Irresistible (9 page)

He nodded significantly at a small, brass-cased clock affixed to a shelf above the table.

Claire gasped with indignation. "Are you calling me a— a lightskirt, you witless oaf?"

His eyes narrowed at her. "I'm calling you a lying jade. And by the by, you have approximately forty seconds left."

Claire opened her mouth to give voice to a heated reply, looked into his face, saw the harsh implacability there, closed her mouth, and silently seethed. She had not a prayer of convincing him, she realized. Still, she tried one more time.

"I am Lady Claire Lynes, whether you choose to believe me or not."

There was suppressed fury in her tone and in the look she gave him. Inside, she was conscious of the increased thundering of her heart as she cobbled together the rudiments of a plan.

His lips tightened purposefully.

"Very well," Claire added in some haste, as dire action on his part seemed imminent. Capitulation was her best choice, she realized. Capitulation of a sort, that is. "Since there is no help for it, I will do as you ask. Please let go of my arm."

"Wise choice." His hand dropped from her arm.

Claire was able to step away from him. Unnoticed (she hoped), she took a deep, steadying breath. She was shaky, sick to her stomach, and prey to a throbbing headache, none of which could be allowed to matter. One of those opportunities of an instant had presented itself, and she had to think how best to seize it.

Instinctively raising a hand to her head in an effort to ease its throbbing, Claire touched the seeming source and found, behind her ear, a bump the size of an egg. It was amazingly tender, she discovered as she probed it. Of course, she had been hit over the head. In light of all that had happened since, she had almost forgotten.

"Head hurt?"

There was a flicker in the gray eyes that almost looked like— compunction. Of course, he— or one of his henchmen— was doubtless responsible for the blow. It was Hugh who had surprised her on the beach, she was almost sure. His tall, well-set form was difficult to mistake. James, then, or someone she hadn't seen, must have hit her from behind.

But Hugh bore the responsibility.

"A little," she said, frowning at him.

"I'm not surprised."

This was said rather dryly, but without the slightest degree of regret that she could detect. Any compunction— if, indeed, she had not been mistaken about that— he might briefly have felt was now notorious for its absence. There was no longer even a shadow of remorse in either his voice or his expression. Which was, of course, totally in keeping with the kind of brute who would visit such violence on a lady.

As she considered just how she had been struck down from behind, her anger grew hotter. Claire welcomed the building blaze as a final antidote to her fear.

He slanted a significant glance at the clock.

"Your time is up."

It was on the tip of her tongue to once again insist that he was making a mistake. But such a protestation would not move him where the others had failed, and might, indeed, provoke him to violence. Better to take the risk of implementing her plan. She had little to lose if it failed.

She lifted her chin and looked him in the eye.

"Please turn your back." Cold dignity laced the words.

He laughed, and crossed his arms over his chest. His intention to do no such thing could not have been more clear if he'd shouted a declaration. Standing there watching her with his head cocked and his bare feet braced apart, he looked as unrepentantly villainous as a pirate.

"You would be far more believable in your role of outraged innocent had you not already offered yourself to me," he said in a drawling fashion that set Claire's teeth on edge. "You did say you would give me 'anything'— from which I presumed you were offering to share your admittedly delectable charms with me, although you may certainly correct me if I got that wrong— if I let you go, did you not?"

If he was trying to embarrass her, he would not succeed. Claire scorned to reveal or even feel the smallest degree of shame. The offer had been made in desperate fear for her life, and if such an act was the price she had to pay to stay alive, she was prepared to pay it. Since her wedding, she had become thoroughly familiar with intimate congress between a man and a woman, and it no longer held any power to terrify or even move her. Quite simply, it was unpleasant but quickly over— a small trade for one's life. One closed one's eyes and tolerated the man's beastliness for the few minutes it took until his business was done. If one was left, in the aftermath, feeling rather like a chamber pot, well, such was a woman's lot in life. In this situation in particular, she could not afford to regard the act as anything more or less than a bargaining chip— practically the only bargaining chip she possessed.

