The Wild Wellingham Brothers: High Seas To High Society / One Unashamed Night / One Illicit Night / The Dissolute Duke

‘My friends call me Emmie.’

‘Then Emmie it is, and I have just the gown for you. It’s in my room and it was one that my cousin left at Falder last year and she is about your size and colouring.’

‘She wouldn’t mind me using it?’

‘No, not at all. She’s the least fussy person I know and one of the nicest.’

An hour later Emerald barely recognised herself. She stood in front of a full-length mirror in Lucy’s room and stared. This dress was the first one she had ever worn that actually nearly fitted her. Gone were the sagging bodices and the false hems. Gone were the short not-quite-fit-me sleeves and the hideously high or dangerously low necks.

But it was the colour that owed the most to the transformation. Deep midnight blue with a hint of silky grey on its edge, the fabric showed up the line of her body and the gold of her skin. In this she did not look insipid or washed out. In this her eyes were bright and her hair, carefully combed by a maid, was for the first time placed in some semblance of order. Even her ears looked different, for Lucy had found some topaz drops that had been her grandmother’s.

‘You look wonderful,’ she said as she hooked the earrings in place. ‘But you have more than one pierced hole?’

Emerald took in breath. ‘It is the way in Jamaica.’

‘And your gloves? Is it the way there to wear gloves all the time?’

Perfect blue eyes met her own.

‘No. That is my choice. I like to wear them.’

‘Then you should make it into a fashion statement.’ Rattling around in her cupboard, Lucinda came up with some fine white lace elbow-length gloves, looking enquiringly at her when she did not remove her old ones.

There was little else to do but to peel off the grey pair. Quickly. She turned her palms upwards as she pulled the new ones on and took a peek at Asher’s sister.

She had seen.

She knew it as soon as she looked.

‘I burnt myself once.’ It was all that she would admit. She was pleased to see the lace was lined in fine cream silk and that no trace of the reddened scar tissue could be seen. Flame left the sort of mark with its bone-deep ravages that made people turn their eyes away. And her hands had been on fire for all of a minute before she hit the sea.

‘I would prefer that you said nothing of my scars to anyone.’

‘I promise you I won’t.’ Lucy made much of folding away the discarded petticoats and chemises before asking quietly, ‘Do they hurt?’

‘No.’

Her mind ran backwards to a battle in the waters off Jamaica about a year after her first meeting with Asher Wellingham. Azziz had been behind her and Solly Connors out further under the yardarm. Morning fog had engulfed the Mariposa and the flash that came from nowhere was strangely magnified by the closeness. She remembered Solly’s head flying past her, his body curled around the footrope as if his fingers had a mind of their own, the last ingrained act of survival imprinted in their being. And shouts from below as a fireball whirled up the mast and hit them, the main-course sheets soggy from the night-time rain sheltering them from the sheer force of it. She had reached out for the shroud and shifted her weight. But her fingers did not grip, could not grip, and she had fallen, fallen, fallen into the ocean.

When she woke up all hell had claimed her.

Thornfield came into view after a good fifteen minutes in the carriage and Emerald was glad to see it. Asher had hardly spoken to her and certainly had not complimented her on the gown or her hair. Chagrin was a strange emotion, she decided, a feminine art form of guilt that she had always despised. But here in the folding darkness of Fleetness Point she found herself pouting at his negligence.

With a sigh she shifted position, bringing the fullness of the skirt out from beneath her. Lucy had told her to do so for the material was heavy silk and liable to crush. In the dusk its silver shimmer was more noticeable, like a living moonbeam come to rest in her dress. She absently shaded her fingers over the lightness and glanced at Asher Wellingham from the corner of her eye.

He sat as far away from her as he could manage, his hands tightly bound on his lap. Tonight he had barely looked at her.

‘I need to make a small detour to the harbour, for my draughtsman in London is in need of some plans.’

Irritation dropped away to sheer delight.

‘We will go aboard your ship?’ She tried to make her voice as indifferent as she could. But it was hard work.

