by Kate Pearce
“You know damn well what I mean, Teague. I see the sharp look in your otherwise sleepy eyes, and I know you’re up to no good.”
“It’s a very short memory you have, Captain, to be forgetting that you never would have caught your traitor without me, and without the villagers—the poor fisherfolk and farmers who came to your aid that night, and sacrificed nigh unto a six-month’s worth of French brandy and Holland gin and Belgian lace that went up in flames in Black Cave along with your munitions, with nary a cry for relief.” She put up her chin and stepped closer to deliver her last salvo. “And you know damn well that I never would have helped you if I hadn’t been convinced that the powers that be—from the magistrates to the Revenue Service and up to the Admiralty—would leave us in peace as payment for our sacrifice.”
Devil take her, but she was right. Still. “Thanking you for your past assistance doesn’t give you immunity from future prosecution.”
“It ought to do—the Admiralty ought to have a better strategy than to send you back to bite the hand that fed you.”
“The Admiralty’s strategies are none of your business.”
“Just as my strategies for how to make my way in this world are none of yours,” she shot back. “It’s no fault of mine that my strategies are simply better than the Admiralty’s. Or yours—I would have interrogated those hundred French prisoners from that corvette that night far more closely had I been in command, to find out what they knew of Gravelines, from whence they sailed. You do know about Gravelines, do you not, Captain? How Napoleon built his open secret of an entrepôt on the north coast of France to encourage British smugglers to betray their country simply by their easy trade with the enemy—to help the British free traders evade tax is to keep revenue from the Admiralty’s coffers, is it not? I should have taken a man or two of those French sailors apart for a friendly chat before I stuffed them all below decks and hied off to Portsmouth.”
Oh, damn, damn, damn her brilliant brain. “How do you know I didn’t do exactly that while underway to Portsmouth?”
“Because I was there. And because you’re here, harrying me, instead of sailing up the canal at Gravelines and setting fire to those warehouses, the way your sister—who by all accounts sounds like twice the sailor of at least half of her brothers—did when she set flame to the whole port of Brest in the year five.”
Matthew ground his teeth together to keep from gaping at her like a fish gasping for water upon dry land. “How do you know about that?” His younger sister Sally’s misadventure six years ago as a midshipman in the Royal Navy remained a closely guarded family secret. “And it wasn’t like that—she didn’t single-handedly sail in there—”
“No, she had a vastly superior strategy of her own—a strategy that she proved successful.”
“How do you know that?” he asked again.
“Come, Captain. You came here as a spy—surely you knew your brother Richard lived here, with us. And while he did, he told my father all. He—Richard, not my father—might have been shocked and mortified by your sister’s actions, but I was delighted. And enthralled.”
“You would be, you bloody pirate.”
“Thank you.” She took his grousing as a compliment. Which it probably was—unlike Richard, Matthew had admired Sally’s guts in going aboard ship in Richard’s place. “And I pledged as a girl to let her be my example for how to get what I wanted in this life, no matter the obstacles or objections.”
Matthew didn’t like being one of those obstacles, but he had no choice but to object—not to do so would put her in jeopardy, from which he might not be able to extract her. “You make it sound as if she were the captain of her own ship, and I assure you she was not. And she was with her husband, under whose guidance—”
“Captain Colyear wasn’t her husband at the time, nor even her captain.”
“The point is, she’s married now—”
“To Captain Colyear, and sails with him, aboard his ship, Audacious.”
“His ship, I hope you’ll note.”
“Oh, yes, so noted. And I’m sure she sits still and waiting all day in his stern cabin, just knitting or gazing idly out the windows, and never lifts so much as a finger to help her husband. And he never consults with her. I am sure they are both quite happy to let that superior brain of hers—all that acumen and experience and strategy—go to waste. I’m quite sure.”
Devil take her. “How do you know all this?”
Her smile was triumphant. “I wrote her, those six years ago, when Richard complained so bitterly about her, for I thought she was a woman I should like to know. So I imposed upon the very slight connection and wrote, and your sister wrote me back. We still correspond to this day—whenever she happens upon a ship bound to England, or finds herself in port, she writes me. I’ve learned a marvelously shocking amount of the world from your sister.”
“Devil take Sal for encouraging susceptible females.”
“Susceptible? Is that what you think I am? I assure you, I am not in the least bit susceptible or manageable.”
“You were definitely susceptible to me, and to my kisses.”
“My dear Captain Kent.” Her tone was nearly pitying. “Did you think you were romancing my co-operation out of me?” She tipped her head over and smiled in that damned sleepy, come-hither-but-do-so-and-I-will-box-your-ears way of hers. “Did it never occur to you that I might be the one seducing you into ridding me of that meddlesome priest?”
“The devil you were.” And to prove it, he kissed her.
Chapter 8
This kiss was nothing like the mischievous charm of the very first time his smiling lips had touched hers a month ago. One month—he had been gone from her only one month, but with his mouth pressed to hers, it felt as if it might have been a year, or ten, or twenty the way he kissed her simply, forcefully, with all the want and curiosity and conflict that had wound up between them like a cargo of dangerous, incendiary black powder.
