“As a cabin boy, I was the least necessary member of the crew. When we’d go to shore, and other members of the crew had scuffles with the law, I’d be offered up to take their punishment for them.”
Lady Agatha gasped and covered her mouth with her hands as her eyes filled with tears.
“And yet you kept going to shore with them?” Edmund asked. “One has to wonder about your degree of intelligence given that you knew what would happen.”
“One has to wonder at your degree of intelligence that you think I was given any choice in the matter,” Graham snapped back at him. “I had my reasons for keeping those things to myself. Primarily that I knew how upsetting Lady Agatha would find them. But as you’ve insisted we drag out all the ugliness into the drawing room, shall we address your unwanted advances toward Beatrice?”
Edmund blanched but Eloise was at the ready. “Beatrice has been flirting with Edmund for years, being nothing more than a little tease. And while I cannot condone his infidelity, given her very forward behavior, it is little wonder that he strayed.”
“You have nothing more than a passing acquaintance with the truth, do you, Madam?” Graham demanded. The pair of them was infuriating.
*
“Oh, Miss! You must come at once,” Betsy exclaimed as she dashed into Beatrice’s room.
“I cannot possibly go downstairs like this,” Beatrice insisted as she gestured toward the dark bruise that had formed on her cheek. Despite her best efforts, there would be no concealing it. Edmund had well and truly left his mark.
“You don’t have a choice, Miss! Mr. Blakemore is demanding that his lordship reveal his back to them to see if he bears the Blakemore birthmark!”
Beatrice would not even consider going downstairs for that. If Graham were removing any articles of clothing, she needed to remain as far from that room as possible. “So let him. It would be a quick end to all of Edmund’s games.”
“His back is marked, Miss Beatrice, but not from birth… one of the maids saw it when she took in fresh towels to his lordship just before dinner. His back is covered in thick scars—most likely from flogging. All the servants are carrying on about it below stairs… wondering the hows and whys!”
Reluctantly, Beatrice rose from her bed. She was not dressed for dinner but still wore the same gown she’d had on that morning. Her hair was mussed from lying in bed, but there was no time to fix it. “They’re in the drawing room then?”
“Yes, Miss,” Betsy answered.
Leaving her room, Beatrice’s heart was racing. She couldn’t imagine what was going on below stairs, but she knew beyond a doubt that Edmund had been informed of the scars marring Graham’s back. He never would have risked asking to see the mark if he was not utterly certain it was no longer present.
As she neared the drawing room, she could hear raised voices. Saying a quick prayer, she opened the door and stepped into chaos. Edmund was screeching, demanding that Graham be thrown from the house. Graham was shouting that Edmund should do it himself if he were man enough. Christopher had left. Eloise was perched on a chair, bright-eyed and smiling, watching the scene unfold as if it were a play at Drury Lane. The servants were all gathered in the hall staring at the door with trepidation. And Lady Agatha was on the settee, her face pale and wan, clearly beside herself at the commotion.
“Enough!” Beatrice shouted. “Stop it this instant! Both of you!”
Whether it was the shock at being called down like misbehaving boys or embarrassment at their actions, they both fell silent. Graham’s gaze turned to her and then to Lady Agatha. His jaw tightened and his lips firmed into a thin, hard line.
“Forgive me, my lady,” he said. “It was not my intent to upset you further.”
“All this fighting!” Agatha cried. “I simply cannot tolerate it. It’s too distressing by far. Surely, Graham, there is some way for you to prove it and end all of this fuss?”
“I know of none other than to let the investigator dig up whatever information he may. The birthmark is indistinguishable now,” he answered softly. “If you like, I will leave. I can stay at the inn in the village until the necessary information has been gathered!”
“Yes! That is precisely what you should do!” Edmund shouted with triumph. “Get him out of this house.”
“No,” Lady Agatha said, weeping softly. “I will not see you lost to me again when you have only just returned.”