‘You can wait in the carriage, if you would rather. I will take just a moment to find the drawings and then we’ll be on our way. Annabelle said six and it is not yet half past five, so there is still plenty of time.’

‘I would be interested to go aboard.’ She could not quite hide the excitement.

‘Very well. Though I must warn you it is cramped and difficult to negotiate.’

‘Difficult?’ She opened her fan and hid a smile. ‘I am sure I shall be able to manage, though I should not wish to be a nuisance…’

He did not answer as the carriage veered towards the harbour.

He helped her across the gangplank and the swell and ebb of the sea beneath her feet was like a caress.

Closing her eyes she savoured it, breathed it in.

‘Are you all right?’ There was urgency in his voice, and for the first time that night he touched her, his hand cupping her elbow as if to hold her up. She swayed into him, her body reacting before her mind warned her away.

‘All right?’ She was disorientated by sheer longing.

‘Seasickness,’ he clarified. ‘It can sometimes hit quickly.’

‘No, I am in good health.’ With the greatest of will she broke the link between them and looked around, glad to feel her heart settling down to a more normal pace. ‘It’s a beautiful ship.’ Her fingers reached out to the belayed halyard that led to the main lower topsail, so familiar she could have trimmed the sheet with her eyes closed.

‘That’s the rope that lets the sail drop. Without that we can’t furl it.’

She smiled at his explanation, given to her in such simple terms. ‘You have sailed a lot?’

‘I used to.’

‘But you don’t any more?’

‘I lost the taste for it,’ he returned shortly and bade her follow him down the companionway. ‘The chartroom is this way. Mind your step.’

It was the skirt, she thought later. In her haste she forgot to raise it properly and the toe of her shoe caught in the thick folds of silk and simply tipped her up. Asher caught her. Closer this time. The whisper of his breath touched her cheek and his hand fell across the swell of her bottom as he guided her to the master’s cabin where they were cocooned in the quiet lap of the ocean, the smell of oil lamps mixing with the stronger scent of teak.

She felt the hard wooden ribs of the hull behind her back and the warm planes of his body at her front, pressing against her, closer. In the half-light only the snowy white of his cravat was plain. Everything else was melded into shadow.

‘How do you do this?’ he asked softly. ‘How do you make me want you?’ He raised her hand and the wet warmth of his tongue explored the space above the hem of her glove. And left her breathless.

‘Asher.’ She could barely say his name as her fingers threaded through the length of his night-dark hair. She knew exactly what it was he spoke of, this want that defied all rationality and sense and delivered her to a place where nothing else mattered.

Just him. Her. Them.

With lips edged in anger his mouth took hers; when the hand that rested on her bottom firmed and guided her to the place between his legs, she groaned. It was the residue of yesterday’s suggested dalliance, she was to think later and the conjured imaginings that she had dealt with as a result all through the previous night. She could not find it in her to say no, to place her hand on his and call a halt. No, rather she leaned into his embrace, pressed against his solidity as his fingers slid around the edge of her breast.

Here in the dark of the hold of his ship with the gentle sound of water on wood she had no words to stop him. Oh! Love came easy without the stinging drudge of memory, and the girl she had been in Jamaica was the woman who responded here.

Tell me.

Show me.

Take me.

‘Emma, I want you.’

Emerald.

For the first time his use of a name not quite her own bothered her. His eyes were dark twin pools of intensity, the brown in them ringed with a harsher colour as he slipped the strap of her low-cut dress from her shoulder and bent his head. Flipping his tongue against her nipple once, he pulled back, watching the skin pucker and crinkle.

‘At the dinner with the Bishop of Kingseat you did not wear undergarments and when you bent over…’He stopped, giving her the impression of a man only just holding on to some semblance of control. ‘Suffice it to say that I have wanted to touch you here ever since then.’ His thumb lightly skimmed the wet coldness of her nipple. ‘And kiss you here.’ His lips were warm against the small patch of freckles lying in her cleavage. ‘I have wanted to know the taste of your sun-warmed skin and find the line where clothes have shielded you. His hand dipped lower. ‘Have they, Emma? Shielded you? Here?’

