He had been lying upon the bed. As she entered, he bolted up.
He had bathed, earlier, Skye knew. He had gone out to the barn, and they had brought him pails of warm water there. He was barefoot and bare-chested, and clad only in a pair of soft bleached buckskin breeches. He looked at her, startled, reaching for a linen shirt that lay across the bed. His action amused her somewhat. He had been so ready to touch her in the night, to make intimate demands upon her. Then he shielded his own chest with a startling modesty.
His actions did not help her cause, she thought, and she was already rueing the rash impulse that had brought her here.
“What is it?” he asked her. The room was dim, his voice was husky. Strange, but the lack of brightness did not bother her here. She felt safety, knowing that he was near. No … she felt very alive, knowing that he was near. She dared not admit that it had been easy, easy to come here.
The damage was done! she cried inwardly. It had been done last night. And if this ever ended well, then she would be his wife in all truth, and she would make it up to him, God help her!
She stepped closer. “I …”
“What?” He came out of the bed. She remembered briefly from the fleet seconds in which she had seen them bare that his shoulders were broad and fine and his skin bronzed and sleek. She remembered his touch, and the strength and demand of it, and she wondered briefly if she hadn’t discovered him to be very fine, and if she hadn’t lost a corner of her heart to his raw demand and vehement, sometimes tender care. Perhaps she had. In the dim light she found that she had no voice, and she could not think of the words she wanted to say.
“You’re trembling,” he murmured.
It was not without some astonishment that he said the words, for he was amazed that she should be there.
He had been a fool to touch her last night. He should keep a far greater distance than he did. But when she had lain so close to him, and when his hands had found her nakedness in the night and her soft moan had been his response, he had cast caution to the wind. He had never meant to take her. Her distress this morning had struck deep into his heart, and he had never felt more the knave.
But now she was here.
Fresh from her bath. Her eyes wide and luminous and nearly teal in their glazed color. Her features so fine and delicate and so hauntingly feminine that the sight of her trembling lips brought a rush of heat stabbing into his groin. Desire rose,and pulsed hard against his breeches, and still she stood there, silent.
He strode around the bed to the side table where he had brought a bottle of Mattie’s best dark rum. He poured out a portion and came before her, bringing the glass to her lips. She swallowed, and winced slightly as the fire of the rum rode through her.
“I …”
“Yes?”
“If it is truly your desire …”
He waited, but her voice had trailed away. “Yes?” he prompted softly.
She took another sip of the rum, moistening her lips. Her hair spilled all about her, touched by candlelight. It glowed with the red fury of fire, it cascaded like sunlight. He longed to thread his fingers through the length and mass of it. He longed to feel the fiery tendrils fall softly over his naked shoulders and chest.…
“Yes?” he repeated.
“You have been very kind.”
“Have I?”
She was still faltering. “I appreciate all that you have done for me.”
“You are my wife,” he said softly, standing back to watch her curiously. The length of him had come alive. The pulse and need rushed to fill his limbs, and his heart, and his soul. Warnings called out to him, and he ignored them. Let her speak! Let her come to him, or run, for he could not bear to keep his hands from her a moment longer. He wanted to rip away the towel and drink the sweet scent of rose dust from her flesh.
“That’s what I’m trying to say.”
“What?” he demanded sharply.
“I’ve been trying to say that … if it is your desire despite all that has happened … if you wish to have me for your wife, then, milord, I am yours.”
Her words hung softly upon the air for long moments as he tried to believe them. This sweet wild thing, this creature of temper and beauty and tempest, was coming to him.
She lifted her arms and dropped the towel that covered her. She stepped from it and stood before him in naked perfection, her flesh so gently kissed by the glow of the candlelight that touched the room. She was exquisite. Her hair did not touch his shoulders, but streamed over her own. Her breasts rose with coral peaks, full and tantalizing, beneath the caress of her swirling gold locks. Strands of red and gold cascaded all the way to her waist, and curled over the curve of her hips and buttocks.
He caught his breath. For one long moment he was unable to move.
Then he cried out hoarsely, casting the rum glass into the fireplace and sweeping her into his arms. He carried her swiftly to the bed and laid her upon it. The candles glowed on the table. He looked down at her and her eyes were passionate slits, teal and shadowed by the lush fringe of her lashes. Her lips were damp and parted as if they awaited his. As if they invited his touch …
But he did not bring his mouth to hers. Not then.
His lay low against her, fascinated to touch her. His hands curved over her breasts while his tongue teased the taut skin of her abdomen. Slight sounds escaped her, and he continued to touch. He rose against her to bring her breast deep into his mouth, and he withdrew to watch the nipple harden and the color deepen. He stroked the length of her, and felt the surge of her body, and still he did not touch her lips. She reached for him, but he eluded her, and buried his face against the sweetness of her body again. He moved lower and lower again, taking all of her with his sweeping caress. He parted her thighs and heard a startled sob escape, but he gave her no quarter that night; he longed to seek from her all that she had to give. He watched her for a moment, and her eyes were closed. They opened slowly, and when they met his, he lowered himself between her legs. He teased her inner thigh and stroked her flesh with the searing heat of his tongue. She gasped, writhing to escape so great an intimacy, but she was his, and he knew it. He touched her with that sweet stroke where and how he would, and her fingers curled into his hair while a breathless series of whispers and sobs and incoherent words tore from her lips. He brought her to the very brink of passion and then cast her over the edge, savoring the constriction of her beautiful form, and at long last, coming to her lips, there to swallow down the cries of pleasure that rose.
