The Wild Wellingham Brothers: High Seas To High Society / One Unashamed Night / One Illicit Night / The Dissolute Duke
Lord. The options closed in on her because she also knew enough about medicine to realise that for the next few days at least he should not be moved. And though his offer of a place here was appreciated, she could barely contemplate what his family must think of her.
The absolution of a debt.
The words floated in between the cracks of uneasiness and she felt both the power and the impossibility of them, for when she had torn off his shirt to tend to his wound she saw what she had not before.
Scars. Rows of them cut across his back, ribboned flesh silvered and sliced diagonally. She imagined the pain he must have felt and the sheer raw fury of powerlessness. She turned back to face the room, and when Azziz nodded she let out the breath she had not realised that she had been holding.
They would follow his instructions? They would take orders from a man who lay pale faced in a bed with a quarter of the blood that should have been flowing through his veins and the marks of slavery on his back?
Yes, they would, because, even given his wounds, leadership and authority stamped itself easily into the lines of Asher Wellingham’s body and into the cadence of his words. A raw untamed wildness, all the more startling for the setting she had found it in. England. With its manners and protocols and ludicrous comportments.
For a moment she was disorientated with the sheer longing of reaching out and just holding on. He could protect her as he protected his brother and mother and sister. And the tenants on his land at Falder and the servants in all of his homes.
But she was Emerald Sandford and these dreams of safety were not for her. When she got the map, she would take ship for Jamaica, find the treasure and clear the debts that hung over her father’s name. And then she would rebuild St Clair.
St Clair. Even the name was hard to say. She remembered crouching in the shadow of the trees with Ruby and watching the place burn, the flames lighting up the night sky for miles around, small pieces of ash floating into her sister’s outstretched hand. Ruby had laughed as she had wept, waiting in the glade against the red, red sky; when the morning had finally come, leaving the skeleton of one remaining wall, they had picked through the rubble and salvaged three pots and a half-burned spade. And her jewellery box, slung beneath a beam that had not quite caught fire, a small buffer against impending poverty.
She shook her head and gestured to Azziz and Toro to wait outside. Using the moment of their departure to take the acupuncture needles from his arm, she found the darkness about his eyes worrying.
‘A worthy art in the East, Emma, but here in England the pins may be misinterpreted for something else entirely.’
‘What?’
‘Witchcraft.’
She laughed at the absurdity of it, thinking of Wing-Jin and his patient teachings aboard the Mariposa.
‘A society without rules is more dangerous then a society with too many. Have you ever heard of the pirate Beau Sandford?’
The colour drained right out of her face. ‘He was an acquaintance of my father’s.’
‘The devout and honourable Reverend?”
‘The very religious treat each man as redeemable.’
She could barely utter the words said next. ‘It is said that you killed this man?’
She expected him to brag about doing just that. But he didn’t, and the pain in his eyes held her rooted to the spot, neither moving nor speaking.
My God, what had she done to him? His words from the night in the gardens at Falder came back to her. ‘I was not at home for Melanie’s funeral. I should have been home.’
She had given his statement little notice before, imagining that perhaps he was on one of his ships plying the coast of foreign lands for cargo. Could there have been a more sinister reason for his absence and for his injuries and for the sleepless midnights when he wandered his library drink in hand and waited for the dawn? She turned to leave.
‘No.’ Asher’s voice was tired, but he fought for consciousness with the same one-tracked determination as he seemed to fight everything else. ‘You will stay, Emma. The deal. Promise me that you will.’
‘I need to talk to Miriam.’
‘No. It is not safe to leave.’
‘My aunt will not understand what is happening.’
‘Taris will speak with her.’
The lines between his nose and mouth were pronounced. He was exhausted, yet he still fought to have her stay. With him.
‘This cannot be proper—’ she began, but he broke across her words and smiled.
‘Proper? When was anything proper between us?’
When she did not answer he rang the bell on his bedside table. Sweat beaded his upper lip.
‘If you are in pain, I could help you.’
