Lady Reluctant

by Maggie Osborne

  “Not their armpits.”

  “Not their heads?”

  “Among intimates, one may use a scratching rod beneath a wig or dressed head. But never in public.”

  “But what if a passel of fleas are fairly feasting on a bloke’s arms and legs. Not even then?”

  “Not even then. A person of quality scratches only in solitude.” He smiled at her expression. “A person of quality does not have fleas.”

  Blu stared at him, knowing her disbelief was mirrored by Monsieur and Mouton. “Bloody hell,” she marveled. When the Duke offered his arm, she fought back her shawl and politely accepted his arm before they continued around the deck. “Is it true you are a duke in actual fact?” she asked, making conversation while she thought about the incredibly discomforting rule for scratching.

  “Does it matter?”

  They paused at the rail and looked out at the water, as moonlit and silvery as the Duke’s eyes. Monsieur and Mouton halted at a distance near the mast.

  “It bloody well matters if you’re to serve as our authority in matters of propriety.” Turning from the rail, Blu glanced back at Monsieur with a smile of affection. “Although Monsieur has glimpsed a king—”

  “He confided as much at last night’s dinner.”

  “—and he served as the first gentleman of the Marquis de Lavobère, more than a decade has passed.” She lowered her voice so Monsieur would not overhear. “I doubt Monsieur came in daily contact with either the King or the Marquis, though I do not know this for a fact. In any case, it appears Monsieur has grown musty in some areas. Like this business about scratching. If you’re truly a Duke, you could be of some assistance.” The moonlight in his eyes bewitched her and she looked away, clumping her shawl tightly over her breasts.

  “Blu—surely your mother will accept you as you are.”

  It was a question she had struggled with from the first. Tilting her head, she gazed up at him and narrowed her eyes. “You don’t understand because you don’t believe my mother is a genuine lady, do you?”

  “I don’t dispute that you believe it. But I wonder if Beau Billy’s fancy of a lady would match my own description.”

  “My mother truly is a lady. Even Monsieur confirms it. He has traveled to London several times to spy on her. She is vapid, cowardly, and a hypocrite. Mouton, who knew her, can tell you she has never raised a sword or carried a dagger. She has no spirit and no spine. That describes a lady as I know of it.” Scowling, she raised a hand to scratch her throat, then paused to look at him. Her brow lifted. “Not even my throat?”

  “Not even your throat.”

  Swearing, she contented herself with touching the spot and pressing hard.

  “When did you last see your mother?”

  “It vexes me to speak of her.” When she thought of finally facing the woman who had borne her, a strange mixture of fear, resentment, curiosity, and longing overcame her. “I’d rather speak of you. What do you do in London?”

  He shrugged. “I have business interests in the City and there’s a country estate to see to.”

  “Will you put to sea again soon?”

  Leaning his elbows on the rail, he clasped his hands and looked toward the moonlight rippling across the waves. “This is my final run. I am to be married early next year.”

  “Wed?” Blu straightened and blinked. That he might be wed or plan to be had not entered her thoughts. Although she knew the staid people of St. George wed one another, she had personally never known a married pair. Curiosity vied with a twist that felt very much like jealousy. “Is she a lady?”

  “Very much a lady.”

  Of course his wife would be a lady, Blu realized. The Duke’s woman would not have to be taught the rudiments of society. She would know them. She would have grown up knowing about forks and when to scratch and what to call one’s parts. She would resemble the Duke, polished and elegant, amused by rude souls like Blusette Morgan and her kind. The Duke’s wife would be like Lady Katherine.

  Looking at him, at the strength in his profile, at the swell of muscle along his arms, of a sudden Blu regretted vastly that she had not rogered him when she had the opportunity. She would so like to have seen him naked and touched him and smelled him all over.

  Wetting her lips, she turned her face away, feeling hipped as her spirits inexplicably plummeted. Perhaps her terms were coming on.

  “The match was arranged when we were little more than children,” the Duke was saying. His voice reached Blu from a distance, gradually penetrating her thoughts. “The date of the wedding will be the occasion of her twenty-first birthday.”

