Irresistible (10 page)

"You may be sure that your smallest wish has become my command, my bloodthirsty beauty. But before you dispatch me, I would at least know how you discovered the letters' existence. Was it pillow talk from Lord Archer, perhaps, or did someone set you on to find them?"

Claire glared at him. "Your idiocy passes all bounds. And keep your hands up."

This sharp-voiced reminder came as his hands began to lower. She remembered the knife he had tucked into the waistband of his breeches all too clearly. No doubt he remembered it too.

"Turn your back. And keep your hands where I can see them."

His brows rose. "Are you contemplating shooting me in the back? It seems a little cowardly."

Claire scowled at him. "Turn around."

To her relief, he turned around. For the briefest moment, she looked him over without moving. His hair was drying now; it still gleamed as shiny black as a seal's pelt, but the thick strands, which reached almost to his shoulders, were beginning to wave quite disarmingly. His shoulders looked tense, as if he might indeed fear that she would pull the trigger at any moment. A picture of them unclothed leaped unbidden into her mind: They were bronzed, with satiny-looking skin covering flexing muscles. Below them his back had tapered in a vee to his waist, and then his buttocks had flared, small and round and looking as though they would be hard to the touch. But she had not meant to see him naked; indeed, she had quickly closed her eyes.

She refused to let such indecent images haunt her now. The present, and him in the present, were more than enough to deal with.

His white shirt hung loose from his breeches; it covered him to the tops of his thighs.
But she well remembered the black wedge of hair on his chest, the hard muscles of his abdomen, and the surprising size of that most private part of him.

Oh, Lord, she had not meant to remember that. Had not meant to notice it. Had not meant to see it. Why, oh why, was it fixed in her mind?

Determinedly she banished it.

Braced apart, his legs were long and strong-looking.
The muscles of his thighs had been thick and powerful.
Below his breeches, she could see the dark hair that roughened calves sculpted of muscle.
His legs had been hairy all over, including his thighs.

Stop it, she told herself fiercely. She would not remember how he had looked without his clothes. For a lady to carry images like that around in her mind was shameful. Worse, it was— debauched.

She would not allow herself to be interested in such things. Rather, she was
not
interested in such things.

She was not.

And, if she were to survive this encounter, she must get on with what she had started out to do.

Taking a deep breath, Claire focused on the man in front of her. The clothed and real man in front of her. His back faced her squarely, so that he was unable to see what she was doing. And thank goodness for that, she thought. At least she did not have to worry about him guessing any of her unseemly thoughts from the expression on her face.

Keeping a wary eye out for any sudden moves, Claire stepped up right behind him. At such close quarters his size was even more intimidating. She took in at a glance the daunting width of his back, the brawny strength of his forearms clearly revealed as the unfastened cuffs of his shirt fell away from his wrists, the number of inches he towered over her, and swallowed. If he whirled on her, all would be lost. Then she mentally shook her head. No, if he whirled on her she would do just as she had threatened: shoot him dead.

Wouldn't she?

Yes, she would.

"Don't move," she warned again, hoping that he couldn't tell from her voice how suddenly dry her mouth was.

"I wouldn't dream of it."

Before her increasingly jumpy nerves could get the better of her, Claire transferred the pistol to one hand and, with the other, reached beneath his shirt, sliding her fingers around his waist until they found the cool silver hilt of his knife. There was a bruise the approximate size and shape of a large cucumber extending across the left side of his rib cage, she remembered. Dark purple with yellowing edges, it had looked painful. Her touch was instinctively gentle as her hand slid over where she knew it to be. Which was ridiculous, she told herself angrily. She was prepared to shoot the man, yet she didn't want to hurt him?

Well, she tried to reconcile the dichotomy, she would only shoot him if she must.

Despite everything, she could not help but register the warm resilience of his skin, the firmness of the muscles girding his middle, the solid jut of his hipbones, and, as her hand reached his stomach, the hard flatness of his belly and the crisp silk of the line of hair that she knew, from her earlier observation, bisected it.