“There is another mark,” Beatrice said. She couldn’t stand to see Lady Agatha so overset. But there were other reasons. Graham’s presence offered her a measure of safety from Edmund’s advances and, yet, if she were completely honest with herself, she could admit that was not her only reason. She was inexplicably drawn to him, like a moth to a flame. His presence, regardless of Edmund’s advances, made her feel safe and secure.
“What?” Edmund and Eloise asked the question in unison. Their stunned expressions might have been comical had there not been so much at stake.
“We were learning to use bows,” Beatrice reminded Lady Agatha, doing her best to ignore the avaricious couple. “Graham insisted that he knew what he was doing and did not require assistance. He wound up slicing his forearm with the bow string. The cut was very deep.”
Agatha clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oh, how could I have forgotten? You were such a little thing then. Nicholas and I even argued about it because I said you were too young to play with such dangerous things. He laughed at me and said that you had to start young to learn the skill well.”
“Which arm?” Edmund demanded and his tone was much less supercilious than it had been. Eloise, too, had lost her smugness. Still seated in the chair, her spine had grown stiff and she appeared tensed and ready.
“The left,” Beatrice answered, even as she uttered a silent prayer. It was an old injury—perhaps no scar remained or perhaps he wasn’t Graham at all.
She couldn’t take her eyes from Graham as he shrugged out of his coat. It was not the kind of garment fashioned for a gentleman, so tight that it required a servant to don and doff. It was the jacket of a sailor or a laborer, loose enough in the arms and the shoulders to allow free range of movement.
When it was gone, and he wore only his shirtsleeves and a plain, serviceable waistcoat that molded to his broad shoulders and the flat, hard surface of his chest, she felt her breath catch. It was not an intimate thing. He was, by no means, the first man she’d ever seen in his shirtsleeves, but he did not have the physique of a gentleman. He reminded her very much of the bare-knuckled fighters she’d seen at a fair once near the village. Heavy muscles and lean hips, it was disconcerting to say the least.
She stood back as he grasped the sleeve of his shirt and tugged it upward to reveal his arm. His skin was bronzed even beneath his shirt. The crisp, dark hair on his forearm fascinated her far more than was good for her. Then he turned his hand palm up and revealed the paler skin on the inside of his forearm.
A thin white line bisected the flesh, just a few inches above his wrist. Beatrice released a breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding. Her doubts had been far greater than she’d realized—doubt that he was who he claimed to be, doubt that, after so many years, such a minor injury would still mar his flesh, doubt that shoring up his claim and allowing him to remain inside the walls of Castle Black was a wise decision for her. So many doubts.
Agatha reached for him, clasping his hand and pressing a soft kiss to it. “I never doubted you. Not once. If you’ve further doubts, Edmund,” she said, directing the full force of her ire to her nephew, “you will keep them to yourself or you and your vicious harpy of a wife will leave Castle Black and never return. Is that understood?”
Chastened but hardly defeated, Edmund gave a curt nod before sweeping from the room. Eloise followed at his heels, pausing only long enough to toss a glacial glare over her should at Beatrice. It was not the first time they had disagreed, Beatrice thought bitterly. It would hardly be the last. Edmund had his own agenda, but it would not be the same for Elo
ise. While they were civil for the most part, the two were not a couple wildly in love, certainly not enough to be partners in crime. Whatever was occurring, they might have a common goal, but their reasons for wishing to attain it would be vastly different.
“You should rest,” Beatrice said. “I know it is time for dinner to be served, but I think a tray in your room would be for the best, Lady Agatha. All this is simply too much for you. It’s too much for anyone.”
The older woman nodded and rose stiffly. “You’re so very right, my dear… my goodness what happened to your cheek?”
Beatrice lowered her lashes. “I fell, Lady Agatha. Tripped over air as I am wont to do.”
“You are a clumsy thing at times, my child. Do be cautious!”
