The Pursuit of Pleasure (3 page)

“No.” He laughed. “But perhaps I could arrange for an idealized miniature you could pull out and grow misty over at the proper moment.”

“Perfect.”

“So, are you going to marry me?”

Was she? The little voice in her head said, why not? It was Jamie, not one of the pot-hunting swells back in the assembly room. But still, she hesitated. Marriage was for life: inexorably, legally binding. Once she said yes, there would be no going back. Not until he died. It seemed so … mercenary, so dreadfully cold-blooded, even if it was his idea. Even if he was her Jamie.

It had been one thing to scandalize Celia with the idea of some anonymous, unimagined man making her a widow, but it was quite another thing to contemplate being left by this man. This new Jamie.

“I’ll let you know in a few days’ time. I’ll send round a note.” She paused. “Where are you staying?”

“No. I’ll call on you. If there’s a chance you’ll accept, we’ll need it to look correct. Or at least plausible.” There was that slow, sly smile. It tickled something inside her. Something pleasurable. Something reassuring. But why should she need reassuring? He was taking as big a chance as she. “And I only have a few days’ time.”

“All right. Come to call, if you like.” She gave him one of her patented shrugs.

“Lizzie, you don’t sound convinced. Perhaps you need some sort of inducement?”

“Besides your money and your death?”

He just continued to smile at her. She cocked her head and waited. Jamie liked to dole things out slowly, like pieces of candy. Came of being a minister’s son.

“How about … a little seduction?”

She let out a whoop of laughter to cover her sudden breathlessness. Not so much like a rector’s son after all. He sounded so sure of himself, and those eyes of his—those pale eyes that now gave off an almost incandescent light—they looked right through her, as if he knew the shivery way his words made her body feel.

Heavens above, she would need to be careful.

“You needn’t bother.” She turned away to cut off his steady probing gaze.

“It’s no bother. In fact, it’ll be fun. You used to like to have fun, Lizzie. I think you need some convincing. And some kissing.”

The tightness in her chest increased. Her breath felt hot and dry. “You’re going to convince me with kisses? You’d be better off offering me some of that whisky you’ve had too much of.”

He smiled his Jamie smile, full of light and mirth, as he pulled a slim flask out of his coat pocket.

“Secreting liquor on your person? How delightfully naughty.”

“Just your sort of naughty, Lizzie.” He pulled out the cork and held it out for her, watching her all the while. Knowing what he did to her. “Ladies first.”

She swiped it out of his long fingers and took a tentative sip. It burned pleasantly going down and infused her throat and belly with mellow warmth. Much better than champagne, which went straight to one’s head. She took another liberal swallow.

“That’s my girl.”

She tossed the empty flask back to him. “I’m not your girl.”

“You ought to be.” His penetrating, laughing gaze dared her. “Come on, Lizzie. Send me to my death happy. Surely you can do it. Or haven’t you learned how?”

It was unfair of him to bait her so. She ought to be able to resist a dare by now. But she couldn’t, and furthermore, she really didn’t want to. And why not? Jamie had come back. Finally. A grown man. A man who wanted her. And soon he was going away again, perhaps forever, perhaps to die.

So Lizzie lowered her chin and gave him her smile, all of it. It made him blink, his pale eyes darkening in anticipation. Then she closed the distance to him and pulled his mouth down to hers.

C
HAPTER 2

O
h, yes. Lizzie Paxton had very definitely been doing things she oughtn’t. This was not her first kiss.

Not her first
real
kiss anyway. Her first kiss had been down along the riverside that August afternoon when Marlowe had been all of fourteen. She had been so young he was almost embarrassed to think of it.

Tonight, her cool little hand inched up his nape and tangled with the queue in his hair. She pressed her lips into his without hesitation and then moved them ever so slightly in invitation.

But for all that, she went no further.

It was just an act, her pose of jaded indifference. She had no real idea of what she was doing. And no idea of whom she was dealing with. He had more than enough experience, and expertise, for both of them.

The devil deep in his gut smiled. His hands came around to the small of her back to press her closer as he opened his mouth to taste her. Her lips were cool, just like her hands, not yet warmed by his need—his need to taste her, to have her in his arms, under his control, and to finally, finally possess her.

