Wanton Angel (Blackthorne Trilogy) (29 page)

      
“After the scene you witnessed between him and your father, he felt it best if I broached the subject to you first. He has been summoned to speak with the British charge

d'affaires. He is still in the employ of their Foreign Office, you know.”

      
“You are in great charity with him, considering how you felt when you first learned he was a spy. Then you wanted to cut out his heart and feed it to the gulls on the quay. What has changed your mind about him?”

      
“You,
cara.
After he was gone and you believed you'd never see him again, how you grieved and could not paint...I knew then that you loved him as I loved Piero.”

      
“You always told me that you didn't believe in that kind of forever love.”

      
Vittoria smiled sadly. “I lied...to protect you from the hurt I felt. Perhaps I lied to myself as well all these years. My life has been good, yes, but a part of me was always empty. I never knew how empty until I saw Piero standing in this very room yesterday evening.”

      
Beth felt her chest tighten with emotion—joy for her friend, but what for herself? “You think that I will always love Derrick that way—that I will never get over him?”

      
Vittoria took her hand, smiling. “You don't have to get over him—or pine away alone. He's here and he wants to marry you. I doubt even your formidable father could force him if he did not want to. All you have to do is say yes. Father Vivalde will perform the ceremony as soon as I speak with the bishop regarding waiving the banns.”

      
“This is all happening too swiftly. I must discuss this with Derrick before I'll agree. We have many things to sort out first.”

      
Beth waited for Derrick to return that night, pacing nervously in her quarters. She was afraid to hope that they could build a life together. Would she be forced to spend the rest of her life as Vittoria had until Piero returned? Her friend, usually cool and aloof, now radiated the glow of a well loved woman, blissfully happy, almost girlishly giddy when she looked at or spoke with her lover.

      
Is that how I appear around Derrick?
she wondered. If so, she had certainly been wearing her heart on her sleeve. Not so her spy. Physical desire for her was the only emotion he had ever revealed. Why had he agreed to leg-shackling? For that matter, why should she? Hearing the tall case clock down the hall strike midnight, she realized he was late. Still conferring with the officials from his government? Or had he repented his offer and fled Naples in the night once again?

      
Derrick stood in the outside doorway to her quarters, watching her while she was unaware of his presence. After the ordeal with Blackthorne, followed by a lengthy session with Sir Richard, he was past being exhausted. His mind felt as numb as his body—until he looked at her. Ever since that day when he'd first seen her in peasant's garb on the quay, she had entranced him to the point of obsession. As a mistress he had desired her beyond all reason...but as a wife? He was not certain how he would feel when the priest pronounced them bound together for life.

      
Dammit all, he had never intended to marry. That was Leighton's duty, not his. But when he gazed at the strong, vibrant planes of her face, the lush curves of her body...

      
She seemed to sense his presence like a doe sensing the approach of a predator. He watched as she turned and looked at him without saying a word.

      
“Hello, Beth. Sorry I’m so late.”
Too stiff by half, Jamison.
He strode into her sitting room and took her hands, raising them to his lips as he tried to read her expression.

      
“Vittoria told me you were with the charge d'affaires,” she replied, withdrawing her hands and turning to the table, where Donita had set out a cold collation and a bottle of claret. Her hands trembled as she poured two glasses of the ruby liquid. Forcing them to hold steady, she handed him a glass.

      
He accepted it, taking a sip while studying her over the rim. “So, puss, what's it to be—will you marry me?”

      
“At least you have the good grace to ask. Everyone else simply assumes I'll fall in step with the arrangements, which appear to be moving along briskly. Father Vivalde was here earlier to assure me that the bishop has granted a dispensation so that we may be wed on the morrow!”

      
He shrugged. “Tomorrow would be fine with me. What of you?”

      
“You must first tell me why you wish this. The only time you have ever spoken of marriage was to call it leg-shackling and shudder at the prospect.”

      
“So did you, if you recall. Your art was your life...or so you told me.”

      
His coolness was palpable, as if he'd removed himself from emotional involvement. How could he ask her to bare her soul when he stood so aloof, a handsome stranger with the unreadable face of a spy. “What are you fishing for, Derrick? Do you want me to tell you I would abandon painting for love of you?”

      
“I expect not,” he said, a rueful half-smile touching his lips fleetingly as he sipped at his wine again. “I'll not forbid you to paint, Beth—as if forbidding you to do anything would signify. You may pursue your art career as you wish. After all,'tis not as if I were the earl and you my countess.”

      
The offhand comment wounded her painfully.
How careless are the barbs of the aristocracy
. “I would be a scandal in London,” she replied, taking a large swallow of wine for courage. “My father believes I'm one here, too.”

      
“He doesn't understand Naples.” He did not deny that she would be a fish out of water in London society.

      
“He doesn't understand you. Neither do I. Vittoria's right. Even Quintin Blackthorne could not coerce you into what on our frontier is called a ‘shotgun wedding.’ ”

      
He stiffened angrily for an instant, then brought his temper under control as Piero's words echoed in his head.
A dead father. A dead lover. Now there's a fine solution to everything.
“I am no more afraid of your father than he is of me. That is not why we reached an accord.”

      
“You still have not answered my question, Derrick. Why are you willing to marry me?”
Just say you love me
. The words echoed in her head, but she knew they were foolish even before he replied.

      
“Dammit, must everything be spelled out for you as if you were still a school miss!” His angry outburst made her pale and the wine splashed over the rim of her glass. At once he repented. “Ah, puss, I’m sorry. I did not mean to rail at you.”

      
“What did you mean then?” she persisted doggedly.

