The Pursuit of Pleasure (13 page)

“So do you.” He gave it for the compliment it was, and rather than continue the engagement, tried a shift of strategy. “Though, I should not be so shocked to find you so well-read with such clearly formed opinions. You never did do anything by halves, Lizzie.”

She almost took the bait. Almost. “My opinions, such as they are, will be, as you advised, kept private and none of your concern.”

“Of course they’re my concern. You’re my wife.” Everything about her, from her soft lips to her sharp mind, was his concern. Everything about her fascinated him.

But she chose to remain angry. “In name only, especially once you’re gone.” She flicked out her wrist, dismissing him already.

He’d be damned if he’d let her. He grabbed her wrist in a gentle but implacable grip. “It wasn’t in name only a half an hour ago, was it Lizzie?”

She tried to twist out of his possession, but he held fast. She had to understand. He could not afford to simply let it go.

“I will ask you to just consider this: One man’s reform is another man’s treason.”

“And one
woman’s
reform is
always
another man’s treason.” She pulled away her arm and crossed her arms under her chest. The view of her breasts against the wide scooped muslin neckline did wonders for his equanimity.

“Lizzie, please, stop playing at philosophy. You must understand. The government is cracking down on the Society.” He clamped his jaw shut and closed his eyes to keep from saying anything more.

“What do you mean?”

“Just that this is deadly serious, Lizzie.” He looked straight at her, trying to make her understand the seriousness of his words. “Some would accuse your society of treason.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” But her voice wavered slightly. “It is not treason. It’s simply change, which all Tories abhor, simply on principle. It’s reform, to make our government more responsible. Not to get rid of, or overthrow, the government.”

“Some people may not see it like that.”

“Who? Most people, if they have any sense, see it the other way round. The world has already changed, Jamie, and we need to catch up. Twenty years ago no one thought
The Rights of Man
could be published at all, let alone read by thinking people. But now there have been two revolutions, two! The old order of the world has changed, and it will continue tochange. Once people begin to think and see and feel differently, you can’t force them back into the old ways. It won’t work. Can’t you see that?”

He could see a lot of things. He could see his beautiful Lizzie, her eyes snapping fire and passion, caught in the middle of the wide net of the government’s displeasure. The net he was going to cast.

“Please, Lizzie.” He made his voice as quiet and calmly implacable as he could. “Please. Promise me you’ll stay away from such inflammatory causes and their equally inflammatory texts while I’m away.”

“Heavens no, why should I do that?” She turned away and would have sauntered out the door in her usual dismissive manner, but he still had her tethered by her fine-boned wrist.

“Lizzie. This is important. Promise me. If something should happen … I won’t be able to take care of you.”

“I don’t need taking care of. I’ve told you I’m not useless.”

“I know that. I see that. But this is important.” He tipped up her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. “I ask you not because I want to guide you, but because I care about you. You must see that.”

“Jamie, you’re hurting me.”

His urgency had traveled all the way to his fingers, digging into the soft skin of her delicate, vulnerable jawline. And there it was in her face for the first time. Fear. He hated that he had put it there, but she had no idea of what she was getting herself into by belonging to the Society.

He instantly loosened his grip to draw her against his chest in an embrace, to show her with his body what he couldn’t put into words, that he was trying to protect her.

“Lizzie. Please. I can’t take no for an answer.” He hated what little time was left to them would be filled with argument. “I’ll make it up to you. I’ll order you a cart full of novels. From London. Racy ones. Naughty ones. Just your sort of naughty.”

She peeked up at him from under her lashes, as she considered his olive branch. “Well, I have thought I might begin to augment my reading with something lighter.”

“That’s it.” He could feel relief flow into his body. “Have you read Fanny Burney?”

“No,” she murmured noncommittally, “but I’ve been thinking I should augment my reading with a new author’s work.”

“Whom do you desire? I’ll have it sent to you.”

“Saint Augustine.”

“Theology?”

His only warning was the perfectly naughty smile she bestowed upon him before answering.