Devil take him. His need was like the roaring of cannon fire in his ears, deafening his better sense. He had to force himselfnot to grip her, to carefully loosen his hands and pull back before he began doing things
he
oughtn’t. She was in over her head, but he’d get nowhere if he tried to control her. With Lizzie, he couldn’t press. He couldn’t force her to go anywhere she didn’t want to go. If it wasn’t her own idea, she’d dig in her heels like a balky foal.

So he angled his head and sucked lightly at her bottom lip until she opened her mouth like a flower, slowly unfurling towards the light. Oh God, her lips were soft and sweet and tasted vaguely of cinnamon spice. So soft. So indecently, incongruously, surprisingly soft, when all the rest of her seemed to made up of wickedly sharp angles. She was delicious.

Marlowe lifted his hands to cradle her jaw and stroke his thumbs along her cheeks, encouraging her, slowly feeding his own need. When she began to kiss him back and to taste him with hungry little nips, he sent his tongue out tentatively to dance with hers, waiting, straining his patience until she followed of her own volition.

And she did. Lizzie had always been a fast learner, and now she began licking at him and sucking until he lost his will to resist, until he wanted to devour her. She was like pure sunlight in his arms—she scorched him.

He framed her face in his hands, probing her with his gaze. “My God, Lizzie. Do you have any idea what you do to me? You make me ravenous.”

He couldn’t stop his arms from hauling her closer still, drawing her body into intimate contact with his. He couldn’t stop himself from kissing her hard, as voracious and predatory as he felt, arching her head back and plundering her mouth. Falling into her.

She hesitated a fraction of a moment before she grappled her arms around his neck and wrapped her legs around his, clinging to him as if he were flotsam in a shipwreck. As if her life depended upon him. Above the pounding in his ears, he could hear fabric tear.

A hot explosion of lust fired deep, deep in his gut. Oh, God, yes.

He backed her into the wall, pinning her against the oaken paneling. He knew he shouldn’t push her. Shouldn’t press into her until he could feel the frighteningly fragile bones of her hips against his belly. Shouldn’t plaster his chest against her small, perfectly rounded breasts. My God, he hadn’t seen her in ten years and he was all over her like musket fire.

If he tupped her here and now, against the wall like an inn-yard cull, she would think he was trying to force her into this marriage. He couldn’t do it that way. She had to choose. He needed her to choose.

Through will alone, he pulled back, leveraging his weight away, letting her breathe. Then he loosened his hands from where they gripped her buttocks and let her feet slide back down to the floor. He allowed himself the one last luxury of nuzzling at her neck and inhaling deeply her scent. Her unique citrus spice. And then he stepped away.

She stood before him without any trace of pretense, completely undone, her eyes glowing like emeralds and her white skin washed silver in the moonlight, her small chest heaving. No trace of indifference now.

“Lizzie.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say. Actually, he couldn’t think at all.

“Well,” she said, as her gasping slowly subsided, “haven’t you just been full of surprises?”

And then she slipped away, dissolving through the door and into the dark as if she had never been there at all. As if, after all these years, he was still imagining her.

She was still all he could think of when he finally made his way into the grim confines of the Heart of Oak Tavern off Warfleet Row.

God, but he’d waited a long time to finally have Lizzie Paxton. Half his life. There were times when he had wondered ifhis attraction to her was something he’d made up, a boyish infatuation he’d let run for too long and blown out of proportion in his mind.

No. No mere infatuation would have lasted this long. And no infatuation would have set Lizzie blazing like tinder in his hands.

“Where the hell have you been?” The big blond man in the dim corner at the back of the smoke-filled tavern barely looked up from his ale.

Marlowe hauled his thoughts back into order and put his mind to the work at hand. “And a good evening to you, too. Morning, rather.” He kept his voice low as he tossed his slouchy, wool seaman’s hat down on the table and slid onto the bench. “I was gracing the local assembly with my presence. One last go, being seen.”

“Dancing.” Hugh McAlden’s upper lip curled back and his voice was laden with scorn. He poured Marlowe a tankard from the pitcher at his elbow.

“Exactly,” Marlowe agreed. “Be happy it fell to me.”

