Care and Feeding of Pirates (17 page)

"Mmm," Honoria said sleepily. She flicked her
gaze to the glass decanter and gave it a tiny frown.

Christopher straightened from the bed and
crossed to the writing table where crystal glasses had been left
for guests' convenience. Christopher sloshed liquid into a glass
and held it up. "Want some?"

Honoria sat up with a rustle of bedclothes
and gave him a ladylike look that was adorable when she was half
asleep. "Ladies do not drink spirits."

Christopher did. He silently downed the
whiskey and filled the glass again. He took a deep drink of that
too, then carried glass and decanter back to the bed with him.

Honoria drew her knees to her chest. "Why are
you trying to get drunk?"

Christopher sat down next to her, breathing
the heady fragrance of her warmth under the bedclothes. "I want
to."

"How is Manda?"

Christopher drained the glass, chasing the
last droplets with his tongue. "Fine. Alexandra has her bedded down
. . ." He moved the glass vaguely. "Somewhere."

"You should talk to her."

Christopher dribbled more whiskey into the
glass. "What about?"

Honoria gave him her most earnest, green-eyed
stare, her round cheeks pink from sleep. "She's been through an
awful ordeal. She will need to talk about it."

Christopher shook his head, the whiskey at
last loosening his limbs. "The last thing Manda will want is to
talk about it."

Honoria looked unconvinced. "Just what a man
would say."

"Manda deals with things in her own way,
usually by herself." Christopher pointed the glass at her. "So
don't try to have a heart-to-heart with her. She won't like
it."

Honoria said nothing, but a stubborn light
entered her eye.

The neckline of her nightdress was trimmed in
lace, which moved with her breathing. Christopher thunked the
whiskey decanter to the bedside table. "You should be asleep," he
said thickly.

"I wanted to wait for you." A blush spread
across her cheeks. "I wanted to show you something. It might soothe
you to sleep, better than the whiskey."

Christopher slid his hand over her
nightdress, then withdrew before he touched her skin. The whiskey
was beginning to cool his shaking rage, but he still did not trust
himself. Not yet.

"Honoria," he said, "if I take you tonight,
it will not be the pleasant journey we had before." Christopher's
cock was already stiffening from the memory of that pleasant
journey. "I'll take you hard, and I might not be able to stop, even
if you don't like it. And you are far too innocent for the ways in
which I want to take you."

Honoria studied him, eyes luminescent. "I am
not innocent."

"You are. You let me take you before, but
that does not mean you're ready for all the things I can do."

"All what things?"

"I'll tell you when you're ready."

Honoria touched her lower lip with the tip of
her tongue. She smelled of lavender, as though she'd scented the
water with it when she'd bathed. Christopher's arousal grew
tighter. She was his wife after all, and she had to do what he told
her.

"Then you will not seduce me tonight?" she
asked in a near whisper.

Christopher deliberately put the glass to his
lips and forced the whiskey into his mouth. "Not tonight, darling.
I'm getting drunk."

"Good," she said decidedly. She pushed the
covers aside and crawled out of bed.

Disappointment smacked him. "Good? What do
you mean, good?"

Honoria rummaged in the cupboard next to the
bed. "If you are not busy seducing me, then I can do something for
you."

Christopher stopped the glass of whiskey
halfway to his mouth. His head had been buzzing pleasantly, but now
he came alert. "What?"

She came up with a small glass bottle. "I
want to rub oil on your body. You will have to take off your
clothes and lie down."

*****

Chapter Thirteen

If Christopher had taken another sip of
whiskey, he'd have choked on it. He stared into his glass, looking
for enlightenment in the amber depths, then he very carefully set
the glass on the bedside table. "Why?"

Honoria shrugged, but she stood poised like a
bird who waited to see whether he would stroke its head or knock it
aside.

Christopher slowly slid off his coat and
tossed it to a chair, then he moved to the edge of the bed to tug
off his boots. One irregular oval of dried mud, missed by Grayson's
man's hasty cleaning, fell from the heel to the red and gold
carpet.

