Temptation (10 page)

“Indeed, you are not.” His breath was hot on her neck, and it sent sharp red spikes of pleasure darting into her flesh. “You are Beatrice, the woman I love. The only woman in the world for me.”

If she thought that eating too much plum cake was hard to resist, the temptation that the captain posed was a hundred times greater. No, a thousand times. “You do not know who I am.”

“Then give me a chance, my love.” His eyes were serious, pleading. His fingertips touched her cheek, lightly, reverently. It was the brush of a butterfly wing, the touch of gossamer, and it shattered her resolve into tiny shards. She would die to be touched like this. “Let me get to know you. Get to know me in return.”

“And Dr. Hyde? What of him?” She crossed her arms over her chest to protect herself, to hold herself together. The touch of her bodice grated against her suddenly sensitive nipples, and she let out a tiny moan. It was too much for her. She could not fight on all fronts.

“You are not promised.” His voice was demanding, inexorable.

“Not yet.” It was a cry for help, a cry for mercy. If she gave in to him now, she was lost.

He had no mercy. “Do not give him your promise.” His words were both a demand and a promise.

Nothing she had said or done in the last year would have given Dr. Hyde any indication she would not accept his suit. She had always intended to do so. She still intended to do so. “I must.” She could not honorably refuse him. Not now. Not even though her body was crying out for the touch of the captain’s hands. Dr. Hyde’s courtship, and her tacit acceptance of it, had gone too far.

“Delay it, then. For a fortnight. That is all I ask.”

“A week, then.” She dusted her hands off and pushed him away, getting to her feet to dismiss him before she did something she would regret, like pulling up her skirts and begging him to touch her between her legs where she ached for him. So much would she give the captain, but no more. This was her life he was playing with. “Next Sunday, I shall promise Dr. Hyde that I will become his wife.”

He leaned back on the sofa, his good arm behind his head, just watching her. “Unless I can convince you otherwise during that time.” Despite the lateness of the hour, he was in no hurry to leave.

She walked away from him toward the window, and pulled back the curtain to look out at the night. The lamplighter had lit the streetlight on the corner, and its pale glow cast a circle of illumination at its feet.

It was easier to think straight when the captain’s scent couldn’t distract her, when his closeness did not make her breath catch in her throat. Her whole body still burned for him, but her desire was under her control once again.

She stared at the pale circle of light in the night. “I made up my mind a long time ago that I would marry Dr. Hyde, and I generally get what I want. He is a sensible, rational choice for a woman in my position. I have to be honest with you—for all that you wear a handsome jacket and talk prettily to me, I do not like your chances of changing my mind.”

She had not heard him get up, but there he was behind her. “I always get what I want, too,” he breathed into her ear. “And I want you.” His lips touched the bare skin of her neck in a gentle kiss.

Then he was gone, and her neck was burning from the touch of his mouth. She put her hand to her neck, almost expecting to find it burned and blistered.

Her skin was unblemished, unmarred. But though the iron of his kiss had not marked her skin, it had branded her soul.

Captain Carterton strode down the road back to the barracks. Even at this hour, the streets were busy with all kinds of traffic: farmers coming in from the countryside with their produce to sell at the morning markets, gentlemen in top hats and canes striding home after an evening at the club, and women. Everywhere he looked there were women.

A pair of pretty girls, their skirts picked up high enough out of the mud that he could see their ankles, passed him by. He could not help smiling at them.

“Were you wanting a bit of company, then?” the bolder one of the two asked him, with a saucy wink. “A handsome gentleman like you could have the pair of us for half a crown apiece.”

He gave his head a rueful shake. “Not tonight, darling.” Though he was wound as tight as a watch spring, he had no interest in the myriad of pretty women that London had to offer. Only one of them would do for him. Compared to Beatrice, no other woman was worth stretching out a hand to pluck.

“It’s you as will be missing out on a grand offer, then,” she retorted without any heat in her words, and the girls walked on with their heads together, giggling.

He wasn’t interested in any woman’s grand offer. No woman but Beatrice could tempt him.

