Desire in the Sun (40 page)

L
ater, a long time later, Joss lifted his head from where it rested against Lilah’s breasts. She stirred beneath him, her hands automatically clutching at him, but did not awaken. Joss rolled off her, stretched out beside her, settled her comfortably against him. Then he left her sleep for as long as he dared.

Finally he had to wake her. It would be dawn before long.

“Lilah.” He stroked her hair. No response.

“Lilah.” He tickled her eyelashes with his finger, tweaked a silken curl. Still no response.

“Lilah, my love, if you don’t wake up this minute I’m going to push you out of this cot and onto the floor.”

That threat, accompanied by a leisurely finger tracing the line of her parted lips then moving down over her arched throat to circle her beautiful breasts, at last produced a reaction. She murmured something, and rolled over. Only a quick grab saved her from ending up in the dirt.

He ran his eyes with a connoisseur’s appreciation along her naked backside. In his many years of bedding many women, none had ever affected him like this one. None had ever made him fall in love.

What was it about her? She was beautiful, but so were most of the others. She was intelligent, which some had
been but most had not. She was a lady, which narrowed the field considerably. Perhaps it was the aura of quality that clung to her whatever she was wearing, whatever she was doing, that had attracted him.

Perhaps it was her courage. Nothing cowed her for long, not gossip nor cholera nor near drowning, not being marooned on a deserted island nor discovering that island was not as deserted as they’d thought, not joining a pirate crew as an addled youth nor being caught in the middle of a sea battle. She’d risen ably to every challenge the last few months had flung at her, and he admired and respected her for that.

She made him burn hotter than a peat fire in bed.

She’d slapped his face, bitten his tongue and leg, yelled at him for things he couldn’t help. She was a shrew and a witch most of the time, and occasionally, just occasionally, an angel. She’d turned him inside out since the first moment he’d set eyes on her, making him flame first with passion, then rage, then passion again. She’d even made him lose his temper to such an extent that he’d been provoked to physical violence, which shamed him now that he thought about it. Although it was his considered opinion that for Miss Delilah Remy a paddling had been far overdue.

She was an acclaimed beauty, her family’s pampered darling, rich and used to being waited on hand and foot.

Even without the catastrophe of his bloodline, even if he’d still been the self he’d always known, an English seaman and businessman without the hideous nightmare of mixed blood and slavery, he’d not have been able to offer her a life to compare to what she had on Barbados.

His life in England was much different, simpler. He made enough with his shipping business to keep a wife in ample comfort, but not in such luxury as Lilah was accustomed to. He had only two servants, a house that was large but not fashionable, friends who were situated like himself. He was far removed from the social stratosphere.

Even if he could have wed her without having the nightmare interfere, she would have been giving up something in the way of wealth and social status to become his wife.

He realized that, and didn’t like it.

But with the addition of the nightmare, their situation became impossible. If she chose him, she would have to give up everything she’d ever held dear: home, family, friends, her whole life. It was a big step, and he wasn’t sure she was ready to take it.

He was uncertain, and that was another thing he didn’t like. Never in his life had he imagined that he would fall in love with a woman and worry about whether or not she would have him. His success with women had been too constant, too effortless. But with Lilah, he could take nothing for granted. Would she give up so much, for him?

She said she loved him. He thought she even meant it. But did she love him enough to go back to England with him? Because his life was not here, could never be here. He could not stay with her even with the best will in the world. She would have to come with him.

Or would that cursed soupçon of blood and all that it meant stand forever in their way?

He meant to put it to the test. At once, before he lost his nerve completely.

“Lilah!” Grim-faced now, he shook her shoulder.

“Mmmm?”

“Damn it, Lilah, wake up!”

This brought her awake, finally. She did not roll over, just turned her head to the side and blinked at him.

“Oh. Joss,” she murmured, and smiled.

She looked so lovely, her eyes heavy-lidded with sleep, her mouth all soft and rosy, that he had to kiss her. That earned him a yawn, a smile, and another murmur.

“I wish I could stay. I love sleeping with you.”

“Do you, now? I’m glad, because I’m hoping you’ll be sleeping with me for the rest of your life.”

It took a minute for this to penetrate. When it did, her eyes widened and she rolled over to stare at him. He had a complete and uninhibited view of her nakedness, but at the moment he was not interested.

“What does that mean?” The incomprehension in her eyes and voice made him smile despite the clenching in his stomach. To ease the tension his pride would not let her see, he shifted his gaze from her eyes to her mouth, which he traced softly with one finger.

“For a young lady who seems to have made a practice of collecting proposals, you’re not very quick on the uptake. I’m asking you to marry me.”

“M-marry you!”

There was a long silence, which he could interpret as appalled or not, as he chose. Her eyes were wide pools of pure blue, huge and shadowed.

“Mm-hm. Marry me.” His voice was hard.

“Oh, my!”

He scowled. “That’s hardly an enlightening reaction. Yes or no?”

Slowly, a smile curved her mouth. “Have you had much practice at this?”

“At what?” He was impatient.

“Asking ladies to marry you.”

His scowl deepened. If she did not give him an answer soon, he would strangle her. He was more nervous than he had ever been in his life, and she, blast her, was smiling!

“As a matter of fact, you’re the first one.”

“I thought so.” Unexpectedly she giggled, the sound delicious, a sweet girlish trilling. “‘Yes or no?’ How romantic of you!”

“Well?” He was in no mood for her fooling.

She sighed, suddenly sobering. “Joss, it’s not that simple. You know it’s not.”

“What’s not simple about it? I’m leaving, shaking the dust of this thrice-damned island and its thrice-damned barbaric customs from my feet. You can come with me, or you can stay. If you come, I expect you’d prefer to come as my wife.”