"I certainly do not deny that I am prepared to do whatever I must to survive, as any sane person would. Under the circumstances, though, I no longer feel that I have any need to make such a sacrifice: I tell you, you have mistaken me for someone else."

He grunted derisively. "You've wasted enough of my time. Come here."

He reached for her. Eluding his hands, Claire took a quick step backward.

"Keep your hands off me," she said with cold hauteur. "I'll do it."

Before he could reach for her again, she lifted her arms, curving them behind her head to reach for the first of the two dozen tiny jet buttons that secured her frock from its neck to just below its waist. If she'd had any intention of obeying him, undressing herself would have been most difficult. The tight-bodiced, slim-skirted traveling gown she was wearing, like the majority of her raiment, had been designed to be put on and off with the help of a maid.

But then, she had no intention whatsoever of obeying him.

Defiantly she held his gaze as she wrestled the first button free. Her fingers were clumsy with cold as she set about separating the edges of the clammy fabric.

Folding his arms over his chest once more, Hugh watched with an expression that was impossible to decipher as she slowly worked her way down the row. Fortunately, he didn't seem to notice that she was also sidling backward at the same time. Or perhaps he put her backward progress down to the unceasing motion of the ship. The swaying lantern overhead and the increased creaking of the hull were ample evidence of the power of the swells; they were certainly enough to make anyone unsteady on her feet.

In any case, the scoundrel would soon discover that Claire Banning, for that was how she still thought of herself in her secret heart of hearts even so many months after her marriage, was not so easily cowed into submission. Never, until this nightmarish situation had caught her up in its toils, had she thought to be grateful for having been reared under such difficult conditions as she had experienced. But suddenly she was. If nothing else, during the course of her fearsome childhood she had learned how to survive.

Claire freed another button and felt her bodice loosen the required amount. Deliberately she shrugged, letting the neckline droop just enough to reveal the creamy tops of her shoulders and the pulsing hollow at the base of her neck. His gaze flicked down from her face to observe the distraction she had presented for him, just as she had intended. While he looked, she dropped her arms and shifted position so that she was now unbuttoning from the waist up— and she took another, slightly longer step backward.

"You might as well end this farce now, for I am not Miss Towbridge, and I have no letters. I swear it," she said, more as another distraction than because she expected the words to finally penetrate his thick skull.

"Umm." It was an absent sound, as if he was not really attending, which, clearly, he was not. His gaze was fixed on her breasts, molded to an embarrassing degree by the wet fabric as her posture caused her back to arch. There was no mistaking the gleam of very male awareness that had sprung to life in his eyes. Claire had seen that look in the eyes of enough men to have no doubt what it signified: He desired her.

In that instant, as she registered the raw sexuality in his gaze, she remembered too how what had begun as a briskly impersonal search of her person had deteriorated, by its end, into a shamefully intimate groping that he had, for whatever reason, abruptly terminated when his hands had begun to linger on her breasts. Perhaps her only bargaining chip had even more worth than she had previously realized: From the look in his eyes, his physical appetites were strong, and so was his desire for her.

A frisson of apprehension raced down her spine as she contemplated allowing this hard-eyed stranger to slake that appetite with her body. She had only ever had intimate congress with her husband, although, she imagined, there would likely prove to be very little difference. Between the sheets men were probably much the same. Turning over in her mind the idea of lying with this man, she swallowed convulsively— and realized that what she felt wasn't only fear. It was fear mixed with— and she was ashamed to recognize it, or admit it even to herself— a kind of shivery sexual awareness of her own.

David had told her from the beginning that ladies had no liking for the marriage act, and she had never contradicted him. By about the third time he had lain with her, she had realized that he was exactly right. The first, shameful stirrings she had felt when her new husband had come to her in their marriage bed had been born of ignorance and anticipation and had been sadly dashed. Those seedling feelings remained her guilty secret, never to be revealed to anyone. Fortunately, they had quickly withered away.

