With This Kiss: Part Three

by Eloisa James

  “I don’t think you look like a man,” James said, finally inspecting her from head to foot.

  “You know that opera dancer you’ve been squiring about?”

  “You’re not supposed to know about Bella!”

  “Why on earth not? Mama and I were in Oxford Street when you passed in an open carriage, so Mama explained everything. She even knew that your mistress is an opera dancer. I have to say, James, I think it’s amazing that you got yourself a mistress whom everyone knows about, even people like my mother.”

  “I can’t believe Mrs. Saxby told you that rot.”

  “What? She’s not an opera dancer?”

  He scowled. “You’re supposed to pretend that women like that don’t exist.”

  “Don’t be thick, James. Ladies know all about mistresses. And it isn’t as if you’re married. If you carry on like that once you are married, I’m going to be terrifically nasty to you. I’ll definitely tell your wife. So beware. I don’t approve.”

  “Of Bella, or of matrimony?”

  “Of married men who run about London with voluptuous women with hair the color of flax and morals that are just as lax.”

  She paused for a moment, but James just rolled his eyes. “It’s not easy to rhyme extempore, you know,” she told him.

  He obviously didn’t care, so she returned to the subject. “It’s all very well now, but you’ll have to give up Bella when you marry. Or whatever her replacement’s name is by then.”

  “I don’t want to get married,” James said. There was a kind of grinding tension in his voice that made Theo look at him more closely.

  “You’ve been quarreling with your father, haven’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “In the library?”

  He nodded again.

  “Did he try to brain you with that silver candlestick?” she asked. “Cramble told me that he was going to put it away, but I noticed it was still there yesterday.”

  “He demolished a porcelain shepherdess.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. Cramble bought a whole collection of them in Haymarket and strewed them all around the house in obvious places hoping your father would snatch those as opposed to anything of value. He will be quite pleased to see that his plan is working. So what were you rowing about?”

  “He wants me to marry.”

  “Really?” Theo felt a not altogether pleasant pang of surprise. Of course James had to marry… someday. But at the moment she rather liked him as he was: hers. Well, hers and Bella’s. “You’re too young,” she said protectively.

  “You are only seventeen and you’re looking for a husband.”

  “But that’s just the right age for a woman to marry. Mama didn’t let me debut until this year precisely because of that. Men should be far older than nineteen. I expect thirty or one-and-thirty is about right. What’s more, you’re young for your age,” she added.

  James narrowed his eyes. “I am not.”

  “You are,” she said smugly. “I saw how you were flitting about with Bella, showing her off as if she were a new coat. You probably set her up in some sort of appalling little house draped in blush-colored satin.”

  His scowl was truly ferocious, which, rather than alarming her, merely gave Theo confirmation. “At the very least, she could have chosen some shade of blue. Women with yellow hair always think that pink shades will flatter their skin. Whereas a blue, say a cerulean or even violet, would be far more pleasing.”

  “I’ll let her know. You do realize, Daisy, that you’re not supposed to mention women like Bella in polite company, let alone offer advice on how they should design their nests?”

  “When did you become polite company? Do not call me Daisy,” Theo retorted. “Whom are you thinking of marrying?” She did not like uttering that question. She had something of a possessive bent when it came to James.

  “I have no one in mind.” But the corner of his mouth twitched.

  “You’re lying!” she cried, pouncing on it. “You do have someone in mind! Who is she?”

  He sighed. “There’s no one.”

  “Since you haven’t been to a single ball this year, I cannot imagine whom you could have fixed your eye on. Did you go to any balls last year, when I was still confined to the schoolroom? Of course, I should play an important part in choosing your betrothed,” Theo said, getting into the spirit of it. “I know you better than anyone else. She’ll have to be musical, given what a beautiful voice you have.”

