Her Proper Scoundrel (25 page)

Accuse him of highway robbery? She wouldn’t dare. Or perhaps she would. He regarded her with new found respect – her wits were keen and she was willing to use whatever tactics she had on hand to win her battle.

“You’re my wife, you shan’t be allowed to testify against me,” he retorted.

“Can’t I? I’ll say you forced me to marry you.” She looked down her nose at him, eyes smoldering.
 

Christopher felt as if he had been punched in the gut at her haughty demeanor. The implication was clear. She was a duke’s daughter and he a lowly commoner. Uncertainty nibbled at him and for an instant he remembered the merciless teasing he had endured as a child. How would she regard him when she discovered his dark secret, that he was bastard born to a nobleman who had scorned his mother?

Defeated, he sucked in a long, ragged breath.

“Please, Christopher, I beg of you, find another way.” She fell to her knees in front of him and forced a smile. “It’s too dangerous,” she whispered so softly he could scarce hear her words over the sough of the breeze.

She worried for him. An appealing notion. He looked at her long and hard, losing himself in her tear-lined, emerald gaze before lifting his head to inspect the clouds scudding overhead.

Josceline asked him to pursue a path he knew was doomed to failure. But if it would restore the affection he had glimpsed in her eyes when he had first found her on the bench, then he would do it. If it would build her confidence in him so that if, when, she discovered the truth of his birth, she would disregard it, then he would do it.

“Very well, Josceline. I shall approach the wretch one last time.” He pulled her up to sit beside him and dropped a kiss on her nose. “However,” he warned, “if he does not accede, then I shall follow my instincts to steal the “Bessie” and deal with the consequences later.”

For a long moment, Josceline stared at Christopher, stomach in knots. His mind was made up; her argument had not changed it. True, he had agreed to approach Candel one more time, but if Candel didn’t acquiesce, then Christopher would proceed with the audacious idea of taking the “Bessie.”

That venture was sure to come to failure and he would end up in jail, sentenced for transportation to the colonies or worse, sentenced to hang. She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t bear to lose him now.

She loved him.

An idea almost as audacious as Christopher’s plan but there it was. She loved him.

Now how to stop him from certain failure.

Chapter Twenty Two

Christopher threw down his pen in disgust. Again he’d splotched ink on the paper. He turned the page in the ledger and began again. However, he had only copied over a couple of numbers before they swam before his eyes to be replaced with the vision of a pink cheeked Josceline in the garden earlier this afternoon. Once more he threw down his pen to stare blankly outside at the falling dusk.

He drummed his fingers. The discussion with Josceline had left him in an unsettled state. In his mind, he could see the instant when she had looked down her nose at him and he remembered the welling insecurity. Yet, mere minutes later she, pleading for him to reconsider his plan, had knelt on the ground at his feet as if she were a serving maid and he a mighty lord.

Tears had threatened to spill from her eyes. Perhaps feelings for him stirred within her after all. However, feelings for him weren’t enough. He needed her unreserved love. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt Oliver Candel wouldn’t give in and therefore he, Christopher, had no choice but to take the “Bessie” from beneath the man’s very nose. An action that, despite his brave words to the contrary, would have him flirting with the law.

It was sure to draw Josceline’s ire and would strain even the strongest bonds.

For a second time he remembered her tear filled eyes. Tears signified emotion.

A hopeful surge propelled him to his feet and he leaned forward to splay his hands on the desk. Tanned and calloused from years at sea, they stood out stark against the white pages. The hands of an honest man, a working man. The hands of a man who would protect and honor his wife for the rest of her days.

He began to pace, prowling the library as if in that room he could find the secret to earning her esteem.

Absent minded, he pulled on his watch fob to glance at the time on the ivory inlaid watch he’d bought in Morocco. Half past six. He’d ordered supper for eight o’clock and had requested Josceline to join him. An invitation she hadn’t wanted to accept. At first she had frowned, however when pressed she had agreed, albeit reluctantly.

That gave him an hour and a half to devise a plan, a first step, to secure her love and confidence.

* * *

Their conversation in the garden this afternoon still disturbed Josceline – Christopher could see it in the heightened color of her cheeks, hear it in the swish of her skirts when she walked into the dining room, smell it in the intensified scent of violets and sandalwood.

She wore her green frock, the one that turned her hair into deep russet and her eyes into an even deeper shade of emerald. For a second, he let himself simply enjoy the charming vision she made.

Paying him no heed, she sat down and made a show of smiling prettily at the footman who, blushing at her attention, dropped her linen napkin on the floor. In reaching down to fetch it, the unfortunate fellow bumped his head on the table which elicited murmurs of sympathy and a concerned gaze which lead to another round of blushes on the part of the young man.

Christopher gritted his teeth. When the footman, still blushing furiously and shaking like a leaf at Josceline’s attentions, knocked over Josceline’s empty wine glass, he ordered him away.

“You need not be so harsh with the poor fellow.” Josceline said, honey dripping from her words.

“Me, harsh? You were the one putting the poor lad through his paces.”

“And are you jealous?”

Yes. Yes, he was. Damnation, how weak that made him.

“No. No, of course not,” he blustered. “Merely intrigued by your ploy. Is there something you wish to discuss?”

“I am going with you.” She lifted her chin and gave him a defiant gaze.

“I must beg pardon?” Christopher gaped. “With me? Where?”

“When you pay another call on Oliver Candel. I know you have no stomach for it and will not give it your best effort. Therefore,” she turned a saccharine gaze on him, “I am going with you.”

Was she serious? The idea was shocking, her paying a visit on an unmarried man, even if Christopher did accompany her. What could she hope to gain? Desperately he wracked his brains for a response but she spoke before he could answer.

