“How I worried,” he murmured, his voice a wreck as he kissed her eyes, then claimed her lips with tender sorrow. “Forgive me, darling, for all that happened there. Al Hassan is a brute. I knew it. I had to do what we did.” He paused a moment to lift a dark brow and ensure she understood his implication of their erotic coupling. “It was the only way to free us. My only choice to save you.”
“I concluded as much then. You need explain nothing of your motives. I knew them instinctively.” She caressed his cheek and reached up to kiss him in thanks.
He steadied her on her feet, gave a quick nod to Valentina, then hugged the man who had accompanied them. “Thank you, Ramon, for this. I can never repay you.”
“You have already, Marco. Valentina and I are free of him as well as your woman.”
“Let’s make certain of it, Ramon.” Mark beamed at the man who, clearly, was his friend. “Come up to the wheel with me. I need your guidance to sneak out of this inlet before dawn.”
The two men ran toward the stairs.
“Who is that man, Valentina?”
Her friend’s lovely face filled with pride, her bearing suddenly regal. “Don Ramon Catalon, Duke of Toledo, capitan of the northern fleet of His Royal Majesty, the King of Spain. His ships were captured by Al Hassan more than six years ago.”
Sirena stared at her in shock. Ramon was not a pirate, not a slave, but a nobleman wrongly imprisoned. “And you?”
Valentina’s oval face glowed with a radiance Sirena had never seen from her. “His wife. Taken in the same siege.”
“Come along, ladies,” the crewman Simpson slid to a halt before them. “I’ve orders to show you below.”
“Can we not stay,” Sirena asked, enjoying the fresh air of freedom, “and see us leave this horrid place?”
“No, ma’am. You can not. Captain’s orders.”
“But—”
“Ma’am.” Simpson glared at her. “’Ems my captain’s orders. He wants you below if them buggers discover us gone and come out with their guns blazing to sink us. Now, you want to be atop to see us get blown to smithereens, or you want to be a polite lady and come below while we leave this hell?”
“Of course.” She hooked her arm in Valentina’s. “Forgive me, Simpson. I go below along with my friend.”
Hours later, well out to sea, exhausted and asleep in Mark’s bunk, Sirena rolled over to be enveloped by a warm, delicious masculine scent of salt and sea. Rough arms seized her close. Gentle lips blessed her eyelids and called her lovely endearments. She stirred, coiled one leg over his, knowing exactly this delight was delicious, decadent reality.
“Sweetheart,” Mark’s deep voice invaded her dreams of him as he brushed her hair from her cheeks, “I cannot believe you are here. I worried. Dear God. I was in agony with fear for your safety.”
Drifting in the euphoria of his arms, she smiled against his lips. Her arms wrapped him to her in a joyous embrace as she arched her hips against his powerful frame. “No other man ever touched me. None but you.”
“I told Hassan you were mine.” Mark pulled back, the apology on his face a torment. “I was taken before him. Knew his tastes, his needs. When he asked me if you were a virgin, I knew he intended to take you to his bed. I told him the truth and claimed you as mine. He was enough of a libertine to demand I prove it. And so, those nights in front of—”
She pressed her fingers to his mouth to quiet him. “Do not torture yourself over this.”
“But that exposure was nothing a lady should endure.”
“It saved us for another day,” she said, recalling Valentina’s injunction. “It saved us for this.”
A hand to her cheek, he kissed her sweetly. “The sexual display was beyond any experience I imagined. You were exquisite, so naturally erotic.”
A sensual joy made her grin. “You must have known we could present quite an entertainment.”
He laughed wryly. “I hoped you might flower for me. Think only of me and what we did together, what we might create together.”
She cupped his jaw. “Darling, to join with you again was thrilling. Though I cannot say I ever wish to be the object of such voyeurs again, I adored what we did. I always do.”
His sapphire blue eyes took on the stormy look of desperation. “You will never be on display for anyone again. You are mine, Sirena. Only mine.”
He made love to her then slowly, sweetly, as if now he had all the time in the world. He removed her tattered shirt and trousers, kissing every portion of her skin as he sank down her body and covered her with kisses. “I loved the way you looked at me. As if I were the only man in the world for you.”
