A Lady Dares (16 page)

‘Elise, it’s more than that.’ Dorian shook his head, looking distinctly uncomfortable for the first time in their acquaintance. ‘You’re asking me to enter into society. Society and I parted ways a long time ago.’

‘Perhaps it’s time to re-enter,’ she answered staunchly. ‘What do you have to lose? If they’ve already rejected you for good, then nothing changes. But if they were willing to give you another chance, opportunities might open up.’ She felt a bit dishonest here. She was
hoping those opportunities might be with her shipyard. Perhaps he could be persuaded to stay on as master builder.

He reached for her hands, covering them with his grip, warm and firm. ‘Elise, I’m not worried for me. I don’t care what they think of me now or ever. I’ve made my choices. I am worried for you. Don’t you see what association with me could do to you? All your plans will be for naught.’

‘People know you’re here already.’ Something tugged at her heart to hear him speak so disparagingly of himself. ‘Charles knows, and who knows who else knows by now that you’re working at the shipyard?’

‘A select group of yachters probably do know,’ Dorian agreed. ‘That’s not the same as the whole of society knowing. It’s also not the same as flaunting it in their faces. The yachting community might tolerate me being around behind the scenes, but to put me up on your deck in the role of captain would be to rub their noses in it. You need someone who will be good for business.’

Elise cocked her head to one side, considering. ‘You will be good for business. I am banking on you and all your notoriety,
Dorian, and of course a fast ship pays for all. No one will care if you’d stolen the Crown Jewels when the boat is as fine as ours.’ She’d known it would be a hard sell. She shouldn’t be surprised that he was proving so resistant. She
was
surprised she felt so very desperate inside when she’d had his measure all along.

Elise eyed the remaining champagne, just a bit in the bottle, but enough for what she intended. ‘It seems like you could do with a little more persuading. Let’s see what we can do about that.’

She knelt before him, hands at the fastenings of his trousers, pleased to note that he was rising for her already, his manhood roused at her first touch. Pleased, too, that he understood this was a game of sorts. She wanted to do this for him. It was as arousing to her to touch him, to take him like this, as it was for him to be taken. This was no literal act of whoring herself to get what she wanted.

Elise opened his trousers and took him in her hand, feeling the pulsing heat of him. ‘You are so big.’

Dorian chuckled, sliding down in his chair to better position himself for her. ‘That’s what every man wants to hear, Princess.’

‘I doubt every man is as well endowed,’ Elise said coyly, starting to move her hand up and down his shaft, smoothing the bead of moisture from his tip over the entirety of his length. She reached for the bottle of champagne and glanced up naughtily at him while she poured the remnants over his length.

‘That’s a bit cold.’ Dorian jumped a bit at the contact. She felt a moment’s guilt.

‘I know, but my mouth isn’t.’ She closed her lips over the head of his shaft, taking in the salt of him and the dry sweetness of the champagne all at once. It was a heady ambrosia made all the more delicious when mixed with Dorian’s moans of approval. She worked him with her mouth, sucking and licking until she was sure all his reservations had deserted him.

He was pulsing and tense, she could feel the muscles of his thighs quivering with the effort to hold back, his hands clenching the sides of his chair, his back arching his body up to her. That’s when everything shattered.

Literally shattered.

Her head flew up from between Dorian’s legs and Dorian exploded from the chair with lightning speed. He raced towards the drawing
room. She was steps behind, skittering to a stop at the sight of broken glass on the floor and flames from the destroyed lamp racing up the heavy curtains.

Oh, lord, her house was on fire.

E
lise grabbed a vase, the first item she laid eyes on with any water in it, and doused the curtains with a splash, petals and all, to little effect. Dorian seized a section of the curtains that hadn’t caught fire and yanked hard, bringing down the
portières
with a crash. ‘Watch your skirts!’

Elise backed away just in time to avoid catching fire herself while Dorian smothered the flames with great stomps from his boots. The room filled with her staff, alerted to trouble by the commotion and already carrying buckets. Dorian shouted orders and the flames began to diminish. They were gaining on it. Five minutes later, they conquered
it. She wasn’t going to lose the house, but what a mess!