  Three years ago my lady Newcastle had visited St. George and Blu had been among those on the Mound who rowed to St. George to see her. Blu had waited an hour in the street before the church to watch my lady Newcastle emerge. The labor had been lost as my lady Newcastle disappointed. Though gowned brilliantly, the lady possessed the face and eyes of a toad, hair like a spine fish, and the arms above her gloves were speckled with brown scabby patches. But it was her attitude and her expression which Blu best remembered.

  My lady Newcastle appeared not to know or to care that she resembled a toad. Clearly she knew her value and clearly she reckoned her worth above that of any who observed her. High in her hauteur, she scorned the eyes upon her. She saw no one save the liveried coachman awaiting her pleasure. Without a glance to either side she regally descended the steps, entered her coach and drove away, her toadlike snout lifted in disdain.

  That was how Blu envisioned the Duke’s lady. More beautiful than my lady Newcastle ever dreamed, but much the same otherwise. Of a type who would not see Blu if Blu stood directly before her.

  A shudder passed through her body. Of a sudden she conjured a vision of herself standing before Lady Katherine and Lady Katherine’s eyes peering coolly through her as if she were formed of vapor.

  “Blu?” The Duke stood from the rail and looked down at her. Concern darkened his gaze. “Are you ill?”

  Perhaps she was. Swaying on her feet, she would have pitched forward but for throwing out her hand and steadying herself against his chest. His heat scalded her fingertips and she snatched her hand away in confusion. Instantly Mouton leaped forward and she felt him appear behind her. Perhaps she was indeed in need of protection for she stood only inches from the Duke, gazing at his sensual naked lips and feeling her belly clamp into a hot lump. Her mouth dried when she raised her eyes to his, and a juicy heat engorged her privates.

  “Blu...” Her name emerged in that rich, rich voice that shivered through flesh and bone. He gazed at the tremble tugging the corner of her lips and his jaw tightened.

  “Thomas, I feel...” She stared at him and the bad-pork queasiness invaded her knees and sapped their strength. Her skin felt hot and feverish. If this was a sickness, it was a strange sickness, for she sensed the remedy was nothing less than a fierce bout of rogering.

  He clasped her shoulders and peered into her pale face. “Shall I fetch you something?”

  The moment his hands touched her flesh where her shawl had slipped, she gasped, strangling on the sound, and her simkin knees shook beneath a final tremor, then gave way. Thomas and Mouton caught her before she toppled to the deck and they hoisted her boneless body between them. Mouton swung her into his arms where, bewildered, she lay against his chest like a limp sack of grain as he bore her below.

  “‘Tis nothing,” she assured everyone when Mouton had placed her on her cot. Too confused and embarrassed to confess the truth, she insisted, “It must be my terms.”

  They looked at her then at each other. Blu had never experienced a moment’s grief with her terms. Both Monsieur and Mouton looked troubled and anxious when Isabelle shooed them from Blu’s cabin, then she stood over Blu with hands on her hips. “This is not terms. It is something more.”

  “I don’t know what it is,” Blu answered truthfully. Rolling on her belly, she gestured Isabelle to relieve her laces. Misery caught at her eyes. “Oh Is
abelle. The Duke looked at me and touched me, and... I thought I would die if I didn’t roger him that instant.” Isabelle’s fingers paused over her back, then continued tugging at her lacings. “I couldn’t roger him, so I began to die.”

  When the hated corset had been dispensed with, Isabelle sat on the stool while Blu finished undressing. She adjusted a wrapper across her breasts, tossed her braid over her shoulder, and pursed her lips. “This is very bad,” she said when Blu had slipped naked between her blankets.

  “I knew it,” Blu moaned. “I’m going to die. I’m soured forever.”

  “No. I mean it is bad business to want a particular man.”

  “Isabelle, I don’t want to do business. I don’t want to roger everyone, just the Duke. I’m dying of it!”

  Isabelle shook her head and clicked her tongue. “You go to London to find a husband, is this right?”

  “That is what everyone except me wants.”

  “The business for you is to find a husband,” Isabelle insisted stubbornly. “How you going to find a husband when you are dying with lust for this one man?”