He did not hesitate a moment, but untied his breeches and drove deep within her welcoming warmth. She lay still, just trembling from all that had been before. He moved against her with the care of a master artist, seeking to elicit all emotions, all desires, and all needs. And when she rose again to the sure blaze of sensation, he at last gave over to his own desperate need. Hungry and afire, he took her with a fierce and driving force, and it seemed that the sun rose in his heart and vision, only to burst and explode all around him. There was no woman like her. None with her slender, provocative form, none with the perfect fullness of her breasts, not with her wild blaze of hair, her startling teal eyes.
No woman could love as she, caress a man so, part her lips so. Drive him to absolute heights with the thrust and sway of her hips, with her whispers, cries that touched the wind, that brought him to heaven.
She created … paradise.
She was his wife. She had said it. He had claimed her.
And he loved her. Deeply, and forever.
He fell beside her, pulling her close. For long, long moments they were silent. They were together, softly trembling with aftershocks of the explosion of the sun.
At long last he gently moved his hand over her bare breast, watching a golden curl fall from it. She buried her head against his throat and reached out a finger tentatively to touch his shirt.
“You’re still dressed!” she whispered reproachfully.
He hesitated. “Umm,” he said no
ncommittally. He saw his own fingers upon her flesh and he drew them away, holding her tightly. He should not even let her see his hands so, he thought. A smile teased her lips. Of all women to fear the darkness!
Darkness could hide so many sins.
He drew up the covers, but she was watching him pensively. She seemed very nervous. He leaned against her, and a shudder swept through him. He was about to leave her again. It might have been easier if she hadn’t come so close to him. If she hadn’t given him, freely, and willingly, this ecstasy.
He touched her lip. He stared into her beautiful eyes, and he remembered how he had fought the very idea of marriage.
This was no cross-eyed bride.
She was everything to him. She had been, from the very beginning.
“I love you,” he told her.
She inhaled sharply, her eyes widening. Then they widened even further, and she whispered, “I—I think I love you, too.”
“You think?”
She twisted away. He longed to pull her tight again. He knew that she was remembering a different man, a pirate, in a faraway paradise of her own.
He hated himself at that moment.
He longed to speak to her.
But he could not.
He pressed his lips against her hair and held silent for long moments. Then he whispered again, “I do love you, Skye Kinsdale Cameron. You have become my very life, and I swear, my love, I vow myself to you, now and forever.”
She lay silent. He turned away with a sigh, tying up his breeches. He rose from the bed and walked over to the table, picking up the rum bottle and swallowing down a long draft.
They would have this night, he determined. He would have to leave her in the morning, and by God, he would return with her father. She would be his wife then, in every way, for every day and month and year that came to follow.
But until then, he would have this night.
Something like a sob seemed to escape her. He turned around and saw that she was rising, too. Naked and graceful and beautiful and sleek, she walked his way. Her head was lowered. She came to stand in front of him. Her hands fell upon his chest. She leaned against him, kissing him, letting the wet warmth of her tongue blaze through the linen of his shirt.
“I will honor you, I swear it!” she cried softly.
He frowned, for her tension was so great, then his frown faded, for the lap of her tongue against his flesh was so arousing.Her fingers moved against his shoulder, her body was flush against his. She had indeed given herself to him that night, in so many ways.
In so many ways …
He moved to sweep his arms around her, but she slipped away and idly picked up the rum bottle.
“I’ll get you a glass, love,” he murmured.
She shook her head, and her teal eyes were luminous with a glaze of tears. “It will not be necessary,” she said.
She slipped back into his arms. She drew him down to her embrace, finding his lips with parted mouth, meeting him with a wild abandon that swept away his very thoughts.…
Then a shattering pain burst upon his skull.
Darkness came in upon him, and wavered back. Liquid spilled over him as he crashed down to his knees. He managed to look up, and into her eyes. He saw the broken rum bottle in her hands, and he managed to swear at her in a single gasp.
“Bitch!”
Then he fell, heavy and flat. She cried out, but stepped aside, and his weight came down full upon the floor as the blackness of oblivion came surely to claim him.
XIV
Roc came back to consciousness very slowly.
Pale light flickered by his eyes.
He smelled like the scurviest of taverns. He moved his hand, and winced, feeling broken glass beneath.
Then he heard a soft chuckle and saw a handsomely buckled shoe with a well-turned masculine calf attached to it. He groaned aloud, allowing his eyes to fall closed once again.
“Come on, my boy, up, up!”
Wincing, he sat, and cast Spotswood an angry glare. “What are you doing in my room? And why is it—sir—that you seemed to have known that you would find me in this state.”
“Truthfully, Petroc, I did not know how I would find you at all, but it was imperative that I see you now, so I came as quickly as I saw your wife leave.”