      
He reached out and took the glass from her whitened fingers, setting it on the table, then drew her with him to the Grecian couch and sat down beside her. “I'm offering you the protection of my name. Beth...there might be a child. It could be mine...or that corsair Quinn's or Kasseim's—”

      
She leaped to her feet angrily, her head spinning with the sheer pain and rage of the practical arrangement her father and lover had made for her. “How noble that you concede it might be yours—this imaginary child!”

      
“I know for a fact that you have not had your courses since we left Algiers,” he said, gritting his teeth as he rose. “How long before that?”

      
She had gone through hell to keep another man from touching her, working her fingers to the bone nursing Quinn, stealing Maya's opium to drug that thrice-cursed Kasseim! And now Derrick thought one of them might have gotten her with child. It had hurt when she realized that he believed she'd lain with them, hurt even worse that he blamed her for being captured in the first place.
 

      
She had wondered if it had been a prideful mistake not to reveal the real reason for her voyage. Now she was glad she had not confessed that it was despair over losing him that had driven her to risk sailing in Barbary waters.

      
Beth swallowed back her tears, unable to voice a painful denial, which he would not believe anyway. Instead, she replied, “My courses have always been erratic. Derrick. I think it best if we wait a while before leaping into a marriage that we may both regret. There may be no reason for it.”

      
She looked so vulnerable and brave at the same time. His heart softened, but the memory of the steely glint in Quintin Blackthorne's eyes made him say, “Waiting may not be a wise idea, Beth. Your father wants this matter settled. He has the rather traditional view that his daughter's honor has been compromised, and the only thing that will satisfy him is a wedding.”

      
“You aren't afraid of him.” She was certain of that.

      
“I would not want to kill him either.”

      
Then she understood. The ground seemed to evaporate from beneath her feet. “Dear God, he really did threaten a duel.”

      
“As a matter of fact, the possibility was mentioned,” he said with a wry smile that did not reach his eyes. “Piero reminded us that it would please you ill if either or both of us ended up dead. So, I think, puss, that you shall simply have to marry me,” he announced, taking her in his arms and pulling her against his chest.

      
The world was spinning out of control, everything moving much too fast. Perhaps she was enceinte. Her dizziness was certainly not due to a few sips of wine.
It is Derrick.
Beth quashed the thought. “There must be another way to settle this,” she said reasonably, pushing against his chest. ”I shall speak with Papa.”

      
Her resistance should have heartened him. Instead it only seemed to rub salt into what was already a fiery wound. He had fled the marriage noose repeatedly during his days as a London rake. Women had always tried to entice and entrap him. But this woman, a totally unsuitable American whose body had been violated in unthinkable ways, refused him. “You said yourself, Beth, your courses are erratic. What if we wait another month, two—and then learn that you are four months with child? Do you think your father will be willing to allow that?”

      
When he put it that way, reasoning with Quintin Blackthorne did seem a bit ridiculous.

      
“Look, puss, you shall marry me or I will kill your father...or he shall kill me...or we'll kill each other.”

      
Beth was appalled. “Derrick Jamison, are you blackmailing me?”

      
Derrick cocked his head and stared down at her, an enigmatic smile slowly curling his lips. ”Hmm, it does rather sound like it, doesn't it?”

Chapter Sixteen

      
Beth lay awake all night after Derrick left, tossing and turning until the sky pinkened with morning light. Wearily, she climbed out of her bed, which was large and lonely without him beside her. Even if her fathers presence in the city was not a deterrent, it would have been unwise for them to sleep together until they settled this matter of marriage. What should she do?

      
Beth dressed hurriedly and went into her studio. Perhaps the familiar routine of work would soothe her troubled spirits, enable her to think more clearly if she focused on something other than this dilemma for a while. She readied her palette and brushes,dry and dusty from sitting so long while she was gone. The light was perfect. Now, what to work on? Several paintings in progress were propped about the room, covered with cloth. Some instinct sent her to the one farthest from her.

      
When she flung the cover off, Derrick Jamison's brooding countenance stared back at her: the portrait she had never completed. She studied the long lazy lines of his body as it reposed by the side of the stream, the tilt of his head, the deep blue of his eyes and that mouth...oh, yes, that mouth, sculpted as perfectly as if Michangelo himself had done it. But this man was not lifeless marble, the embodiment of some mythical figure. He was alive and warm. He was the man who would be her husband, if she agreed.

      
Her thoughts were broken by a knock at her door. Thinking that it was Donita with her morning coffee, she continued to stare at the painting as she bid the caller enter.

      
“So this is where you work,” Quint said, striding into the large, cluttered room filled with canvases, paints, charcoal and paper. “I remembered that you were always up while your slug-a-bed brothers still slept.”

      
When he approached, she started to cover the canvas, but he quickly stopped her, then stood back to study the portrait, which was almost complete. She had only to fill in the rest of the background. “It reveals much, Beth,” he said thoughtfully.

      
“About him...or about me?” she asked nervously.

      
“Perhaps both. You've captured something elusive in his eyes, in the way he's looking out at the world—or at the one who's drawing him. You're in love with the rogue, aren't you, daughter?”

      
“Yes,” she replied, seeing no use in denying it since he would not relent in his insistence she marry. “But he is not in love with me,” she felt compelled to add.

      
Quint walked across the airy room to one of the large windows that overlooked the bay in the distance. The sun had just begun to clear the hills behind him and was gilding the water with flecks of gold and pink. He seemed lost in thought for a moment, then said, “Perhaps he is...perhaps not. When first we wed, I did not love your mother either.” At her small gasp of shock, he turned. “I've never told a living soul what I am going to tell you now.