She jerked off him, rolled to the side of the bed, and yanked the covers up and off. She wrapped herself in them, then turned to face him. She wanted to tell him what she thought of him, but she’d yanked the covers off him as well and he was lying in the middle of her bed, on his back, his legs slightly parted, and he was naked, completely naked. His member was swelled, and she swallowed. His body was so exquisite she wanted to hurl herself on him again and touch him all over and kiss him all over as well. This had to stop. She had to get a grip on herself.
“Oh, dear,” Genny said.
He grinned at her.
Alec came up on his elbows. “Genny, truly, before you run off, listen to me. Surely, even when you were aping a man, you knew you were a woman, and a woman can be gotten with child if she sleeps with a man.”
“Sleep, ha.”
“You know what I mean. We had sex, Genny, twice. You could be with child right now, at this very moment, even as we speak—”
“Oh, be still. Go away. Please, Alec, I have so much to do now and—”
“Have you so lightly dismissed or forgotten the stipulations in your father’s will?”
She became utterly still. Her shoulders rounded, sending her hair tumbling down, veiling her profile from him.
“It won’t go away, Genny.” His voice had become incredibly gentle. “The month will pass and it will be over for you, and for me. We must talk about it.”
He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He stretched and she could only stare at the movement of muscles across his back. It was as if he belonged here, in her bed, in her bedchamber.
“I can’t right now.” Her voice was low and empty-sounding, and he held his peace.
“All right. This afternoon, then. We have only twenty-six days left.”
She didn’t raise her head. She was thinking blankly, my father is dead and I was romping in bed busily losing my virginity. She felt tears sting the backs of her eyes and swallowed. She said nothing more, merely waited until he had finally left her bedchamber.
“Genny, you’ve bloody well lost what little brain you had left.”
“No, I haven’t. I’m perfectly serious, Alec. Would you care for some more tea?”
He stared at her, bemused, but handed her his teacup. “Let me get this straight. You want to know if I really, truly, honestly want to marry you?”
“That’s right. Please tell me the truth, Alec.”
“All right. Yes, I want to marry you.”
“Even though you’ve known me only a short time?”
“Yes.”
“Even though you’ve seen me throw up?”
“Your questions become difficult, but yes, despite that.”
“Even though I followed you to Laura Salmon’s house and climbed up the tree and watched you through her bedchamber window?”
“It becomes more and more difficult, but yes, even after that.”
“Do you love me?”
Alec looked into his teacup for a moment, remembering the gypsies who used to visit Carrick Grange when he’d been a boy. One of the old hags read tea leaves. The old hag had thought him a darling little boy and had taught him how to do it. It didn’t help him now. He didn’t see a thing in the bottom of the cup, rotten or otherwise. “I care about you, Genny,” he said finally, his voice low. “I like you. I believe we can make a fine go of marriage.”
“You don’t love me.”
“You seem quite insistent about something I’m not even certain exists. Do you love me, Genny?”
It was obvious his question surprised her. She gave him a lost look that made him want to gather her into his arms and hold her and rock her and protect her from anything that could harm a hair on her head. Genny jumped to her feet and strode to the bow windows that faced the front lawn. He watched her wrap her arms around herself, as if in self-protection.
“Do you, Genny, despite the fact that I took you to a brothel? Despite the fact that I tied you down to my bunk and stripped you and made you scream with pleasure?”
“Now you’re insistent,” she said, not turning to face him. “Besides, how can one love another when there’s been such a short time of acquaintance between them?”
“There’s been much more between us. My sex, for example. Between us and inside you. We’ve certainly gone beyond mere acquaintance. I don’t like to embarrass you—”
“You much enjoy outraging me and you know it.”
She still hadn’t turned and he grinned at her stiff back. “That’s true. You’re such a satisfactory audience, all arrogance and innocence. An irresistible combination, believe me. We know each other well enough, Genny. I will try to make you happy.”