“Yes, I am serious.”

She read his mind; the idea of her doing so staggered him and he continued to stare at her, mouth agape.

“I can help you, you know. I do travel in the same social circles as Candel. I know his father. Lord Thaddeus Candel has had more than enough of Oliver’s escapades and, I’m quite certain, will do anything to avoid further scandal. Bristol is quite the end of England and Oliver really has nowhere else to go. So, unless he wishes to find a new life for himself on the continent or in the colonies, I believe he’ll be quite happy to avoid any news of this reaching his father.”

Christopher cocked his head. “I don’t believe you. Was it not only last night you told me you were a social pariah?”

“True. However, I am banking on the fact Oliver doesn’t remember that. Let us just say, he could be a fine member of the Hellfire Club.

“The Hellfire Club. Now there is a pack of rogues if ever there was one,” he muttered.

A second footman appeared, carrying a soup tureen.

“Why, that smells delicious.” Josceline gave the man her brightest smile; the footman almost dropped the tureen. A few drops of soup spilled onto the carpet.

Christopher scowled. She would have all the dishes in ruin and turn the men servants into blathering idiots if she continued on in the manner she was.

“Very well,” he sighed heavily, hoping she would notice the mournful expression on his face. “We shall call on Candel together.”

“Splendid.” She clapped her hands. “I’ll have one of the footmen deliver our calling cards on Monday. You do have a calling card, do you not?” she added when she saw his addled look.

“I do,” he growled. They had not stepped one foot from the house and already she had planned the appointment.

“Then it is decided.” She gestured to the hapless footman still standing with the soup tureen. “Soup, if you please.”

And she graced both of them with a charming smile which seemed to say: See how easy I managed to get my way?

Christopher had the sinking feeling this wouldn’t be the last time she twisted them all about her little finger. She had neatly taken the wind out of his sails and he was still no further ahead in winning her esteem.

* * *

Josceline pulled out the pins from her hair and shrugged off her stays, loosened by the ever obliging Mrs. Belton, who had bustled off immediately, shaking her head over “the silliness of fashion”. Josceline smiled at the memory. Such a dear, warm hearted woman.

She stripped off her shift and donned the flimsy scrap of silk nightgown. It wasn’t her warmest, far from it, but an uninspired flannel sack served as her warmest night gown and she meant to be attractive if Christopher decided to visit her. He hadn’t done so since their wedding but sooner or later she knew he would demand his conjugal rights.

She sat down to braid her hair, and with the aid of her comb and mirror, sectioned the heavy tresses precisely into three equal swatches.

A knock sounded on the door, a sharp rat-a-tat-tat as if the owner of the unseen fist could bore a hole through the wood.

Christopher.

She dropped her comb. He knocked not the hallway door, but the door between their rooms. He meant to visit with her.

The world tilted crazily, her heart pounded. It was as if he had heard her thoughts about sharing a bed. Feeling suddenly exposed in the scrap of nightgown, she reached for her wrapper.

“Come in.” She hated the quaver in her voice.

In the mirror’s reflection, she could see the door swing open on silent hinges. Christopher stood there, expression enigmatic. He too, apparently, was ready for bed, for he wore a night shirt. Her eyes darted to his calves. They were shapely, lightly covered in hair.

Her heart jammed itself in her throat. She had never seen a man’s bare legs before. Ludicrous thought, they didn’t look much different than her own. Bulkier, perhaps, but still the same general shape. She forced her gaze back to his.

“That was quite a display this evening at dinner.” His voice, soft yet ominous, caressed her ears and sent shivers down her back.

“A woman has weapons in her arsenal. I merely thought to use them,” she replied coolly, relieved to note her voice had steadied. She didn’t want him knowing how gauche his presence made her feel, as if she was a silly girl still in the school room learning her first minuet.

She couldn’t catch her breath for his eyes were on her, probing, searching, raking her body from top to bottom.

She sat paralyzed as he moved into the room.

“Weapons.” He snorted. “Lud, not even Bonaparte’s armies could withstand the wiles of a thousand women.”

“Oh,” she gasped then started to laugh at the mental picture of an army of scantily clad women halting an army of soldiers in its tracks.

Nerve fuelled hysteria sharpened the peals of laughter into shrill barks. Balderdash, he had totally unnerved her. This must stop. She closed her eyes and collected her thoughts.

She didn’t know his intentions but if he did mean to bed her, she couldn’t stop him. Nor did she want to. The remembrance of the feelings he had aroused in her that night in the library sent more shivers down her spine. With a start, she realized she wanted to relive the sensations.

“Do you care to share the joke?” He strolled over to stand behind her, dropping both his hands on her shoulders.

“Oh,” she gasped again when the heat of his hands burned her shoulders through the thin fabrics. She stiffened.
 

He appeared not to notice. “I should like for you to buy some frocks, or fripperies or whatever it is women need.”

“What?” The change of topic surprised her. One minute he spoke of Bonaparte’s armies; the next he spoke of clothing for her.

“Josceline.” He pulled her back to lean against him, leaning down to rest his head on her shoulder.

Together they stared into the mirror, his dark head nestled snug against her russet one.

She felt him inhale.

“I love the way you smell,” he whispered. “Violets and sandalwood. I want you tonight, Josceline. I want you to share my bed. I want to show you how a man truly loves a woman.”

She gulped.

Christopher grasped her upper arms and tugged her to standing, then turned her about. His head lowered, blotting out the rest of the room, he brushed his lips once against her nose before slanting his mouth to capture hers.

He kissed her.