“It’s true,” she whispered as she untied the loop of his makeshift linen trousers. “You are.”
“I could not bear the hours in my cell, wondering if they took you up to Hassan.”
“No, forget all that, my darling,” she declared as she licked his nipples and made him moan. “Only the women touched me.”
“You were lovely before they did,” he growled as he threw her clothing to the floor and pushed his trousers down so that his rigid shaft sprang out. “But in the sunlight of The Rouge, your body was even more irresistible, my sweet. Your nipples,” he said and favored each one with tiny kisses, “looked like budding roses. And your skin,” he said as he dropped his tongue inside her navel and licked her skin over her pubic bone, “shone like ivory. Your cunny, bare of all hair, was a luscious sight. So plump and pink.”
“Tight with need of you.”
“Yes, creamy, too,” he told her as he parted her with two fingers and put his mouth to her in a torrid, open-mouthed kiss. “Christ, you are so giving, I can never match you in generosity, though, God knows, I do love trying.” He grinned rakishly. “I marveled at your beauty as you stood there watching the display of the slaves. You caressed yourself, and I wanted to be the one who did that for you. Like this.” He reached inside her with two blunt fingers and stroked her most sensitive spots until she keened like she had before the pasha and his retinue.
“I wanted only you,” she cried out as he reared up and took her deeply with his cock. “Oh have me. All of me.”
He did as she asked, grasping her ankles and draping them about his shoulders. Then he sank his rod more securely inside her. She groaned, filled to the limits of her being with the man she loved. Their mating, their climax took moments, their freedom the aphrodisiac that had them pounding into each other, teeth bared, cries of delight echoing around the small cabin, grinding into each other with the joy of life saved for each other, by each other.
He gave her his seed fully, with ragged sounds of need, joy realized. “Sleep,” he told her and brushed her wild hair from her eyes and cheeks. “When I return, we love again.”
“And again,” she promised him with a satisfied smile.
He returned that day, much later, to sink to the bunk, curl her close into his arms and fall instantly asleep.
What he had endured, he had not shared. Not yet. But tomorrow, she would ask him to explain. How he had managed this escape. Why Ramon Catalon and his wife Valentina helped them both to outwit the barbaries. What she might do to help or at the very least, say to express her gratitude to the two Spaniards.
As Mark slept, she grew pensive. Pondering her recent past, she decided she truly cared not one whit about the erotic display in front of Al Hassan. She had no regrets. No shame. Though no women of the ton could ever imagine what she had done or why, Sirena knew that because of it, she had become a different person. Yes, she loved Mark. Had since the night she had met him. She admired his stamina to survive the British impressment. She had been drawn to him by curiosity and found him to be more extraordinary than even her imaginings of how brave he must have been. Each time she spoke with him, she discovered him to be considerate, kind and witty. More, she’d seen he was taken with her. That gratified her, fed her pride, made her see that marrying Colin de Ros was not the path to any happiness for her. How could an arran
ged, loveless marriage be for any woman? Yet most women did bind themselves to men found for them, secured for them by others for reasons as simple as affinity, as complex as financial benefit or a smug maintenance of bloodline.
She snorted. Fearing to wake Mark, she rose from the bunk gingerly, silently fretting at her enduring weakness after all their travails. Gathering up a sheet, she walked toward the porthole and squinted out where the dying sun streamed through in hot red rays of day’s end upon the brilliant dancing waters of the Atlantic.
Were they headed to Baltimore?
So thrilled with their escape and with Mark in her arms, she had failed to ask. Yet, she had no idea what the condition was of the ship, nor its crew. Dear heavens, she had not even thought of them, what they had suffered. Was she shallow?
She thrust her hair back from her face. What must Mark think of her, that she would never ask after the welfare of the men who were his loyal crew?
And what must he think that she had not even inquired about Ramon and his wife, if they too came with them to America?
Or did they take them to a port in Spain?
She turned, aghast at her naïveté. She would no longer be that woman. Superficial, self-centered. She would be a woman worthy of the man who had risked all to save her. She would be worthy of her own commendation.
And worthy of Mark Stanhope’s love.
Because, she realized with a shock as she sat there staring at him abandoned to his dreams, that he had not told her he loved her.
