The Care & Feeding of Pirates Read online

  Honoria waited for him at the bed as he came back, cradling the bottle against her chest. She ran her fingers around the bottle's stopper in a most distracting way. "What happened to you, Christopher?"

  Christopher tossed himself onto his back on the bed, tucking his hands behind his head and crossing his ankles. "Aren't you supposed to be oiling me?"

  "Tell me," she said quietly. "Please."

  Christopher shrugged. "I was set upon and robbed. Somewhere in the East." He hadn't even been certain where he'd been at the time. China? Siam? It had been hot and wet and he'd stunk with fever. "Whoever it was robbed me, and then they tried to butcher me, and finally left me for dead."

  Her eyes widened. "How did you survive?"

  "The kindness of strangers." An old farmer and his daughter, specifically. Neither Christopher nor they had been able to speak the other's language, but the farmer and his daughter had nursed him back to health and shared their meager food. Missionaries said that these races were heathen and damned, but the farmer and his daughter had been kinder to him than most Europeans he'd met.

  "I lived, Honoria," he said, banishing the memories of pain. "It was just another of my adventures."

  Honoria continued to watch him in distress. She'd taken her hair down and gathered it in a thick tail at the back of her neck. Wild curls trickled across her shoulders, fine ones touching her forehead.

  "You are so beautiful," Christopher said, his words slurring. The whiskey must be catching up to him.

  Honoria looked at the bottle as though remembering it in her hands. Quickly she unfastened the stopper and poured a few drops of oil onto her palm. The scent of jasmine and spice floated in the heated air.

  She set the bottle on the dressing table, hiked up her nightgown, and knelt beside Christopher on the bed. Christopher untucked one hand from behind his head and edged the gown higher on her knee until he could see the curved line of her folded leg and a glimpse of her thigh.

  Honoria rubbed her hands together before placing them on Christopher's chest. Her touch was cool, like spring water, as she drew her hands across his collar bone and smoothed the oil over his pectorals.

  "Why did you not want me to see what had happened to you?" she asked.

  Christopher dipped his thumb into the warm fold behind her knee. "Vanity, I suppose. I didn't want to disappoint you."

  No, what he really feared was that she'd take one look at him and flee in horror. Christopher knew he'd sprung back into her life like an out-of-control fire, and the fewer reasons he gave her for running away the better. Would she want a husband who had been halfway hacked apart then clumsily sewn together again?

  Honoria's fingers tangled in the wiry curls on his chest. She circled his flat nipples, pale against his tan, then drew her hand to the twisted mess of his side. "I'm not disappointed."

  Her soft words warmed his heart. Her hands slid across his torso, slippery with oil, as she explored him in hesitant, questing strokes.

  Christopher was already as hard as he could be, but she ignored his obvious erection in favor of tracing the ridges of his abdomen. Her sleeves gently brushed his arousal, curling fire in his veins.

  "You're so prim outside the bedroom, my wife," he said. "But inside . . ." He traced a circle on her thigh. "You are just right."

  Honoria gave him an oh-so-proper look. "What I do with my husband in private is no one's business." She swiped her palms up his arms, leaning forward to massage his knotted shoulders. "And I am not prim. Primness implies a want of feeling and rational thought--propriety for the sake of it. I'd rather think of myself as discreet."

  "Call it whatever you want. I still like it."

  Honoria drew her fingers over the scars on his side, gliding over the ridges. "You lived through this terrible ordeal. And yet two nights ago a few slivers had you cursing and roaring."

  He grinned. "You enjoyed it."

  "How can you think I enjoyed hurting you?" Her green eyes were wide, her hands moving in firm patterns on his skin, as though she sculpted him from the oil.

  Christopher rested his hand on the length of her thigh, fingers indenting the softness. "You wanted me to be dead."

  "I certainly did not."

  "But things were easier for you when I was."

  Her hands stilled. "They were not easier. That is not what I meant at all."

  He waited for her to go back to rubbing the oil on him, but she stopped, eyes glittering in indignation and worry.

