"Would you indeed, my dove? As I said earlier, your wish is my command. Even when you are not holding me at gunpoint."
He turned, pulled the topmost cover from the bed, bundled it in his arms, and crossed the room to present it to her with a flourish.
Meeting his eyes was difficult, but she scorned not to do so. He smiled at her, so wicked a smile that she was immediately reminded of the one thing above all others in the world she preferred not to think about: that soul shattering kiss. Lifting her chin, praying devoutly that she would not blush, she took the blanket from him with a brief nod of thanks and immediately swathed herself in yards of coarse gray wool like a corpse in a shroud.
"How old are you?" he asked abruptly, his smile vanished. He looked stern, and the lines beside his eyes and mouth seemed suddenly more sharply etched.
"I'm twenty-one." Claire smoothed her hair back from her face with one hand. Now that she was wrapped in the blanket, she felt much safer. Not that the specter of rape troubled her any longer, at least as far as he was concerned. He had let her walk away from that kiss without hindering her, and he had passed her the blanket when she had asked. Whatever else he was— and she could think of a whole list of unflattering adjectives— he was no defiler of women.
"A trifle young for this game, aren't you?" He crouched beside the wet heap of her discarded gown. "Did your lover happen to tell you that the penalty for spying is death?"
Claire shook her head in disgust. "There is no talking to you, is there?"
"I could help you if you'd tell me the truth."
Claire's only reply was an exasperated sound. He was turning her wet gown inside out and examining, seemingly, every stitch and seam. Then he did the same to her petticoat and finally her corset and shift. After a bewildered moment, she realized that he was searching her clothes for his precious letters, and her exasperation turned to outright annoyance. Holding the blanket close, she watched without speaking. His hands looked dark against the delicate white linen of her shift; his fingers looked long and strong, as indeed she knew from experience they were, as they probed the boning of her corset. Suddenly the sight of her intimate garments in his hands was too much to be borne. Flustered, embarrassed, Claire turned her back, and found herself looking at the clock.
It was near four A.M. She should, by rights, be exhausted. As, indeed, she was, now that she thought about it. Not that acknowledging how tired she was would do her any good. She had to stay awake and alert, prepared to face whatever came. Still, she'd been without sleep for almost twenty-four hours. The previous morning she had risen before seven in order to get an early start on the road. She'd drunk tea and had a bit of a scone, and then had gotten into her coach with no inkling as to what the day would bring.
Never in her wildest imaginings could she have conjured up what would come to her. It still seemed like a nightmare from which she must soon surely awake.
Which would make Hugh what— the demon stalking her sleep?
If only it were so. If only she could just wake up, and he and this cabin and everything else would vanish in a twinkling.
Yes, and if wishes were horses then beggars might ride.
To her annoyance, Claire found that in staring at the clock, she could still see the very scene she had deliberately turned her back on. Small and golden but clear in every detail, Hugh was crouched on the floor, running his fingers along the delicate lace that edged her chemise.
It took a second or two for realization to strike, but when it did her jaw dropped under the force of it. Clearly she recalled undressing behind him along with her suspicions that he was somehow watching her.
He had been watching. Through the clock.
"You bounder!" she gasped.
He looked up then, saw what she was staring at, and came lithely to his feet.
"You cad!"
She turned as he moved toward her, leaning back against the table edge again and glaring at him. Swaddled in the blanket, her black hair, almost dry now, flowing around her face and down her back in unruly waves, her feet bare, her eyes flashing fire, she must look, she realized, like the vixen he had called her. Which was fine with her, because vixenish was just exactly how she felt.
"You were watching me the whole time!"
He stopped in front of her, hands on his hips, looking down at her with a considering expression. He was far taller and bigger than she, dark and dangerous looking and standing not much more than a foot away, but Claire discovered that she was not the least bit afraid of him any longer.
"'Twas quite a pretty show," he said with the merest quirk of a smile. "I make you my compliments."