  “I don’t know,” Blu whispered. In two or three days they would sail into the Thames. The voyage was nearly over. When she thought of bidding the Duke farewell, her chest constricted as if she were still wearing the cursed corset and she could not breathe. “He’s put a spell on me.”

  “I tell you how,” Isabelle confided. “You roger the Duke and roger and roger until this sickness be gone. Then you can do business.”

  ~ ~ ~

  He stood in the darkness, smoking and gazing out his cabin windows at the silvery wake trailing in the moonlight. Something had happened when he touched her. If Mouton had not jumped forward, God help him, he would have taken her there on the deck. Never in his life had he wanted a woman as he had wanted Blu Morgan at that instant. Perhaps it had been the unexpected vulnerability in her eyes, or the sudden heat of desire he had witnessed there. Or perhaps it was the scent and the nearness of her.

  But there had been other soft-eyed women, other moments of heat and passion and proximity and he had not responded like an animal in rut.

  After pulling a hand through his hair, he drew on his cigar and sat at his table, reaching for the wine flagon.

  Blu Morgan possessed a raw vitality coupled with a surprising innocence, and the combination fascinated him. She was unlike any woman he had known. He would long remember yesterday afternoon when she had emerged on deck dressed in shirt and kicks in order to scale the ratlines and yards so she could stand high in the crow’s nest and be first to spy the cliffs of Dover. What woman of his acquaintance would have braved such a foolhardy feat? What woman of his acquaintance would have kicked off her slippers and danced a jig with his seamen? Had he ever known a woman as ingenuously honest?

  When the rap sounded, he knew to his soul that it was Blu. And he knew why she had come. He dropped his head into his hands and groaned softly before he opened the door.

  Neither spoke. He stood in the dark doorway and looked down into her silent pleading face and he felt a hot ache tighten his stomach. Never had he wanted a woman as urgently as he wanted this one.

  Gently, very gently, he lifted her chin and looked into her dark eyes. “No, Blu,” he whispered, his voice rough with his need for her. Later she would feel the insult and be enraged, but now he saw only pain reflected in her gaze. “You don’t know what you’re doing, but I can’t claim the same innocence.” He drew a breath. “I will not dishonor you.”

  A sound midway between a moan and a sob issued from her throat and she closed her eyes, sagging against the doorway.

  Because he was a man, not a saint, because his need burned flesh and mind, and because it would have strained the limits of possibility not to touch her, he kissed her.

  He held her against the heat exploding between them and felt the soft pressure of her breasts against his chest, her firm young thighs trembling against his own. Her lips were moist and yielding under his, an invitation to plunder.

  When he forced himself to step away from her, a thin layer of sweat rose on his forehead. He felt a physical pain of denial. As he watched, she touched her fingertips to her lips and gazed at him with a dazed expression.

  “Oh my God.” He stared at her, wanting her. “You’ve never been kissed.”

  “You made it worse,” she whispered, her fingertips still on her lips. “Please, you don’t understand. I have to roger you to be done with it.”

  Christ. He looked at the creamy breasts swelling above her bodice, saw the plea in her eyes, and he sought the strength to refuse her. His teeth and fists clenched.

  “I won’t ruin you, Blu, not knowing your wish to be a lady.” Pain and anger built in her eyes. Her sagging shoulders stiffened and her head lifted. “One day you will thank heaven I found the strength to preserve your honor.”

  “You stinking son of a pox-crawling whore!” Eyes blazing, she stumbled backward into the passageway. “Twice! Twice I have offered my only gift and twice you have refused me. For no good reason!” Her hand dropped to where her sword hilt should have been but she gripped air. Tears guttered in her eyes. “As God is witness, one day you’ll beg at my feet, wanting me, and I’ll spit in your high and haughty mizzen!”

  “You think I don’t want you? Blu—”

  But she whirled in the passageway and slipped like mist into the night shadows. He heard her bare feet whisper up the steps, then she was gone.

  His instinct was to give chase and take her where she stood. His body burned with his need for her. By effort of will, he deliberately closed his door and returned to sit before his table. What he had just done was the decent thing, the right thing—and one of the most difficult things he had ever made himself do.