“I am. Bloody happy it all falls to you. I don’t like all this deceit. Goes against the grain.”

“I’m not thrilled either. The whole damn scheme promises to become a right mess, but orders are orders. Just be glad you’re not the local.” He took a long, deep drink of the ale.

His lieutenant and longtime friend remained his usual surly self. “You know I am.” McAlden eyed him closely. “Took you long enough.”

“I ran into a bit of a complication.” That was as neat a description of Lizzie as he could give. “Though I may have found a way to alleviate one of my problems.”

“Which one?”

“The house. And my ‘estate,’ such as it is. I think I’ve finally come up with a way to get around the Honorable Jeremy Wroxham.”

McAlden flashed an unholy smile, curving up one side of his mouth. “A right couple of Scots bastards, we are. I’m all ears.”

Marlowe raised his tankard in a toast. “Wish me happy.”

The Squire and Lady Theodora Paxton, Lizzie’s parents, resided in a beautiful three-story manor house just north of the town, set high on a hill, overlooking the river Dart. Hightop House was a lot like Lizzie: blindingly bright and open to the countryside, its whitewashed stone walls punctuated by a row of lofty, impertinent gables.

Marlowe had gone to a lot of trouble to tog himself out in his best Corinthian rig. His coat of deep blue Bath superfine fitted him like a second skin and, he knew, suited him admirably. He had even gone so far as to try to tame his infernal cowlick, clubbing his hair back ruthlessly, all towards putting in a suitable, suitor-like appearance. He had thought of defying navy custom and his assignment to wear his best dress uniform and sword, but Lizzie was unlikely to be impressed by anything so obvious as braid and silver buttons, however pleasingly it might have aggravated Squire Paxton.

Marlowe swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth. It made him a lesser man to want such a petty revenge upon Lizzie’s father for having, quite literally and quite forcefully, cast him to his fate. No matter the Navy had been the making of him. Everything he was, everything he had worked so assiduously to become, his every success, was due to the fact he was an officer in His Majesty’s Royal Navy. Yet, the injustice of the Squire’s shipping him off, the insufferable presumption of his arranging the lives of lesser mortals still rankled, like a sore that refused to heal.

Perhaps that was why he was unaccountably nervous. Here he was, a man who had faced danger, mortal danger, hundreds of times, yet his insides were clenching themselves up tighter than a Turk’s-head knot. He had thought this up as a lark, as a convenient pleasure to have Lizzie and as a small dish of tea and retribution for the squire. But he’d be damn disappointed if she said no.
When
she said no.

Because Lizzie was too sharp to let him get away with it.

Then again, if she had meant to reject him out of hand, she would have said so that night. He was sure of it. Or at least he had been, until he lifted the heavy brass knocker on her father’s door and let it fall with an ominous, dull thud.

The door was opened almost immediately, not by the butler, or even a footman, but by Lizzie herself, looking like a scullery maid.

She was wearing an old, out-of-mode work dress made of pale green cotton over a plain white linen fichu and sleeves. She couldn’t have looked less the belle, and he could only laugh at his own efforts to play the suitor.

She motioned him over the threshold with an impatient toss of her head, ignoring his sartorial splendor.

“Come on then,” she whispered.

“Where’s your butler?” He didn’t bother to lower his voice. Perhaps they were in tick and the butler let go? That would actually fall in well with his plans.

“Sent on a goose chase. I’d prefer our interview to be private.” She kept her voice meaningfully low.

“Ashamed of me, are you, Lizzie?”

“Not yet.” She cast him an almost-smile. “But the day is young. … You’re early.”

“My apologies for not waiting until the afternoon to call. I am on a rather restricted schedule.”

“Points off for ungallant punctuality—it must come of being a navy man. You’ve caught me out.” She flicked her skirts. “I should say yes, just to punish you.”

“Does that mean …?

Lizzie laid a finger across her lips in warning, but it was too late. A quavering voice floated out from behind the drawing room doors.

“Elizabeth, dear, is that you?”

The voice of Lady Theodora—he was sure it could be none other—instantly took him back in time. How many times had he heard her good-natured inquiry after them: “Now, come in and sit and tell me what you two have been up to today.”