Claire saw red. Her fingers curled deep into the blanket's rough wool. The fact that he had watched her as she had undressed and toweled herself dry made her want to scratch his eyes out. She'd been naked; only her maid had ever seen her in such a state of total undress. Even with David, when he had come to her bed, she'd worn a nightgown. She never would have dreamed of letting him see her naked, and he had never given any indication that he wished to. For this man, this stranger who had abducted and abused and threatened her, to see her in the altogether was so mortifying as to make her want to die— or kill. Him, to be precise.
"How dare you," she said, her voice low, almost guttural.
"Oh, come." He frowned, suddenly impatient. "This paroxysm of maidenly modesty is very well done, but totally wasted on me."
Moving, he was suddenly right in front of her, so close that her arms, folded now over her bosom inside the blanket, brushed his chest. He put his hands on her upper arms, gripping them loosely through the thick wool and looking down into her eyes.
She glared. His eyes moved over her face, and his mouth twisted wryly.
"You're a beautiful piece, a high-flyer indeed. We could deal extremely, you and I. If you are doing this for love, little dove, let me tell you that love may be found in many different places. You might even, for instance, find it with me."
His hands tightened on her arms, and he bent his head, clearly meaning to kiss her again. This time Claire was having none of it. Even as his mouth touched hers she made a furious sound— and, doubling up her fist, punched him as hard as she could in the ribs.
Chapter 12
It hurt like be-damned. For the space of a couple of heartbeats after the blow landed, Hugh saw stars. He groaned, doubling over and staggering backward, his arms wrapped around his injured chest. Speeded by the ship's roll, he fetched up against the bunk and collapsed on it. Gritting his teeth, stretching his length out on the musty-smelling mattress, which was bare now that she was wearing all that had been provided in the way of bedclothes, he closed his eyes and waited for the spasm to ease.
When at last he opened his eyes, it was to find his nemesis standing over him, wide-eyed. Holding on to the upper bunk with one hand for balance, she was clutching the gray blanket close with the other. It concealed her curves more thoroughly than any domino ever worn by a guilty visitor to a Covent Garden masquerade. Her black hair cascaded in a waterfall of tangled waves around her shoulders. Her eyes were as big as doubloons, and almost the same color. She looked worried— and beautiful. So beautiful that Hugh groaned again, and closed his eyes.
The next time he fell off his horse, see if he didn't take heed of the celestial warning.
"Are you all right?"
Considering that she had just driven her fist into his ribs, that was almost amusing. Of course, under ordinary conditions, taking a punch to the ribs from her delicately boned hand wouldn't even have slowed him down. But just at the moment his ribs were his Achilles' heel. It was some comfort to reflect that even legendary heroes had been brought down by ill-timed blows to their weak spots. But not much.
He opened his eyes again.
"No, I damned well am not all right."
He was annoyed to hear himself wheezing between words. Fortunately, the ship was wallowing back and forth like a pig in a sty, accompanied by a medley of muted creaks and groans. With that for cover, he hoped she might miss the whistling of each slow, careful breath.
"I didn't mean to really hurt you."
Unfortunately for the success of that as an apology, there was a slight but unmistakable note of awe in her voice as her gaze slid from his face to focus on where he still clutched his ribs. She sounded most impressed with herself, rather like a green lad might if he succeeded in knocking down the great boxing champ Gentleman Jackson with a single blow.
His masculine pride was, most ridiculously, stung. Though he recognized it for the foolish vanity it was, he still could not bear to let her go on thinking that, in the ordinary way of things, a mere slip of a girl like herself could lay him low.
"I injured my ribs not long ago in a fall from a horse." The words were forced through gritted teeth. He was disgusted with himself for feeling the need to explain— and he was still hurting.
"Everyone takes a tumble from time to time," she said, sounding sympathetic.
Hugh eyed her darkly. He was
not
going to tell her that, ordinarily, he rode like he breathed: effortlessly. It occurred to him then that he wanted to impress her, and he didn't much like the knowledge.