But, most inexplicably and embarrassingly, she had felt them again when this criminal had run his hard hands over her body. By the time he had flattened his palms over her breasts, the secret tingling that had begun to quiver along her nerve endings in the wake of his hands had spread to her loins, where it had taken firm root. It was as if her body, long dormant, had been awakened by his touch, to yearn once more for something she couldn't quite define.

Men got some sort of bestial satisfaction from intimate congress. Women, if they were fortunate (and she had not been, and would probably not be, given the fact that David had some months since stopped coming to her bed), got babies.

Luckily, though, she wasn't going to be in this man's power long enough to have to deal with her wayward body's embarrassing quickening. At least, not if her plan worked as she hoped.

Her words seemed to register with him then, most belatedly, because suddenly he frowned and his gaze rose to meet hers. The sexual glint was gone, vanished as if it had never been. In its place was pure unyielding flint. But hide it though he might, there was no mistaking what she'd seen.

"Why don't I believe you, I wonder?" He smiled at her, but it was not a nice smile. "You are really playing your role very well, a practiced courtesan at her seductive best, aping the blushing innocent you are not quite amazingly, but unfortunately a protracted unveiling is wasted on me. It will win you no quarter. I will have those letters, and quickly, if you value your gown."

Even as this less than subtle threat to rip off her dress if she did not hurry sank in, the small of her back bumped up against the edge of the table, which had been her goal all along. Claire abandoned the buttons to stretch a stealthy hand along the smooth surface of the wood, groping for that which she sought.

"I must say, it's a great pity that you're such a fool," she said dispassionately as her fingers closed around her prize. Bringing the pistol he had very carelessly left lying on the table up behind her back, she smiled at him in turn as she positioned it in her hand. "Were you not, I wouldn't be forced to use this."

With those words she whipped the pistol into view, holding it at waist level and pointing it straight at him.

"Chapter 8

"What the devil…?"

For a moment Hugh simply stared thunderstruck at his pistol, now held steady by both her hands wrapped a little convulsively around the grip. Then, narrowing dangerously, his gaze rose to her face. Those gray eyes were cold lead no longer. Instead they shone like molten silver as the lamplight touched them. Claire's heart beat faster as she realized how angry he was.

Well, she was angry too.

"Don't move," she warned. "And get your hands up."

Growing up in a household headed by a father who had no love for his offspring and was, by nature, vicious and corrupt, and who, moreover, was frequently visited by like-minded guests, she had been forced to defend her honor on many occasions, with whatever weapon came to hand, and thus was no stranger to pistols. Those friends had considered it almost a sport to try to bed the Earl of Wickham's beauteous middle daughter. That she had managed to save her virginity for her wedding night was a testament to her resourcefulness when cornered.

It was also rather ironic, when she thought about it. Which she definitely did not, at the moment, have leisure to do.

"You hell-born vixen," he said, drawing out the words. His hands rose, palms out, until they were above his shoulders, but other than that he didn't move, and she was grateful for that.

"An intelligent man would undoubtedly realize that, under the circumstances, calling me offensive names isn't very wise," she observed pensively. "I don't particularly wish to shoot you, but I will if I must. Make no mistake about that."

"So much for your protestations of innocence, hmm? At last we get down to the truth. Since you have me at your mercy now, instead of the other way around, you might at least satisfy my curiosity and tell me where the letters are hidden."

Claire's frowned in exasperation. "I've been telling you the truth, you brainless lout: I am Lady Claire Lynes, and I know nothing of your letters. But whether you choose to believe me or not no longer matters. As you so rightly point out, I now hold the upper hand, and you will do as I say. And let me warn you: If you make any sudden moves, I will shoot you dead."

The pistol pointed unwaveringly at his chest. Claire was proud of the steadiness of her hands.

He smiled then. Claire misliked that smile.