Miranda Jarrett

by Princess of Fortune

  “Oh, no,” she said blithely. “It is not a ball at the royal court, to be sure, yet it shall do until my invitation from Queen Charlotte arrives, and—”

  “You shouted from the window for me to come simply because you couldn’t decide which damned gown to wear to a party?”

  “Forgive me, Captain my lord, but I tried to tell her she shouldn’t do it,” Mrs. Willoughby said eagerly. “I warned her you’d be displeased, and that—”

  “Lady Willoughby.” Tom’s voice was sharp, his expression black as thunder, as he uncocked the pistol and shoved it back into his belt. “Would you be so kind as to leave us?”

  Though the countess looked stricken, she still bowed meekly and scuttled from the room. The maid fled, too, closing the door after, and leaving Isabella and Tom alone.

  But Isabella wasn’t fazed by Tom’s manner. She understood; she didn’t care for Lady Willoughby, either. She glanced back to the two gowns on the bed. “So which shall it be, Tomaso? The green, or the—”

  “Cover yourself,” he ordered curtly, his focus lowering to her untied dressing gown and the gauzy nightgown beneath. “Be a credit to your rank, if you can. It’s enough that you’ve lured me to your bedchamber. At least you can have the decency not to display yourself in your nightclothes.”

  Isabella gasped with outrage, her fingers shaking as she tied the front of her dressing gown more closely. “I have not lured you anywhere! I called to you, and you came, as was your duty. And—and it is perfectly acceptable for a lady to converse with a gentleman en déshabillé, or it would be if you were a gentleman!”

  “Not by your lights, no.” She could see now he was angry, maybe even angrier than she was herself, but somehow he was managing to keep his temper, which only infuriated her more. “But I am an English gentleman, ma’am, and in this country we respect our ladies, just as our English ladies in turn show us respect.”

  “Respect!” Isabella snatched a blue-and-white vase from the nearest table, scattering water and rosebuds as she lifted it over her head. “You are ordered to respect me!”

  “My orders are to keep you safe from harm,” he said, his mouth a tight, grim line. “Do not confuse it for more than that.”

  But she already had, hadn’t she? She’d believed he cared for her, the only one in this whole wretched country who did. Now, because she’d foolishly underestimated his pride, his face was closed against her, all the warmth gone. Now he was saying she’d been wrong, that he’d only done it because he’d been told to, and with a little sob of despair, her fingers tightened around the neck of the vase.

  “You throw that,” he warned, “and so help me, you shall regret it.”

  She fell back on the old instincts to protect her. No one could know more about pride—and its consequences—than she did herself. “You would not dare! No one speaks to any Fortunaro like that!”

  “Then it’s high time I did, ma’am,” he said. “Watching over you is difficult enough without you trying to trip me at every step. I’ve already exceeded my orders for your sake, yet you insist on treating me like the lowest lackey in your whole infernal palace.”

  “I do not,” she said defensively. She felt pushed into a corner of her own making, trapped by her own ways, and she’d not the faintest idea how to get out. “I do not!”

  “Aye, you do,” he insisted, relentless, “and you’re doing it again now. So help me, ma’am, orders or no orders, if you fling that crockery at me, I will walk from that door and never come back.”

  “No!” she cried, shocked he’d dare her like that. “You would not! You will not!”

  “Try me, ma’am,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. “Every man who’s ever sailed with me knows I’m a man of my word, and no matter how you might wish otherwise, I’m not going to change now.”

  “No one sails with you now,” she said bitterly, the vase forgotten in her hand. “You’re a sea captain without a ship, and what is more worthless than that?”

  “I cannot say, ma’am.” His face had become the emotionless mask that military men always hid behind. “Unless it’s a princess without a country.”

  She gasped, for once too shocked to speak. She lowered her hand with the vase, unconsciously hugging it against her chest as if it were an infant. Swiftly she turned away to the window, not wanting him to see the pain he’d caused her. But by speaking the truth, she’d hurt him, too, hadn’t she? She’d just never expected that truth—or the hurt—to ricochet back to her.