Until making her acquaintance, he had considered himself a consummate professional: efficient, devoid of emotion when necessary, thoroughly dedicated to getting the job done. She had him questioning everything about himself, and he wasn't any too pleased about it.
So far, he'd managed to extract about as much useful information from her as a bee trying to get honey from a rock. While she— she was chiseling away at the barrier of impersonality he always built around himself, chip by telling chip, when he was on the job.
"Shall I call someone? James?" She glanced toward the door.
Following her glance toward the barred portal made Hugh nervous. It did not require much imagination to come up with several ways in which the thrice-damned chit could take advantage of his temporary incapacitation. She could, for example, run to the door, unbolt it, and conceal herself somewhere on the ship. She could jump overboard. She could grab his knife and slit his throat. She could…
Oh, hell, who knew what she might take it into her head to do? The thing to do was preempt any such action on her part. Reaching up, he grabbed the hand that was holding the blanket closed and yanked. Hard.
"Oh!"
With a surprised gasp, she came tumbling down on top of him. In the interests of both protecting his still-protesting ribs and at the same time getting her exactly where he wanted her, he caught her around the waist with his free arm before she hit and rolled her across his hips so that she wound up in the space between his body and the wall. Now, to go anywhere, she had to go over him.
She landed amid a tangle of flying hair, blanket, and bare legs. Long, slim, extremely shapely bare legs, as he had observed before, that ended in enormous wool stockings that now puddled about her ankles and covered just them and her feet. James's stockings had never been so flattered by their wearer, Hugh thought with the beginnings of an inner twinkle, and vowed to tell his henchman so should the occasion ever arise. Her legs turned those homely stockings into the most beguiling of garments. He was still admiring them— and at the same time mentally berating himself for being so susceptible to her charms— when, scrabbling to rewrap herself in the blanket, she jarred his ribs with her elbow.
"Christ Almighty!" he yelped.
Clutching his side with renewed fervor, Hugh could only think himself well served. If he hadn't been so fixated on her legs, she wouldn't have been in such a scramble to cover them up.
"Don't move," he said, fixing her with a gaze that he hoped promised murder if she disobeyed. She was still wrestling with the recalcitrant blanket, trying to wriggle it down so that it covered every last inch of exposed skin. At his words, she looked up. Meeting his gaze, her eyes widened and she abruptly lay still.
Good, he thought. His message was finally getting through. When he was satisfied that she wasn't even thinking about moving again, he closed his eyes and gave himself over to recovering.
"I'm sorry if I hurt you, but you shouldn't have watched me through the clock," she said in a small but decidedly truculent voice after several minutes of silence. By then the worst of the pain had eased, and Hugh was breathing more or less normally. He opened his eyes, slanting her a jaundiced look. If this was a game they were playing, a high-stakes game, a winner-take-all game, he had to acknowledge that she was better at it than he. Outraged modesty was not an emotion normally expressed by the high-flyers of his acquaintance, which over the years had numbered quite a few.
"I apologize if I offended you," he said, very polite.
She looked at him suspiciously. "You are not the least bit sorry and you know it."
"Now, there you're wrong. Believe me, I am very sorry indeed."
"Only because I hurt your ribs."
"There's that." His voice was grave— too grave, he thought— but she didn't seem to catch the growing amusement underlying his words. Watching her scowl at him, he had suddenly, absurdly, felt that he had been transported off this worm-eaten vessel into a duchess's drawing room.
His gaze shifted so that he was staring up at the dark underpanel of the upper bunk some three feet above his head, which he absently noted was dusty and festooned with cobwebs. Frowning, he asked himself: How likely was it that a tart could give an impression like that?
If he didn't know better, he would almost have believed that her to-the-manner-born dignity was real. That her sweetness was real. That her story— too ridiculous to be even remotely possible— was real.
Did he know better?
She hadn't pulled the trigger, the letters were not anywhere on her person or among her clothes, and she didn't kiss like any tart he had ever kissed in his life. She kissed like a wet-behind-the-ears miss.