Knowing that she had been playing him all along should have made him angry with her, but it didn’t. He couldn’t be angry with the woman he loved. It simply made him all the more determined to win her for himself. No paltry fool of a doctor would snatch the prize he coveted from under his nose.

She might think that she was going to wed her eligible suitor, but he knew better. No woman could respond to him as she had done if she seriously meant to marry another man. Though he had barely touched her, she had almost gone up in flames at the merest brush of his lips against her neck. Shivering, flushing—every move she made showed him how susceptible to him she was.

If she thought she could live happily with her doctor, she was fooling herself. She desired him in person as much as she had pretended to desire him in her letters. The door was wide open for him to waltz in and win her heart. He awoke the passion in her soul as her doctor so clearly did not.

She had already shown herself susceptible to his kisses. The merest touch of his lips against her skin had her jumping like a startled rabbit. The deep flush on her neck and the heaving of her chest when he came near her had merely confirmed his suspicions. She was hot for him.

Despite the naughty letters she had written to him, she was still clearly an innocent—far more innocent than he had expected her to be. Such a combination as he had found in her, a heady mix of innocence and passion, would make her an easy target for seduction.

Her doctor could not be much of a man if he had courted her for over a year and had not already kissed her senseless. Beatrice did not act like a woman who was used to being kissed senseless. Her wildness was too deeply buried—he would have to coax it out of her little by little.

Before she knew what was happening, he would have her in his arms, kissing her as she ought to be kissed.

From there, it was but a short step to having her skirts up above her waist and be dabbling his fingers in her pussy. He would be fucking her with his fingers, and she would be panting in his arms, begging for more.

He wouldn’t let her come, though, not until she let him replace his fingers with his cock. Then, when she was impaled on his length, he would stroke her into pleasure.

Once he had charmed her into his bed, it would be child’s play to convince her that she had to wed him. He would take her first to his bed, and then to the altar as his wife.

Traditionally, the order was reversed, but he didn’t have the luxury of time. He had to win her before she settled on the doctor as the booby prize.

The following afternoon, Captain Carterton pulled up a chair and sat down next to Sergeant-Major Tofts, who was fidgeting in the hospital bed. “How’s your leg doing?” The sergeant-major’s leg had not healed properly since it had taken a bullet in the battle. In desperation Captain Carterton had arranged that very morning for him to be admitted to London’s best hospital in a bid to save it rather than allow his friend to take the army surgeon’s advice and have it amputated.

The fact that his Beatrice was a nurse at the same hospital was a delightful bonus. He could visit his friend and pay court to his beloved at the same time. She had given him a week to win her, and win her he would.

He’d stationed himself so he could see who was passing through the corridors as he sat with the sergeant-major. He’d ascertained from one of the other nurses that Beatrice was on duty in the ward today, and he would be sure to find some excuse to have her wait on his friend. With only a week to win her, he had no time to waste.

“I’m not used to staying still,” Sergeant-Major Tofts admitted, as he shifted uneasily on the bed. “My backside itches from lying on it.”

The captain grinned at his friend. “Just don’t ask me to itch it for you. Friendship has its limits.”

The doctors at St. Thomas’s Hospital had cleaned out the festering wound on the sergeant-major’s thigh and reset and re-splinted his leg. As far as the captain could tell, they had done a decent enough job of it. Better than the army butchers who called themselves surgeons. All that remained was to see if this time it would heal well enough for him to walk again.

Despite the gray pallor of his face, the major gave him a hearty smile that showed he was not dwelling on the very real possibility that he would lose his leg. “If I’m going to be laid up anywhere, it might as well be in the hospital that boasts the prettiest nurses in London.”

“They are treating you well, then?” Captain Carterton hoped so. He’d personally paid for the sergeant-major to have a private room rather than sharing a ward with a dozen other patients, thinking that the peace and quiet would aid in his friend’s recovery.

“The doctors say there’s a good chance of saving the leg. That’s better than I expected, and as much as I can hope for.” He sounded cheerfully resigned to whatever fate held in store for him.