“I don’t want to marry. Truly, I’m not being coy, Alec. I want to go places and see things and experience different people and watch the way they act and—” She tossed up her hands. “You probably don’t understand what I mean.”
“Oddly enough, I understand you perfectly. It’s just that I’ve never in my adult life heard a female say she wanted those things. They’re the sorts of activities a man pines for—to go places and be doing and acting.”
She faced him then. “Men,” she said, splaying her fingers in front of her. “You think only you should have all the fun, all the adventures. Well, I want to have them, too. I don’t want to serve up tea in the parlor and have ten children clinging to my skirts while my husband is out traveling the world, seeing new things, learning about new places. I won’t have it, do you hear?”
“You’re shouting again. Of course I hear you.” Alec was remembering what Boss Lamb had said. He supposed he’d thought at the time that Genny could crave a bit of adventure, but this—Damn, she sounded just like him. It was unnerving. He’d knocked about the world for a good ten years, first as a married man who’d felt guilty if he left Nesta at home and almost as guilty when he took her with him, and then with the gusto of freedom, thinking nothing of hauling his infant daughter with him from Brazil to Genoa. He didn’t crave it so much anymore. When he’d thought of Genny for the past several days, he’d thought of them together in one of his houses, secure and stable.
He cursed to himself, very quietly.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Oh, never mind. You’re like a lot of men I know, Alec. If they don’t like the question, they simply ignore what a woman asks.”
“Actually, I was thinking very profound thoughts.”
“And what is your conclusion?”
“That we should marry at the end of the week. Sooner, if it’s possible.”
Genny came away from the window and walked toward the parlor door. “I’m going to the shipyard.”
“That’s another thing, Genny. In twenty-six days, if you aren’t married to me, you’ll lose it.”
“Buy the Pegasus. It will give me enough capital to build another shipyard.”
“You could do that, but I would consider it a vast waste of money. You could build the best shipyard in Baltimore, but you wouldn’t succeed. I don’t want to go into it anymore. You can’t change the way of the world—”
She slammed out of the parlor. He heard her racing up the stairs and knew she was going to her bedchamber to change into her men’s clothes. He sighed. It hadn’t yet occurred to Genny that his presence in her house—without chaperon—was extremely improper. Unlike Genny, he knew that Baltimore society was chewing over with relish all their supposed activities. Nor were they all that supposed either, he thought. Alec rose slowly and crossed the parlor to the sideboard. He poured himself a brandy and sipped at it slowly. The idea came to him full-blown. He thought it through again and then another time. He set down his brandy snifter.
It was possible that it could work very well.
And it would save Genny’s pride. He realized that he didn’t want her to feel ground under. That was the way her father’s will had made her feel. He would turn it around and she would salvage her pride and he would salvage the shipya
rd.
He would salvage them.
Fourteen
Genny had thought about the fact that Alec and his entourage were living in her house without a chaperon. But she was too drawn into herself to worry much about it. What did it matter anyway? She’d already gone beyond the pale by sleeping with Alec, not that she regretted it. Her father was dead, the shipyard was soon to be sold to someone else—a man, naturally—and she couldn’t see that there was anything in her future in any case. Money, she supposed, from the inevitable sale of the Paxton shipyard. She wondered if Porter Jenks had heard about the infamous will. No, no one knew of the particulars. She would say that about Daniel Raymond. He was as closemouthed as a clam.
What to do about Alec?
Genny spent only two hours at the Pegasus. She spoke briefly to Boss Lamb, listening to one of his stories of him and her father back in the old days of Baltimore. He was blowing his nose noisily when she went belowdecks to the captain’s cabin. She wanted to cry in peace, alone. She did, then shook herself. Her father wouldn’t have wanted her to carry on like a weak fool. She gave herself a headache going over the accounts. Fiddle as she might, the scant dollar amounts on the bottom line didn’t vary. There was barely enough money to pay the men on Friday. Then, if there were no buyer for the Pegasus—She shook her head. It didn’t matter. Whoever bought the shipyard would get the Pegasus. It simply didn’t matter.