  She stood there, her eyes squeezed shut as she struggled to control her emotions. He’d only said what she didn’t want to accept. He couldn’t possibly know the rest: how there’d been no word from anyone in Monteverde since she’d left, not from her mother or father or anyone else. She’d told herself that letters were often lost in times of war, that her mother wouldn’t forget her, that she’d be home again before the summer was done, and everything would again be as it once was.

  Yet he’d been able to voice her darkest fear, there in a single sentence: that she was the only one left, the only one alive, the only Fortunaro to escape the French.

  What if she truly were a princess without a country?

  Like a captain without a ship….

  She’d said it on impulse, without considering what she said, beyond that it was true. She’d never wondered why a man who had earned such praise from Admiral Cranford didn’t have a command, especially with England at war, or why he’d been assigned to watch over her instead. He was still a young man, very much in his prime, yet for some reason he was being kept from the life he’d chosen. He was unhappy, and he was bitter. She’d only to recall how he’d practically spat out those last words at her.

  Could he be, in his way, as much a castaway as she was herself?

  She swallowed hard, unsure of what to say or ask next to try to mend the rift she’d caused. She’d hardly any experience to guide her. Usually others were trying to win back her favor, not the other way around.

  “Everyone says you’re a—that you’re a hero,” she began. She kept facing the window, not wanting to see his face if she said the wrong thing once again. “Even before yesterday they called you that. What did you do to earn that praise?”

  He did not answer for what seemed like forever, so long that she wondered forlornly if he had in fact left the room, and she’d simply been too preoccupied with her own thoughts to notice.

  “Not even in England would a gentleman be called a hero without grounds,” she began again, hoping—if he were there—that he wouldn’t notice the desperation in her voice. “Tell me what you did.”

  She took a big breath for courage, and whispered the most unprincesslike word she knew. “Please.”

  He made a grumbly sound in his chest, almost as if fighting with himself. But at least she knew he was there, and that he’d stayed. She realized now that most other men would have left even a princess, and she appreciated it. No, she appreciated him.

  “I’m not a hero,” he said at last. “I only did what any good captain would. I acted for the good of my ship and my people, nothing more.”

  “I do not believe you.” She looked down at the vase in her hands, at the damp little ovals of nervousness that her fingers were leaving on the porcelain. “If what you say were so, then every one of your English captains would be heroes, yes?”

  “No.” He took a deep, restless sigh, and she realized he’d stepped closer to her. “If only because other captains aren’t so unfortunate as to have a first lieutenant given to hyperbole and overpraise.”

  “Please,” she said softly, not exactly sure what she was asking for. No one confided in princesses, or confessed, or even told them secrets; princesses were supposed to be beyond the concerns of others. “Please. For me.”

  “It’s a sorry enough tale.” He gulped, almost as if he were filling his lungs before plunging into the surf. “I was captain of the frigate Aspire, twenty-six guns. We had chased a French sloop, much our superior in size and st
rength. After a heated engagement and heavy losses by the French, their captain finally decided to spare the lives of his few remaining crew, and surrendered his sword and his ship to me.”

  “To capture a ship of the enemy is indeed heroic,” she said, even though she felt oddly disappointed by his dry, formal telling. “Surely you must agree that such an accomplishment is uncommon, even for an English captain.”

  “If that were all, then aye, I would agree. But it was that damned fool boy and his damned fool stupidity and—and—oh, blast.” He sucked in his breath again, struggling with his emotions. “Forgive me, ma’am, I beg you. I did not mean—”

  “Go on,” whispered Isabella. “Don’t stop. Tell me of the boy.”