  Reaching for the flagon, he poured a tankard and settled himself to get very, very foxed. Sometime before dawn he remembered Beau Billy Morgan praising him as a man of principles. His laugh was bitter and lacked any trace of amusement. Tonight he would have preferred to be a man without honor or principle.

  Turning his face to the pink glow spreading across the waves, he drained his glass and thought he would be bloody damned glad to see the end of this voyage.

  ~ ~ ~

  The sight of London Town rendered all but Monsieur speechless.

  Blu gripped the ship’s railing, her mouth agape, as the William Porter negotiated through the forest of masts crowding the river. Had she not been too excited to eat her morning repast, the stench of the river would have caused her to belch it up again. Directly beneath her, a dead horse turned in the current, disturbing a surface scum of garbage and offal, bumped the side of the ship then drifted beyond her sight. A string of guts followed behind like an elongated tail. Pressing a perfumed handkerchief to her nose, Blu lifted her eyes to the city rising in front of her. If the river masts reminded her of a forest, the city made her think of an anthill teeming with frenzied motion, crowded by houses and shops and church steeples so tall they pierced the sky like needles.

  Nothing Monsieur or the Duke had said had prepared her for the noisy vastness of London Town. Not in her most fanciful thoughts had she imagined so many people could live and labor in one place. How were they all fed? Where were the vast fields and herds of goats? She could see nothing but rows and rows of buildings crowded tightly, one against another. And such houses. As tall as the clouds. Again and again she counted as many as five stories. There were houses everywhere she looked, even on the bridge spanning the river. Houses and people and noise. If she could have had a moment without noise, she might have collected her wits, but the din continued without ceasing.

  Of a sudden, a terrible fear overwhelmed her and she stood frozen, her dark eyes as wide as buckles, her heart thudding painfully against her stays. They would never find Lady Katherine. It was impossible to find anyone amidst that teeming mass of packed humanity. They would wander helplessly, with no bed or board, dodging the rumble of coaches and the screaming curses of the men who dro
ve them. Rogues would overwhelm them, slice their throats and pilfer the gold sewn into the lining of their clothing. They would perish for want of food. The noise and throngs of people would crush them.

  Sweat poured beneath her arms and her fingernails tore at the wood railing. For the first time in her life Blu Morgan felt genuine fear. For the first time she felt herself unequal to a task, in need of protection. But Mouton appeared as staggered as she. Blindly, she veered toward Monsieur and pressed herself to his small thin body, seeking comfort in the arm he slipped about her trembling waist.

  “Ah, look at it, my dear Blusette. The city is not as magnificent as Paris,” Monsieur enthused, waving an arm, “but lovely, is it not?”

  “Lovely?” Blu croaked. She had never endured such a stink in her life, nor heard such head-banging noise, nor imagined such a number of souls gathered in one place.

  “The shops, dear Blu. Ah, the shops!” Monsieur rolled his eyes in rapture.

  “The customers,” Isabelle murmured, her Spanish eyes bright. She traveled as Blu’s ladies’ maid; her whoring days were over. But she focused on the men swarming over the docks and her dark eyes filled with regret.

  “I shall have new spectacles and a half-dozen wigs. And books, boxes and boxes of books. And the latest plays and the fashions! Oh, my dear, my dear Blusette! You see before you civilization!”

  At that moment, the Duke’s deep voice boomed over the ship, followed by shouts from Mr. Pastor and the leadsmen. Already the sails were furled along the yards. Within minutes, the William Porter dropped anchor alongside a merchantman in the center of the river. A long line of anchored ships divided the river into two crowded lanes.

  After the William Porter settled into position, the Duke joined them at the rail and a cabin lad brought tankards of rum punch. “Is London what you expected?” the Duke inquired, smiling at her.

  “It stinks.”

  These were the first words they had exchanged since the night she had been simkin enough to take herself to his cabin and suffer more humiliation at his hands. Her face flamed at the memory and anger stiffened her spine. She longed to claw the smile off those naked lips.