The Danger of Desire (33 page)

“But, ma’am,” she stammered, “I don’t know how.”

“Then of course, you must learn. You will stay, and we will spend our days shopping and dancing. Oh, my dear girl, you must let me buy you a ball gown. But we must let Hugh go. I fear his eyes are starting to glaze over at the thought of dress shopping. You may go, darling. You are no longer needed. I have dear Miss Evans under starter’s orders. But of course you will return this, and every, afternoon, so you might be useful. You will be available this afternoon, won’t you, darling?”

“Available?” For the first time in her experience, the captain looked almost afraid.

“To dance. Surely you understand Margaret must have someone with whom to dance? How else is she to learn?”

“You know I don’t dance.”

“Nonsense.” His mother waved away what looked like ten years of personal preference. “Your leg is clearly better, and dear Margaret will feel so much more comfortable dancing for the first time with someone she knows. And with your ... difficulties of grace, you can’t help but be understanding if she has trouble remembering steps.”

The captain knew Meggs could remember the tumbler set of a lock she’d picked six months ago. She was highly unlikely to forget a dance step. But she was attempting to look as innocent as a milkmaid behind his mother’s back.

“Perhaps, ma’am, it would be too difficult for an arthritic old sailor, like Captain McAlden?”

The corners of his incandescent blue eyes crinkled up almost imperceptibly. But she knew. His look told her he would step all over her toes, just to teach her a lesson. But perhaps she could teach him a thing or two as well. Dancing might have its advantages, after all.

CHAPTER 23

H
is mother did not have a sense of humor. Or perhaps she did. However it was, she was determined to keep them well apart. Viscountess Balfour arranged for them to travel to Somerset separately, be separated at dinners, and room in separate wings of the house. She was taking no chances with Meggs’s reputation. Even if it damn well inconvenienced her own son. This was
not
what he had asked for. And his mother damn well knew it, damn her canny blue eyes.

His only opportunity to speak to Meggs after his arrival was in the drawing room, with the room already packed with dinner guests. Meggs was seated with the ladies at a settee, but she wasn’t attending to their talk. In fact, she rather burst his bubble of anticipation when she noticed him not at all when he joined the assembled party. She was staring into the wood fire roaring away in the huge hearth.

“Miss Evans?” And when she did not respond, “Meggs?”

“Oh, Hu—Captain McAlden. What a pleasure it is to see you again.” She made to rise, but he waved her back into her seat.

“What were you looking for there?” He gestured to the flames.

“Nothing.” She turned back to the hearth. “I’d just forgotten.”

“Forgotten what?”

“The fire—what it was like. The wood smells so good, so warm and inviting. I’d just forgotten is all.”

How strange. If she knew wood fires, chances were that at some point she had lived in the country. Funny, he’d never suspected that. To him, she was so wholly a creature of London, with her encyclopaedic knowledge of its streets and alleys, its ways and people, from Billingsgate Market to Chelsea. And yet, here she was, dressed in a demure, light-colored dress of the finest make, looking every inch the quiet, contemplative country daughter.

“You look very nice,” he told her. “Very demure.”

She gave him a flash of her cheeky smile. “Oh, yes,” she whispered, “I’m as demure as an old whore at a christening.”

He was laughing even though he knew he shouldn’t. He looked back to see if anyone was attending their conversation and spoke quietly. “God’s balls, Meggs. Don’t talk like that. You need to keep out of mischief and learn how to be a young lady.”

“Out of mischief?” She began to smile. “Imagine that. Whatever shall I do with myself?”

“Learn needlework, I suppose.”

“Hmm, boring. But I suppose I could learn easily enough. I
am
good with my hands.”

“God help me, don’t talk like that, either. I’m meant to be a gentleman and keep my hands off of you. So please don’t tempt me. Help keep me to the straight and narrow.”

“Yes, I’ve been instructed to cleave to the path of righteousness myself. I’m to make myself agreeable to the young gentlemen and ladies through dinner and cards. Your mother makes all the young men sound like choir boys, but I know better. I’m only hoping I haven’t bunged one or another of them when they were down to London sowing their wild oats.”