  “The boy—he was a green midshipman, as great a fool as any boy of thirteen can be, and I’d only taken him on the list as a favor to his father. What little sense he’d had was flung away by the fighting, and by finding himself living while his mates had died around him. The French captain handed me his sword, and Caruthers—that’s the boy’s name, the idiot—Caruthers lost his head and jumped forward with his dirk, and I saw the Frenchman’s gun flash, and I knocked Caruthers aside and—and that was all.”

  “All?” repeated Isabella, the vase clutched so tightly in her hands she marveled that it hadn’t shattered. “All?”

  “All.” His voice was hollow and rough, the earlier emotion gone. “I was meant to die then, Isabella. The surgeons said so, and so did my men. I don’t even remember the pain of the shot, or lying on the surgeon’s table as he labored to save me. Even the chaplain had given me up for dead, and dead I should have been. Clean, neat, with the pistol’s ball in my heart instead of beside it, so that I would—”

  “You were not meant to die!” she cried, hating the chilly doom of these English words. “You were meant to live, and to come here to London, and to meet me, and—and—oh, Tomaso, you could not have died!”

  She turned and hurled herself at him in one impetuous motion, letting the vase crash to the floor as she flung her arms around his neck to pull his face down to hers. He grunted with surprise but caught her around the waist, steadying her even as he pulled her close to him. He welcomed her, and he wanted her, and she felt the power of that want sweeping her along with it. His arm was like a band of iron around her waist, her breasts crushing against his chest and the brass buttons of his coat.

  And this time, when she longed for him to kiss her, he did.

  Chapter Six

  Tom had spent most of last night and this morning thinking of what it would be like to kiss Isabella. In all that time, he hadn’t come close to getting it right, not by half. The reality of her in his arms was that far beyond his imagining.

  She’d caught him by surprise, rushing at him like that, and letting his body act on instinct instead of listening to the rational if feeble warnings of his head. But there was nothing rational about holding Isabella, wearing little more than a few lengths of sheer linen and silk. Her small, round body was soft and yielding, filling his hands with the warmth of her flesh and her skin in a way he’d never thought possible in a woman, or at least not in any of the Englishwomen he’d known. Was there any better way to choose life over death, or to be reminded of the boundless joys of one over the grim finality of the other?

  Her long curling hair fell down her back and tickled and teased his wrists, and her orange-blossom scent filled his nose. Somehow she managed to arch against him and curve into him in one sinuous motion, and turned her parted lips up to him with such fervor he’d almost no choice but to kiss her.

  No choice, and no will to resist. Her lips were soft and eager, her mouth so wet and hot he could quite happily forget everything else except having her in his arms. Well, not precisely all: his body was reminding him of what else he wanted to do with her, of how her unmade bed was waiting only a few steps away, of how even if she was a princess, she still must want this as much as he did, didn’t she?

  A princess, aye, but his responsibility first, and a duty that he was shamelessly abusing.

  Yet she was the one who finally broke the kiss, leaning back in the crook of his arm. Her eyes were half-closed, her expression dreamy.

  “Ahh,” she whispered. “That was very nice, Tomaso, even if it was very, very wrong.”

  “Yes,” he croaked, struggling to make his body believe anything that felt so good was wrong. “Yes.”

  She smiled crookedly, her lips red and swollen from the kiss. “Yes, it was very nice, or yes, it was very, very wrong?”

  “Both.” He eased her arms from around his neck, gently setting her back down and apart from him. “Forgive me, ma’am, for taking advantage of—”

  “Oh, hush, you took nothing that I didn’t give,” she scolded. “You are already my guardian. I do not need you to be my conscience as well.”

  “But my own conscience is—”

  “Hush,” she said again, as soft as a sigh as she covered his mouth with her hand to silence him. “If no one else knows, then it’s not wrong, is it?”

  Manfully he lifted her hand from his mouth. “I’ll know, and I’ll know it’s wrong.”

  “And so shall I,” she said, wriggling her hand free so she could rest it on his cheek. “That is, we will both know it was wrong, and we shall be quite racked with guilt, but we can pretend we don’t know it yet. I refuse to know it. Did you guess that you’re the first gentleman I’ve ever kissed?”