Still seated, Christopher popped open the
buttons of the breeches, one by one, while Honoria watched with
flattering scrutiny.

Christopher rose to his feet to slide off the
breeches. His underbreeches followed, even now a bit damp from his
swim.

He turned around to face her, still in his
shirt, the hem lifting a little with his erection.

Honoria gestured to the shirt. "That too."
She held the bottle tightly. "I already saw what happened to
you."

Christopher hesitated. The whiskey had warmed
him, but he still felt a faint chill in his heart. Was he ashamed?
He'd barely thought of the ruin of his body while he'd worked his
way back from the other side of the world, until he'd at last seen
Honoria again.
She
was still beautiful, whole,
unchanged.

Before self-pity could establish its hold,
Christopher stripped off the shirt and stood naked before her.

Honoria looked her fill. Her darkening gaze
roved his shoulders, his abdomen, his legs, his very aroused cock.
She examined every part of him that was still tight and whole,
before letting herself look at his scarred side. Her gaze rested
there, her expression blank, as though she didn't want him to see
her horror or pity.

Christopher turned his back and walked away.
He heard her draw a breath to call out, then she fell silent as he
stopped at the door and turned the key in the lock.

Honoria waited for him at the bed as he came
back, cradling the bottle against her chest. She ran her fingers
around the bottle's stopper in a most distracting way. "What
happened to you, Christopher?"

Christopher tossed himself onto his back on
the bed, tucking his hands behind his head and crossing his ankles.
"Aren't you supposed to be oiling me?"

"Tell me," she said quietly. "Please."

Christopher shrugged. "I was set upon and
robbed. Somewhere in the East." He hadn't even been certain where
he'd been at the time. China? Siam? It had been hot and wet and
he'd stunk with fever. "Whoever it was robbed me, and then they
tried to butcher me, and finally left me for dead."

Her eyes widened. "How did you survive?"

"The kindness of strangers." An old farmer
and his daughter, specifically. Neither Christopher nor they had
been able to speak the other's language, but the farmer and his
daughter had nursed him back to health and shared their meager
food. Missionaries said that these races were heathen and damned,
but the farmer and his daughter had been kinder to him than most
Europeans he'd met.

"I lived, Honoria," he said, banishing the
memories of pain. "It was just another of my adventures."

Honoria continued to watch him in distress.
She'd taken her hair down and gathered it in a thick tail at the
back of her neck. Wild curls trickled across her shoulders, fine
ones touching her forehead.

"You are so beautiful," Christopher said, his
words slurring. The whiskey must be catching up to him.

Honoria looked at the bottle as though
remembering it in her hands. Quickly she unfastened the stopper and
poured a few drops of oil onto her palm. The scent of jasmine and
spice floated in the heated air.

She set the bottle on the dressing table,
hiked up her nightgown, and knelt beside Christopher on the bed.
Christopher untucked one hand from behind his head and edged the
gown higher on her knee until he could see the curved line of her
folded leg and a glimpse of her thigh.

Honoria rubbed her hands together before
placing them on Christopher's chest. Her touch was cool, like
spring water, as she drew her hands across his collar bone and
smoothed the oil over his pectorals.

"Why did you not want me to see what had
happened to you?" she asked.

Christopher dipped his thumb into the warm
fold behind her knee. "Vanity, I suppose. I didn't want to
disappoint you."

No, what he really feared was that she'd take
one look at him and flee in horror. Christopher knew he'd sprung
back into her life like an out-of-control fire, and the fewer
reasons he gave her for running away the better. Would she want a
husband who had been halfway hacked apart then clumsily sewn
together again?

Honoria's fingers tangled in the wiry curls
on his chest. She circled his flat nipples, pale against his tan,
then drew her hand to the twisted mess of his side. "I'm not
disappointed."

Her soft words warmed his heart. Her hands
slid across his torso, slippery with oil, as she explored him in
hesitant, questing strokes.

Christopher was already as hard as he could
be, but she ignored his obvious erection in favor of tracing the
ridges of his abdomen. Her sleeves gently brushed his arousal,
curling fire in his veins.