Never had he told her that.
She would not ask him for the words. That would debase their value. But fear fell over her like a shroud that he had not declared his love because she had not given him reason to love her. Yes, she was brave. Brave, perhaps, to the point of fool-hardy. But what else commended her to him? Aside from his physical attraction to her, what else did he see in her? What else did he value? If he could not name any qualities, how could he love her?
And if she could not earn a declaration from him, she would never marry him. Certainly leave him. Make her own way in the world. As a governess. A tutor. Anything to be able to gather her pride and her dignity.
Chapter Eight
Eleven days later, Sirena sat in the Grosvenor Square home of Jack Stanhope and his wife Emma. The entire family had assembled within an hour of Mark’s and her arrival from Dover. After their initial shock at Mark’s appearance, Jack and Emma had fussed over Sirena, having heard she had died on the East End docks. She’d explained how she’d run away to Mark and begun an adventure which turned sour with capture. Neither she nor Mark offered up any of her experiences in the seraglio or as lovers in Hassan’s presence. They had vowed to keep all that as eternal secrets none would ever know. Then, Emma and Jack had ushered Mark and Sirena into their main salon and sent messages round to Adam and Felice and Wes and Lacy to attend them at once. Their father, the earl, they summoned as well. In each note, Emma wrote that Sirena was alive and as well as could be expected.
“I do not want them walking in here only to stand in the doorway speechless,” Emma explained. “We have many problems to solve this morning.”
“You’re right,” Mark agreed with a small smile toward Sirena.
She had nodded, understanding that many would soon know of her survival, whether she wished it or not. She relented, giving in to her worst fears that her father would come and forcibly try to remove her from the house. But frazzled from days on a cold ship with poor supplies and food severely rationed, Sirena took the first comfort she could and snuggled into the warm wool blanket Emma had thrown around her shoulders. She had drunk a hot cup of tea with such ease that her stomach, unused to such delights, growled loudly.
“Have another cup, my dear.” Emma poured rich picot tea into the pale blue cup in Sirena’s shaking hands. “The footman comes with cakes in a few minutes.”
“Thank you.” Sirena had never been so undone by need of food and warmth as she was these past eleven days tossed about in the wintry Atlantic Ocean.
She sipped this cup of tea, the heat stirring a sense of normality within her at their shocking fate at the hands of Al Hassan. She contemplated that she was indeed in Jack Stanhope’s drawing room, still as stunned as the morning Mark had revealed to her that he had decided to return to England instead of sailing west to America. Yes, she did understand his reasoning, though she loathed the necessity of going home.
Running from Al Hassan had been a harebrained scheme, true, Mark had told her the first morning of their freedom. Yet it was one inspired by laxity among the pasha’s guards—and smart calculation by Ramon Catalon that they might succeed. Ramon had learned of a change in the guard numbers and had bribed a few to turn the other way as Mark and his men rushed from the dungeon and out to the shore. Though the Water Witch stood anchored in the shore, the prospect of overtaking it and any of Hassan’s men on it was a big task. Yet, once Mark’s twelve men and he climbed aboard, they found only two pirates. Dispatching them to their doom had been easy. Still, the clipper ship had been stripped of its cargo of tea and spices. Worse, the pirates of Bou Regreg had stolen their foodstuffs. Without food or water, Mark and Ramon had decided to sail into the British-held port of Gibraltar. They had to tell their tale to the British admiral in command and ask for assistance. The commander readily aided them, but citing his need to conserve his own resources in wartime, gave them such small rations, they were nigh unto starving yesterday as they sailed into Dover.
But hunger and cold were the least of Sirena’s concerns at the moment. Her independence was the bigger challenge. And she feared its loss here in England. She’d never shared this with Mark. He had so many other problems, she felt petty focusing on her own. Mark had men to feed, a ship to sail safely, if he could, into a friendly port. Still, she pondered what returning to England might mean for her. Going back to England meant not only notifying her father of her survival, but perhaps even tempting Colin de Ros to keep her here and renew his attentions to her. Women had so few rights in England. Few financial ones, no legal ones to decide her own future. Only married did a woman have any standing, and Sirena was not. She would not marry de Ros, and as for marrying Mark, well, that possibility had not crossed his lips. If it crossed his mind, he did not say. If flight had seemed the only solution for her weeks ago, it seemed just as viable a solution now.
