“Well, I can’t imagine how you expect me to prepare for my wedding without my things, Mr. Warre,” she scolded. “Or to travel, which raises another question. How, precisely, do you plan to convey me back to England? By ship, I hope. The roads on the Continent are devilish rutted. Auntie Phil and I took weeks upon weeks to travel to Venice, but of course that was years ago. Oh, I would love to see Venice again. And Vienna. All cities beginning with V, in fact. Perhaps we can—”
“That’s enough.”
“Am I bothering you, Mr. Warre?” she inquired with false concern. “Do accept my apologies. Truly. One does so hate a yammerer. Such a nuisance. Of all the qualities one might find in a person, I daresay chattering has got to be the least—”
“Silence.” He pushed her inside the inn, ignored the frowning concierge, hauled her upstairs by the arm and managed to drag her into his room.
“Well, since you hadn’t the foresight to collect my things—” Good God, he would have to gag her “—we shall simply have to return to the Possession.”
He went to the pockmarked bureau. “By all means, let us proceed there directly.” The looking glass in this third-rate inn was so shoddy it was good for little more than guessing where the blood was as he inspected the damage from the bar brawl.
“Sarcasm is an ugly thing, Mr. Warre. Everyone says so. You really ought to be more sincere, if not for me then for the sake of your soul, because—”
“Lady India,” he said sharply, and turned on his heel to face her. She observed him craftily with eyes better suited to a courtesan. “For the sake of your soul—” he pointed at the fraying sitting suite behind her “—sit.”
There was a beat. A little twitch at the corner of her too-full lips. And then she turned away and sprawled herself in a shabby velvet armchair like a man, except there wasn’t one bloody thing masculine about her—a fact his hands were having difficulty forgetting.
“I wish he’d broken your nose,” she said, staring him directly in the eye.
“A charming sentiment.” He turned back to the glass. He’d lost his peruke in the tavern, and his hair—too long for the damned thing anyhow after nearly five weeks aboard that godawful ship—lay in a mess of near-black waves. He’d have a black eye by morning. That, a bloody lip and sore ribs were the perfect cap to an endless bout of seasickness.
No. No, the perfect cap was sitting in an armchair behind him, observing him disdainfully.
He checked his pocket watch. Where the hell was Jaxbury?
“You did not succeed in ruining Katherine’s life to pay your debts,” she told him haughtily, swinging a small foot back and forth, “so you’ve decided to ruin mine. You will not succeed.”
Ruining Katherine’s— Of course. Lady India was loyal to her former captain, and apparently the fact that Katherine was now Nick’s sister-in-law carried little weight. But Lady India would not want to hear that ruining Katherine Kinloch’s life had never been his objective, and that sometimes one pursued options in one’s desperation that one would never consider otherwise.
Such as agreeing to pursue a young hellion and force her into marriage.
“Your life is already ruined,” he told her.
“It isn’t.”
Yes, it is. No, it isn’t. There was no doubt Lady India would be able to keep up that conversation for the better part of an hour.
In the glass he watched her rise from the chair and approach him. She had the kind of shapely mouth that could earn a fortune doing unspeakable things at Covent Garden.
He refused to think of what Lady India might do with that mouth. Leave a man singing two octaves higher, most likely.
“My life isn’t ruined, of course,” she said conversationally, “but my body—well, that is another matter entirely. I regret to inform you, Mr. Warre, that I am not a virgin.” She put a hand to her belly. “At this moment, I could well be carrying a child. An Egyptian child, if you must know, although strictly speaking I suppose Ottoman is the better—no. No, in truth he was from Tunisia, I think, so if one wants to be strictly factual—”
“And I do, Lady India. I do wish to be strictly factual. Which is why I must remind you that less than an hour ago you spoke of giving your virtue to a sailor.”
Her mouth curved in a bemused smile. “I really don’t consider anything properly done until it’s been accomplished a minimum of three times, so—being strictly factual now, mind you—tonight would have marked the final demise of my virtue. I was referring to the coup de grâce. The triple cut, one might say.”
My daughter is a wild harridan, Cantwell had said. The man had a talent for understatement.
“Well, then.” He dropped the cloth in the basin and turned toward her. “You won’t mind if I have a taste of what I may look forward to once we’ve celebrated our nuptials.”
The quick apprehension in her eyes told him everything he needed to know about whether she might be carrying a Tunisian sailor’s illegitimate child.
Those eyes were blue—real blue, not gray-blue like Clarissa’s. Nor was her hair the pale, flaxen shade of Clarissa’s. It was pure honey, alive with ten shades of gold.
Desire ripped through him. Devil take him, he was an idiot.
But those eyes had taken on a decidedly less bold light, so he let his lip curve. “Not so adventurous as you claim, I see.”
She laughed, and it transformed her face in a way that wasn’t helpful at all. “My, Mr. Warre, you do think highly of yourself. You’ve already seen my taste in men. You’re hardly exotic, and much too old. I could never bring myself to bed someone so ancient.”
Fifty thousand pounds. Cantwell suffered from a severely overinflated view of his daughter’s worth. Or, depending where one stood, a severely underinflated one. “Indeed. God knows how I manage to stay upright with thirty-four years behind me.”
“Thirty-four!”
“Fortunately, our relations will be more of the lying-down variety.”
“Thirty-four?”
“Shocking, isn’t it?”
“Ought you to remain standing? You mustn’t tax yourself on my account.” She gestured toward the sitting suite. “Please, do be seated.”
“I find that I am particularly fit for my age,” he said drily. If only someone were transcribing this priceless conversation. “As for exotic, if you like, I shall wear a turban when I ‘bed’ you.” He regretted the words the moment they left his tongue.
“What a generous offer, Mr. Warre. But I worry about engaging in anything so vigorous as bedding with a man of your age. My Auntie Phil once spoke of a Lord Garth who dropped stone dead in the middle of—”
“Lord Garth was two and eighty.” Something like a laugh escaped him, and he went to his portmanteau because it was too easy to imagine her splayed across that bed, and his dropping dead would not be part of the entertainment. Good God. Lady India’s Auntie Phil, the young and widowed Lady Pennington, should have a care what she discussed with impressionable minds.
“Regardless, one can’t be too careful when one gets up in one’s years,” she said. “I would hate for anything to befall you.”
His hands itched to open the door and toss her out. Let her go back to her stolen ship and her lusty sailors. Let Jaxbury deal with her, while Nick finally, blessedly got some sleep after the hellish weeks of sea travel.
But he was in too deep to turn back. Holliswell had granted him time to pursue Lady India and collect the money from her father, yes. But if Nick did not succeed by their agreed-upon date, Holliswell would