“The Advantages of Widowhood.
A great thinker was our Saint Augustine.” She only waited to see her salvo hit, before she skipped out and up the stairs.

Damned provocative woman. There was only one way to deal with Lizzie’s abominable cheek. And she was already headed in precisely the right direction. To the domed bedchamber.

He followed her slowly, heading back through the house and up the service stairs in order to give her more time: more time in which to settle herself out of their brief row. How funny: ten years away, six hours married, and already they had had their first and, he prayed, only, fight.

He paused at the doorway before he entered. Lizzie presented a charming, rather intimate tableau, standing barefooted and so informally dressed in front of the sitting area’s windows. She couldn’t have been wearing stays, the way she slouched back against the window casing. Heat and the rekindling of need warmed him far more than the fire. Astonishing how comfortable she was in her own skin. Made him want to strip her down right there on the hard wood floor.

But Lizzie had other things on her clever mind. She was not yet ready to completely forgive him and still stood apart, though she did take a plate of food and even sauntered closeenough to take a glass of excellent claret from his hand. He would let her keep her distance. For now.

In a little while, she began with an olive branch of her own. “Tell me about the navy.”

Too much to choose from. Marlowe leaned back and took a long taste of the rich claret. “What do you want to know?”

“Oh, anything. Amuse me.”

It was a phrase straight out of memory, something she used to say when they were younger. And he had always been anxious to tell her a story to impress her with his worldliness. Now that he was undoubtedly more worldly, most of his stories were hardly fit for a lady’s delicate ears. Even Lizzie’s.

But, no, she was probably as bloodthirsty as any West Indies buccaneer.

“How did you get to be a captain at your age? Aren’t you too young to be made post?”

“Perhaps.” He wanted to boast and brag. He wanted to tell her all about Toulon and the fireship and all the bloody reckless things he’d ever done just so he might see admiration light her face like sunrise. But where to begin? Surely not at the beginning, with her father hauling his fourteen-year-old, frightened arse off into the night.

But Lizzie could carry on without him. “Where did you get shot?”

“Here. Here, here, and here. And also here.” He pulled his shirt open to demonstrate. He was rewarded with her laugh.

“On the map, not on your body.” Her green eyes sparkled and turned up at the corners when she smiled. He loved that impudent grin—that mobile smile that always played at the corners of her mouth and was at once a banner of, and a rampart against, her emotions.

“Svensksund, Gulf of Finland in the Baltic.”

“The Gulf of Finland? What on earth were you doing there?”

“Getting rich.” He took another swallow of claret. The wine was making him expansive.

“In Finland?”

“We’d been put on half-pay during the peace, but my commander at the time, the renowned Captain Sydney Smith, resigned his commission and went to advise the Swedes in their war against Russia. I went, too. I was Smith’s First, his top lieutenant, and when we did well, he saw to it that we got our fair share of the prizes. And there were a lot of prizes.”

“Why … you were a mercenary!” Her face lit up with a sort of horrified wonder. He couldn’t tell whether she was pleased or disgusted.

He shrugged the suggestion off. He was uncomfortable with the label. It wasn’t as if he’d done it only for the money. “We were put ashore on half-pay, Lizzie. His Majesty’s Navy had no use for us, but the Swedes did. And paid us well for the privilege.”

“Who paid you in grapeshot?” Her eyes were back on his chest. It was all he could do not to stretch up his arms behind his head to bask in the heat of her eyes.

“The Russians, naturally.”

But now she was up out of her languid slouch and leaning towards him, her hand reaching for the edge of his shirt.

“Is that a …? Is that a tattoo?” She was avid with curiosity, her finger stroking across the dark script on the far left side of his chest, below his heart. “I didn’t notice it… before. I’ve never seen one. I mean I’ve seen them on sailors’ arms …”

“I’m a sailor.”

“So you are. I suppose I was thinking of a rough sort of sailor, not an officer. It says
Fides
.”

“Means fidelity.”

“I know what it means. But why have you got it?”

