A Less Than Perfect Lady. Elizabeth Beacon

with a whole skin. The rest when we get back to my ship.’

      ‘Ten guineas now?’ she bargained, and casually clouted an over-eager customer with a pewter plate.

      Kit handed her his purse, certain he would shortly regret it. Of course he had wriggled out of far tighter spots, but not encumbered by a half-conscious goddess.

      ‘Here’s for you, lads,’ the wench shouted and threw a couple of gold pieces and all the silver high in the air so that it scattered round the room.

      As fighting broke out, she grabbed the swaying Venus by her other arm and towed her away from the wife-seller who was now striving vainly against the surging crowd. Shouldering open the one stout door in the place, Kit gasped in air that might have seemed rank if he hadn’t just spent hours in a stinking tavern.

      The cooler air felled his goddess like a hammer blow. Cursing bitterly, and not sure if he was more furious with her or himself, he swung her over his shoulder and started to run. He stood little chance of avoiding pursuit, so he had no choice but to run for his ship when the door behind them opened so abruptly Kit was surprised the bang didn’t shake the wretched place apart.

      ‘Run to the Ellen May,’ he gasped to the tavern wench.

      The so-called husband was straw in the wind, but Kit’s rival in the bidding was a hardy rogue. Burdened with a drugged woman, Kit knew he would need a wonder to avoid a fearsome beating, especially when his tavern wench melted into the night. Nobody was more shocked than Kit when a rich contralto voice bellowed out, ‘Ahoy there, Ellen May!’ at the top of a very healthy pair of lungs. ‘Help us, oh, God help us!’ she managed in an ever-weakening voice.

      ‘Well done, Venus,’ he gasped

      At the very least she had won them a few seconds’ grace as his pursuers tried to remember where and what the Ellen May might be. Kit took advantage of everyone to spurt towards the sturdy sloop, but he knew he wouldn’t do it when taverns along the dock emptied and their patrons joined in for the thrill of the chase. He had betrayed his lost crew and now would very likely be torn to shreds while his dockside Venus fell victim to the mob.

      Then came the relentless beat of a drum and regular treads on the cobbles, a disciplined body of men approaching at a sort of running march and the warning cry, ‘The Press! The stinking Press!’ spread along the waterfront.

      The dock emptied even faster than it had filled and Kit was left panting and spent, helpless to defend himself or the beauty in his arms. Years at sea loomed ahead of him, and heaven knew what fate his Venus would meet at the press gangs’ brutal hands. It wasn’t the hard work and indignity, he decided, but the loss of all he had fought so hard to make from nothing that galled him. His blue-blooded relatives would be proved right and Christopher Alstone would come to nothing, just like his father and grandfather before him.

      ‘Damned high-nosed Alstones,’ he rasped as he sank to his knees on the cobbles, and his fair burden stirred across his broad shoulders and moaned in what sounded like despair, ‘whole pack of them can rot in hell!’

      ‘Already there,’ he thought he heard her murmur.

      Then Venus had somehow found the strength to stand and was swaying uncertainly on her own two feet when the tavern wench appeared out of the shadows and tugged at her hand again. For a moment they sketched a pantomime of urgency and reluctance as the half-naked beauty clung to his shoulder, and then she let go and was gone just as if she had never been. Winded and shocked as any silly beau out on the strut in the wrong place at the wrong time, Kit glared into the darkness and saw nothing but inky shadows and silent menace. She had left him to the mercies of the press-gang!

      The memory stung anew as he came back to the present. She couldn’t have known his ship’s master had made as much noise and commotion as he could and fooled the crowd into fleeing from him and his crew. Somehow it still stung that he had rescued his Venus from an appalling fate and then she had blithely left him to his fate without a backward look. Then there was the fact that it had taken him so long to forget the wretched female the first time round, and now he would have to set himself to doing it all over again.

      When he had steeled himself to do his duty as host and welcome his latest cousin back to the fold, he had been in danger of letting Venus fell him twice as he was transported back to that filthy dock, on his knees and almost in despair. Instead of the hoyden he had expected Mrs Miranda Braxton to be, given her fabled elopement and disgrace, he had looked down and seen his tavern goddess instead. He had even managed to convince himself he must be mistaken, until the sight of the so-called tavern wench standing bold as brass beside her, daring him to say he knew her, scotched that hope for ever.

      The open and friendly smile that had curved Mrs Miranda Braxton’s lush mouth upward had almost charmed him all over again, until fury roared through him like a tornado. Then an image of the composed and lovely widow superimposed itself over that of his wild young Venus, with her heavy eyes and sensual smile, and desire had torn through him in a merciless fever. How he got through the next few minutes without either strangling the wretched female, or throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her off to the lofty luxury of his bedchamber, he couldn’t say even now.

      Staring grimly into the glowing fire, Kit unconsciously tightened his grip on the brandy glass until the fine glass snapped and blood and spirit mingled when he opened his hand at last. So much for the fine control he had once prided himself on. Now all he had to do was to overcome this need to seize the witch and carry her off to some isolated lair where no one else would find them and he might be free of her spell at long last.

      Even as he considered forgetting her, his lips curled into a sensual smile as he fantasised about Mrs Miranda Braxton, lying sated and sleepy-eyed in his bed. If he couldn’t force oblivion on his raging desire for her, he would see her so, he vowed to himself. Then he rang the bell to confess at least some of his folly and have his wound fussed over with due ceremony before the blood ruined the carpet. Oh, yes, he decided while he was waiting for the inevitable fuss to die down, before she left Wychwood the incomparable Miranda would be emphatically his and then he could set about learning to forget her once and for all.

      Only denial had made her memory so potent that every woman he bedded was measured against an impossible standard of beauty. Well, this time his revenge would be sweet and very complete and Miranda Alstone would be his mistress before she left Wychwood. He had seen something of his own driven desire in her blue gaze before she veiled it and left the room with such offended dignity that he could not but admire her anew. The lovely Miranda did not want to want him, but she couldn’t quite help herself and eventually that desire would seal her fate.

      That kiss should be a warning to him to let her go, for it had rocked his certainties and demolished all his defences. He should leave her strictly alone, but the yearning to feel her writhe in ecstasy beneath him all night long was powerful, and how the devil could he let her go back to her isolated Welsh valley once he had experienced such a luxury of the senses?

      He decided Kit Stone was as big an idiot now as he had been that night he first cursed her loss so harshly. Then he had been one huge ache of frustrated passion, but this time he wouldn’t burn alone. Their first kiss had told him it wouldn’t take much persuasion to tip Mrs Miranda Braxton from cool sceptic into warm and very willing lover and he longed for that abandoned little sensualist as if he had only lost her yesterday, instead of five years ago.

      

      There was a bright fire burning in the grate of Miranda’s old room and Leah was waiting with the promised tea. For one dangerous moment Miranda felt as if she was truly home. Then, remembering how effectively his new lordship dealt with such unworthy souls as herself, she shivered and wondered for a wistful, wasted moment what it might be like inside the magic circle she knew by instinct he would cast about those he loved.

      ‘I thought you were in a great hurry to put off your travelling attire,’ her maid chided, before falling significantly silent.

      Surely Leah didn’t think she had lingered below out of some insane desire to cultivate the new earl’s interest?

      ‘I am,’ she insisted