Of course.
“I don’t need any shovel of yours for that. I’ve got myself out of more than one these past seven years, after you left me.”
“That’s not how it looks to me this time, which is why I’ve just about had enough of this. Now.” He yanked her closer, so she could feel the hard press of his body through the enveloping layers of satin and wool. “You want that heir or not?”
She almost fainted with shock. Straight to the point as ever. So straight she was appalled by what flamed in her blood, how he towered, and how his body—scent and strength—was pure, beckoning male. She had only to reach out and sweep the hair back from his face to let him take control, as he always had.
But not only did she not want her guests coming from their chambers to find him taking control against the banister or even the wall—the stairs, as she had learned last night, were not ideal—she remembered the last time he had issued a similar threat, about her wanting something or not.
Then her trunk, or rather Lady Celia’s, had landed with a thud on Fishside Wharf, displaying its contents for all to see. She did not want the Beaumont heir following suit.
She cleared her throat—if nothing else, it was an action designed to remind herself his offer was outrageous. She refused to be tempted like this.
“No. Not particularly. I believe…I believe I have said all there is to say on that subject.” She lowered her gaze. My God, he was handsome. Made to be admired. And so like his old self that way, brightening a woman’s day with his casual sexuality, that she spoke with difficulty. Lied with difficulty too. “In fact you might even say I’ve changed my mind about all of it. So, if you don’t mind removing your hand?” She stared at it. He’d always had nice hands.
He huffed out a breath. “Fine.” His voice seemed to come from way down in his boots. “That’s what you want.”
For a second she stared in horror. That Flint Blackmoore, the scourge of various seas, should accept defeat was too perfect. She should gloat. But her heart beat to a tempo even faster than before. Something other than her temper swam too close to the surface. Something that… She quashed it, summoning her best smile in the hope of making herself appear serene.
“It is. Yes. Thank you. It has, of course, been a pleasure seeing you. As ever. Now, if you will release me. Thank you.”
Grasping her skirt, she resumed her ascent of the stairs. The little smile framing his mouth would only be construed as alarming were this Captain Flint. He wasn’t. No, he was only a pitiful excuse. A shadow of his former self.
Besides, had he wanted to raise any roofs, he’d have done it by now. Certainly he wouldn’t have removed his hand. Flint Blackmore was not a man to prevaricate.
But after his shabby attempt to blackmail her, there would be no money. Why should she part with even a half farthing’s worth of what she was bound to inherit when she produced the heir? To him?
A quarter’s worth would be too great. Especially as there were no circumstances on the face of this earth in which she could now countenance Malmesbury as the father of the Beaumont heir. Unless he first disposed of his valet. Or she did. No. She must rethink this. Fortunately she stood near enough the top of the stairs and her bedroom to do so.
“Same here, seeing you, sweetheart.” His drawl came from behind her. Naturally he desired the last word. He always did. “But the acquaintance isn’t over yet.”
“No?”
“Nope. Your Grace!”
She froze. How could he yell like that? In a way guaranteed to waken—maybe not the dead exactly, but—
“Duke Malmesbury! Sir! Your Grace, you anywhere there, sir?”
“What?” A muffled sound came from the Blue Chamber. A damned pity the Blue Chamber stood so close to the top of the stairs.
“Stop it, James!”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Signor Vella-ghio! Duke Malmesbury! Damn it, what the hell’s the other one’s name again?”
It didn’t much matter what the other one’s name was. Southey’s door flew open first. Malmesbury followed him onto the landing, carrying a candle and wearing a nightshirt and cap. And Vellaggio followed him, wearing nothing very much at all.
“Dalm it, Fury.” Southey staggered toward her. “Amn’t I—hic—the lucky one? Hic. Well, come in…come in…gel. Come in. Can’t guarantee anything right now, but I’ll dalm well do me best. Hic.”
That they should come out here and stand and look expectant when all she could think about was what Flint was going to tell them didn’t make her groan. It made her consider the marble stairs as a resting place. But she couldn’t very well lie there.