And heaven help her if she didn’t want to set a match to make a bonfire.
Tressa’s hand flexed and gripped his shoulders, holding on as tight as she dared. She had waited so long for someone who seemed to want her exactly as she was—without wanting less from her. Who kissed her even if she were difficult.
Lord knew she found him easy—easy to kiss, if not easy to trust. Everything about him shouted charm and capability and confidence. He set his mouth flush against her lips, and let his breath mix and mingle with hers, while his hands stole along the line of her jaw, angling her head to his liking.
And oh, how she liked. She tipped her head away, offering him greater access to the sensitive skin along the side of her neck. Offering him her own confidence. Offering him her own passionate curiosity.
Tressa was a curious girl—always had been. And she had always been curious about kissing—enough to try it a time or two with one boy or another. But nothing in those sloppy, awkward kisses had prepared her for him.
For the taste of him, of mint and brandy and excitement. For the smell of him, of soap and clean linen beneath the dark wool uniform coat. For the feel of his hands around her head and along the line of her jaw, urging her to kiss him more, to kiss him deeper. For the strength of his long, lean leg where his thigh snugged up next to hers.
For the power that she was so willing to cede to him—at least for a little while.
It was heaven. It was bliss. Bliss lighting up her lips and skin and breath, until she couldn’t breathe and didn’t need to, because all she wanted was him.
Bliss that made every taste and touch a hundred times stronger, a thousand times more powerful. Bliss that made her want to curl up inside it and abide there, just for a little while, where there was no navy or smugglers, no trouble or strife, or need for syndicates.
Where there was only the two of them giving each other such unrestrained pleasure.
“Devil take me,” he mouthed into her ear. “But I want you, Teague.”
“I want you
, too, Kent.” A needy sort of greed was welling up within her. Her hand tightened, flexing into the lapel of his coat, pulling him closer, holding him near.
He reached up and enmeshed his fingers with hers, pressing their hands together between them, and the strange, careful intimacy of the gesture undid something wary and watchful within her.
“Matthew,” she said, because she couldn’t think, and because it seemed the right thing to say. And when his name fell from her lips, his eyes crinkled and his mouth came open on a wide, welcoming smile—a gift she meant to take.
The feel of his firm lips beneath hers was extraordinary, and she was conscious of listening to him—to his breathing and low murmurs of encouragement. Of trying to go slowly, to savor every touch, every taste.
And so was he. “Handsomely now, Teague.”
She could not comprehend him. “What does that mean?”
“It’s a navy term,” he murmured into her ear. “Meaning with all due deliberation and attention to detail.”
She very much liked his details—his lips were chapped and rough from years at sea, but the moment he opened his mouth to her, she fell into the inexpressible intoxication of him. He kissed with a mischievous, roguish glee—as if he could think of nothing better—and with a sureness that left her breathless and racing to catch up. But when she would have taken his face between her hands and turned her head to follow the dark, twisty path of her desires, he drew back.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” Like a calf-eyed girl, idiot enough to kiss a man on the steps of her father’s church?
“As if I’ve just offered you the moon. I haven’t. It was just a kiss, lass.”
As if her wanting to kiss him meant she was offering anything more. She was guarding her heart if not her virtue. Still. “It was a bloody good kiss.”
He couldn’t master his smile—it spread across his face like the moonlight dancing upon the water. “Thank you. But it is also a kiss that is over.”
“Why?” Why should she not take what she wanted when she wanted?
“Because if I don’t stop kissing you, Teague, I shall start doing other things. And it is cold, and falling dark, and we are in front of your father’s church in the middle of the village and someone is bound to see us.”
His speech was entirely logical. But perhaps she wanted to be something less than logical and reasoned at the moment. “Maybe I want the other things, Kent.”
He smiled, that mischievous, merry smile that creased up the corners of his glittering eyes and made a slash of white of his teeth. “If you aren’t the damnedest girl for a vicar’s daughter.”
“Am I? Well, I suppose I am—I like to choose for myself. And I won’t be sorry for choosing you and kissing you—it was bloody marvelous.”
He laughed and shook his head. “Devil take me, Tressa Teague.”
“No.” She made up her mind. “I don’t think I’m going to let the devil have you. I rather want you for my own.”
Oh, he liked that, Matthew Kent did—he threw his head back and laughed out loud. “I keep forgetting how frank you are.”
“I told you—I’m not missish. I have educated myself to be a rational creature, with dominion over my emotions. Like you.”
“My dear Teague”—he shook his head in teasing sadness—“if you think I have dominion over my emotions, you overestimate me,” he laughed. “I am as susceptible to the impulse of the moment as anyone I know. Probably more so, because I want to give in to my impulse to kiss you again.”
“I wish you would.” And to encourage him, she slid closer, and looped her arm about his neck.
But he did not yet kiss her. Instead he took her jaw in his hands, fanning his palms across her cheeks, as if he might try to read her in the wash of light from the moon. “You’re all gilded in moonlight. But for all your gloss and glitter, I still can’t make you out, Tressa Teague.”
There was something solemn, and even a little frightening in the focus of his regard. As if he might in the next moment find what he was looking for in her face, and find her wanting. Or difficult.