Genny left the shipyard two hours later. She decided to walk home, a goodly distance on any day, but today the sky was bloated with dark rain clouds. There were few folk about as a result. At Pratt Street and Frederick Street she paused for a moment to look at the Night Dancer, secure in its moorings on O’Donnell’s Wharf. It was a beautiful vessel, not sleek and sharply raked like her Baltimore clipper, but substantial of line and constructed to survive the harshest of winter storms.
Genny put her head down and walked on.
Alec wanted to marry her. What to do?
She knew he didn’t love her, but then again, she didn’t love him either. She wanted to spend the next fifty years with him, but love? Alec was a man who expected a woman to behave as he and most men deemed proper. Odd how women censored other women if they dared stray out of their predetermined confines. It seemed, indeed, that women were many times more demanding of their own behavior than were men. But men—oh, yes, she knew what kind of woman Alec wanted. Certainly submissive, undoubtedly yielding, never argumentative, and always in frills or in nothing at all. No, Alec wouldn’t be a man to tolerate any behavior that didn’t fit into his notions of female conduct. The rotter.
What to do?
Alec wanted the shipyard. He wanted the Pegasus. He got both if he married her, and without spending a sou. She paused, shaking her head. This trail of thinking led nowhere. Alec was already a very rich man—at least she assumed he was. Her father had seemed to think so. If he indeed were, it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t get his hands on the Paxton shipyard. He could easily deal for another. And he wouldn’t have to tie himself to a woman who obviously wasn’t in his style.
What if she were pregnant?
Why, she’d be just like Alec and sail the seas with her child, finding adventure after adventure. And her child would be like Hallie—precocious, almost too honest at times, and sweet-natured. Who would be her crew? Blind men who fancied she was a man also? She quickened her pace. It was silly to worry herself about something that couldn’t be changed in any case.
“Well, Miss Paxton. You trust the weather, do you?”
Genny turned at the sound of Laura Salmon’s voice. “Hello, Mrs. Salmon. I fancy we haven’t much more time before the heavens let loose on us.”
Laura waved a negligent hand. “Allow me to tell you how very sorry I am about your father, dear. I trust you’re feeling better?”
“Yes, I’m quite all right.”
“I imagine from the clothing you’re wearing that you’ve been climbing about your father’s shipyard again.”
“It’s my shipyard now, Laura,” Genny said, knowing that that was true, at least for twenty-six more days.
Laura was stylishly gowned in a walking dress of dark green velvet with black velvet braid. On her head she wore a high-crowned bonnet of matching green-and-black velvet. A tall black velvet ostrich feather curved around her cheek. She looked delicious. She looked like a woman should look, the way Alec liked women to look.
Laura continued with studied nonchalance that wouldn’t have fooled her own mother. “I understand that Baron Sherard is staying with you. That isn’t at all the thing now, Miss Paxton, given the altered circumstances.”
“His daughter is an excellent chaperon.” Genny thought of Hallie’s entrance this morning and knew she would have routed her father completely had she entered the evening before.
“His daughter. I don’t understand. What is—”
“His daughter is a beautiful girl. She quite manages him, you know, tells him what to do and he does it. The baron is quite in her pocket.”
“No one told me about her,” Laura said more to herself than to Genny. A raindrop landed on her nose at that moment, but she wasn’t through and persevered. “I assume the baron is a widower and the child isn’t a bastard?”
“He’s a widower.”
“Ah. Really, dear, he shouldn’t be staying there. I thought someone should tell you, a friend with your best interests at heart.”
Genny wanted to take Laura’s parasol and wrap it around the widow’s beautiful neck. “It doesn’t really matter,” Genny said.
