The Pursuit of Pleasure (12 page)

Lizzie’s horrified gaze shot to the stillroom door—wide open. If anyone were to walk by they would see her …

She jerked her legs up and tried to roll. Jamie’s hand came down flat, covering and pressing firmly on her belly to still her.

“Don’t move. Don’t move so much as an inch, a muscle. Don’t say a word.” He dropped a kiss on her navel. “I’ll take care of this—I’ll be right back.”

He quickly buttoned his cock back inside his breeches before he walked swiftly to close the door behind him.

Lizzie let herself collapse back in relief against the cool counter for only a few blissful seconds before she recovered. And moved.

C
HAPTER 7

G
od Almighty! His cock strained and shifted in his breeches like a swivel gun. But he was going to keep it there for just a while longer. A very short while. Only until he could deal with this untimely intrusion, get back to Lizzie, and get her as primed and loaded as he felt. His restraint was all but gone.

Yet, as he came to the foot of the kitchen stairs, the sight of a large assortment of baggage, piled haphazardly and blocking the kitchen door, stopped him in his tracks. A collection of trunks, to be exact. Lizzie’s. She must have arranged this. The sight brought him crashing back to the deck faster than a bucket of cold seawater.

As did Mrs. Tupper, weaving her way through the piles, bearing the supper tray. Marlowe moved to make an aisle between the trunks so the housekeeper could make her way through and set the heavily laden tray to the deal table.

Mrs. Tupper didn’t bat an eye at his disheveled, half-dressed appearance. “Caught out in the rain, were you?” she surmised with a smile. “There should still be enough dry things up—”

“Thank you, Mrs. Tupper,” he said in an overly loud voice so Lizzie would know who was here. Though Mrs. Tupper, with her years aboard ships, was not in the least put out by the sight of him half-dressed, doubtless she would have been shocked by Lizzie’s state of complete undress. “What have you managed to find for us?”

“A bit of stew, nice and hot, bread, baked fresh this morning, and butter as well. Good cheese and cold ham. Didn’t have time to shift anything fancier. And we’ve no tea, but I brought ale and a bottle of claret.”

“The claret will do nicely. You take the ale back to Tupper and … the lads.”

She nodded her understanding and began bustling about the hearth. “I’ll set the supper out here then. And just get a fire going so you can dry out a bit.”

“No need. I thank you, but I’ve already got a fire going upstairs. Why don’t you take the tray up and we’ll eat there?”

“But there’s no table, nor chairs, sir.”

“We’ll spread out a blanket like for a picnic. Do you think you can find one?”

“Ought to be one in the cupboard in the dressing room.”

“Excellent. Come, let me carry it up for you.”

“Now, sir, no need for that.” Mrs. Tupper led the way up the service stairs and in no time at all, the impromptu picnic was ready. All he needed was his missing bride.

“Shall I come back to get the tray, sir?”

“No need, Mrs. Tupper. We’ll see to it ourselves.”

They descended the way they had come, down the service stairs into the kitchen entryway.

“Then I’ll be off, sir.”

“Thank you. Oh, would you have Tupper send Mc—one of the lads—down to the Red Harte and have my sea trunk brought back up here? It appears we shall be spending the night.”

“Oh. Of course, sir. Then, are you sure there’s nothing else I can get for you? Perhaps the lady might need some help?”

“No, I thank you, Mrs. Tupper. That will be all. Good night.”

The door shut behind her with another jangle of the bell, and Marlowe was back through the stillroom door in a flash. But damn it all to bloody hell, it was empty. Where had Lizzie gotten to? Marlowe prowled back towards the warren of rooms beyond the larder and stillroom. At the end of the narrow hall he found the laundry room with its stone floor. His coat was hanging out to dry, along with Lizzie’s shift. He fingered the damp material. She must have changed clothes.

“Lizzie?”

“Out here. Was that Mrs. Tupper?”

Marlowe followed her voice back to the kitchen entryway, only to find Lizzie dragging one of the trunks towards the baize hallway door. She had changed into a plain chemise dress.

“Yes, she brought a meal on a tray.”