  Christopher clasped her wrist. "I remember you telling me you'd agree to obey your husband and his demands on your body. So get on with it, wife."

  "Not if you are going to be rude."

  "Hmm, I don't remember that in the wedding ceremony. I promise to obey my husband, except when he's rude."

  "I'm pretty sure the men who put together the Prayer Book meant exactly that."

  "I doubt it. Why don't we find them and ask them?"

  She gave him a careful look. "They've been dead for hundreds of years, Christopher."

  "Then what do they know about it? Now, go on oiling me. Your husband wants soothing."

  "I can't if you don't let go of me."

  Christopher dragged her wrist to his lips and pressed a hard kiss to her fragrant skin.

  "Do it," he said softly. "Or I'll take what I want."

  Her glare, he observed as he released her, could sting worse than the harshest flogging. She snatched up the bottle again, jerked off the stopper, and poured a stream of oil straight onto his chest. The liquid landed with a sludge-like splash and oozed over his sides and belly.

  Honoria slammed the bottle back to the table. She slapped her hands to his flesh, scooping the oil over his skin in quick, painful jerks. The sound of palms hitting flesh rang across the room.

  Christopher seized her wrists. "You little vixen."

  "Don't move so much," she commanded. "You'll spill oil all over Alexandra's fine sheets."

  "If you don't stop that, Alexandra is going to think something else is going on in here."

  Honoria stilled, puzzled. "What?"

  How could she be so wicked and so hopelessly naïve at the same time? "She'll think I'm teaching you a lesson. One you need to learn."

  "Christopher, I have no idea what you're talking about."

  "I'm talking about taking my hand to your backside. It's starting to seem a mighty fine idea."

  Honoria's mouth dropped open. "Alexandra would never suppose you were doing that."

  "She might. Who knows what things she and Finley get up to?"

  Honoria's eyes flickered as she thought about this new concept. Her face was pale, sculpted marble in the darkness, then the white marble flushed a pretty and embarrassed pink.

  "Well," she said. "I certainly will not allow you to do that to me."

  He tightened his grip on her arms. "Careful, Honoria. The husband decides what will be allowed."

  She gave him a brow-arching stare. He liked that. Honoria had always been more resilient than other young women of her class. Instead of swooning or weeping in terror, Honoria said, Do your worst and be damned.

  She was like her brother all right. Ardmore was a ruthless bastard who would have shot Switton outright tonight without even speaking to him.

  Christopher had decided that drawing out the man's misery would be much more satisfying. From now on, every time Switton looked into the mirror, he'd see the scars on his face put there by Christopher with the poker, and remember who'd punished him and why. Christopher had to wonder who was the crueler man, himself or Ardmore.

  "Take off the nightgown," he said to Honoria.

  Her eyes were green fire. "Are all husbands this highhanded?"

  "I have no idea. Take it off."

  Her glare returned, but the hands that moved to the hem of her nightgown shook. She slid the garment off over her head, further dislodging her hair so that it tumbled down altogether.

  Christopher caught her hair in his hands, wrapping the warm strands around h
is fingers. She was bare beneath her tangled curls, her breasts peeking from between the ringlets.

  "Pretty lady," he said in a low voice. "I wager the fine gentlemen of Charleston ate their hearts out over you. How many asked you to marry them?"

  She rested her hands, slick with oil, on his thick biceps. "Fifteen."

  "Fifteen?" Christopher tried to banish the dart of jealousy, but his possessiveness reared its ugly head. "What, is that all?"

  "Only two were worth serious consideration," the proper Honoria said. "The others merely wanted connection with the Ardmore family and our money."

  Christopher looked her up and down, so delicious and naked and smelling fine. "I'm damn sure they wanted more than that. Who were the two worth considering?"

  "Gentlemen of good families whose wealth were enough that my brother need have no worries about them being after his," she said. "A match with either man would have been acceptable, in other circumstances."

  "Such as not being married to me?"