To widen into an impressively luxuriant nest for that equally impressive male part.

With the best will in the world for it not to happen, that thought popped into her mind again. Dear Lord, why couldn't she get the vivid image of Hugh in all his naked glory out of her head? Was she, as she had in the past occasionally feared, totally depraved?

Thoroughly flustered now, Claire snatched the knife from its resting place and withdrew her hand from beneath his shirt. She then withdrew her entire person from his vicinity, retreating rapidly until her back was against the wall.

She was not going to think about him naked ever again.

His back was still turned to her, thank goodness. She took a moment just to breathe as she firmly closed her mind to the memory. Such a shocking image was bound to make an impression by its very nature, she reassured herself. That she remembered it so vividly did not mean that she was depraved. If her heart was racing, it was because of embarrassment at having seen so much. If she was feeling warm, it was because the cabin was stuffy.

There was no other reason.

The table was now at her left; still breathing deeply, Claire put the knife on it, then returned both hands to the pistol grip.

To her relief, she saw that her hands were steady.

"You may turn around."

Her voice was gruff. He could have no idea of the mortifying route her mind had just traveled, of course. Still, as he did as she bade him she was conscious of the hot lick of embarrassment.

"Behold me relieved to find myself still among the living."

His gaze touched on the pistol, then rose to her face. Thank goodness she was too cold to blush, was her first thought as their eyes met. Then, to her horror, Claire got the impression that he was secretly amused. Had he somehow guessed what had been going through her mind? No. It was not possible.

She would not even consider the possibility. But she felt her cheeks start to warm despite the fact that she was soaking wet and thoroughly chilled.

"I confess, you had me all atwitter: When your hand slid beneath my shirt, I was expecting to find myself, if not murdered, then at the very least ravished."

Incredibly, he seemed to be teasing her, and about the very subject that she most preferred not to allow into her mind. The infuriating thought that he could jest about such a thing had the welcome effect of steadying her nerves. She gave him a long, level look, and her embarrassment disappeared.

"If I were you, I'd keep a civil tongue in my head, sirrah. I'm still trying to decide what to do with you, and your insolence could just tip the balance."

He laughed. A sudden twinkle warmed his eyes, and the ends of his mouth turned up in a crooked smile. He looked quite engaging, she thought with some surprise, then quickly amended that to: quite engaging for a villainous, murderous rogue.

"You do find yourself on the horns of a dilemma, do you not?" he asked, sounding almost sympathetic.

She, however, was not fooled. He could try to turn her up sweet until the English Channel parted for Napoleon; she had tried much the same thing on him, after all. But it hadn't worked on him— and it certainly wasn't going to work on her. Her hands tightened around the pistol grip, and she watched him warily as he continued.

"You must be asking yourself: What do I do now? You could shoot me, of course, but if you do, what then? You will still be in this cabin, on this ship, which is now some way out from land. For the sake of argument, though, let's suppose you shoot me and then stay in the cabin until the ship docks. You must then unbar the door, emerge, get off the ship, and somehow find your contact. But first there will be James to deal with. Even if he does not hear the gunshot with which you dispatch me— and he has ears like a lynx— he will have figured out that there is something badly amiss long before you unbar the door and will be waiting outside like an angry bear defending its cub, if he does not find some means of breaking it down beforehand. He'll be extremely wroth with you for having done away with me, I assure you, and is quite prone to violence even in the normal way of things, as you can probably tell from the bump on your head. If by some miracle you should succeed in getting by James, then you must still get past Captain Dorsey and his crew. And then, of course, you are an Englishwoman in France, which can be counted on to make you less than popular with the general run of its citizenry. And finally, if you surmount all those barriers, you must still find some way to get in touch with your contact, who has, by now, most likely thoroughly lost track of you."

Their gazes met and held. Hugh's assumption that she had some kind of contact in France aside, everything he said was true, Claire realized with growing dismay. If she killed him— which in any case she truly didn't wish to do— she would find herself no better off, and possibly in far worse case, than she was at present. Remembering the way the sailors had slobbered over her, she swallowed.