Hugh hadn’t thought of
that
. No wonder she was uneasy. “You’re safe here. No one will recognize you. Remember, you made your fortune on it.”

“I could make another fortune sharping them all at cards—go back to making an honest living.”

“Not card sharping, too?” Where did her list of felonious skills end? The skirl of misgiving in his chest widened into caution.

“Oh, aye. Old Nan taught us all to cheat. Famous games we’d have, with the whole lot of us all trying to cheat each other. Half the deck would be up the kiddies’ sleeves, until there was nothing left to play with.” She smiled at the fond memories.

That was what he had been thinking—he so
liked
this girl. One wouldn’t think she could have any fond memories of growing up in the hell that was the slums of London, but she knew life was what you made of it. And she was clearly determined to make the most of this opportunity, as well. If he thought, in the ensuing days, he occasionally saw a glimmer of sadness, or apprehension in her dark eyes, she hid it well from the others.

His mother had made arrangements for a dizzying array of winter outings—shopping trips to the local village, daily visits to the neighbors, walks and sled rides in the parkland, the gathering of winter greens to decorate the house for the coming Advent Ball, and nightly dinner parties.

Throughout it all, Meggs smiled sweetly and made herself agreeable to everyone. She held the other girls’ packages and purchases when there were no gentlemen handy, she complimented the young ladies on their clothing and good looks, and she laughed delightedly whenever one of the choir boys made a joke. She was doing exactly as he had asked and was going on splendidly. Everyone declared Miss Evans completely charming.

So naturally, he was in hell. Because not once through the first two days of activities had he been allowed to so much as sit next to Meggs in a carriage, walk with her in a lane, or converse with her at dinner. They were always surrounded and accompanied by others.

Meggs and he were also housed at what could only be termed a deliberately inconvenient distance. Meggs remarked upon the distance on the third day, when they chanced to find themselves alone—for the first time—whilst looking for the orangery, where there was to be a game of charades.

“It’s such a very large house. My room must be in the next parish over, it’s so big. The footmen ought to run a toll gate in the upstairs hallway.”

“They’re too busy running a dice game in the carriage house.” But he really wasn’t attending to what he was saying. Despite his mother’s injunctions, he was not about to let the opportunity to be alone with Meggs pass. He took her by the elbow and guided her left, instead of right, and found a suitably empty corridor.

“And me without me fulhams,” she was saying.

That brought his attention back. “No loaded dice, Meggs. No gambling. No card games of any kind. You are not to fleece the choir boys out of their allowances. However much they might deserve it.”

“Allowances.”She scoffed. “Someone needs to tell me how
that’s
not stealing. And they call me a thief.”

“They should only ever call you Miss Evans.” He checked the corridor behind them.

“So proper. I’ll try to remember that. And what will you be calling me?” She attempted to devastate him by tilting her head to the side and looking up at him through the dark fan of her lashes. God’s balls. When had she learned that particular trick?

“Are you flirting with me, Miss Evans?”

“And what if I were, Captain McAlden?”

“Well, in accordance with custom and honor, I believe I am obliged to flirt back.”

“Really? And are you dreadfully accomplished in the art of flirting?”

“Unfortunately”—he shook his head in solemn disappointment—“I find I’m woefully out of practice. But I wonder ...”

“Yes, Captain?”

“I wonder, if
you
might be so kind as to lend me your assistance in this endeavor?”

“Well, I will have to check my schedule. But I do feel certain I can find the time for an endeavor of such great import.”

“I thank you.” He bowed over her hand. “You are too kind to this arthritic, old sailor.”

“Yes. I do hate to tell you, the young ladies do worry about the extent of your ... infirmities,” she advised solemnly. “Sadly, for their sakes, I find I am loath to set them straight. But how much time, do you suppose, will we need to devote to your study of flirting?”

“Oh, a goodly amount of time, I should think.” He tightened his hand around her wrist and swung her around as he opened the door to a small closet and backed her in, shutting them in the close velvet darkness.