“You do have something of a reputation for being eccentric, dear, but this is going a bit far. I understand, of course, but others won’t. The baron should return to the Fountain Inn. That or purchase a house.”
“You should tell him that, Laura. Why don’t you come for tea this afternoon? The baron should be there. You can tell him precisely what it is he should and should not be doing.”
“So very kind of you, dear. You know, I believe I’ll accept your invitation. Good day, Miss Paxton.”
“Until four o’clock, Mrs. Salmon,” Genny said in an equally formal voice. “Don’t get wet.”
Thirty minutes later Genny informed Alec of his good fortune. She was damp around the collar, but otherwise had beaten the rain. Alec was staring at her, his eyebrows lowering.
“Who’s Mrs. Salmon, Genny?” Hallie asked, looking up from a book of children’s story rhymes Mrs. Swindel had given her. “That’s a very funny name.”
“She’s a lady who isn’t at all a cold fish and she much admires your papa, Hallie. She doesn’t want him to do anything that would make him unpopular in Baltimore society.”
“She wants Papa,” Hallie said. “I’ve seen it so many times, Genny. I’ll wager she doesn’t even hide it well. Yes, Papa, she wants you.”
“She’s already had him,” Genny said, quietly enough for just Alec to hear, “for what that’s worth.”
He gave her a slow, very drawing smile.
“A woman will murder you,” she said between her teeth.
“Jealous?”
That called for retribution, but Genny wasn’t up to it at the moment. She ignored him instead. “Now, Hallie, I must change into more tealike clothing for our visitor. Should you like to assist me?”
Hallie agreed to that request and the two of them left Alec in the parlor to fume alone. He’d returned only a few minutes before Genny. He’d had a busy day and was quite pleased with his progress. He’d looked forward to a quiet afternoon with Genny and his daughter, and to an equally quiet dinner. Now he had to put up with Laura before he could tackle Genny with his proposition.
Alec had always believed that if you were going to do something, you should do it right. And he did. He put up with Laura charmingly. Both Genny and Hallie weren’t pleased with the seemingly ardent tea party between the other two members.
“What a dear little girl,” Laura said for perhaps the third time, and Hallie stiffened up like a poker once more. A
fter the second time, Hallie had remarked in a low voice to Genny that the fish-lady reminded her of Miss Chadwick.
“Thank you,” Alec said, “but I rarely think of her as a dear little girl, you know.”
“I got the impression that she was older, nearly grown, but of course, you are far too young for a nearly grown daughter, aren’t you, Baron?”
“I suppose it would depend upon all the girls who grew up with him,” Genny said. “I’ve heard stories that would easily make Hallie all of fifteen years old if only the baron had been more persuasive as a boy.”
“Miss Paxton, really.”
“She’s probably right,” Hallie said, earning a scandalized look from Mrs. Salmon. “I didn’t know Papa when he was a boy, of course, but I imagine he was just as he is now, only less so then.”
Alec was laughing. He picked up a small lemon cake from a platter and tossed it to his daughter. She caught it handily.
“Into your mouth, pumpkin. And keep your more terrifying observations to yourself.”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Good girl. Sometimes.”
Hallie opened her mouth but Alec shook his head. “No, pumpkin. Keep quiet or you’ll go to Mrs. Swindel.”
“Who is Mrs. Swindel?”
“Our chaperon—”
“Hallie’s companion—”
Alec and Genny looked at each other and laughed.
“She is both,” Alec said.
Laura toyed with a small scone that oozed strawberry jam over its sides. Finally, or at least that was how Genny saw it, she screwed up her nerve and said, “Miss Paxton, why don’t you take the darling child upstairs? I really must speak to the baron in private.”
Genny gave Alec a beaming smile. “Why, certainly. Come along, Hallie. No, don’t argue. We’ll stop by the kitchen and fetch more goodies.”
Hallie grabbed her book and dashed to the parlor door. She heard her papa say her name very softly, and immediately turned. “It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Salmon. Good day.”
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