“Leave!”
He bolted up, shaking his head, desperate to clear it. “Blast that wench! I have chased her over half the seaboard and through forest and glen, and I swear, sir, that I am about to keep the lady in chains. Dammit, where has she gone now?”
“Why, to find the Silver Hawk, of course,” Spotswood said complacently.
“What?”
“I believe that I’ve sent the young lady off to find the Silver Hawk. In fact, I know that I have.”
“Why!” Roc exploded incredulously. “Damn you, sir, but what have you done to me now?”
“Petroc, wait, listen!” Spotswood pleaded vehemently. “We’ve worked at this for years now, and you must know the rationale of what I’ve done. A tremendous favor, and that’s the God’s own truth, sir, and I swear it. Think—”
“Think!” Roc groaned and clutched his head and sank down to the bed. “Think, eh? Sir, it has been bad enough. I returned from my last adventure with the woman who is my wife, afraid to put my hands upon her, afraid to come too near her! Now you think that I must go out and change roles again! Her husband was going for her father! I was going, I would have sailed today with my legal and legitimate crew and a ship that docks safely upon the James—”
“Robert Arrowsmith has the Hawk’s sloop ready and waiting on the river. You need only don your whiskers—”
“Don them! They were real last time.” Roc rubbed his clean-shaven chin, gritting his teeth. He’d had time to grow a fine set when sailing for New Providence and the Tortugas in the hopes of claiming the Silver Messenger and his bride. This time he would have to play with theatrical hair and sticking gums. He didn’t care for the idea, but in one respect, the lieutenant governor was right—it might be far better for the Silver Hawk to set sail against Logan than for Lord Petroc Cameron to do so. No other pirate would come to his assistance if they knew him as Lord Cameron, but if a battle or skirmish came about someplace, he might find assistance as the Silver Hawk. Everyone knew about the “relationship” between the two men, and therefore it was easy enough to play the act before men and women who did not come too close—
Playing an act before one’s wife … one’s mistress, one’s lover … was nearly impossible.
He had envied the Hawk. Until this very evening, he had longed to be his alter ego once again, the man who could freely shed his clothing before Skye and not fear that she’d find some scar upon him that would tell her beyond a doubt that he was, indeed, his own “cousin”—the sea slime, the scourge of the seas, the rogue.
The man to whom she had willingly and so sweetly given her love.
He stood up suddenly, his temper soaring. The wretched little adventuress. She’d seduced him to betray him—him! her lawfully wedded husband—to go off to find a rogue. Perhaps the acting would not be so heinous after all.
“You, sir, sent her after the Hawk?” he inquired darkly of Spotswood.
“It was necessary, Petroc.”
“Alexander, did it occur to you that you might have warned me?”
Spotswood shrugged, a twinkle in his eye. “Petroc, I didn’t think that a mere wisp of a girl could take you by such complete surprise. I was most interested in the results myself. When I remembered how you fought the marriage vows—to that poor cross-eyed lass!—I thought that surely, the man will be strong against this, his despised baggage of responsibility. Then lo and behold, the great Lord Cameron of the Camerons of Tidewater Virginia falls prey to a trick older than time.”
“Hmm.” Roc crossed his arms over his chest and nodded laconically to Alexander’s amusement. Perhaps he did deserve the man’s laughter.
Skye deserved a lot more.
And
she was going to get it.
“You’ve put me in a horrible position, you know.”
“Alas, Petroc, this has been in the works these four years now!”
“I should have told her the truth,” Roc murmured.
“You can’t. Not yet. Not until you return safely to these shores. Not until you can make her understand. You promised me to uphold the secret, Petroc. I need you! I need the Silver Hawk. It is my only way of knowing what goes on in the Caribbean, and down in North Carolina, beneath my own nose. You cannot tell her yet.”
“I didn’t intend to tell her—not yet,” Roc murmured. What role was she going to play herself this time? The Silver Hawk was longing to touch her again. Touch her … as she touched and seduced him this night.
Lord Cameron was dying to throttle his beautiful bride, the lady willing to trick and seduce him to seek assistance from another.
“You need to hurry,” Spotswood said. “I let her slip away just as I came. She’ll take some time to question some of the men in the town taverns, then they’ll send her down to the river’s edge, and to the Blackhorse.”
“The Blackhorse? Why, ’tis full of river rats!”
“Umm. And a place where the Silver Hawk has been seen before, and may appear again. I’ll send down. Peter should be below with the Silver Hawk’s apparel.” He paused, looking back. “It really was necessary, Petroc. You do know as well as I that the Silver Hawk will command the respect of the rogues in the area. They will not come together against him, while they might pool all their resources to send Lord Cameron down to the bottom of the sea.”
“Yes, it was necessary.” He touched his temple and winced. “I’m not sure about the headache, though, sir. Perhaps you could have warned me, and she could have just slipped out unnoticed.”
Spotswood lowered his head, a subtle smile playing on his lips. “I don’t know. Maybe the way she left was necessary, too.”
He turned around and left.
Roc crossed his arms over his chest, pensively awaiting Peter’s arrival with the things he would need.