  He hadn’t, not at all, but that guileless confession that he’d been the first to kiss her kept him painfully hard. What the devil else was she not telling him, anyway?

  “Ma’am,” he said, not able to muster much else whether pretending or otherwise. “Isabella.”

  “Captain,” she said, stretching up to reach his mouth with hers. “Tomaso.”

  May all the lords of the admiralty forgive him, he was kissing her again, and it was even better this time. She parted her lips freely for him, exploring him as much as he was her. His hands slid down along the silk of her dressing gown, gathering up great bunches of the slippery fabric as he caressed the soft flesh of her hips, pulling her against the hard proof of his own arousal. If this were only her second kiss, then she learned fast, and the heady realization ratcheted his own desire another notch. He slid his hands along the narrowing curve of her waist, inside her dressing gown so there was nothing but the gossamer-weight linen between him and the quivering fullness of her breasts and this had to stop.

  He released her and forced himself to step back, away from temptation. Her hair was mussed and tousled, her nightclothes askew, her cheeks flushed and her lips still parted, and damnation, he’d never wanted any woman more than he wanted this one whom he’d no right to have.

  “Oh, my,” she murmured, her breath coming in short, rapid gulps. “That was not pretending, was it?”

  “No.” The blood was still thumping through his body, demanding to be obeyed. “That’s as damned real as it gets.”

  Her smile was shaky as she purposefully retied the front of her dressing gown. “Next you shall warn me of the ill that can come from playing with fire.”

  “I could, aye.” He clasped his hands behind his waist, and remembered the admiral’s warning. He wasn’t just playing with fire; he was dancing in the very flames. “What happened to that folderol about keeping yourself pure for a royal husband?”

  “I do not know.” Her smile turned wistful and unexpectedly shy. “I suppose you made me forget.”

  “Well, you made me forget, too, Bella, if that’s any comfort to you.”

  “Then that is what I wished,” she said. “When you spoke of how you wished to die—I did not like that, just as you did not like to hear me speak of that woman who wished to kill me. I wanted you to understand how much better it is to live.”

  “By kissing me?” he asked, incredulous. He would have to recommend that to the surgeons at Greenwich, for it certainly had worked. “That is how we’ve both cheated death?”

  “Yes.”
She tossed back her hair, letting her expression soften with concern as she stepped around the shards of the broken vase. “But is that why you do not have a ship? Because you were wounded?”

  “Because of the uncertainty of the wound.” How in blazes had they circled back to this? “The surgeons swear the ball is still lodged inside my chest, beside my heart, though I would never know it if they hadn’t told me. A hazardous case, they call me.”

  “I cannot believe it.” She frowned, appraising him. “You do not look weak or poorly. You look…fine.”

  “I am,” he said, striking his chest with his fist to prove it, “and I find it difficult to believe myself. But the admiralty listens to the surgeons. They will not entrust another ship and crew to my care, from fear that I could die without warning.”

  “But how much more likely at sea that you would be washed away and drown, or perish from scurvy, or—or a score of other sudden ways.”

  “And a princess is far more likely to die from smallpox or consumption than any assassin’s knife.” He wanted to hold her again, just hold her, to reassure them both about a future that neither could control. “But you were right before. A captain without a ship is a worthless creature.”

  “A princess without a country is not worth much more,” she answered sadly. “What a sorry price we would bring together at the market, wouldn’t we?”

  Her smile faltered but did not fail. She was strong that way, steel beneath the silk; perhaps all princesses were. With a little shake of her head, she swept her arm toward the two gowns on the bed.

  “So which shall it be, Captain? You must help me decide. That is why I summoned you here, you know. The green muslin, or the plum Genoa velvet?”

  He didn’t give a damn about the gowns, and she knew it. But she’d asked him to pretend, hadn’t she? And if she could be brave and pretend that everything was fine and right between them and the rest of the world, then so could he.