What she knew of these men would not outweigh the fact Thomas lay in the cellar and she was not Celia Fury Shelton. She was now, anyway, and had been since she had married Thomas. It was just before, during the time Flint knew about, when she hadn’t been Celia anything but plain Fury Fontanelli, and Celia had been like Thomas—dead.
Flint smirked. “Should have just tried me the other way, sweetheart. I’m an awful lot safer.”
She could barely believe the audacity with which he bounded by on his long legs. All the way up the stairs, two at a time, to the very top.
Dear God, it would mean the ruin of everything if he opened his mouth. She had only meant to secure her future. And now the only way to do that was by taking this man into her bed.
She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. Her pride and every other part of her rebelled. She’d sooner run. She’d sooner abandon everything.
Yet, she also did this to outfox Lady Margaret, didn’t she? Should she give the woman the pleasure of denying her everything, after every agony she had suffered with Thomas, because of this man? This stranger from her past? Who had done everything to hurt and humiliate her?
Who did she hate more? Well?
In that instant she made up her mind. She would wait to hear what he had to say first.
“Now gentlemen, sorry to bring you out your rooms like this, but Miss Fury here has something to tell you all. And if she can’t, then I will.”
The words were not encouraging. In fact, they were as damned discouraging as Flint could make them. Was it any wonder? He need only consider the way she’d rather rot in everlasting hell than help him out, when he was damned desperate enough to have begged her on bended knees. Him—a man who hadn’t known it was possible knees could do anything so elastic twelve short months ago.
Hell. It wasn’t as though he even wanted to sleep with her. The damn trouble she’d always been.
But, for the present, he needed to swallow his first urge, which was to throttle her with his bare hands. When it came to cards, she never knew when she held the ace. Now he’d gotten her potential lovers in this raving scheme of hers, exactly where he wanted them, he needed to keep the pressure on. He had no desire to wind up dangling from a yardarm in Jamaica.
He tilted his jaw. “Well, isn’t that so, Miss Fury?”
“Yes.”
He could tell by the way she squirmed and looked over her shoulder, she intended to bolt out the front door. Then he’d never get his boat back. He’d be dusting frock coats and spitting on shoe buckles for the rest of his life.
At least he’d be doing it till he could think of something. Nothing in his situation so far had presented an escape route. Seeing her, then seeing what she had in that box in the cellar, was his first hopeful sliver in months. He was damned glad he’d resisted the urge to stay out of that trunk. Gut instinct said she was bound to be up to her neck in trouble. She always was. Gut instinct was right.
“So then, you want to come up here and do it, or are you happy where you are?” He kept his gaze locked on her.
“I’m fine here. Thank you, James.”
Oh, that was good. James. The manners were different from how he remembered them. In fact a lot was. His eyes roamed her curled, tinted coiffure. From what he recalled, she had worn her hair long and straight, with a thick fringe framing her heart-shaped face. And it had bee
n darker then. Ebony in fact, whereas now he detected traces of tinting.
She was still the same bother though, for all her polished air, or the elegant indigo dress that set off her pale skin to perfection, and her slender figure too for all that the gown flowed loosely to the floor.
The same? She was more. Already he felt he had to raise his game high as the yardarm to deal with her. “All right, then Miss Fury—”
“Milss Fury?” The man who thought himself the lucky one—lucky? Easy seeing he’d no damned notion of what lay stone dead in that cellar—fumbled in his coat pocket. “What is this Milss Fury? Hic. Who is this damned ingrate, if you please?” He pulled out a handkerchief and held it against his mouth.
Flint just hoped it wasn’t because he noticed the smell of decomposition. But Flint had been very careful to put the lid back on the box and close the cellar door behind him.
“Only my valet, sir,” Malmesbury said.
“Your valet? Then he should know the correct form of address—hic. I, for one, have never heard such a confounded, damn affront. It’s Layldy Fury. You hear, you damned peasant? Let’s hear it.”