“Why, Captain McAlden, how clever you are to—”

He kissed her taunting mouth with all the hunger eating him alive from the inside. It was all he could do to keep himself from plundering her mouth and every other part of her body. He wanted to stamp himself into her, to mark her irrevocably, to tell every other man his mother had introduced her to, to stay the hell away. She was
his
.

“Oh,” she breathed as they broke apart. “No wonder they call that tipping the velvet.”

“My God. I need to—I want to—” He couldn’t think. He could only feel the surging need swamping his body.

“To fuck me?”

The raw carnality of the whispered words washed him in a wave of unadulterated lust, drenching him with unspeakable craving. “My God, lass.”

“I want it, too,” she confessed into the hushed dark, “the fucking. I want you to fuck me.”

Hugh found his head tipping back, his eyes closed in something approaching prayer, to ward off the power of her words. “You shouldn’t say that.”

“What? Fuck? Don’t young ladies of good family fuck? Is it too vulgar for them?”

“Yes. Of course. But it’s not just—” He had to remember her upbringing, her life on the London streets, the people she had been exposed to. She couldn’t be held responsible for the heat firing deep in his belly, for his coarse, earthy response to her choice of words. “It’s ... dirty.”

“Is it? But underneath this pristine dress, I am rather dirty. A dirty little thief. And I think you must like dirty, Captain.” She reached out across the few inches of utter darkness and found him unerringly. “Or at least your yard does. It’s growing.”

He swore, violently and profusely, and felt nearly insane from the effort to keep from putting his hands upon her in the urgency and violence of his need. In savage lust.

“Is that dirty, too, ‘yard’?” She stroked the length of his shaft through the rough wool of his breeches. “Though it seems to like me saying its name.”

He grabbed her hands up and pinioned her wrists over her head as he bore her back into the wall. “Stop.”

She wasn’t at all intimidated. She arched her body against him. “But you don’t really want me to stop. You like it. And so do I. I’ve missed you.” Her mouth brushed along the side of his cheek, close to his ear. “I’ve missed it when you press your yard against my belly. It makes me want to do dirty, vulgar things to you. It makes me want
you
to do dirty things to me.”

God help him, he wanted it, too. He wanted it with an inarticulate violence that left him astonished and shaking. And so he indulged himself, enthralled by the carnal lust between them, by dragging his hands down the vulnerable length of her inner arms to the underside of her breasts. “What sort of things do you want?”

He heard her intake of breath and felt her warm exhalation brush over his skin.

“I want you to touch me.”

“Here?” He traced below her breasts, along the raised waistline of her dress and up the curved sides to the pins securing her scooped neckline.

“Yes,” she breathed.

He pulled out the pins and let her bodice fall before he set his hands back upon her, tracing her curves above her low stays, palming the sweet roundness of each breast through the light fabric of her chemise. “Do you want me to take this down?”

“Yes.”

He let his hands find their unseeing way to the ribbon drawstring of the chemise, pulling apart the tie and loosening the fabric enough to tug it down so her breasts were exposed above her stays to the heated air. “And now what?”

She was breathing faster now, and it gave him great pleasure to imagine the way her bare breasts would look rising and falling, their pink crests tight and waiting for his touch. But she surprised him.

“Now, it’s my turn. To do dirty things. To touch you.” And she set her clever, agile fingers to the buttons of his breeches. The fall came quickly undone, and she was loosening the drawstring of his small clothes and pushing the linen apart before he could stammer his assent.

“God. Yes.” His hands found the delicate peaks of her breasts just as hers closed around the length of his shaft.

And just as he would have moved forward to kiss her—to take her mouth with his own, and fill his senses with her taste and texture—her clever hands were sliding down the length of his thighs. And she was kneeling in front of him.

“God. Meggs, not here. I don’t—”

Oh, but he did. He did. He did like the feel of her warm, strong hands closing around his cock. He did like the feel of her agile fingers drawing up and down the length of him, sending pleasure shafting through him. His head tipped back against the wall, and he shuttered his eyes against the heated bliss of her mouth closing around him. He did love the feel of her hands digging into the flesh of his thighs as she steadied herself and began to suck and lick him.