanted enough money so that he did not have to worry about where their next meal was coming from. Or that they would be evicted from their home and thrown out on the street because they couldn’t afford the rent and could live in a safe place. He wanted enough money so that his little sisters would never have to face the life their mother had in order to survive. He wanted to protect them.
He sold that first ship he had won in the card game, took the money, and invested it in a small shipping company, which did extremely well. Over the years, he kept buying and selling ships at a profit, always going with his gut instincts and always investing wisely, which it seemed he had a natural gift for. Harrison had sailed the world, founded his successful shipping enterprise H.G. Fleming & Company, as well as other businesses, and owned a number of homes. But most importantly he had managed to keep his siblings safe, because he was an extremely wealthy man.
“Harrison?”
He pulled himself from thoughts that he had not dwelled on in many years and looked to Juliette. She lay back on the pillows, looking quite relaxed and stunningly sexy. Naked with a sheet loosely draped around her breasts, her shapely legs lay exposed on the bed. Her silky dark hair was tousled seductively about her face. She had not the faintest idea how desirable she appeared.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Do you know that you’ve led an extraordinary life?”
He winked. “I’m not finished living yet.” Harrison took their glasses and plates and placed them on the bedside table.
Juliette’s expression remained serious, almost contrite. “I feel ridiculous for complaining about working in a bookshop.”
Desire In His Eyes Page 9
