"Where have you been?" Cammy cried. "I was about to fetch the constable."
"You won't believe what happened," Tori said quickly. "The horse wandered away and we were stuck on the beach." That wasn't exactly a lie.
When Cammy raised her eyebrows at them, Grant asked, "How was your day yesterday, Miss Scott?"
Tori looked from one to the other and thought there was more to the question.
"My day went favorably well. In fact, I have great news. Tori, I saw the doctor."
"But I thought he wouldn't be back for a couple of days," Tori sputtered. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"We didn't tell you because I was afraid of what the prognosis would be. The physician asked me scores of questions and did hours of tests." She paused and said, "I know what's been wrong."
Tori sank down. "Well..."
Cammy picked up a piece of paper and read from it. "Patient has persistent fluid depletion--that's a fancy way of saying I don't drink enough water and that makes me forgetful and erratic--and a chronic pathological reaction to ingesting fish of any kind."
Fish? Tori was horrified. "B-But that's all we ever ate."
"Quite."
Every time she'd brought them fish, she'd been unwittingly poisoning her friend. "So you drink water and don't eat fish and you'll be well?"
"It's a bit more complicated that that. I have to get minerals in my blood and build up my strength. And this illness has taught my body to reject food. So I'll be forcing down broth for a few more weeks. But the lingering forgetfulness should fade promptly."
"So you can get well."
She nodded. "The return trip will set me back a bit because of the seasickness, but after that, I can make myself well again."
Tori leapt up to hug Cammy. All of the years of worry, of not knowing. Now they had an enemy they could see to fight. And if Camellia Scott was anything, she was a fighter.
Tori thought of this excellent news and of her time with Grant and sighed, "This is the best day of my entire life."
Grant stared into his cup of black coffee, not even glancing up as Ian stomped into the ship's salon and dropped to a chair.
"If you're just going to look at it...," Ian said as he slid Grant's cup over and drank deeply. "I saw you come aboard this morning."
"So?"
"So, you and Tori...Shouldn't you have been whistling?"
"How do you know I wasn't in a brothel?" He might as well have asked, "How do you know I wasn't on the moon?" Ian's unmoved, knowing look was the same.
Grant snapped his fingers. "Wait, I know. Because you would have seen me there."
Ian shook his head, his good mood unaffected by Grant's surly tone. "My companions were my brandy and cheroots. We had a sublime evening lounging on deck." When Grant said nothing, Ian asked, "Can you really say you regret it?"
For him to even ask..."Of course I can," he answered, his voice low.
Ian snorted. "If that's what you tell yourself."
Grant raked his fingers through his hair. "You don't understand."
"Then explain it," Ian said, propping his boots up on another chair.
"A year ago, I promised a frail old man that should I find his granddaughter, I would protect her with my life. I told him to rest easy on that score. And should her parents be gone, I swore I'd be her guardian until I delivered her back to him. And he believed me, knowing I've never broken my word."
"But what's done is done--"
"And did you know that if he passes away before we return, I'm to be her permanent guardian? That was how much he trusted me."
Ian looked snared. "So you bungled that--"
"And there was no reason for him not to trust me. I built my reputation. Worked on it. Denied myself to solidify it."
Ian shook his head forcefully. "Life is too short not to take happiness where you can find it. Especially when no one gets hurt. Marry her and be done with all this agonizing. You know you have to. You could even now be a proud papa-to-be."
Grant ran a hand over the back of his neck. "There's no chance of that."
Ian frowned, then flashed a grin of realization. "You sly devil! Grant, you truly have depth."
"If you keep this under wraps, we can avoid marriage."
Ian raised his eyebrows. "I still don't understand why you would want to."
"Did you ever think I wouldn't be the earl's first choice for her husband? Their title is without money, but it's still ancient. I have no land of my own. I'm a decade older--"
"Inconsequential when compared to the fact that you're her choice. She chose you."