‘No. Just…want your promise to stay.’ His voice shook with exhaustion and his hair was dark and damp against the white of the sheets as he instructed his servant to see her to a room.
Chapter Ten
Emerald slipped through the kitchens into the garden. She had been at Carisbrook House for almost five days now, though she had not seen Asher since the day of her arrival. Her questions as to his state of health had all been answered perfunctorily by the servants, but had included no mention of an invite to see him and so she had stayed away.
Miriam had been installed in the room next to her and the cold her aunt was suffering seemed remarkably better with the ministrations of the Wellingham physician. This morning Emerald had sat reading to her, but now Emerald needed some space, some air and some exercise to temper the quiet edge of waiting.
The gardens, while not as large as those at Falder, were complex and the small sound of a boot scuffed against the shell path had her walking on further and turning a corner. Taris Wellingham sat on a wide marble garden seat, his hat in his lap and his face turned towards the sun.
‘Lady Emma,’ he said as he registered her presence.
‘You knew it was me?’ she said before realising the rudeness of such a question.
He smiled. ‘Lack of sight heightens the hearing and you walk with a particular gait.’ Tilting his head, he continued. ‘You walk your world like one who is not at home in England.’
Emerald was still as she considered a response, though he did not seem to require one as he continued talking.
‘If you sit with me for a moment, I would like to tell you a little about my brother.’
He waited as she rearranged her skirts and took a place beside him and when he started to talk she heard a reticence. ‘Asher thinks that you need…protecting.’
‘Does he?’ She could barely answer.
‘He thinks that you may be in trouble and he is a man who knows his responsibilities and sticks by them. Stability. Trust. Loyalty. All fine qualities, would you not agree?’
‘I would.’
‘And he is different since he met you, happier, for he has let few others close since his return from the Caribbean.’
Emerald frowned, uncertain now as to where this conversation was leading. Was it a warning?
‘He was held captive for a year after the pirate Sandford ambushed his ship off Turks Island. And when a ransom note came to Falder and we finally found out where Asher was, he was full of only one thing—revenge. He came home only to get better to go back again a year later.’
Oh, God. Emerald tried to stop the aching lump of guilt that congealed in her throat from spilling over into her eyes.
This was all her fault.
When she had thrown Asher into the ocean as a means of saving him from the wrath of her father, no one could have foreseen the consequences. And this very minute was one of them.
She had ruined his life. Irrevocably. Undeniably.
‘Emma?’ His hand covered hers. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’ She stood and forced a smile on her face.
Judas. Traitor. Liar.
If she saw Asher now, he would know.
Pleading a headache, she fled to her room and lay down on her blanket near the window, stuffing the fabric in her mouth to stop the sobs that gathered in the back of her throat.
All my fault…all my fault. The litany of guilt was like a mantra. His wife, his scars, Taris’s lack of sight and his lost years. Lord, she had done all this to him. Unknowingly. The serpent in the Garden of Eden.
Her.
She crept down the corridor and across the stairs to the landing on the first floor.
Asher’s rooms.
A spike of panic nearly had her turning away from the heavy door, but she made herself stand still until the fear had passed and then pressed on silently. Opening the door, she turned the key in the lock as she shut it behind her. It was dark inside and the glow from a fire in the grate of an adjoining room threw shadows over everything. A quick glance at the moon through the windows gave her a rough timing. Around three o’clock. She stood still until she had her bearings and listened until the scrape of a quill upon parchment drew her attention. He was writing at his desk? Her heart began to thud and the thin cotton shift she wore stuck to the moisture building across her skin. But she would not waver.
‘Who’s there?’ His voice was close, husky, and she could not quite find it in herself to answer.
Emerald.
Beau’s daughter.
Judas.
A chair scraped across parquet and then he was in the room, shirt-tails pulled from his trousers and wearing no cravat. Even in the lack of light she could make out the thick wedge of bandage beneath his shirt.
Was it too soon? Six days since the attack.
She placed her arms by her side and made herself relax.