  “I am not interested in anyone who can sing.” James’s eyes flashed at her in a way that Theo secretly rather liked. Most of the time he was just the funny, wry “brother” she’d had her whole life, but occasionally he turned electric with fury and she saw him in a whole different light. Like a man, she decided. Odd thought.

  She waved her hands. “For goodness’ sake, James, calm down. I must have mistaken the sure sign that you were fibbing.” She grinned at him. “Do you think I would tease you about your choice? I, who blurted out my adoration of Geoffrey? At least you don’t have to worry about being entirely overlooked by your beloved. You’re quite good looking; the girls don’t know you well enough to guess at your faults; you sing like an angel when someone can coax you into it; and you shall have a title someday. They would have fallen about hoping to dance with you last night and I could have watched it from the side.”

  “I loathe balls,” James said, but he wasn’t really paying attention. He was trying to puzzle something out; she recognized the look.

  “She’s not married, is she?” Theo asked.

  “Married? Who’s married?”

  “The woman who has fixed your attention!”

  “There isn’t anyone.” The edge of his mouth didn’t curl, so he was probably telling the truth.

  “Petra Abbot-Sheffield has a lovely singing voice,” Theo said thoughtfully.

  “I hate singing.”

  Theo knew that, but she thought he would surely grow out of it. When James sang “Lives again our glorious king!” in church she found herself shivering all over at the pure beauty of it, the way his voice swooped up to the rafters and then settled into an angel’s trumpet for “Where, O death, is now thy sting?” Whenever he sang she thought of bright green leaves in late spring. “Isn’t it interesting that I think in colors,” she asked now, “and you think in music?”

  “Not at all, because I do not think about music.”

  “Well, you should think in music,” Theo revised. “Given your voice.” But he was obviously in a serious temper, and she had learned over the years that the best tactic was not to engage when he was peevish.

  “I wish I had your advantages.” She dropped onto her bed and drew up her knees so she could hug them against her chest. “If I were you, Geoffrey would be at my feet.”

  “I doubt it. He wouldn’t want a wife who has to shave twice a day.”

  “You know what I meant. All I need is for people to start paying attention to me,” Theo said, rocking back and forth a little bit. “If I just had even the smallest audience, I could be funny. You know I could, James. I could talk circles about Claribel. I just need one proper suitor, someone who’s not a fortune hunter. Someone who would…” An idea popped into her head, fully formed and beautiful.

  “James!”

  “What?” He raised his head.

  For a moment, looking at him, she almost dropped her idea. His eyes were positively tragic, and there were hollows in his cheeks, as if he hadn’t eaten enough lately. He looked exhausted. “Are you all right? What on earth did you do last night? You look like a drunkard who spent a night in a back alley.”

  “I’m fine.”

  One had to suppose he had spent the previous evening drowning in cognac. Her mother was of the opinion that gentlemen pickled themselves in the stuff by age thirty as a matter of course. “I have an idea,” she said, returning to her point. “But it would mean that you’d have to delay your plan to marry for the immediate present.”

  �
�I have no such plan. I don’t wish to get married, no matter what my father says about it.” James could be maddeningly sullen when he wished. It had gotten better since he was fifteen, but not that much better. “Do you know what I hate most in the world?”

  “I’m sure you’ll say your father, but you don’t really mean it.”

  “Besides him. I hate feeling guilty.”

  “Who on earth makes you feel guilty? You’re the perfect scion of the house of Ashbrook.”

  He ran a hand through his hair again. “That’s just what everyone thinks. Sometimes I would kill to go away, where they’ve never heard of earls and noblesse oblige and all the rest of it. Where a man could be judged on who he is, rather than on his title and the rest of that tomfoolery.”

  Theo frowned at him. “I don’t see where the guilt comes in.”

  “I’ll never be good enough.” He got up and strode to the side of the room to look out the window.

  “You’re being absurd! Everyone loves you, including me, and if that doesn’t mean something, I don’t know what does. I know you better than anyone in the world, and if I say you’re good enough, then you are.”