Sirena folded her hands, frowning in unease, out of place in this formal silk and satin draped salon. Odd. I always felt at home in such rooms. Now it feels sumptuous. Alien to my nature.
Glancing down at her attire of North African linen shirt and trousers and thin silk slippers, Sirena smiled with poignant reflection. On her person was not a ribbon or pearl to be found. Nor did she want them. Sighing, resolute for what she might soon have to do to save herself from her father and de Ros, she listened to Mark recount the tale of their capture to his three half-brothers as they awaited the arrival of their father from his home two city blocks away.
“Forgive me for intruding on you again and in this sorry condition,” Mark apologized to Jack and Emma, indicating his attire. “I am quite without funds and the means to send a runner to announce us.”
Emma refilled his teacup, then gave a comforting smile to Sirena. “Of course, you would come to us. We are your family. And you are quite in need of more than money. Drink up. I have the footmen drawing two baths upstairs and Cook preparing a nourishing breakfast for you both. And Sirena, my maid goes with Felice’s to gather warmer clothes for you. You and she are about the same size.”
“I thank you both,” Sirena replied to both women, grateful for their care and telling herself for the hundredth time that this return to England was the most prudent course of action for Mark after their escape. But she hated the whole idea nonetheless. She shivered, laying odds the servants were already out and about the town, gossiping with others, spreading the word that Sirena Maxwell had appeared on their doorstep this morning, back from the dead.
“And I think we
can find suitable clothes for you, Mark,” declared Wes.
Certainly, looking at the four brothers standing close together near the fireplace, it was indeed noticeable that the Stanhope men were of the same build and the same bone structure. Big and bold, muscular to a fault. Only Wes differed from his three raven-haired siblings, with his auburn hair and his black leather eye patch.
Mark chuckled. “I doubt I’ll have call for anything fancy to sail to Baltimore.”
Sirena cast her eyes to the floor.
“After all the trouble with those pirates,” Adam asked, “you want to cross the ocean again?”
“Why not let us put them down first?” Wes asked. “The Admiralty will certainly hear of this from me.”
“In Parliament,” Adam offered, “we do talk of action against them.”
“What with the war against Napoleon well advanced on land,” Jack asked of Adam, “are we not able to conquer these pirates soon?”
“This spring, I do hope,” Adam replied, then considered Mark. “Winter is no time to cross the north Atlantic. It was perilous enough to start out in October!”
“Come in, Rogers,” Felice beckoned the footman who carried a silver tray filled with tiny cakes and muffins, butter and bread. “Why must you cross now, Mark? Stay with us. Any of us. All of us, each in turn. Go in the spring, why don’t you? Is that not a wonderful plan, Adam?”
Before Adam could answer, Emma took up the cause. “Yes! Go after you have pressed the Admiralty and Parliament. Convince them all to rid the coastal waters of the Bou Regreb. Perfect time to cross, after you can do so safely, Mark. Don’t you agree, Jack? Wes? Adam?”
Mark frowned into Sirena’s gaze. “I am not certain. I will not commit to it unless….Sirena, what do you think of this?”
Was he asking her opinion only of the time of crossing? Or was he asking her more? To go with him? Once, weeks ago in some other lifetime, she had might have been a romantic. Haphazardly, foolishly, she had run away from her home and father. She had stowed away on Mark’s clipper ship. She had not thought of the method or the consequences. As a result, her servant who had helped her had died. She herself had hidden away in the storage hold of the ship and nearly froze and starved to death. She had found herself in the arms and the bed of the man she now adored. That she did not regret, nor would she change. But the price for that bliss in his bed was his neglect of his duty to the bridge and their capture by Al Hassan. She and he plus his crew had been seized like slaves and imprisoned. Only to nearly starve and freeze once more on her return to a land she wished to leave as soon as possible. If Mark had declared he loved her, if he had shown the slightest inclination to marry her, she might have counted it all well worth the prize. The most valuable lesson she had learned in all this misadventure, however, had been to be true to herself. Honest, bold and upright about who she was and what she needed to hold her head up high.
The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances Page 35