‘Emma?’ A whisper of disbelief was underscored by soft puzzlement as his eyes came to rest upon her gloveless fingers. And, as if to give himself time, he asked a question.
‘What happened?’
‘They were burnt.’
‘When you were cooking?’
Smiling at his assumption, she knew that she could not give Asher even one more lie. But there was something that she could give him. Something precious.
Herself.
Lifting her hands to the ties at her bodice, she unlaced the ribbon and simply stepped out of her shift, nipples puckering hard in the sudden cold.
‘Lord.’ Asher breathed in, and the sensual haze in his eyes took the breath from her body in one heavy hit.
‘You once suggested a dalliance and I turned you down. I have come to think that was a mistake.’
She cursed the shiver that ran through her words and desperately wondered what was supposed to happen next. The growing thickness of his manhood was plainly seen, though she could not quite bring herself to lean down and open his laces. No, whilst she always swam in the nude and slept in the nude and was rarely hampered by society’s penchant for undergarments, the pleasuring of a man was something she had only seen at a distance in the brothels of many a dockside port.
Wetting her lips with her tongue, she tried to remember the less bold moves of the doxies who haunted the drinking houses between Savannah la Mar and Kingston and with precision ran her hand across her stomach and lower, gently swaying her hips in the way Molly’s girls did in the Golden Hind, a favourite drinking hole of her father’s.
And now what?
A sudden fright consumed her. Would he be gentle? Worse, would he refuse her?
Asher saw the panic in her eyes before she closed them, turquoise bright and shaded by some emotion he could not quite fathom. What game did she play at? Would someone discover them and insist that he do the right thing by her and offer marriage? Marriage? To a woman who posed as a lady, acted the harlot and had the body of an angel. His eyes skimmed across her breasts. Her waist was tiny and the long length of her legs gave her a grace that was…breathtaking. Lord, even at the salons of the select courtesans in London she would be exceptional, the tattoo on her breast and the scar on her thigh adding layers of mystery.
Lady Emma Seaton? Nothing about her quite added up but the sum total of all that she was drove him to the edge of reason.
He felt like locking her up at Falder where no other man would ever touch her again—she was his woman, damn it.
His woman?
The sheer possessiveness of the thought egged him on and he felt his rising lust as a power.
‘Come.’ He did not move at all, but waited as she walked forward into his arms, his erection hard against her stomach, pressing, eager, ready. When he shrugged out of his shirt, she touched the bandage gently, the pale gilt of her curls whisper soft against his cheek.
‘Is it sore?’
Shaking his head, he removed his trousers and reached out to the curve of her waist and then lower.
Emerald felt the first push of his fingers in a place no man had touched before. Careful. Warm. Certain.
So this was it.
This was what she had heard of for ever.
‘Asher?’ She breathed his name as a quicksilver pain pierced her inside.
She would not stop him.
Payment.
Repayment.
Her repayment.
The guilt torn from her very soul made her still.
‘Open for me, sweetheart.’ The command was whispered and underlined by a quick movement. And when she did, the shards of gold in his eyes glowed against a darker brown. Triumph, conquest and elation mixed with desire.
The thick-cut pile of an Aubusson carpet beneath her back was warm as he laid her down and opened her thighs, his sex seeking an entrance, finding the pathway.
‘I have not—’
He covered her mouth with his own and took away the words, his tongue mimicking the quiet thrust of his hips and her whole world exploded into pain. And then he was still. Desperately still.
‘Lord. You’re a virgin!’ Rising above her, sweat beaded his brow and upper lip, the lines of his face softer now as tenderness stretched across desire. She tried to still him by holding her hands across his back, the firmness of muscle cut by ridged scars.
‘Ahh, sweetheart. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’
The message was plain as his hooded glance sharpened, refocused, and she made to move out from underneath him.
‘No, Emma. Give it a moment and the pain will pass.’ He moved just slightly.
‘It hurts.’
‘I know. I know.’