“Layldy Fury then.” There was little point losing this on a point of etiquette, after all.
“And a bow. Hic.”
“A bow?” Before her? The way she utterly failed to accommodate his wishes and said she’d rather rot in everlasting hell than sleep with him? He bent his head, seeking to ignore the way her eyes brimmed with disbelief and she tightened her mouth as if he were being ungracious.
“Fine.”
“Valet? He don’t look like no damned valet to me.” A drunken cackle cut the air.
For God’s sake, what was she thinking, considering buffoons like this?
“Malmsie, old boy, are you sure he hasn’t just wandered in here off the streets and intends getting his feet under our table? Hic.”
“My valet will be beaten for his impertinence. Let me assure you of that.”
“Fine, fine.” Flint jerked up his head. “You beat me all you like. Just so long as you save something in the stick for our Lady Fury there. The little secrets she’s hiding.”
“Secrets? I say. Hic. Secrets? Extraordinary. You, Fury?”
“Pay no attention to him.” She met Flint’s eyes with admirable coolness. “He’s joking.”
“I think we agreed, that joke could be on you, and hell’s not a nice resting place, sweetheart.”
With difficulty he fought the vague frisson in his blood. He’d bedded her before because that was what he did. And he’d do it now because that was what he’d need to do. But the frisson… He didn’t need the distraction of frissons when he stood on this cold, unforgiving staircase fighting for his existence. How could she live in a place like this either?
“Sweetheart. Hic. How confounded outrageous is that? What do you think this is—hic—a brothel? With yourself as keeper?”
Flint wondered if she intended to prevaricate. All right, he’d left her on that quay, but how could she have thought it was ever any more than a one-way ticket? Getting set, she was, to take over his cabin with all her damned falderals. The parasol. The fancy cream coat.
The parakeet in the gilded cage he had heard screeching from the other end of the dock had been the last, the final straw. Never mind the pile of boxes she had five laborers carrying in her wake, like some Nile queen. He’d had to do something. He didn’t want a woman in his life. He especially didn’t want her.
Unless memory lied though, she had never refused him before. No matter what mood he was in. And he couldn’t think of the reason for it now. Unless she was aware of her hand? He was outnumbered, after all. What did she hope for? Him to give the whole game away by behaving like Captain Flint? Holding a knife to Malmesbury’s throat? Swinging from the chandelier?
“I wouldn’t call it a house of pure repute. Not what’s been going on here.” He held up a warning hand. “Your call, Miss Fury.”
“You…you mean the signora has made her mind up? Finally?” Vellaggio piped up for the first time.
“She has indeed. And depending on who it is, two of you might just get a small guided tour of this house, with all its many attractions.”
“Attractions? You mean zere are more than Signora Furee?”
“Oh, there are plenty more. Isn’t that so, Fury?”
Her darkening eyes were like pistols at five paces. But that was all right because his own could be just as dangerous, when he chose to make them so. He chose now.
“I know it’s maybe not what you agreed with them, all that leaving within the hour stuff and that. But you want me to do that, don’t you? Show the gentlemen around while you’re busy? Then, while I’m about it, have a chat about old times…in Jamaica.”
“Old times? In Jamaica?” The lucky one hiccupped, lowering the handkerchief from his mouth. “I say, Fury, what is he on about? Hic. You was never in Jamaica, was you?”
She parted her lips, as if he’d said something ghastly. “He…he means that he knows me. That is what this is about, unfortunately.”
This time, because she did not look at him, he had the opportunity to study her. But then she did look at him, and he wished she hadn’t. He didn’t want any pang about those pretty little emerald eyes of hers or the straight way she stood, just like the day he had flung that trunk at her on the quay, nipping his—if he’d had a heart, that trunk would still be on the Calypso.
Which was more than he was right now. He tilted his jaw, offering his best glare.
“He knows you?” Malmesbury demanded.
“Yes. From—from Jamaica, where I…I must have lived for a while.”