Just then Captain Carterton caught of glimpse of a white uniform pass by. He could tell by the sway of her hips and the color of the hair underneath the white cap that it was Beatrice. He leaped to his feet and called down the corridor. “Nurse, nurse.” His bass-drum boom of his voice carried through the ward.

She turned toward him at his call. A look of pleasure flickered quickly over her face before being deliberately replaced with an expression of indifference. “Yes?”

“There’s a patient here who needs your help.”

She hurried toward him them, her soft-soled shoes making no sound on the linoleum floor. Brushing past him, she entered the room where the sergeant-major lay. “What is the matter?” she asked, her brow creased with worry.

Captain Carterton signaled frantically to the sergeant-major behind Beatrice’s back. “Invent something,” he mouthed silently, willing his friend to read his meaning. “Keep her here.”

“My leg…my leg pains me,” the sergeant-major said slowly.

Captain Carterton gave a sigh of relief and smiled encouragingly at his friend.

Beatrice drew back the covers on the bed on one side and looked at the sergeant-major’s bandaged leg. It had been washed and redressed earlier that morning, and the bandages looked clean and fresh. She probed at the edge of the bandages with deft fingers. “There’s no evidence of swelling or infection,” she murmured. “But you might be more comfortable if I elevated it a little. Let me go find you another bolster to prop it up on.”

The captain watched as she walked out of the room again, her hips swaying enticingly under her gown.

“I gather that is your Miss Clemens?” the sergeant-major asked wryly, as soon as she had left. “Teddy’s sister? She’s a pretty young thing. Kind, too.”

Carterton was still staring after her. “I’m going to marry her, you know. I’m not going to let her get away from me.”

The sergeant-major heaved a sigh of envy mixed with resignation. “It’s been years since I felt that way about a woman. I don’t know if I have it in me anymore.”

“She is my soul mate. The only woman I have ever loved.” His words were no exaggeration, but the pure and simple truth. He could not imagine his life without her.

“I wondered why you were being so attentive to your old friend,” the sergeant-major said with a grimace. “It’s the lure of a pretty nurse, not the pleasure of my conversation, that brought you in here so bright and early this morning to see to my welfare.”

The captain punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Be a good chap and find another errand for her to run for you when she comes back. One that will keep her here for a while longer.”

“Can’t you get your own woman? You expect your wounded comrade to play the pimp for you?”

The captain was still glaring at him when Beatrice came back in, a small, stuffed bolster in her hand. She placed it carefully under the sergeant-major’s leg. “There, that should take some of the pressure off. Now, is there anything else you need to make you more comfortable?”

The sergeant-major winked at Captain Carterton behind her back. “I…I’d like a glass of water, please, nurse, if you’re not too busy. I’ve got a thirst on me like a desert.”

Beatrice shot a suspicious glance at the captain, but when she turned back to her patient, her face was all sweetness and light again. “Of course. I will be right with you.”

When she was in the doorway, she beckoned to the captain. “Can I please have a word with you, sir, if you don’t mind?”

When he followed her with alacrity, she pulled him into the empty room next door and shook her finger at him. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”

He put on his best innocent expression. “What do you mean? Is there something wrong with keeping a wounded comrade company?”

“I am a busy woman, with other patients to look after besides your friend. I have no time to be summoned for spurious errands all day long.”

“Would I do such a thing?”

She looked at him, her eyebrows raised and her arms crossed over her chest, and said nothing.

“Well, maybe I would,” he admitted, “but doesn’t the sergeant-major deserve to be looked after properly? He is paying for a private room. He should be able to call a nurse when he wants a drink of water, or if he just wants someone to sit with him and talk to him.”

“He has you to sit and talk to him.” She turned her back on him and made as if to walk out the door. “Now let me fetch him a glass of water and leave me be.”

She was not getting away that easily, before he had stolen even a single kiss. He pulled her backward into his arms, and touched her cheek gently with the tip of his finger. “But I am not a pretty nurse, with red rosy cheeks.” His finger crept down her neck. “Or a soft, white neck. Or breasts that are popping out of my uniform, breasts that scream to be fondled.” He suited his actions to his words, cupping her breasts in both hands and squeezing them gently.