He moved again. Forward this time. Deeper as he brought one arm beneath her back and tilted her hips. She felt the very hardness of him against her womb.
Kissing her gently, he nuzzled at her neck and ear. The cold trail of tongue across her nipple and fire consumed her. Without meaning to, she rocked forward. It was all he was waiting for, the pain less now as another feeling climbed. Higher. Closer.
‘Come with me,’ he murmured and, pulling her arms above her head with one hand, he turned her, the rhythm different, less known. A pause here. A deeper thrust there. His free hand held her bottom tight and he buried himself in her to the very hilt.
Up and up and up and over, the clenching waves of ecstasy made her jolt. Once, twice, more and more and more.
Spent, she lay lifeless and did not protest as Asher gathered her in his arms and laid her head upon his chest. Lying there in his shelter and listening to his heart while the wind gathered outside and chased clouds across the moon, she wished that time might just stop. Here. Now. For ever.
But the world ran on in the heavy chime of a clock and when his hand dropped she felt again the quick punch of sensuality.
‘I still want you.’ His words were quiet and the look in his eyes was sensuous, the scent of their lovemaking musky in the air. ‘Do you want me? Again?’
When she nodded, he carefully rolled over and bent his elbows to her side to shelter her from his weight. The touch of his thumb against her breast was questioning; as her nipples hardened she pressed into his hand, her breath shallowed and waiting.
She was cold and he warmed her. She was hot and he cooled her. He was of her and she was of him and there seemed no place that they were separate or solitary in the heady secrets of the flesh.
And when he had finished he brought her up into his arms and walked across to his bed, gently laying her down and bringing up the sheets before joining her.
Smoothing back the damp curliness of her hair, he grinned. The golden lights in his eyes were easily seen and he looked younger and happier. ‘We will be married as soon as the banns have been read. I swear it.’
Marriage!
God.
As who?
As Emerald Sandford?
She was pleased that he did not notice her confusion or her withdrawal as she lay there, listening to his breathing deepen into sleep.
How long would it be before Asher started to put the pieces together properly? Closing her eyes, she gritted her teeth. She could not tell him. He was an honourable man, a man who took his responsibilities seriously. And here she was, another responsibility, a woman whom he would feel bound to marry just because they had slept together.
Marriage.
In the circles she had mixed in, even the notion would seem ludicrous. But her father’s crowd had never had the sort of moral fibre Asher Wellingham did.
A flare of pleasure warmed her and therein lay the rub, for her steely independence faltered somewhat under the mantle of his care, and if she let herself believe in fairy tales she would only be hurt all the worse later.
The memory of him deep inside her body made her heart race. Lord, but to never again know the sweetness of his kisses and the raw white heat of passion…She slashed at the tears that welled in her eyes and swore.
She was caught between love and lies, frozen into immobility. She, who had always walked her world unfettered and straight, the wind in her hair and the sun on her back and a sharp true blade in her fingers.
And now when her world had skewed and reshaped, she understood how often she had been lonely. Solitary. Isolated. Living in Jamaica under the shadow of her father had allowed no space for frivolity, for girlish pursuits, for love.
Love.
A prickling panic overcame her. Love? Asher had never said it. Not once. Could just lust be enough? Had it ever been enough for Beau?
She rubbed at the ache that was settling at her temples and promised herself honesty.
She was the pirate’s daughter and already the whispers of her difference were starting, just as they had at home in Jamaica. She had never fitted anywhere. Even aboard the Mariposa.
Frowning, the slight echo of mistruth startled her.
She did fit!
In Asher’s arms with the promise of safety in his name and in the strong lines of his body.
Yes, for the first time in all her life she looked neither onwards nor backwards but existed just in the moment, a tiny and fragile reality that offered happiness.
Or hurt?
The ghost of her father hovered near and behind him other spectres lingered, death and pain written across each face.
She would not let them spoil this moment and she shook away memory, laying her arm alongside Asher and feeling his warmth. And then, when he did not stir, she pressed her legs against the long heat of his own and a shiver of delight consumed her.