She could not speak. She could only feel as hot drifts of longing assailed her and the rhythm of his breathing changed. Her eyes fell upon his lips. He had beautiful lips. Full and defined. The stubble on his jaw was light as her palm brushed against it and when he tipped her lips to his, the slick shattering passion spun her wild and heat took over.

Away. From everything. She was all woman. Open, alive, free. And he was the sun and the ocean and the warm solid earth.

Again.

For ever. Cast as she was from a storm into the safe harbour of his body. And needing refuge.

The heavy footfall of boots were suddenly heard above them on the deck.

‘Hell.’ He pulled away and helped her straighten herself, as a man came down the stairs.

‘Duke, I thought I heard you…’ The words petered out and stopped, uncertainty replacing the earlier hurry. ‘I’m sorry.’ The newcomer’s voice held a strange quiver. Not sorry at all, she determined, but amused.

‘This is Peter Drummond, an old friend of mine who is also the ship’s captain. Peter, meet Lady Emma Seaton.’

‘It is my pleasure,’ he said softly, his glance falling to the crushed silk of her skirt. A definite question was in his eyes and the tone in his voice was puzzled.

‘You got my note, then?’

‘Note?’ Asher shook his head.

‘To meet here. I thought that was why…’

‘I came for the plans to take up to London. Is there a problem?’

‘There might be.’

Emerald could tell the man did not wish to say more in front of her, so excusing herself, she walked back up the steps and on to the moonlit deck. The quiet burr of voices from below was a backdrop to the frantic beat of her heart.

What had just happened? Again? If Peter Drummond had not come…?

She could not think of it. Did not want to think of it.

‘I am the pirate’s daughter,’ she whispered to herself.

‘The pirate’s daughter. The pirate’s daughter.’

She remembered the taunts of the children on the dockside at Kingston Town, when the Mariposa had come into port, and the slanted glances of their parents.

Her father was a man who used fear to distance himself from everyone. And he had never been honest. Just as she was not being honest. Here.

With Asher.

The realisation made her sick and when he rejoined her she was hard-pressed to smile. He seemed preoccupied and angry and threatening in a way he had not been ten minutes earlier. The evening sun made his hair darker, the tan of his face showing up his teeth and the velvet of his eyes.

He was beautiful.

She admitted this simple fact to herself. And smiled.

They had gone a good mile before he spoke and in a voice that sounded nothing like the one she had last heard him use.

‘Who are the men camped in the wood?’

‘I am not certain what you mean—’ she began, but he interrupted her.

‘The men you brought with you from Jamaica. Does that make my query any clearer?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Peter Drummond just now and Tony Formison a few days ago. His father owns the ship you came on and he remembers you disembarking with a black man and an Arab, four chests of books and your hair a damn lot longer than it appears to be now.’

‘I see.’ There was no point in denying it, so she regrouped her defences and tried to look contrite. ‘They are here to see that I am protected.’

‘Protected against whom?’ He had the answer even as he asked it. She could see the flint of disbelief on his face.

‘And if they caught us like now, alone? What would happen then?’

‘I suppose they would have to kill you.’

He laughed and then cursed. ‘What makes you so certain that they could?’

‘You strike me as a man who could easily protect himself, but if there were two of them, then, perhaps—’

He didn’t let her finish.

‘Who exactly are they?’

‘My servants,’ she ventured. ‘When I left Jamaica for England it would have been dangerous to travel alone. They offered to accompany me to London.’

‘And then they offered to follow you up here?’

‘Yes.’ Even to her ears the explanation sounded implausible.

‘And you did not think to ask me to house them at Falder, in the servants’ quarters?’

‘They like their independence. Once they saw I was safely at your house and that you were a gentleman—’

He interrupted her. ‘How do you contact them?’

‘By the signal of a candle at night.’ She was honest in her answer, for he looked as if another lie might well incite his anger.

‘Through the window of your room?’

‘Yes.’

‘And should I worry that they may frisk Falder with even more competence than you have?’

Because his summation of the situation was so close to what she had just been thinking she blushed, giving him his answer.

‘I see.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. Or what was left of his fingers, she amended.