“Joss. …”

“Yes or no?”

“I wish you’d stop saying that! To begin with, you can’t just leave Heart’s Ease. I hate to remind you of it, but my father owns you. You’re a slave. You can’t just walk away. You have to have a pass to use the roads! They’ll hunt you down, bring you back, punish you, maybe kill you.”

“They’ll have to find me first.”

“They will. Believe me. Barbados is a small island, and it has a very efficient militia. In order to escape, you’d have to get off the island, and you can’t do that. Within half a day of your disappearance, every captain of every ship in every port on Barbados would know about you. You’ll be caught, sooner or later.”

“So what do you propose? That I stay here in this bloody pigsty for the rest of my life scratching holes in the dirt? While you sleep with the Boss Man up at the big house and sneak down here every once in a while when you feel the need for a little excitement?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No? You didn’t say you’d marry me, either.”

Lilah sighed and sat up. Despite his growing anger, his eyes were irresistibly drawn to her lithe, whiteskinned body. Naked, she was the loveliest thing he had ever seen in his life, and she was driving him mad.

“I don’t know if I can marry you. I love you. I’m so in love with you it’s ridiculous. But marriage—Joss, how can I promise to marry you? You’re a slave on my father’s plantation! What do you want me to do, calmly walk up to him and say, Oh, by the way, Papa, I hope you don’t mind but I’m not going to marry Kevin after all,

I’ve changed my mind and I’m going to many Joss, our slave? He’d die of an apoplexy—and if he didn’t, he’d kill you. He really would.”

“I’m leaving the first chance I get. You can come with me—or you can stay. It’s your choice.”

“Joss. …” It was almost a wail. “You cannot just leave! And I can’t argue with you any longer, I have to go! It—what time is it?”

“Nearly four.”

“Oh my goodness! I have to get back! Everyone will be waking up soon!”

She slid slender pale legs over the side of the cot and stood up, reaching for her petticoat. As she pulled it over her head she turned to face him.

“I want you to promise me—promise me!—that you won’t do anything stupid. You won’t try to run until I’ve—I’ve had a chance to work on my father. I think I can get him to free you, if I dwell on how you saved my life, but it may take some time. Then you won’t have to run—you can just leave.”

He lay back on the bunk, crossing his arms behind his head, blatantly naked and not a whit bothered by it. His eyes were calculating on her face.

“Say I give you time to work on your father—how much time?”

“A few months. A year at the outside.”

He shook his head. “Sorry, I’m not waiting that long. This farce has gone on long enough.”

“Joss. …” Her voice was muffled as she pulled her dress over her head. “Fasten this, will you?”

She turned her back, and he stood up to fasten her dress. The action was so automatic, so much that of a husband or lover of long standing, that he could do it while still furious with her. When he was done, he turned her to face him, his hands on her shoulders.

“When I can, I’m leaving. Shall I come for you, or not?”

She stared up at him, her eyes troubled. He noted absently that the material of her dress beneath his fingers was very fine, a delicate white muslin sprigged in a grayed-blue that almost precisely matched her eyes. With her crop of golden curls and her exquisite face, she was lovely enough to turn heads anywhere in the world. It occurred to Joss suddenly that, although this was his first marriage proposal, it was certainly not hers. Hell, half the bloody male population of this benighted island probably wanted to marry her, to say nothing of the pimply rich boys back in the Colonies! And he had thought she would say, Yes, thank you very much! to him? He must be mad. Joss scowled at her.

“Don’t be angry. I can’t decide something like this right here on the spot! I have to think about it, that’s not unreasonable, so you can just get that mule-headed expression off your face! I love you, you know I do, it isn’t that, but … but I need time to think.”

“As I’ve told you before, you don’t know the meaning of the word love,” he bit out. “If I let you, you’d marry your bloody precious blockhead Kevin and have me on the side. Only that kind of arrangement doesn’t suit me.”

“That’s not true!”

“Isn’t it? Go on, get out of here! You have to get back to the house before someone finds out you’ve been sneaking down here to diddle a slave.”

“Go to hell!” Lilah rarely swore, but then she’d rarely been so furious. He was being so unfair it was absurd, the stupid ape, and if he would think about it rationally he would know it. But apparently a little rational thinking was too much to expect. He was so proud and so stubborn he couldn’t see any farther than the end of his nose!

“Out. Now!”

When she still hesitated he picked her up bodily, carried her over to the door, opened it, and deposited her
on her feet on the other side. She glared at him, opened her mouth to say something, then snapped it shut again without a word. Picking up her skirts, she ran, so furious that she wanted to get away from him as fast as she could. In her haste she completely forgot that she was barefoot.

Joss, cursing himself and her under his breath, grabbed his breeches, yanked them on, and started after her. She was already halfway across the field that led to the main house, her white dress easily visible in the gray light of near dawn. Joss stopped at the edge of the slave compound, crossed his arms over his chest and swore long and profanely until she disappeared from view.

He loved the little bitch. And despite what he said he knew he wasn’t going anywhere without her.

He was leaving, all right, when the time was right. An accident of birth did not a slave make.

But when he left he was taking her with him. If he had to drag her by the hair of her head.

And Miss Delilah Remy could like it, or lump it. He didn’t much care.

XLIX

L
ilah crept up the servants’ stairway at the back of the darkened house, feeling her way along the cool plaster wall, stepping nimbly over the loose step that she knew always creaked. In this, the hour before dawn, a hush lay over everything. A creak would sound abnormally loud. …

Her bedchamber was on the second floor overlooking the manicured lawn at the front of the house. Her father and Jane shared a suite at the opposite end of the hall. Lilah held her breath as she tiptoed past it, but nothing stirred. As she opened the door to her bedroom and stepped inside, she heaved a silent sigh of relief.