There was a jagged hole in the broken window, glass shards scattered on the floor and the curtains obviously beyond repair. Smoke and flames had damaged the hard woods where the curtains had landed. Dorian’s decision had likely saved the house. If the flames had gone up the curtains to the ceiling, nothing could have stopped the fire from spreading. Smoke and water stained the furniture.

Elise began to make mental notes. Furniture could be cleaned and repaired, she’d need new curtains, and a carpenter to repair the floor and she’d need a new window. That would be the first priority. She could imagine what the house looked like from the street.

The neighbours! An involuntary gasp escaped her and she covered her mouth with her hand as if to try to hold it in. What must they think? With a shattered front window, there was no disguising the disaster. ‘There will be no hiding this,’ Elise mused out loud. Her eyes met Dorian’s across the room where he stood by the broken window. ‘Is there a crowd? Is it very bad?’ she asked, hoping for the best.

Dorian’s response confirmed the worst. ‘Shall I get rid of them for you?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. He strode to the door and stepped outside. She could hear his commanding tones carrying down to the street. ‘We’re all fine here, just a rock that was kicked up by a passing carriage. You can go about your evenings. Thank you for your concern.’

‘They’re gone.’ Dorian smiled when he returned inside, looking all the more handsome for the mess he sported. His hair was loose, his shirt mostly untucked from the waistband of his trousers—that was her fault, not the fire’s.

Elise couldn’t decide what would cause the worst scandal tomorrow: the fire or the fact that her neighbours would know without equivocation a man had been with her in the town house when it had occurred. Sensible neighbours would be thankful she hadn’t been alone. Without Dorian, the house and perhaps theirs would have been lost. But Mayfair neighbours weren’t sensible. They’d see only the breach of protocol in Dorian’s presence instead of the luck.

‘Elise, you’re pale. Come with me. Evans can handle things from here for tonight. Mary
will send a tea tray.’ Dorian took her arm and she let him lead her away to a small sitting room at the back of the house. Now that the crisis had passed, she was starting to shake. A mixture of fear and anger swept through her. She was more than glad to turn the situation over to Dorian for the moment. She let him take the tea tray from Mary. She let him put a warm tea cup in her hands while she tried to formulate a coherent thought.

‘Why would someone do this?’ she said at last, the heat of the tea cup rallying her senses.

‘You know who and you know why,’ Dorian chided gently, fixing his own cup. ‘What happened tonight is a terrible thing, but you can hardly be surprised. We’ve been waiting for the other shoe to fall since Tyne’s thugs visited the shipyard, since the fuse was lit to ignite the tar barrels. Now it has.’

He paused and Elise waited for him to say the rest. ‘I told you the day of the fuse fire we were lucky. The intent had been to scare us, not really to ignite the barrels. Tonight was about more than scaring us. Tyne is getting desperate. He wants this situation resolved soon.’

‘I won’t give him my boat. It would be fairly hard to anyway since he hasn’t made an offer and technically I don’t know it’s him behind all this madness.’

‘He agrees with you,’ Dorian said solemnly. ‘At this point he knows you won’t give over the boat, not as long as you live. If you were dead, it might be an easier matter. There’d be no one left who cared what became of the boat.’

She looked up from her cup. ‘No one except you.’ It was true. William would gladly be rid of it and her mother had already washed her hands of it.

‘There would be me. I’d rather it didn’t come down to that, though.’ Dorian took her hand. ‘I want to go after Tyne. I want to confront him and put an end to this.’

Elise shook her head. She knew what he meant. ‘I won’t sanction murder over a boat, Dorian.’

‘Think of it as self-defence. As long as he lives, you are not safe.’

‘As long as I have something he wants, I’m not safe,’ Elise amended. ‘As soon as I sell the boat, I’m no longer of interest to him.’ It would be imperative now to go forwards
with plans to sell the yacht. The brief fantasy Dorian had invoked over wine and pasta of keeping the boat would come to an end out of vital necessity. There could no longer be consideration of any other plan.