"You're so prim outside the bedroom, my
wife," he said. "But inside . . ." He traced a circle on her thigh.
"You are just right."

Honoria gave him an oh-so-proper look. "What
I do with my husband in private is no one's business." She swiped
her palms up his arms, leaning forward to massage his knotted
shoulders. "And I am not prim. Primness implies a want of feeling
and rational thought--propriety for the sake of it. I'd rather
think of myself as discreet."

"Call it whatever you want. I still like
it."

Honoria drew her fingers over the scars on
his side, gliding over the ridges. "You lived through this terrible
ordeal. And yet two nights ago a few slivers had you cursing and
roaring."

He grinned. "You enjoyed it."

"How can you think I enjoyed hurting you?"
Her green eyes were wide, her hands moving in firm patterns on his
skin, as though she sculpted him from the oil.

Christopher rested his hand on the length of
her thigh, fingers indenting the softness. "You wanted me to be
dead."

"I certainly did not."

"But things were easier for you when I
was."

Her hands stilled. "They were not
easier
. That is not what I meant at all."

He waited for her to go back to rubbing the
oil on him, but she stopped, eyes glittering in indignation and
worry.

Christopher clasped her wrist. "I remember
you telling me you'd agree to obey your husband and his demands on
your body. So get on with it, wife."

"Not if you are going to be rude."

"Hmm, I don't remember that in the wedding
ceremony.
I promise to obey my husband, except when he's
rude.
"

"I'm pretty sure the men who put together the
Prayer Book meant exactly that."

"I doubt it. Why don't we find them and ask
them?"

She gave him a careful look. "They've been
dead for hundreds of years, Christopher."

"Then what do they know about it? Now, go on
oiling me. Your husband wants soothing."

"I can't if you don't let go of me."

Christopher dragged her wrist to his lips and
pressed a hard kiss to her fragrant skin.

"Do it," he said softly. "Or I'll take what I
want."

Her glare, he observed as he released her,
could sting worse than the harshest flogging. She snatched up the
bottle again, jerked off the stopper, and poured a stream of oil
straight onto his chest. The liquid landed with a sludge-like
splash and oozed over his sides and belly.

Honoria slammed the bottle back to the table.
She slapped her hands to his flesh, scooping the oil over his skin
in quick, painful jerks. The sound of palms hitting flesh rang
across the room.

Christopher seized her wrists. "You little
vixen."

"Don't move so much," she commanded. "You'll
spill oil all over Alexandra's fine sheets."

"If you don't stop that, Alexandra is going
to think something else is going on in here."

Honoria stilled, puzzled. "What?"

How could she be so wicked and so hopelessly
naïve at the same time? "She'll think I'm teaching you a lesson.
One you need to learn."

"Christopher, I have no idea what you're
talking about."

"I'm talking about taking my hand to your
backside. It's starting to seem a mighty fine idea."

Honoria's mouth dropped open. "Alexandra
would never suppose you were doing that."

"She might. Who knows what things she and
Finley get up to?"

Honoria's eyes flickered as she thought about
this new concept. Her face was pale, sculpted marble in the
darkness, then the white marble flushed a pretty and embarrassed
pink.

"Well," she said. "I certainly will not allow
you to do that to me."

He tightened his grip on her arms. "Careful,
Honoria. The husband decides what will be allowed."

She gave him a brow-arching stare. He liked
that. Honoria had always been more resilient than other young women
of her class. Instead of swooning or weeping in terror, Honoria
said,
Do your worst and be damned
.

She was like her brother all right. Ardmore
was a ruthless bastard who would have shot Switton outright tonight
without even speaking to him.

Christopher had decided that drawing out the
man's misery would be much more satisfying. From now on, every time
Switton looked into the mirror, he'd see the scars on his face put
there by Christopher with the poker, and remember who'd punished
him and why. Christopher had to wonder who was the crueler man,
himself or Ardmore.

"Take off the nightgown," he said to
Honoria.