‘Aye, Ben’s proving himself the best of us all as usual,’ she said, affection very evident in her husky voice, and Hugh frowned fleetingly at hearing her so neatly avoid his implication she wasn’t as close to her protector as she hoped she was.
Then he forgot his doubts about that position himself as he pondered the possibility of her maintaining intimate relations with Kit’s business partner as well as Kit himself. He silently cursed the blond giant for apparently taking shares in his best friend’s doxy, especially when Kit could have shared her with him instead.
‘So why are you still here? You could easily have gone to sea in Ben’s stead, and I doubt very much anyone would have missed you,’ she informed him irritably.
Which was perfectly correct, he allowed fairly, even if it was brutally frank and deliberately tactless. Once upon a time, when he’d gone by another name and still possessed a relatively innocent soul, a number of good people had cared what became of him and some had even claimed to miss him sadly whilst he was away at sea. The few who were left to recall the blithe young idiot he’d once been probably welcomed the disappearance of the cynical sot he’d become from their lives with unalloyed relief, when he finally had the good manners to remove himself from polite society and the place he’d once thought of as home.
He reminded himself sourly that the past was dead and gone and he’d resolved to live for the day when he became Hugh Darke, a man who congratulated himself on caring for nobody, just as nobody cared for him, except somewhere along the way he’d come to value the good opinion of his rescuers. Still, at least he’d been able to tell himself that he’d never again be the gullible, arrogant young fool he’d been back then, before his world fell apart and everything he’d thought solid and safe melted away like mist.
Memory of the wanton havoc a careless and selfish woman could create in the life of a so-called gentleman should make him turn away from this one and barricade himself into his borrowed chamber until she gave up on him and went back into the night as swiftly and silently as she’d come. Unfortunately, she fascinated him far too much, even when he was sober and responsible; now he was three-parts’ castaway, he was much too forgetful that whatever sort of woman she was, she certainly wasn’t his, for all his driven wanting of her.
‘I’ve been ordered to stay ashore and run things here while they’re both busy playing on the high seas, or wherever Kit Stone happens to be hiding himself just now,’ he admitted gruffly at last.
His ruffled feelings about his part of their current mission were too apparent in his aggrieved tone and he hated to hear that faint whine of discontent in his own voice. From what he could see of his unexpected visitor’s face through the shadowed gloom, she looked quite tempted to push him down the stairs and have done with him for good. A part of himself he’d almost managed to smother in drink and duty would almost be glad if she could put a period to his worthless existence as well, but he shook off the deep sense of melancholy he suspected had a lot to do with returning sobriety and wondered how soon he could drown it in brandy again. The sooner he got rid of the confounded woman and got back to this useless excuse for a life the better, he decided bitterly, then frowned fiercely at the intruder, which made it a crying shame she probably couldn’t see in the dark how very little he wanted her here.
Chapter Two
‘So you’re playing at being in charge of Kit and Ben’s business ashore, whenever you manage to stay sober enough to care if it sinks or swims for the odd half-hour you can spare it, whilst they’re both busy risking their lives to make your fortune for you?’ the intrusive female asked Hugh, condemnation heavy in otherwise dulcet tones.
How irresistible her voice might be if she ever found anything to like about him, he mused foolishly. As it was, her question echoed about his head like knife blades and he wondered if she’d been sent to torture him with her nagging questions and the haunting scent of her, the ridiculous sensuality of her very presence in the same room with him when it was too dark for him to see the outline of her superb body. A vital, unignorable here-and-now allure that somehow reminded him with every breath that she was a very human woman and not a haughty goddess after all. A woman well used to satisfying a man’s every fantasy on her back—as long as that man had enough gold in his pockets to pay for the privilege. And, thanks to Kit Stone and Ben Shaw, he had more than enough gelt to buy a lovely woman for their mutual pleasure nowadays, and keep her in comfort while he did so. How unfortunate that the one he wanted at the moment belonged to a friend he already owed so much to that he must leave her as untouched as a vestal virgin.
‘I mind my own business—would I could say the same for you, madam,’ he informed her sharply, in the hope she couldn’t read his bitter frustration at her unavailability or discern his ridiculous state in this gloom.
‘Kit and Ben are my business,’ she informed him impatiently and confirmed every conclusion he’d already reached about her, which really shouldn’t disappoint him as bitterly as it did somehow, especially considering he already expected the worst of her and most of her gender.
‘Not at the moment they’re not, since there’s a few hundred leagues of ocean between you and their moneybags, so you’ll just have to ply your trade elsewhere until they return,’ he drawled as insultingly as he could manage.
‘That’s it! Out you; go on, you get out of this house right now, you verminous toad!’ she ordered as if she had every right to evict him from the house Kit had told him to treat as his own while he was away.
‘Firstly, you’ll cease your screeching, my girl,’ he ordered as he grasped her arms in a steely hold, in case she started scratching and biting in retaliation for being thwarted as was the habit of her type—bred in the gutter and inclined to revert to it at the slightest provocation he decided unfairly, considering he’d long ago concluded nobody could help where they were born, mansion or hovel, and that he preferred hovel dwellers over their better-off neighbours nine times out of ten.
‘Damn you, I’ll screech as long and as loud as I choose to,’ she snapped back and he shook her in the hope it would rob her of breath. Her noise and her closeness and the elusive, womanly scent of her as she fought his grip with a determination he secretly admired was making his head pound again.
‘Secondly, you’ll get out of my room,’ he went on doggedly.
‘We’re not in a room; even if we were, it wouldn’t be yours.’
‘Irrelevant,’ he dismissed and felt something strange under the controlling grip he couldn’t bring himself to make a punishing one, despite his disillusionment with her sex and the urgent need he felt to be rid of her before disaster struck, something besides warm, soft, tempting woman. ‘And what the devil are you doing running wild about the place dressed in a man’s shirt and breeches and not just asking for trouble but begging for it, you idiot woman?’ he demanded harshly, quite put off his list of demands by that shocking discovery.
At least he wished fervently he really did find her unconventional attire shocking, instead of far too sensually appealing for comfort or safety as his exploring hand on her neat derrière made her squirm even more determinedly against him and curse him with an impressive, if far from ladylike, fluency while she was doing so.
‘How I choose to dress is none of your business and never will be,’ she informed him sharply at last, but if she could still blush he was almost sure she was doing so from the sudden increase in body heat under his exploring fingers.
‘No, it’s clearly Kit Stone’s or Ben Shaw’s business, and therefore mine in their absence,’ he asserted, senses sharpening despite the brandy, as he felt a terrible threat to his jealously guarded aloofness in that demand for more information and carried on all the same. ‘Come on,’ he urged recklessly, making her obedience irrelevant by tugging her after him all the way downstairs and into the kitchen, where at least a fire was still burning faintly, even if the manservant Kit employed was