  He turned around, and she found to her relief that he had a lopsided smile on his face. “Daisy, do you suppose you’ll try to take over the House of Parliament someday?”

  “They should be so lucky!” she retorted. “But seriously, James, will you at least listen to my plan?”

  “To conquer the world?”

  “To conquer Geoffrey, which is much more important. If you would pretend to woo me, just long enough so that I would be noticed, it would mean the world to me. You never come to balls, and if you began to escort me, then everyone would be asking why, and before we knew it, I would find myself talking to Geoffrey about something… and then I could charm him into overlooking my profile and he would be mine.” She sat back, triumphant. “Isn’t that a brilliant plan?”

  James’s eyes narrowed. “It has some advantages.”

  “Such as?”

  “Father would think I was wooing you and leave me alone for a bit.”

  Theo clapped. “Perfect! I’m absolutely certain that Geoffrey will talk to you. Wasn’t he head boy in your last year at Eton?”

  “Yes, and because of that I can tell you straight out that Trevelyan would make an uncomfortable husband. He’s far too clever for his own good. And he has a nasty way of making jokes about people.”

  “That’s what I like about him.”

  “Not to mention the fact that he’s ugly as sin,” James added.

  “He isn’t! He’s deliciously tall and his eyes are bronzy-brown colored. They make me think of—”

  “Do not tell me,” James said with an expression of utter revulsion. “I don’t want to know.”

  “Of morning chocolate,” Theo said, ignoring him. “Or Tib’s eyes when he was a puppy.”

  “Tib is a dog,” James said, displaying a talent for the obvious. “You think the love of your life looks like a ten-year-old obese dog?” He assumed a mockingly thoughtful attitude. “You’re right! Trevelyan does have a doggy look about him! Why didn’t I notice that?”

  Demonstrating that she had not spent seventeen years in the Duke of Ashbrook’s household for nothing, Theo threw one of her slippers straight at James’s head. It skimmed his ear, which led to an ungraceful (and rather juvenile) scene in which he chased her around the bedchamber. When he caught her, he snatched her around the waist, bent her forward, and rubbed his knuckles into her skull while she howled in protest.

  It was a scene that Theo’s bedroom, and indeed, many other chambers on various Ashbrook estates, had seen many a time.

  But even as Theo howled and kicked at his ankles, James had the sudden realization that he was holding a fragrant bundle of woman. That those were breasts against his arm. That Daisy’s rounded bottom was grinding against him and it felt…

  His hands flew apart without conscious volition, and she fell to the ground with an audible thud. There was true annoyance in her voice as she rose, rubbing her knee.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she scolded. “You’ve never let me fall before.”

  “We shouldn’t play such games. We’re— You’re soon to be a married woman, after all.”

  Theo narrowed her eyes.

  “And my arm is sore,” James added quickly, feeling his cheeks warm. He hated lying. And he particularly hated lying to Daisy.

  “You look fine to me,” she said, giving him a sweeping glance. “I don’t see an injury that warrants your dropping me on the floor like a teacup.”

  It wasn’t until James practically ran from the room that Theo sank onto the bed and thought about what she had seen.

  She’d seen that particular bulge in men’s breeches before. It was a shock to see it on James, though. She didn’t think of him in those terms.

  But then, all of a sudden, she did.

  Excerpt from

  SEDUCED BY A PIRATE

  One

  May 30, 1816

  45 Berkeley Square

  The London residence of the Duke of Ashbrook

  As a boy, Sir Griffin Barry, sole heir to Viscount Moncrieff, had no interest in the history of civilized England. He had dreamed of Britain’s past, when men were warriors and Vikings ruled the shores, fancying himself at the helm of a longboat, ferociously tattooed like an ancient Scottish warrior.

  At eighteen he was a pirate, and at twenty-two he captained his own ship, the Flying Poppy. By a few years later, just a glimpse of a black flag emblazoned with a blood-red flower would make a hardened seaman quiver with fear.