“I am as you see,” she whispered, not knowing what more she could do to gain his confidence. No matter his frown, when he looked at her like that, she longed for him to kiss her again. She wanted to feel the little shivers that ran tingling along her spine when he had run his hands up her arms, and sent the delicious curling heat deep down inside her.
In those moments, Tressa was completely and excruciatingly aware of Matthew Kent as a man, a vibrant, physical being—and a man she wanted.
She had meant to keep him at arm’s length. She had meant to be prudent and reticent, and everything logical.
But her awareness of him was like a pressure—like the energy in the air when a storm was about to sweep up from the sea and batter the village. The scientific books she had read up in the belfry would have called it dynamics, and set forth an equation to illustrate mutual force and reciprocal attraction. But an equation could not explain why her fingers itched to feel the short strands of his ginger hair, or why her lips longed for the strong feel of his mouth on hers, or why the ache that seemed to have become a part of her dissolved into nothingness the moment he pulled her into his arms.
He kissed her and nothing else existed. Nothing but heat and texture and scent. The supple warmth of his mouth on hers, the raspy feel of his skin against her cheek, the tangy soapy aroma of his body.
He pulled her flush against the long strength of his body, his hand spanning the small of her back, and she flowed into him, pliant and wanting, fitting herself into every breath of space between them. His other hand was at her nape, cradling her skull, angling her head to take her mouth, to fill her with the caress of his tongue upon hers.
Warmth spread from her belly throughout her body, and she was floating, swimming in sensation, plunging in headfirst, immersing herself in the dark liquid depths of desire.
She pulled back to stare at him as he had stared at her—framing his face with her hands, committing the map of his to her memory. She could look at him for days and still not be done looking. The broad plan of his forehead, the strong cut of his cheekbones, the firm line of his jaw. The darkened, silvered blue of his eyes, and the two lines of laughter that were permanently etched into their corners.
She put her lips to his, to let the pleasure sweep her under and carry her away on the tide. Away from worry and duty. Away from the free trade and traitors, and toward Matthew.
Matthew, who kissed her as if she were vital to his happiness, as if he would breathe her in instead of the cold autumn air. As if he did not want to let her go.
Chapter 9
He had to let her go—or suffer the consequences. For all her talk of wanting other things, she was still the daughter of the village vicar, and they were still kissing on the doorstep of the church—if he were a more religious man, he might have feared the proverbial bolt of lightning.
But he’d already been struck, hadn’t he—by the coup de foudre. That was why he was still kissing Tressa Teague on the very doorstep of her father’s church.
And if he were being entirely honest with himself, she had hit him with another bolt. The idea she had so briefly outlined—the setting of a fireship into Napoleon’s den of smugglers at Gravelines—had already taken up residence in the back of his brain.
He was already casting his mind back, to the night in Black Cove—the dark outline of the French corvette silhouetted against the grey, looming cliffs, and then the hot flash and thunder of the explosion and the orange blossom of the fire. Remembering Tressa Teague—the one person in Bocka Morrow who had trusted him enough to work relentlessly with him to root out the traitor—taking up the abandoned helm of the lugger in the heat of battle, not shirking away from any danger, not flinching from any duty, no matter how perilous.
It was coming back to him—the images vivid in his mind of that night. He could picture her now, speaking to the French captai
n in his own language—her father was a schoolmaster, and she was annoyingly well-read—and passing Matthew’s orders to the captured prisoners.
“What did they tell you, the French prisoners?”
She drew back slowly, those gloriously sleepy eyes blinking at him in confusion for the barest moment before they lit in amusement. “You can’t resist, can you? Impulsive Matthew Kent—you’re already halfway there in your mind, aren’t you, sailing for the French coast by the feel of the waves without so much as a chart, or a by-your-leave from the Admiralty?”
Devil take him, but she was right—he could all but feel the deck beneath his feet. The possibility was intoxicating. And what were his family’s watchwords? “If you are successful no questions will be asked,” he quoted. “And if you fail no explanation will ever be enough.”
Her expression sobered. “Kent, isn’t that how you got yourself in trouble—disrated and stripped of your command? Isn’t that why you were sent to Bocka Morrow in the first place?”
“That was different.” He had learned from his mistakes—and he would be sure not to fail. “I didn’t have you to help me the way I did at Black Cove.” Matthew could feel his excitement rise like a tide within him, filling him with confidence. “I didn’t have your stratagems and plans and more prudent reasoning. I didn’t have you to give me the devil’s own luck.”
The smile lingering in the corner of her eyes warmed a degree or two in the crisp fall air, as if perhaps his enthusiasm were beginning to infect her reason. “We were lucky that night in Black Cove—lucky there wasn’t an invasion fleet at our backs. We’d all be speaking French in Bocka Morrow had they come upon us so unprepared.”
“So we will be prepared for Gravelines. You can help me prepare.” If there were other reasons to ask for her assistance—reasons that had more to do with her unreasonably confident kisses than her reasonable brain—he would keep them to himself. “Come with me,” he cajoled. “Show me how it can be done.”