  Honoria looked surprised. "These proposals were made long before I married you. I turned them down because the gentlemen in question had too many defects in their characters."

  Christopher wanted to wrap his arms around himself and laugh until the tears came. "So you threw them over and to marry a pirate who was condemned to death?"

  "Well, yes, I suppose I did."

  "I'm glad you did." He slid his hand beneath her hair, finding her warmth. "They'd never have been good enough for you."

  "I suppose not."

  "But a cutthroat pirate was?"

  Honoria inclined her head, still the proper lady, despite kneeling next to him mother-naked. "It was not the same thing."

  "You're right. You're never the same after you've had a taste of pleasure. Once a man has made you wet and dance with ecstasy, you look differently at the men who haven't."

  Her frown deepened, Honoria still not understanding. "My decision not to marry had nothing to do with you. At the time I turned them down, I had no reason to believe I'd ever see you again. The fact that I was not yet engaged when you were brought to Charleston to be hanged is pure chance."

  "The hell it was."

  "You are arrogant."

  Christopher uncurled her hands and pressed them flat to his chest again. "You think it chance that I didn't have a wife when I landed in that cell? I tried to pretend that a highborn Charleston girl was not the woman for me. I tried and tried to make you not matter. But when you came to see me in that prison, I knew you did matter."

  "I never should have come," Honoria said softly. "But I couldn't stop myself. I shouldn't have been alone with you the first time you came to the house either. Paul should have kept me in my room instead of helping me sneak down to see you."

  "I'm glad he did." Christopher's blood heated at the memory of her tripping into the garden room, fresh and pretty, and oh-so-innocent. "You were the kind of young woman I disliked most, dressed like a fashion plate, looking superior to every creature around you. I kissed you to teach you a lesson. And then you stuck your sweet tongue into my mouth."

  An intense heat had flared through his body, obscuring all reason. Christopher hadn't felt gentle passion for the young lady in her ringlets and muslin, her French perfume and the tiny earrings that jingled when she moved. He'd felt carnal wanting like he'd never felt in his life. In two seconds, he'd had Honoria on her back on the marble tile floor, his arousal nearly bursting his breeches.

  She'd clung to him and kissed him all the way down. He'd cradled her body from the cold marble, and she'd wrapped her arms around him and let him put his hands on her and drive her wild.

  He'd kept kissing her to keep her from crying out, from alerting the household that he was ravishing the daughter of the family on the garden room floor. But she'd not cried out--she'd nibbled his earlobe, tiny pinpricks of pain, and whispered, "Please, Christopher," as she'd reached the first climax of her life.

  If Christopher had fallen from atop a mainmast, smack onto the hard surface of the sea, he could not have hurt himself more. He'd destroyed himself that day and hadn't even known it.

  He'd left the Ardmore house feeling young and smug, never realizing that sweet Honoria would haunt his dreams forever.

  "Mine," he said now with fierce intensity.

  He rolled onto his knees and jerked Honoria up to face him. Christopher crushed his wife against him, oil running like thick rain. He caught her hair in his hand and pulled her head back to crush a kiss to her lips.

  Mouth and tongues met, and wildness began.

  *** *** ***

  Diana Ardmore napped in her chamber at her father's house on Mount Street the next afternoon, exhausted from her late night, her worry, and from saying good-bye to Honoria that morning.

  The parting had given Diana a wrench. She'd asked Honoria to remain in London until the time came for them to rendezvous with James on Diana's father's island, but Christopher was adamant that his ship sail right away. Honoria had said calmly that she would accompany her husband.

  Christopher and his half-Jamaican sister looked a wild pair whom no one would dare cross. Diana wondered, and felt anxious about, how Honoria, used to the finest things in life, would fit in with Christopher on his small ship and with his sister and pirate crew.

  What James would do when he found out about Honoria, even Diana could not guess. James might go on a rampage and drag Honoria back home, or he might give a cool shrug and say that Honoria had made her choice and could expect no help from him.