‘It is not as you think,’ she began.

‘Then how is it, Emma? Explain to me exactly how it is.’

‘I cannot,’ she said simply and turned away. In the shimmering glass her reflection was barely visible, a thin reminder of the person she purported not to be.

‘You cannot because the truth is that you are a liar, Lady Emma Seaton. A beautiful liar, but a liar none the less.’

‘Yes.’ She faced him directly and left it at that. Tonight the untruths just would not come and his kisses still burned on her lips and hands and neck.

Lady Liar.

Pirate’s daughter.

There was some sort of symmetry of verse in the expressions and both left her with a completely groundless counter-argument.

She was a liar. And would be a thief if she could only find the damn map. Regret swamped her. All she wanted to feel again was the warmth of his lips against her own.

And know again the safety he offered.

She could not remember ever being truly safe. Not since her mother had left and not for a while before then too.

Blood.

And screaming.

The sounds of cold arguments on the warm winds of Jamaica. She tilted her head and tried to catch the glimpse of something elusive. But she couldn’t, and when the Gravesons’ house came into view she was pleased, for it released her from the close confines of the carriage.

Dinner was horrible.

Oh, granted, Annabelle Graveson had gone to an enormous amount of trouble and was the most gracious of hostesses, just as her son Rodney was the very epitome of excellent manners and careful conversation.

But Asher barely looked at Emerald and when he did she could see only a veneer of distrust in his eyes and a good amount of distance. She missed his banter. She missed his smile. She missed the breathless possibility that he might lean across and touch her and she would feel again the slow rise of passion and the quick burn of excitement.

What was she coming to? She was at dinner, for goodness’ sake, with a widow woman and her son. With an effort she tried to listen to what it was that Rodney was talking to her about.

Guns. She’d never liked them.

‘I can now hit a target at thirty feet. Sometimes more. We often hunt in the grounds of Falder.’

‘We.’

‘Carisbrook and I. He’s teaching me.’

‘The Duke of Carisbrook is teaching you?’

His eyes swivelled around at the mention of his name.

‘Is there a problem with that, Lady Emma?’ he asked in his frostiest voice. A voice that implied she thought he could barely hold a gun, let alone shoot it.

‘Certainly not.’

‘I am pleased to hear it,’ he returned and his smile was strained.

Annabelle Graveson seemed oblivious to everything as she leaned forward and placed her hand on Emerald’s. On the third finger of her left hand was a ring bearing a diamond the size of a large rock. The house. The jewellery. The clothes she wore. Annabelle Graveson had become a rich woman on the death of her husband.

‘I would like to make you a gift of some gowns, Emma. Would you accept that from me?’ Her voice quivered.

‘Gowns?’ She did not umderstand the reason for such an offer.

‘For your Season in London.’

‘Oh, no, Lady Annabelle.’ She went to say more, but could not.

‘Is it because I am a stranger to you? I am hoping we may change that.’ The fingers on her forearm tightened.

He looked as puzzled as she felt.

‘Lady Emma is staying with the Countess of Haversham, Annabelle, and is well looked after.’

‘Yes, of course,’ she replied, a semblance of calm once again in place. ‘Of course she is. When is your birthday, my dear?’

The question was so unexpected it took Emerald by surprise. ‘My birthday?’

Annabelle Graveson nodded.

‘It’s on the third of November.’

Tears filled Annabelle’s eyes and she dabbed at them with her handkerchief and waved the attention of her son away. ‘No, Rodney,’ she said. ‘I am quite all right. In fact I have never felt better.’ And with that cryptic remark she bent over the pudding she had before her and demolished the lot.

‘They are unusual people,’ Emerald chanced into the silence as they wended their way home a few hours later. When she got no reply, she amended her observation. ‘Nice and unusual, I meant.’

Still no reply. She was not daunted.

‘Annabelle seems rather a nervous woman,’ she continued.

‘Whereas you, on the other hand, are not.’

‘I wouldn’t say that.’

‘Name one thing that you afraid of.’

She was silent and unexpectedly he laughed. ‘Thank you, at least, for not lying to me.’