Whatever this man's faults— and they were many and varied— at least he didn't seem bent on rape.

"You make several excellent points," she said, keeping her voice cool even as she thought furiously. "All of which I will bear in mind, you may be sure. Keeping you alive does seem to be the smarter choice, at least just at present, as long as you make it easy for me to do so."

A knock sounded on the door then, startling them both and causing them to glance toward the barred portal as one. The sound was soft, almost furtive.

"That will be James," Hugh said, his gaze swinging back around to her, and smiled.

Claire felt panic rise like gorge in her throat. Her heart thumped. Her breathing quickened. Nervously she wet her lips, which still tasted faintly of ale.

"Master Hugh!"

The knock sounded again, a little more urgently this time. Hugh's eyebrows rose at her in silent question. He now looked like he was almost enjoying himself, the scoundrel.

She scowled at him.

"If you wish to remain alive, you will do precisely as I tell you," she said in a fierce whisper, cobbling together a plan even as she spoke. "We will walk to the door, you in front of me, and you will open it. Without admitting your man to the cabin, you will tell him that you have recollected an urgent circumstance that requires the ship to put back to shore. To England's shore, mind. He will then convey your order to the captain, while you and I remain here. When we dock, you will escort me off this ship. And I warn you: This pistol will be aimed at your heart the entire time. Pulling the trigger will not cost me so much as a moment's sleep."

His smile widened, and he nodded at her with apparent approval, which had the paradoxical effect of making Claire warier than before.

"A good plan. I make you my compliments. But there is one circumstance that you have failed to take into consideration: This is not my ship. I am not on such terms with the ship's company as to give an order like that and see it obeyed. Please take note of the bolted door; clearly you must see that it denotes a certain lack of trust of the crew's intentions toward me and my party on my part. We are bound for France, and to France, I very much fear, we will go."

Claire narrowed her eyes at him. It was a trick— she was almost certain.

"They will do as you say."

Her voice was coldly positive, but Claire took a sneaking glance at the door. As he'd said, it was bolted shut. Would the crew really not obey his orders? He'd given them freely enough until now, she recollected, and they'd been carried out with alacrity, as far as she could tell. Still, as he said, he was not the ship's captain….

"Master Hugh!"

The call, with its accompanying knock, were both appreciably louder. An exasperated mutter followed, the tone of which was quite clear even though she couldn't decipher the words.

"Answer," she hissed, feeling rather like a cat on a hot roof: she didn't know which way to jump. No matter which way she landed, she was quite likely to end up burned.

"Keep your britches on, James. I'm coming," he called. His voice dropped confidentially as he added to Claire, "The crew will obey me only so far as it suits them, and that's the truth. Be assured that they would not mourn overmuch should you pull that trigger and thus rid the world of me. You might mourn, however, in the end. For you would then find yourself at their mercy." He shrugged with seeming nonchalance. "But then again, a woman with your— experience, for want of a better term— with men might find lying with the entire crew not beyond your powers if it will get you off the ship alive. Not that I think it will, mind."

"I'd be careful with my insults, were I facing the business end of this pistol, scoundrel," she replied sternly.

"Basically, as I see it, you have a choice: You can deal with me, or you can deal with the ship's crew," he continued, and smiled at her seraphically. "The choice is up to you."

Chapter 9

"Ah, brandy," Hugh said, taking the bottle and glass out of James's hand with real appreciation. If his judgment of the
Nadine
's company was on target, this would be fine French brandy reserved from a cargo recently smuggled to England.

"What's to do?" Still standing in the dark corridor, James frowned at him questioningly as Hugh continued to block the partly open doorway with his person. Slightly behind Hugh and to his right, his all-too-captivating captive held his own pistol on him just out of James's sight, her body swaying with the motion of the ship and her gaze fixed on him with the fierceness of an eagle's. The question teased at him: Would she actually pull the trigger, if pushed to it?