  No one knew that Griffin’s ship was named for his wife, whose name was Poppy. He had even tattooed a small blue poppy high on one cheekbone in her honor, although he had known her for only one day—and never consummated the marriage.

  Yet he always felt a certain satisfaction in that small sign of respect. Over the years, Griffin had forged his own code of honor. He never shot a man in the back, never walked anyone down the plank, and never offered violence to a woman. What’s more, he sacked any of his crew who thought that the Flying Poppy’s fearsome reputation gave them the liberty to indulge their worst inclinations.

  Though to be sure, the royal pardon recently issued for himself and his cousin James, the Duke of Ashbrook, described them as privateers, not pirates.

  Griffin knew the distinction was slight. It was true that in the last seven years he and James had limited themselves to attacking only pirate and slave ships, never legitimate merchant vessels.

  But it was equally true that he was, and had been, a pirate. And now that he was back in England he wasn’t going to pretend that he’d been fiddling around the globe in a powdered wig, dancing reels in foreign ballrooms.

  On the other hand, he was damn sure that the wife he scarcely remembered wouldn’t be happy to find out that she was married to a pirate. Or even to a privateer.

  However you looked at it, he was a sorry excuse for a gentleman, with a limp and a tattoo and fourteen hard years at sea under his belt. Not exactly the respectable baronet to whom her father had betrothed her.

  He didn’t relish the idea of strolling into a house somewhere around Bath—he wasn’t even sure where—and announcing that he was Lady Barry’s long-lost husband. An involuntary stream of curses came from his lips at the very thought. He even felt something akin to fear, an emotion he managed to avoid in the fiercest of sea battles.

  Of course, he and James had entered those battles together, shoulder to shoulder. That was undoubtedly why he blurted out an unconscionably ungentlemanly offer, one that would horrify his father.

  “Want a bet on which of us gets his wife to bed faster?”

  James didn’t look particularly shocked, but he pointed out the obvious: “Not the action of gentlemen.”

  Griffin’s response was, perhaps, a little sharp for that very reason. “It’s too late to claim that particular status,” he said to James. “You can play the
duke all you like, but a gentleman? No. You’re no gentleman.”

  From the grin playing around James’s mouth, it seemed likely he was going to accept the bet. It was hard to say which of them faced the biggest battle. Griffin couldn’t remember his wife’s face, but at least he’d supported her financially in his absence. James’s wife had been on the verge of declaring him seven years missing, and therefore dead.

  “If I accept your bet, you’ll have to take yourself off to Bath and actually talk to your wife,” James observed.

  Talk to her? Griffin didn’t have much interest in talking to Poppy.

  He had left a lovely young woman behind. Due to various circumstances beyond his control—which he didn’t like thinking about to this day—he had left her a virgin. Unsatisfied.

  Untouched.

  No, he didn’t want to talk to his wife.

  It was time to go home, obviously. It would be easier if he hadn’t taken a knife wound to the leg. But to come home a cripple…

  After James left, Griffin walked around the bedchamber once more, trying to stretch his leg, then paused at a window looking over the small garden behind James’s town house. The alley was full of gawking men, journalists who had caught wind of the news that the returned duke was a pirate. They’d probably be out there for the next week, baying like hounds at a glimpse of James or his poor wife.

  Griffin’s man, Shark, entered the room as he turned from the window. “Pack our bags, Shark. We need to escape the menagerie surrounding this house. Has rabble congregated at the front as well?”

  “Yes,” Shark replied, moving over to the wardrobe. “The butler says it’s a fair mob out there. We should bolt before they break down the door.”

  “They won’t do that.”

  “You never know,” Shark said, a huge grin making the tattoo under his right eye crinkle. “Apparently London is riveted by the idea of a pirate duke. Hasn’t been such excitement since the czar paid a visit to the king, according to the butler.”

  Griffin’s response was heartfelt, and blasphemous.