Lizzie paused and looked up. Marlowe followed the direction of her gaze over into the kitchen and answered her question before she could ask it. “It’s upstairs before the fire.”

“Oh. Let me just get this and then we can eat.”

He stopped her with a touch. “Lizzie? Please tell me these aren’t your trunks. Please tell me this is a mistake. There are at least eight, possibly more, stacked up here.”

“There are twelve, or should be, and I’m sorry, they shouldn’t have been brought here.”

Thank God for small favors—she wasn’t planning to unpack. But there was no way Tupper could heft all these into a wagon by himself, and he’d rather keep McAlden out of sight than risk Lizzie seeing him again. “All right. I’ll shift the trunks for you later.”

“Oh, thank you. They’re heavy, but we should be able to manage together.” She had already let go of his hand and was nosing through the stacks. She took up the handle of one of the smaller trunks that was set aside. “This will do me for now—to have a few more dry things to change into.”

“Lizzie, leave off. You don’t need another trunk just for the night.” Marlowe swung the chest she’d originally been dragging up onto his shoulder, resolved to take it back to the pile so McAlden could help Tupper shift them into a cart in the morning. He sagged a bit under the unexpected weight. “Devil take it, Lizzie. What the hell have you got in here?”

“I told you they were heavy. Books.”

“Books? An entire trunk of them?”

“They’re all full of books. Don’t sound so incredulous. I can read, you know.” She narrowed her eyes to give him an impish, impudent smile.

“But, don’t tell me there are twelve trunks of books?”

“We all have our little vices.” She smiled and slipped through the baize door and down the hallway. “They go with the others in the library.”

“Others!” But she was already gone, leading the way across the house.

When he arrived at the paneled room tucked into the back corner of the house, he saw she had brought one of the smaller boxes in already.

“More books, Lizzie? Really? Where did they come from?”

“From my rooms at Hightop, of course.”

“And do you actually read them?” He tried, and failed, to picture her sitting quietly absorbed, a busy little bluestocking, but honestly, he couldn’t imagine her spending so much time indoors, poring over print. She seemed to him to be so totally an active, outdoors sort of girl. Most, if not all, of his memories of their childhood involved tromping about the woods and riverbanks, out in all weathers, impervious to discomfort and oblivious to sodden hems. Much like this afternoon, in fact, when she hadn’t taken his advice and come in from the rain. There was that steely purpose of will running under the exquisitely feminine body.

A steely will accompanied by a pert, teasing smile. “Only when it rains.”

And this was England. Only place wetter was the bilge on a ship.

He set the trunk down and crossed to the open chest. The books, though bound in caramel-and ruby-colored leathers, were well-read and dog-eared. He was astonished to find, among many others, Paine, Wilberforce, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Good God. The titles were decidedly radical. He had imagined she read nothing more than Fanny Burney, Charlotte Smith, or Ann Radcliffe, but there wasn’t a novel in the lot. He could not have been more astonished if she had declared her intention of taking holy orders.

“Mary Wollstonecraft? You, Lizzie, with such deeply radical philosophical treatises?”

She gave him one of her unaccountable smiles, but this time he could identify pride in the mix. She was perversely proud of her little vice. “Mmm. You won’t tell anyone, will you? No one will invite me to dinners or teas if they think I’m an
intellectual.
“ She pronounced the word as if it were a rare species of plant.

“Your secret is safe with me, but you’ll want to be careful about these.” He dug deeper into the wooden box to find Edmund Burke’s
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
Something in direct opposition to Paine and Wollstonecraft, at least. “Does your father know you’ve read these?” That would account for the Squire’s diatribe against radical thinking.

Her smile faded into bland sarcasm. “I am not accountable to my father.”

“No, not anymore. But don’t you suppose you are now accountable to me? We are married.” He tried to say it calmly, to phrase his words as a question, but their effect was electric. Her arch expression flickered on her face for only another moment before it was replaced with horrified astonishment. Two spots of color flashed high on her cheeks.

“How disappointingly paternalistic you’ve suddenly decided to be.” She moved and would probably have swept out of the room, but he stepped across her path, cutting off her preferred method of dealing with opposition to her views.