Grant shot to his feet. "There wasn't a choice. She didn't prefer me out of a pool of suitors. She was cheated out of parents, out of a childhood, and now I've cheated her out of something else she should have expected. Courting, beaus, a season. Being young and narrowing her decision down to the right man. And look at her--there will still be courting and beaus, only it'll be after I marry her."
"I don't think you give her enough credit."
Grant stalked the room. It seemed much smaller than usual, hemming him in. "You give her too much."
Ian exhaled in impatience. "I'm going to see her today. Anything you'd like me to tell her? Any flowers to deliver?"
"Tell her I'll be busy this week."
"Does idiocy run in our family, or did it only strike you?" At Grant's lowering look, Ian finished Grant's coffee and strolled away.
Grant slammed his fist against the table. He wanted to forget everything about yesterday, forget that he'd ignored propriety and honor, and forget the things he'd done with a virginal girl in a shed. He feared he'd treated her like a whore, bruising her and showing her things no proper lady would ever dream of. And that worry tore at him. He wasn't right when he was around her, and the sooner they parted, the better.
After an incredibly miserable day, he lay in bed, aroused as usual and wondering why he didn't go take what she offered. Technically, they didn't have to marry. But if he was a true gentleman, he'd offer for her. And if he offered for her, then he could have her. All of her...
He heard a light tap, and was instantly on his feet, stabbing his legs into his trousers and yanking open the door. Victoria stood, almost shyly, just outside with the wind molding her skirts to her legs. Did she wear nothing beneath? He grabbed her arm and pulled her in.
"How in the hell did you get down here?"
"I walked."
"You could have been killed. You--"
"Well, actually, I bought this map and then had the hotel owner mark all the particularly bad spots." She showed him the map. "See my course? I had to zigzag a bit, but--"
"Where are your damned underskirts?"
"I didn't want to wake Cammy getting those petticoats out." The bubbly excitement left her voice, and she admitted softly, "I missed you. You never came around."
He grasped his forehead with one hand. "We have a problem, you and I. What we did at the beach was wrong. And it can't happen again."
She crossed her arms over her chest. "It had to. And it has to happen again." Catching his gaze, she whispered, "I feel like I'll lose my mind. All I can think about is you and your hands on me." She brought his hand up and laid it on her breast.
He groaned. "Why do you do these things?"
"Because it feels so wonderful."
"So all you're doing with me is obeying impulse?" he asked in a low, cruel voice as he yanked his hand away.
"What's wrong with impulse?"
"Everything." He ran a hand over his face. "What if you have these impulses with another man?"
"But I won't. I only feel this way for you."
"How can you know that?"
"I know that when my mother first met my father, she fell for him, never thinking of another man for the rest of her life. I feel that way about you."
He'd sucked in a sharp breath during her admission, then let it out slowly. "If anything else had happened, you'd be forced to marry me."
"Anything else?
So we're not going to have to marry just from what we did?"
"We don't have to marry for that."
"Then the way I see it, we can do just those things again."
"That's not how it works." Did he sound like he regretted that fact? "Things might...get out of hand." He set her away. "And then, did you ever think that I might get you with child?"
Her eyes rounded.
"Obviously not," he said, his tone sardonic. "You see--this is not a game, this is your future--"
"Oh, but, Grant, I would love to have a child."
He stilled. Why did her words affect him to such a degree? Was it the delighted sound of her voice? The wide, easy smile accompanying her words? "There can be no children."
"You just told me there might--"
"We're not married. You have to be married."
"Then let's get married." Her tone made it sound as though this was a foregone conclusion. One plus two equals three. "You said I needed to marry. Why not you?"
He shook his head forcefully. "Victoria, I think you are understandably curious about men, but that's all it is. Curiosity. And it's centered on me because I'm the first man you've been around since you became a woman. Surely you don't want to settle on me for the rest of your life. Don't you even want to meet other men? Or be courted?"
She ignored his question, stood on her toes, and kissed his neck. Such a gentle touch, a sweet touch, and already his blood was firing, driving him to do things to her body that weren't sweet.