  Diana's worried speculation ran down as the June sun warmed the room. She tried to stay awake and keep fretting, but her limbs loosened as her body moved toward slumber. At last her eyes drifted closed, and she dreamed of her father's island, the cool air and savage ocean, and its sea-drenched caves where a green-eyed pirate hunter dragged her into his arms for a kiss.

  A callused hand smoothed her hair from her face. The warm touch threaded its way through Diana's dream, and she smiled sleepily, inhaling the familiar scent of ocean and spicy musk.

  Her dreams of her husband could be so real. Even now, she felt his warmth at her side, his strong hand move across her belly to the curve of her breast.

  Diana jumped awake with a gasp. James lay beside her on the bed, his black hair unruly, his green eyes as assessing as they'd been the faraway day she'd first met him--when he'd abducted her.

  "James!" She flung her arms around his neck, the joy of seeing him always intense.

  James cradled her in strong arms then pulled her into a deep kiss that stole her breath. He took his time exploring her mouth, and Diana savored every moment of it.

  When she could speak again, Diana asked worriedly, "What are you doing here? In London? In broad daylight?"

  James Ardmore was a wanted man in England, mostly for his habit of boarding British ships and freeing press-ganged Americans. If someone from the Admiralty spied James strolling about London, they'd arrest him on the spot. Diana doubted that even Grayson or Diana's father, with all their connections in the Admiralty, could save him.

  "I concluded my business early," James said, as though he were an ordinary husband coming home after an ordinary day. "Gather the children and Honoria, and we'll sail tonight for Haven." It was just like James to change the plans on an instant, without a word to anyone. He smoothed his hand across Diana's belly, his eyes full of promise. "But we can delay a minute or two."

  Diana kissed him again, losing herself for a few glorious moments in his warmth and his strength. "I missed you."

  "I missed you too, wildcat. There was no one spitting fire at me. Or throwing food."

  "I do not throw food at you all the time, James," Diana said, trying to sound dignified.

  "No. But I wouldn't mind if we could find some strawberries and a little bit of cream."

  Her blood warmed. "I could speak to Cook."

  "Later." James rested his back against the headboard and pulled her into his lap. "If you get up and go downstairs, you'
ll straighten your hair and button your dress. I like you a little disheveled."

  He demonstrated by easing his hand inside her bodice to rest it on the curve of her breast. Diana closed her eyes, basking in the warmth of him. She hated when they had to be apart.

  She started to ease into the pleasure of his caress, but her conscience pricked her. James deserved to know and know at once, no matter how selfishly Diana wanted this moment to go on.

  "James," she said. "About Honoria."

  "Mmm?" James's lips brushed her hair. "What's my sister railing about now?"

  Diana sat up. She brushed back her tumbledown hair, put her hands in her husband's, and drew a deep breath.

  "I'm not quite certain how to tell you this . . ."

  *****

  Chapter Fourteen

  Far down the Thames a ship called the Starcross rounded a headland and entered the Channel. The day was fair, the wind steady. The muted green of England slid along on the starboard side while men on the yardarms unfurled sails that caught the wind and snapped taut.

  Honoria sat on a bench against the stern gunwale, breathing the fresh fragrance of open sea. They'd left the stink of port behind them--no more fouled and muddy river, no more fish strewn on wharfs, no more towns packed with people living shoulder to shoulder. Ocean and wind assailed her, and Honoria drank it in.

  The stiff breeze caught Honoria's tail of hair and flipped it every which way. She'd decided to leave it down in a braid, because the wind pulled out any pins she pushed into it. The ship started to heave in earnest now, but her heart soared with it. Voyages always reminded her of happy times sailing with James when Paul had been alive.

  This voyage, however, was taking her to a new life. As a point of fact, Honoria had no idea where they were going. Christopher had never definitely answered whether their destination would be Charleston. England and America were at war, an added complication. Ports were blockaded, and frigates prowled the seas. Blockades had never stopped James, who viewed them as a challenge, and Honoria suspected that Christopher would behave in the same fashion.