When she woke again it was morning and the indent of where he had slumbered was still warm. He has only just left, she thought and sat up, running her fingers through her hair to try to straighten it. What should she do next? How many nights of loving constituted absolution? Rising from the rumpled bed, she was pleased to see that a basin with water and a towel had been left on the table. Wetting the flannel, she brought it across her forehead, her face in the mirror showing the struggle of wanting. Wanting to be with him. Wanting to be gone so that he might never know any of it. Today the blue in her eyes was overshadowed by dark, dark green and her hair was a wild array of wayward curls.
Not the face of a duchess.
She could not imagine a portrait of herself above the Carisbrook baronial fireplace to last down through the centuries. The scar that dissected her right eyebrow was reddened and visible and she brought up her finger to touch it. This was the sum of who she was and no amount of wishing it otherwise could preclude her past.
She had just dressed when he returned, and ridiculously she blushed. If he noticed, he gave no word of it—for that she was grateful.
‘Would you walk with me? We have much to say to each other.’ He did not touch her at all as she went past him and kept his distance still as they descended the stairs. Outside in the sun he seemed to relax more as they ambled between the stone walls, the lush green of summer in the leaves of trees that stood as sentinels on each side of the garden.
When he stopped she looked up at him. The brown of his irises was darker today and his hair slicked back as though he had just bathed.
‘Who were the men who attacked me?’
So he wanted answers. She hoped that she might give him at least a version of the truth. ‘The McIlverrays of Kingston Town. They want the map inside the cane. They believe that it should belong to them.’
‘And you think it prudent to hold on to a treasure map that might indeed in the end kill you?’
She almost laughed at that, but stopped herself.
‘My family has debts.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Tell me how much you owe and I’ll place it into an account tomorrow.’
Her mouth fell open. ‘No.’ She couldn’t do it, couldn’t escape from here with a fat payment in her pocket after a quick toss in the sheets. That would make her—what? A whore? And every bit as on the game as the ones she had seen peddling their bodies in Jamaica. ‘I can’t take money from you like that.’
She was unprepared for his laughter. ‘And what if you are pregnant?’
She had not even considered that.
‘If you are pregnant, the child will be the heir to the Carisbrook fortune. I would not want him, or her, to be brought up on an empty quest for treasure or a hollow prophecy of greed. And Falder would welcome the promise of a child.’
‘A child you would risk everything for?’
He shook his head and turned her towards him, peeling away restraint with a quick easiness. ‘It is you I am trying to help.’
‘Help me, then, by giving me the map.’
‘And then watch you disappear?’
She reddened and felt his breath on the soft skin at the top of her ear and her insides twisted in longing. So simply done. So effortlessly won. A throbbing shot of warmth spread as she turned into his lips, groaning when his fingers flicked at her nipples. Even here, in the garden in the full view of the windows along the back end of Carisbrook House, she would let him have her, down on the ground amid the flowers and damn the consequences.
He was hers like no other person had ever been. She felt his familiarity with an ache, and was gasping as he drew back.
‘This is not the place to…Come with me.’ He led her to a summer house at the very bottom of the garden and stripped off his coat. The shirt he wore beneath was snowy white. After he loosened his breeches he stopped and smiled, the wind lifting his hair away from his throat and throwing a shadow into amber-lit eyes.
He was so beautiful. So masculinely perfect. With care she laid her palm against the rough stubble on his jaw and drew one finger across the fullness of his top lip.
‘We could be seen—’
He stopped the words with a quick shake of his head.
‘No. Not here.’
Suddenly she did not care. With a slow grace she undid the buttons at her throat, excited as he watched her lift the fullness of her breast above their protection of lawn and lace.
Wanton. Heedless. Immoderate.
She felt his fingers lifting her skirt and the wind on her shins and thighs and bottom as she accepted him with a sigh. Tipping her hips forward to get a deeper thrust his hands anchored her and she bit into the cotton of his sleeve to smother a scream.