This mission would conclude far differently than he'd planned. He could envision it now: Victoria would step onto England's shores as a girl stripped of her prospects and innocence, married, most likely with a child got upon her--by a lecherous older man who was her guardian. He'd robbed her of ever having a choice.
The bastards at the club would slap his back and tell him slyly, "Well done."
She sat on the bed and slowly tugged the silky ribbon at her bodice. The material gaped, and she drew it lower.
He growled low in his throat. In a heartbeat, he had his fingers curled around the material against her breasts.
To yank it up.
As soon as he removed his hands, she gave him a challenging lift of her eyebrows and pulled it down. He snatched it up again. Down. Up. She tugged it down once more. "Stop!" she cried, when he seized the material out of her fingers and up again. "You're going to rip my bodice!"
"I'm not going to rip your bodice--unless you don't let it go," he added with a growl. "We are not doing this."
"Yes, we are. And if you rip my new dress, you can say farewell to your trousers."
"Promise?" he grated, then felt appalled with himself.
"Hah! You want this too." She took her eyes off his face and regarded his jutting erection inches from her. She leaned farther down his torso to where, God help him, he could feel her breath at the line of his trousers. She kissed him, a sweeping touch of her lips over his skin. "Can I touch you?" she whispered.
Trust that she truly knows what she wants. Give her credit. Trust her.
He was lost. "Do as you will, Victoria."
Seventeen
Tori ran her hand down the front of his trousers and up again, feeling him hard, straining against the fabric. She'd seen him twice before, but when she freed the trousers and he sprang forth, she gasped, enthralled all over again.
Knowing she could never get used to feeling him like this, she wrapped her fingers around him, stroking, not as she had in the past, but lovingly, slowly exploring every nuance of his flesh. She wanted to experience everything and sensed he was on the verge of finally capitulating.
Everything.
"Grant, yesterday when you kissed me...privately?"
"Yes?" he hissed as her palm rubbed the head of his erection.
"Can I kiss you privately?"
"You play at things you don't understand." His voice was raw.
"Then teach me." She knew he was at the precipice, one foot over the abyss. The slightest push...Tonight, she would show him no mercy. "Show me how to give you pleasure."
"Victoria, you don't know what you ask." He looked anguished. Torn.
But he hadn't said no. Tentatively, before she lost her nerve, she placed her lips on his skin.
He groaned, hands clutching her shoulders, grating her name. "You don't know what you're doing to me."
She looked up and found him staring down at her kissing him. His breathing was ragged, the muscles in his torso and chest contracting and flexing. His eyes were dark and watchful, as if he was witnessing something he couldn't quite believe.
Such a small touch brought him to this? She increased the pressure, tasting him with her tongue as he'd tasted her. His hips bucked again and she pulled back.
"Is this wicked?" she asked, returning her lips to his skin.
"Yes." He placed his hands in her hair, and she noticed they shook wildly. He'd drawn his leg up beside her on the bed.
"Since I like kissing you here so much, I must be wicked."
He groaned at her words, and then more deeply when she ran her tongue up his length.
"And since you like it..."
"Like it? Like isn't the word I'd--" He sucked in a breath when she took him fully in her mouth. She glanced up, his flesh still between her lips, to find his head thrown back and his torso rigid all the way down to the base of his manhood.
"Ah, God, Victoria." At once he lifted her and placed her before him. The grip on her arms was hard. "You make me feel like a beast, I want you so much."
The warning in his eyes excited her. "Do as you will."
He made some fierce noise in the back of his throat, then freed her dress and yanked it down. When she stepped out of it, he tugged her pantalets off and tossed them aside.
She'd been eager for him to see her black silk stockings with their provocative openwork stitching, but now embarrassment suffused her. When his fingers traced the lacy patterns on the stockings and then almost playfully tugged on the black satin garters high on her thighs, she reached down to remove them, but he took her hands.
