A Most Unladylike Adventure. Elizabeth Beacon

lovers. If she were what he thought, she’d still have a heart and soul, however broken and damaged, and she wanted to be more than a reluctant itch to be scratched then added to a list of women he’d taken, then all but forgotten. He was more than that as well, for all he looked as if he didn’t care to be.

      There was a depth of sadness under all that to hell-with-you manner, what suddenly seemed almost a wasteland of loss behind his cynical self-mockery. If letting him take her to their mutual satisfaction meant no more than a quick tumble in the hay, then she couldn’t do it even to evade a legion of Charltons. No, a mocking internal voice said, because you want too much from this conundrum of a man for that, don’t you, Louisa?

      The question taunted her as his large hands cupped her shamefully aroused breasts and threatened to incinerate other wants with the sheer sensual need for more. Her eager nipples pebbled under the wicked stimulation of his suddenly very sensitive fingers and she felt as if she might burst into spontaneous flames. Temptation tore into her at the very thought of learning more, of letting him take her and render her unmarriageable between one moment and the next, but she fought it. Those who loved her might hope she wavered because of proper, belated, maidenly shrinking at the irrevocable step between virgin and woman, but that was nothing to do with it. It was because he was too embittered to wake up next to her in the morning and make the loss of her maidenhead feel right to either of them that she couldn’t take that step and walk him over a precipice.

      It would solve so much, but then he’d know Eloise La Rochelle was as big a lie as the brilliant and icy Miss Alstone was to the ton. Perhaps she was the biggest fool in London to pass on seduction by such a master of the amorous arts, but she met Captain Darke’s clearing gaze and knew her instincts were right. He could be all her tomorrows and her sensual fate, or just a regretted possibility, but she wanted more than a brief but blazing seduction that would probably haunt her for a lifetime. Did she hope for protracted and lingering seductions to come, perhaps? Not marriage—to her that was as impossible as fairy dust—but she couldn’t kill whatever held her back by melting into his kisses and solving one problem with an even greater one.

      ‘I see how you hook in your prey now, Miss La Rochelle,’ he said with a shake of need in his deep voice that spoilt the steeliness of his would-be taunt.

      ‘I don’t hook them, as you so elegantly put it—they catch themselves, Captain, then I take my pick,’ she lied.

      ‘If you think to net me, then you’ve rarely been more wrong,’ he grated out in a fine, frustrated fury.

      ‘I’m a woman, Mr Darke, and therefore very rarely wrong at all,’ she taunted him with a sidelong look at his still-heaving chest and the flush of hard colour burning on his high cheekbones. She wriggled her hips and boldly abraded his impressive manhood with her lithe body to prove it.

      ‘In this instance you’re so glaringly mistaken I’m surprised you can’t find the good sense to admit it,’ he informed her stiffly and snapped the spell their bodies were slower to relinquish than their minds by pushing her roughly away. Turning his back on the wanton sight of her, draped against the hard edge of the kitchen table, he groaned in unmistakable self-disgust.

      Louisa stayed where she was, mainly because her legs were still shaking so much from want and shock that she doubted they’d hold her up if she tried to move. ‘Yet you’ll remember me, Captain Darke. Even if I was about to let you put me outside like a stray cat, you’d still take the fire we’ve just lit between us back to bed with you and burn mercilessly for me all night long, deny it as you might,’ she taunted dangerously, recklessly prodding at his temper for some reason she couldn’t even put into words for her own satisfaction.

      Maybe part of her still wanted to goad him into seducing her until she forgot anything else. She wondered uneasily at her own folly and tried to look as if his revulsion at the very idea of ever touching her again couldn’t possibly hurt her.

      ‘I might well, but why draw back from a promising new keeper when you seem to be without one while my youthful employer is at sea, Eloise?’

      ‘To make you more eager, of course,’ she explained, as if it was perfectly obvious to any masculine idiot who hadn’t pickled his intellect in brandy.

      ‘Just how eager do you expect your lovers to be? Is seeing me so burnt up by the lure of paradise between your finely displayed legs that I’d have promised you everything I have, short of a soul I long ago sold to the devil, not desperate enough for you?’

      ‘Obviously not,’ she parried, doing her best not to blush at the thought of what they would probably be doing right now if she hadn’t drawn back.

      She imagined they’d somehow be striving for a fulfilment her body ached for with a merciless, hard knot of frustration at the centre of her that felt as if it might never relax on being denied what was natural and right between lovers. ‘Lovers’—that was the key. It was what they didn’t have—not one sliver of love flowed between them, so none of it would be right, however hot and needy they were for each other. Although she would never marry, she wouldn’t let herself fully love a man outside it unless she really did love him. That seemed about as unlikely as Captain Darke falling at her feet and swearing undying, unswerving devotion to a woman he despised, for all he claimed to want her so hotly.

      ‘What else do you expect of a man, then, if that’s not enough?’ he asked.

      ‘Affection,’ she told him rather forlornly, knowing she’d probably never gain it from this guarded, isolated man. ‘And a little respect.’

      ‘Very hard qualities for a female in your profession to find, I would have thought,’ he mocked her almost angrily, as if no woman had a right to demand so much of a man she was thinking of taking to her bed, always supposing they managed to get that far.

      ‘Hard ones to seek anywhere, Captain Darke, let alone on the streets,’ she said, with what she knew would look like too much knowledge in her dark-blue eyes as she met his hard gaze.

      ‘Aye, I’ll grant you that much bravery, or should that be impudence rather?’ he said reluctantly and she didn’t know whether to feel smug or guilty.

      She reminded herself he was so drunk she could probably have pushed him over with one hand when he first staggered across the open door of that bedchamber and made her jump nigh out of her skin. If she’d pushed him away hard enough at any time during this surreal encounter, he would very likely have fallen in a heap and gone back to sleep as sweetly as Kit’s watchman, and nothing they’d done in the last half-hour had caused a stutter in Coste’s impressive snoring. The world ticked on and she and Captain Darke ticked with it and suddenly it felt as if their bittersweet interlude had been little more than a wicked daydream. She put a hand out as if to grasp it, but a picture of him ardent and wholeheartedly wanting her with every sense evaporated under her touch. Such fantasies weren’t for the likes of them; she knew too much and he’d learnt too much for that sweet pipe dream to ever come true.

      ‘I’d curtsy to acknowledge your extraordinary graciousness,’ she told him in the hard, cynical voice she thought Eloise would use to protect herself from her enemies, ‘but somehow I’ve forgotten to be suitably servile these last few years.’

      ‘Aye, it’s easy to grow accustomed to luxury and money. Harder than I hope you’ll ever know to manage without them when they’ve become such a part of your life you can’t imagine losing everything,’ he said and she wasn’t fool enough to think he was worrying about her future.

      ‘I started out with nothing more than the clothes I stood up in, Captain, but you fell a lot further, I think?’

      ‘You may think what you wish, but don’t expect me to confirm or deny your fantasies,’ he told her abruptly, the story of his sorry downfall obviously forbidden ground.

      ‘I can pick out the nob in a crowd any day of the week, so don’t try to pretend you’re not one, Captain.’

      ‘Then be content with being right and leave it at that, my dear.’

      ‘Again, I’m not dear