“Lost a bet.” He wouldn’t tell her he had actually won a total of twenty-two pounds, six shillings: a fortune for the poor midshipman he had been at the time. Or that more importantly, he had won the respect of the men in his division. Because she was right—it wasn’t something an officer, a gentleman, should have done.

She angled closer, dropping to kneel in front of him on the blanket, her lovely bosom on display. His high opinion of marriage was growing.

“And why
Fides
?” She traced the script with the tip of one cool finger.

“Shorter than
England
and much less risky than
Lizzie.
“

She laughed out loud, an exclamation of complete disbelief. “You never thought of me.
Fides.
Very senti—”

“Now what have you got against sentimentality? Are you so afraid of your emotions?”

“No, not afraid, but certainly wary. Sentimentality encourages a total reliance upon one’s emotional responses to all things. It is much better to be a creature of rational thought. One may take into account one’s likes and dislikes, one’s experiences for good or for bad, but one must make decisions with a more rational detachment.”

She sounded as if the words came straight out of some radical pamphlet she had memorized, probably just to annoy and nettle her father.

“Rational detachment?” He leaned in and lightly kissed the base of her neck, where that long, sensitive tendon ran down the side. “But you’ll forgive me if I failed to notice any rational detachment while you were beneath me a short while ago.”

“Oh, well I …” She swallowed her words and eased her head over to give him access. Clever girl. Warm, nubile, clever girl.

“Yes?” Her skin was unutterably soft beneath his mouth.

“It’s as if my mind becomes detached from my body, so the only thing I can do is feel physical sensation, detached and different.” Her voice had gone whisper-light and her breath began to come shallow.

“Pure physical sensation without any rational thought?”

“Absolutely.” Her lips brushed against his.

“Or emotion?”

The wrong thing to say to Lizzie. She didn’t deign to answer. She slid away, dissolving out of his arms. Trying to hold Lizzie was like trying to catch mercury.

She returned to her place at the window, too uncomfortable with real emotion, even now. She kept her eyes studiously averted from him as she looked out over the water, darkening with the falling of gray twilight, and changed the subject. “And that’s where you shall be.”

This could at least be the truth. He would definitely be on the sea, this sea, but just not in the way she thought. “Yes.”

“And shall I write you?”

He couldn’t gauge the tone of her voice. Did she sound tentative?

“If you like.”

“I shouldn’t like, in general.” Ah, there was the teasing note in her voice. “I find writing letters tedious in the extreme, but I was prepared to extend myself for your benefit. But if you are indifferent …”

“No. I should very much like you to write me, but you do know they will be received and returned very irregularly?”

“That hardly signifies.” And the little flick of the wrist. “Yet, I think it ought to be undertaken. Such a useful occupation for a wife. I shall tell my mother I can not possibly come into town to receive bride calls as I am entirely taken up in writing to my absent, beloved husband.”

He noted the order of “absent” and “beloved,” the former being necessary to the latter.

“Yes,” she continued, “I shall write you every day with all the particulars of your estate and its improvements, and you shall write to me and tell me all your sailor things. All the interesting and exotic sights you see on your way to the other side of the world and back.”

I’m not coming back,
his conscience shouted, even though his mouth did not.
I’m not even going.

His mouth could only form platitudes. “It would be lovely to receive letters from you. You can tell me what parties you go to and what you wear and how pretty you look.”

The warm, glowing smile faded from her cheeks.

“Is that really what you think I do? Go to parties and soirees and balls all day and night? Do you know me so little?”

“I know you would rather be out tromping around a hedgerow with that wicked fowling piece you pinched from your father. Or rather, that’s what I know you used to like when you were twelve. But you’re grown up now, a very lovely young lady, out in society.” Now he thought on it, he had attended a number of evening parties during the past fortnight and yet had seen her only once, at that fateful public assembly. He had thought she would be at her best in assembled groups, where she could show off her dazzling wit to perfection. “Does the thought of going to parties, assemblies, and musical performances give you no pleasure?”