‘I did not lie about James.’

‘I know.’

She held her breath and looked out of the window. The clouds against the moon reminded her of her little brother’s curls as he had lain there asleep while she watched him.

Tonight he seemed close. Perhaps that was because it had been so long since she had spoken to anyone about him. And Asher Wellingham had been a good listener.

What else had he been? A would-be lover, a man whom she could trust and respect and like.

Like? Too tame for what now raced inside her and yet with the ghost of her father hanging so baldly between them nothing else could be possible.

Nothing.

She saw he kneaded his thigh with the fingers on his left hand and chanced the opening.

‘Do you have a cane, your Grace?’

‘A cane?’

‘For your leg. Perhaps if you took your weight off it…’

He stopped rubbing immediately.

‘My uncle had a cane once. A fine one, carved in ebony. He had hurt his knee at Waterloo and found the stick to be invaluable.’

God, how many more clues could she safely give him?

One more.

She took in a deep breath and spoke.

‘Walking sticks are actually quite a passion of mine. I collect them, you know.’

She did not let the pained look on his face dissuade her.

‘I have twenty from all parts of the world.’

‘Fascinating.’ The tone he used intimated that he found the subject anything but.

‘Indeed, your Grace, it is.’ She was grateful for the dark and for the movement of the coach. ‘If you had any at Falder, I would be pleased to look at them for you to give you some idea of their value.’ She felt the thick beat of duplicity in her throat when he did not answer and the look in his eyes was one of singular calculation.

She should not have gambled on his intellect. Already she could see the wheels of his brain turning and so she was not surprised by his next question.

‘Would it be a cane by chance that you are looking for at Falder?’

‘No.’ She met his question directly as the lights of his home came into view. As the carriage began to slow he lifted her gloved fingers into his.

‘What happened to your hands? Are they also a part of the mystery of Emma Seaton?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Do you not?’ he chided, the soft light in his eyes hard and flat. ‘If I looked into the records of the Haversham family, where exactly would you be placed in relation to Miriam?’

Taking a breath, she pulled her hand away and tried to rally. Lord, if he was to do that…

‘I am her niece, as I believe you already know.’

‘I see,’ he returned as the lights of Falder flooded the carriage. All around there now stood servants, waiting. Emerald was pleased when the first footman seemed to take her smile as a signal and moved forward to open the door.

An escape.

Gathering the skirts of her gown, she hurried from the coach. The ruse was up. She knew it. When Asher backtracked into the depths of her family history, he would have his suspicions confirmed that there was no cousin called Liam Kingston. And he would also know that Miriam’s only brother was Beauvedere Sandford Louden. It would take him but a moment to work out the rest.

She would have to forgo her searching and be gone from Falder at the first possible opportunity. The map offered riches, but discovery could mean prison. She had failed in her quest and now there was little else to do but return home.

A tight feeling of absolute uncertainty engulfed her.

Ruby and Miriam.

How on earth could she protect them?

Asher roamed the hills above the ocean, cursing the note in his pocket, the note he had found beneath his door when he had returned to his room in the hours after dawn. Emma Seaton was gone.

Back to London.

Back to Jamaica.

Back to God knew where.

The horse beneath him whickered and pranced and he stilled her with a quiet whisper, hating the way his mind kept replaying the feel of Emma’s skin beneath his hands.

He wanted her. That much was plain. He wanted her like he had never wanted any woman before. Even with Melanie he had not experienced this white-hot flash of passion, this desperate uneasiness. And the way she responded to him…

‘Stop it.’ He said the words out loud, surprised by the gut-tearing anger in them. Emma Seaton was a thief and a liar and a threat to his family. He had given her a chance to trust him, after all. More than a chance. If it had been anyone else, she would have been thrown out after the night he had seen her dressed in the lad’s clothes in front of his dead wife’s picture.

Why had he not, then?

He knew the answer even as he posed the question.

Because he admired her. She was so unlike any other woman who had ever made his acquaintance that she threw him somewhat and he doused down the urge to place his hands around her neck and strangle the truth out of her.

Why would she not trust him?

What had she to hide?