“Yes, ma’am. I will. Would you like me to escort you to your room?” she asked. She wanted Agatha to say yes. She wanted to not be left alone with Graham. She still felt too shaken by the tension she’d sensed between them earlier. He elicited feelings inside her that she could not name and that she was far too wise to indulge.
“No, my dear. You stay and have dinner with Graham… I don’t want him alone. His welcome here has been shoddy enough already. But I am so very tired.”
Beatrice nodded. “Of course. I will come check on you before I retire.”
Lady Agatha patted her unmarked cheek and then tenderly pressed a kiss to Graham’s. “My son is returned to me. If my body were not so cursedly frail these days I would shout my joy from the battlements.”
“There will be time enough for that when you are rested,” Graham teased her gently.
Lady Agatha lifted her cheek and he dutifully kissed it, though such a tender gesture seemed out of character for him. When Lady Agatha had gone, he turned to Beatrice and said, “Thank you for that. For helping me with them.”
“You are welcome, of course, though I did nothing but offer the truth,” she answered, uncomfortable with his praise.
“I fear they are more concerned with how my presence affects them than with my actual identity.” He paused then, idly picking up a figurine from the table and examining it. “The maid was very quick to provide that information to Mrs. Blakemore and she, in turn, was eager to offer it to her husband. Am I so distrusted by everyone then?”
Beatrice laughed. “Oh, that is certainly not the way of it, my lord. The servants cannot abide Eloise. She is impossibly demanding and they would never do anything to assist her… as for assisting Edmund, his skinflint ways have resulted in many trusted servants departing Castle Black for greener pastures.”
His frown deepened, harsh lines bracketing a mouth that, were it not for his fierce expression, might have been called too pretty. “Then how did she learn of my scars? She whispered to Edmund and, immediately after, he demanded that I reveal the birthmark which they both clearly believed was not present. How did she know?”
It was Beatrice’s turn to frown. “I cannot say. But it is incredibly odd and certainly bears further looking into.”
He replaced the figurine. “Shall we go into dinner then? Just the two of us?”
Beatrice could only classify her reaction as panic. It would be a horrible mistake to spend more time in his company, to feed her growing fascination with him. “I can’t stay here with you.”
“It’s only for dinner. We will be well chaperoned by the four hundred servants lurking about,” he protested.
“Servants are never an adequate chaperone… and it isn’t wise for us to be so much in one another’s company,” she admitted reluctantly.
“Because I’m a rough-mannered sailor and you are a lady?” he asked. There was a curtness to his tone. She had wounded his pride.
“No,” Beatrice replied. “Because I should treat you as a sister would. That is what we were as children, growing up here like siblings. But that is not how I feel now, and when you look at me—” She stopped, too embarrassed to continue.
“When I look at you?” he prompted.
Beatrice shook her head and walked away from him, moving toward the window to put distance between them. He followed and she realized that she had known he would. It was not in his nature to give up the pursuit.
“When I look at you,” he said softly as he lifted a lock of her hair that had escaped from its pins. He rubbed it between his fingers in a way that made her want to lean into him, to let him touch any part of her he wished if only he would do so with that gentle intensity.
“It is not brotherly,” he continued, his voice pitched low and deep. There was a gruffness to it she had not heard before but it didn’t frighten her. It awakened something inside her, something wanton and wicked. “We are not siblings. We are little more than strangers and, yet, every part of me screams that should be rectified.”
“And that is why we should stay far from one another, my lord. You are Lord Blakemore. It is your duty to marry well—to secure an heiress and ensure the family coffers are plump for generations to come. I am not an heiress. Were it not for the charity of your family, heaven knows where I’d be today.”
“And that is where you think my mind has gone? To marriage?” he demanded.
Beatrice blushed. “No. I do not think it has. And therein lies the crux of the matter. I may be a penniless ward of your family, I may not have anything that belongs solely to me in this world, but I have my honor and I mean to keep it. So you keep your distance, Lord Blakemore, and I will keep mine.”