“Must have?”
Malmesbury cocked an eyebrow. So, Flint wasn’t alone in feeling pressured?
“Fury, this is most unusual, not to mention outright ridiculous.” Malmesbury crossed his arms. “Either you did or you didn’t.”
She tensed her hands in her flowing skirt. “I did.”
“Before you met Thom—”
“Yes. Amazing, isn’t it?” She didn’t sound as though she thought so. In fact Flint wasn’t too sure how she sounded. She narrowed her eyes. “We were friends.”
Malmesbury dropped his jaw open. Dropped it so far, Flint expected to be told to retrieve it from the floor. Vellaggio’s too. A miracle they thought she’d have any? Or that she did and it was Flint?
“Nothing more. Although he is, of course, most keen and eager to continue the association. And I…I…well…I…” She looked as if she stared down a viper on the staircase.
“What?”
Flint hoped he’d kept his mouth shut and that exclamation had come from Malmesbury, not him. So long as she was nice about it, he wouldn’t see her stuck. Right now, he hadn’t decided. Because what she’d just said about him being keen to continue the association, keen was an overstatement, given the fact her husband lay in a box in the cellar.
How could any man possibly be keen? Certainly not one in his right mind. Anyway, the damned baggage hadn’t exactly said yes, yet, had she? And her look was not encouraging. Would she really rather swallow poison? The old Fury would have leaped into bed with him in an instant. But this one just stood like a horrified statue beneath his gaze.
“Continue? An association? With him?” Malmesbury’s uneasy chuckle echoed through the hall.
Fury’s eyes darkened in a way Flint had never seen before. Uneasy laughter or not, Flint seethed with a fury that was almost forlorn. Just his luck she’d chosen to call here tonight the very types to make him look ridiculous. And it was ridiculous, he supposed. What they were and what he was.
She didn’t need telling. And her silence gave consent to making him feel all the things he’d felt since he was captured.
“Oh, don’t be so silly. Next you’ll be telling us you’re picking him. My damn valet, for God’s sake. Now stop it. You have not called us all here to do that.”
“Actually…actually this man, this man you talk so freely of beating
, sir, is not a valet, by nature or inclination.”
And now, now she was going to blab he was Captain Flint, master of the Calypso—the very last thing he needed. So then they could laugh very loudly indeed. And send him back to Jamaica in chains, if they let him live that long. She had been on that boat too.
“Not a valet?” Malmesbury said before Flint could open his mouth to defend himself. “You two could have fooled me, when I’ve had him polishing my shoe buckles and fitting on my clothes, pressing them too, since I bought him in Jamaica. At a slave auction.”
“A—Sir, Capt—”
“Let it go, Fury.” Flint gritted his teeth.
Furious color bloomed along her cheekbones. “No. I shan’t let it go.” To his astonishment she turned to Malmesbury. “Indeed, you must think yourself very clever, sir. But if he has been doing these things, then it will stop.”
“Stop? I beg your pardon? Stop? Why the hell should it stop?” Malmesbury strode forward. The fact he stood on the landing lent his squat, night-shirted body the power to glare down at her. “You give orders very lightly, madam, with a disdain for my position and my person I do not deserve. I have come here tonight as an obligement to you. Not for you to order me about in the matter of my servants.”
“Allow me to put it another way, sir. You will release him from these duties, so I can make use of him here.”
Malmesbury glanced about him. No one laughed now. She had emptied the hall of all humor. The cool, taut way she said the word here stole the breath from more than Malmesbury. Flint raised his chin, scarcely able to believe it. Although, was it so astonishing? Even someone as recalcitrant and as troublesome as this creature was bound to see Flint was preferable to a yardarm, eventually.
“I will do no such thing. Are you mad?”
“Not at all.” She spoke as if the idea were inconceivable in connection with herself. But the words still carried weight in the stunned silence. “I think we can agree that with what I have on you, you will do it now or face the opening of my little book.”
The Unraveling of Lady Fury Page 3