‘Don’t be a fool, Elise. Tyne can live on revenge alone. Don’t think for a moment he’ll forgive you for thwarting him. It may not be as easy as you think to sell the yacht. Yachtsmen and sailors are a superstitious lot. If Tyne were to spread rumours about the boat, buyers would be thin on the ground.’

‘Are you saying it’s hopeless?’ Elise challenged. ‘I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t? I didn’t take you for a fatalist, Dorian.’

She made to rise, but Dorian pulled her down. ‘Not a fatalist, Elise, a realist. You don’t know him like I do.’

‘I would if you’d just tell me,’ Elise snapped. Anger had overcome her fear. How had her life become so complicated that she was in her mother’s drawing room, alone with a man and discussing the murder of another man who wanted her boat as if it were a casual item on a meeting agenda? ‘You tell me nothing of yourself, nothing of our apparent common enemy and you expect me to take all
my direction blindly from you. That has never been my way and it won’t ever be my way no matter how good in bed you are.’

A horrid thought struck her. She rose, shaking off Dorian’s hand. ‘Is that what all this seduction has been about? Gaining my blind compliance? I suppose next you’ll be offering to take the boat off my hands as a favour to lead Tyne away from me while satisfying some hidden agenda of yours!’

‘You dare to talk about agendas and using people?’ Dorian rose, too, eyes flashing. She’d pushed him too far in her own anger. ‘I’m not the one who only an hour ago was using all of her seductive prowess to convince me to captain her boat. If anyone has been underhanded, it has been you! You’re the one who has applied for yacht club membership by forging your brother’s signature on the application. I’ve never been other than what I seem.’ He held his arms wide in a gesture of transparency. ‘What you see is what you get with me, Princess.’

‘I did what I had to do,’ Elise fired back. Dorian’s eyes were blue coals of rage. He hadn’t missed the implication that perhaps
he’d been used along the way. Well, let him infer what he liked.

‘Are you always that free with your favours, then?’

But not that
. How could Dorian think such a thing? How could he
say
it? Her hand came up of its own volition, slapping him hard across the face, the sound of it a loud and unmistakable clap of skin on skin. ‘Get out. I don’t want to see you until the yacht is done. For both of our sakes, I hope you can finish ahead of schedule.’

‘I can finish, Princess,’ Dorian said with nasty innuendo. ‘I will expect to be paid for my services.’ Looking straight past her, he strode out of the room, shoulders square, head up as if he had nothing to be ashamed of.

And maybe he didn’t except for those last words. Elise sank to the sofa, her heart hammering with the emotion of the quarrel. How had things become unravelled so fast? She hadn’t meant to pick a fight with him. But the dam had burst and all the doubt had come rushing out, probably because the dam hadn’t been well built in the first place. Perhaps this was what happened when one slept with a man one didn’t really know and then tried to convince
oneself the feelings were genuine. The truth was he’d been very blatant about not wanting to discuss his past. He’d been just as blatant about that as he’d been about not wanting to discuss their one night. What had he said?
No rules?
It couldn’t get much clearer than that.

Tears started to burn in her eyes. She covered her face with her hands. She’d been so very foolish! It wasn’t just sleeping with Dorian that had been foolish. It was everything else: thinking that what they’d done would mean something; that she could outwit the villainous Damien Tyne; that she could build this boat and salvage the business. All she had to show for her efforts was a broken window, a fire-damaged town house and a madman after her. And what had she done? She’d sent away the one man who could help her find her way out of this mess. Oh,
foolish
didn’t begin to cover it.

She needed to apologise. But she’d be damned if she was going to chase after Dorian Rowland in the dark to do it. She didn’t have much left after tonight, but she had her pride.

Dorian stopped at the corner. He leaned against the lamp post, catching his breath. He
should walk back in there and apologise. He’d said rough words to her, words a decent man didn’t say to a decent woman. It was further proof he wasn’t a decent man. But dammit, a man had his pride if nothing else. She’d accused him of seducing her for ulterior purposes.
She’s not far from the truth and you know it
. But it wasn’t like that, not when it had come down to it. He’d slept with her because he’d wanted to, because he’d desired her. He still desired her.