*
It would shock her to know that marriage had crossed his mind, that it had been tumbling about in the recesses of his brain from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. But he couldn’t say that to her. He would not offer her something that he was not yet free to give. When his identity was thoroughly proven, when the House of Lords dismissed Edmund’s claims for surely he would bring formal suit there to have him declared an imposter and the real Lord Graham Blakemore dead, only then could he offer her more.
Even as he conceded in his mind that she was completely right, that distance between them was the wisest course of action, he found himself reaching for her. One of his hands snaked around her wrist and pulled her closer to him. There was a second of resistance, a slight hesitation, and then she let him have his way.
They were close, their breaths mingling and their lips scant inches apart.
“I don’t care who I am supposed to marry or why. When I marry, it will be because I have chosen to do so and because the woman I make my bride is one I cannot live without,” he vowed softly. “But right now, I think I cannot live another moment without kissing you. I want to kiss you, Beatrice, very badly.”
“And I want to be kissed,” she whispered in reply. “But it isn’t wise.”
“Then wisdom be damned,” he muttered, before claiming her lips.
The taste of her was sweeter than he’d anticipated. Her skin was like velvet against his and her lips were so soft that it could only make him think how soft she would be elsewhere. The delights concealed by her modest gown called to him, but she was not some dockside tavern wench to be tumbled for a coin.
But lady or no, Beatrice was not immune to desire. As his lips moved over hers, testing every curve, mapping the lush contours and memorizing the satiny texture, she began to kiss him back. Shy and untutored, it incited his lust more than any woman ever had.
Lifting one hand to her slightly mussed hair, he let the silken strands slide through his fingers. Without warning, he tightened his fist. Not pulling her hair, but holding her there with firm, commanding pressure. She gasped, and it was the opportunity he had been waiting for.
Sweeping his tongue into the warm recesses of her mouth, tangling it against hers, he felt the precise moment when all resistance fled. She sank against him, her body lax and warm. The crush of her breasts against his chest was sensual torment and, yet, he would not sacrifice that torture for anything. It was a victory and he would claim it as such.
He kissed her thoroughly. It was not the way a man should kiss a woman who was stil
l innocent. He kissed her as he would have a skilled and experienced lover, until they were both breathless and shuddering, clinging to one another.
It was the dinner gong that brought him to his senses. Abruptly, Graham pulled his lips from hers. Her face was flushed, lips parted and swollen, and her eyes were glazed by passion.
“Do not stay for dinner… ask for a tray in your room and, for God’s sake, stay far away from me until I can trust what little decency I have in me not just to take you here,” he implored, his voice roughened by need and his words harsher than necessary.
She straightened abruptly, pulling away from him in shock and horror at what had nearly passed between them. There were no words, but none were needed. Her fleeing form was all the confirmation he needed to be certain that she had been as lost to the moment as he had been.
*
It was after midnight when she came to him, when the rest of the house had finally succumbed to sleep. She slipped into the room he had claimed for his own. Her expression was contrite.
“It didn’t work,” she said. “Because of Beatrice. She ruined everything.”
Fury washed through him, but he tamped it down. It was not her fault and he would not punish her for the failing, not out of any sense of fairness but because he recognized the need to never let her be certain of his reactions. It was the most effective way to control her. “Do not worry, my darling. I will take care of Beatrice. Our plans will go forward.”
She ran to him then, pressing herself against him. The heaviness of her breasts against his side stirred his lust. “I was so afraid you would be angry with me,” she admitted, her voice nearly childlike.
“My dear, Eloise, I have never had a more worthy and willing ally. Why would I be angry? You could not have known that Beatrice would rush to his rescue or that she would provide such information.”
She drew back from him. “You knew! You heard the entire thing!”
“I did hear it… and I saw it. I also saw them together afterward. Your Beatrice is not nearly as innocent as she claims. Innocents do not allow filthy pirates to kiss them as eagerly as she did!”
Regency Scandals and Scoundrels Collection Page 76