"Leave them." His voice sounded tortured. "For me."
She nodded, eyes wide. He sat then and lifted her into his lap, dragging her shift over her head. He moved her body, her legs over his, laying her back in his arms to stare at her bared breasts. With a growl, he leaned over to put his lips on her nipples, suckling them almost painfully. They soon became numbed until every lash of his tongue on them was felt coursing between her legs. She spread her thighs, and an obliging hand trailed down her belly. His fingers parted her.
"So wet for me," he rumbled against her breast as he fondled her sex. "So perfect."
When he swept a glance down her body, she arched her back, tempting his mouth back to her nipples. She hadn't thought anything could feel better than his stroking her, but then he delved a finger inside her. She gave a sharp cry and her hips reared to his hand. He held her sex, stirring his finger in her, making her moan.
"Grant! This feeling...Make it...Help me."
"How, Victoria?" He placed her on the bed and pressed her back with one huge hand across her breasts. Kneeling between her legs to lift her bottom, he brought her to his mouth as though to drink her.
"Help you"--he kissed her then and groaned against her flesh--"with my lips?"
"Yes!" She raised her hips in offering. Yes, his lips.
"Or with my fingers?" He stroked her then, making her moan low. Her head thrashed. When he drew his fingers from deep inside her, she whimpered, opening her legs wider. No relief came.
She glanced up, and saw he'd removed his trousers and returned. He reached up to palm her breasts and massage her nipples, and his manhood rose over her, resting up on her belly. It was thick and visibly throbbing, the head moist. Her mouth fell open in awe. So beautiful, so strange. So compelling...He looked down to see her staring at him, and she thought his lips nearly curled.
"Please!" she cried.
His whole body was tight, like he
was about to explode. "What do you want, Victoria?" Then he leaned down to whisper in her ear, words she knew should be unspoken. She couldn't believe the language, yet it wasn't even what he said, but the way he spoke to her, the ferocity, the want, that made her moan.
Then he pressed his finger inside her again, making her gasp and shudder. She fell back, arms raised above her as the tension wracked her body. When he withdrew only to push back into her, need spiraled in her, mounting with each push and withdrawal, until it peaked and finally shattered. As her body spasmed and her back arched, he rasped what he was going to do to her after she came from this, places he would lick her, places his fingers would find and rub, how badly he wanted her mouth on him again, sucking him deep....
"Oh, yes," she moaned long and low. She could feel her body squeezing around his clever fingers. He was relentless, continuing to tease her, spreading the moisture in long, luxuriating strokes.
As though another man inhabited his body, Grant teased Victoria inside, testing her, stretching her tightness. After witnessing her abandon, there was no thought of denying himself this. She would be his. At this moment, nothing could please him more. He saw her lick her parted lips, saw her breasts moist from him, and the fair curls covering her sex.... Lost.
Seizing her thighs, he spread her wider, then gripped himself to run the head of his cock up and down her folds, making sure she was ready to take him. He groaned as she became wetter against the head.
Finally, he allowed himself to push into her, but only just so. She was slick, but still so tight. Every muscle in his body quaked for him to plunge to the hilt, to bury himself in her regardless of how small she was. No, he wouldn't hurt her. He could control himself.
But she began moving, writhing to make him enter her more fully. He grasped her beneath to hold her still, groaning at the feel of her in his fingers, withdrew, and then entered just the head once more. She was too tight, impossibly so. He feared he would break her. "I don't want to hurt you," he grated in a low, barely recognizable voice.
"Isn't it supposed to hurt?" she said on a breath. "A little?"
A little? Not this time. By the way her body clenched powerfully against his, he could swear she couldn't take more.
"It's going to hurt, sweet."
She sighed. "I worried you'd be too big. And I don't know if I'm quite normal--"
He leaned down to kiss her, his voice rough against her lips as he said, "You are everything a man could want...." He met the barrier and she sucked in a breath. He flexed his hips, surging into her. She cried out--he froze.