Tonight was supposed to have ended differently. The necklace in his pocket was a sad reminder of those intentions. It still could, if he’d just go back. And what? Beg? Grovel? Elise had been angry. He’d seen her temper on full display, her wit sharp, her tongue cutting. Maybe it was better this way. Yes, it was
definitely
better this way.

Dorian began to walk. First down one street, then another, and another until he was too far away to conveniently turn back, his mind rolling out all the reasons he was right to have left. He would not beg. He could apologise for his words, but not his choices, and that would not be enough for Elise. He could say he was sorry for his secrets, but he would
not tell them. She would truly despise him if she knew the things he’d done. The motives behind them would not be enough to clear him in her conscience.

What was the point anyway? Confessing all to Elise wouldn’t solve anything. It wouldn’t protect her from Tyne, it wouldn’t change the nature of their relationship—which was temporary. He couldn’t keep a woman like Elise. She’d wanted to talk about their relationship this afternoon. That should have scared him. His gut usually twisted at the mere mention. Talking about relationships meant admitting to having them—the very first step on a slippery slope to commitment. But this afternoon, the familiar twist hadn’t been there. Still, he’d diverted the discussion because he could offer her none of the reassurances women looked for.

What he could do, though, was make enquiries about Tyne, help her resolve the doubts about her father’s death and he could finish her boat. Then he could give her up. He could walk away as if she were just another woman he’d slept with. Only she wasn’t. The realisation was so strong, struck so deeply, Dorian had to stop walking and steady himself.
How had that happened? She had him dressing up and climbing unstable trellises. She had him thinking about captaining her yacht and re-entering society, something he’d sworn never to do, and all for a pretty face. Oh, no, she wasn’t just a pretty face. That was how it had happened. He’d fallen for her intelligence, her passion, her boldness. The reasons hardly mattered. What did was that he’d
fallen
.

‘Get a grip on yourself, Rowland,’
he muttered under his breath.
‘Build the boat and walk away. She’s just a woman you can’t have.’
But that didn’t solve anything because he never walked away from a challenge.

Heaven help him. He wanted Elise Sutton. He might even love her.

Heaven help her when he was finished with her. He wanted Elise Sutton with a vengeance. Damien Tyne paced the small, crude office he kept on the Wapping docks. It was not nearly as nice as Blackwell and the East India set-up or as well located. He and Maxwell had guessed poorly and invested unwisely, while Richard Sutton had done the opposite. Sutton had leased the more-expensive site at Blackwell
while he and Maxwell Hart had bet on the cut-through to be built between Limehouse and Wapping, joining the docks directly to the Pool of London. The cut had never materialised, although it had been talked about a great deal over the last twenty years.

It only fed his vengeance to know Rowland was doing more than building the boat. His man had reported Rowland’s presence at the town house after hours on several occasions, the latest being four nights ago. Rowland had come for dinner, all dressed up and riding in the Sutton carriage.

Rowland’s ability to land in the most lucrative of beds never ceased to amaze him. He’d taken Rowland’s ship, effectively running Rowland out of business for the nasty turn of events over the incident with the pasha. It should have broken Rowland. Without a ship, Rowland couldn’t run his cargos and he’d be too dangerous to be hired by another. No decent businessman would risk his ship being hunted down simply because Rowland was at the helm. Even with all that against him, Rowland had thrived. the lucky bastard was now privy to the elite innovations of Richard Sutton’s last yacht, bedding the lovely Elise
and living the good life without expending a pound of his own money.

Tyne pulled out his pocket watch and flipped it open. It was nearly eleven in the morning. Miss Sutton should be receiving Maxwell’s offer right about now. Perhaps after the fire four nights ago, the tide would begin to turn in his favour. Elise should be frightened. This game was serious and, without meaning to, Dorian would have helped it along. If he cared a whit for Elise Sutton, he would have cautioned her that this was for real. That he, Tyne, would stop at nothing. What would she think about Maxwell’s offer? Would she look at it with relief or with suspicion?