Her words cut him, not deeply, but still, it was no pleasure to hear her misjudge him so easily. He wasn’t her father, and he held none of the squire’s views. But he had to make her understand her place in his life. “I’m sorry you see it that way, Lizzie. But no one can expect to sail on their own tack all their lives. We are married now, and what we each do reflects upon the other.”

“And I am supposed to ‘sail on your tack,’ as you put it?” Her flippant tone told him she was still growing angry.

He strove for balance. “Not necessarily, but… Lizzie, I have no desire to argue with you about your books. You will of course read as you like. But you must see that your conduct reflects upon me, as mine does upon you. We must let our moral consciences guide our intellectual conduct.”

“Am I to be punished now for reading books?”

How like Lizzie to leap precipitously from one conclusion to another. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’ve said nothing of punishment, Lizzie. I’ve spoken of being guided by your conscience and by the understanding of those with greater experience of the world than you.”

“Oh, yes, we poor women must be
guided
in our opinions as we lack the necessary education and experience to form sound opinions of our own. And of course we must also be guided and protected from that very same education. This is a very self-serving, self-fulfilling philosophy and just the sort of thinking we’re trying to reform in the London Corresponding Society.”

Marlowe felt as if all the air had been suddenly sucked from the room. God could not be so cruel. His voice, when he spoke, sounded as if it came from underwater. “What society?”

“The London Corresponding Society.” She repeated it slowly, as if he were a child. “I’m a member, or at least I’m a contributor. Working for parliamentary reform.”

“Please tell me you’re joking.” He wanted to think she’d said it as a goad, to prod and poke at him for the sake of her argument. But of course she wasn’t joking. Of course, out of all the things his new wife might be interested in, she would choose the one thing so completely guaranteed to cause him an inordinate amount of trouble, not to mention grief. “God Almighty, Lizzie. Do you have any idea what you’re about?”

“Yes, trying to bring much-needed reform to an outdated system of voting. A rotten, scandal-ridden system of voting. Do you know the House of Commons, which is supposed to, and was founded to, represent the common people, is really controlled by the aristocracy through their ownership of the boroughs?”

“Lizzie, are you just spouting something you’ve read, or do you truly hold such an opinion?” What was he saying? While she may have gotten some of her more radical ideas from her books—he couldn’t imagine them coming from anywhere else—she never would have declared herself if she didn’t hold such an opinion.

“Of course I hold my own opinions. What person of feeling could not?” She was in full cry now, giving canvas to all her pent-up frustrations.

“I for one.”

“I had no idea you were such a confounded old Tory.” Her arch tone was just a shade too cool to be teasing.

“Lizzie, I’m not a Tory. I’m an officer. I don’t have party allegiance, I have duty. I can’t afford opinions or politics in my profession. And I can’t afford you having them either.” He knew the words would annoy her—set her off like spark to powder—but she had to know how he felt. Her philosophies and her lack of experience of the world could put his mission in jeopardy. She had to know the truth.

“I can’t not have my own opinions, my own thoughts!” she retorted just as vehemently. ”
Vindication of the Rights of Man
is well and above the most interesting work of philosophy I have read in a long time. Like Paine, I believe in progress, and I quite detest the overreliance on tradition and custom. Anything that a man wants to get away with is explained by custom or tradition, as if they were vital to the national security and not merely an aspect of its present character. A character that is greatly in need of reform.”

“Agreed.” He held out a hand to try to allay some of the violence of her feelings and to keep her from launching into a diatribe. If this was any indication of the disagreements they had had, it was no wonder Lizzie and the squire had been at each other’s throats. God, yes, Lizzie’s arguments were too well-honed to be entirely off the cuff.

“I don’t ask that you not form or hold your own opinions. You have every right, by both feeling and education. I only ask that you try, as much as possible, to keep them to yourself.”

His deliberately calm and nonjudgmental tone let some of the wind out of her sails. She stood there, hands on her hips, luffing in the breeze as she tried to think up a suitable rejoinder. But she was thinking, weighing him out like an undertaker, all careful calculation. Dangerous calculation. Oh, she held an awful lot in behind those eyes.

“You astonish me,” she allowed.