A Regency Rebel's Seduction: A Most Unladylike Adventure / The Rake of Hollowhurst Castle. Elizabeth Beacon

very stupid of me, I suppose.’

      ‘Undoubtedly it was,’ he agreed gruffly.

      ‘You could probably go back there safely yourself,’ she encouraged him and felt his suspicion on the heavy air as clearly as if she could actually see his frown.

      ‘While you do what in the meantime?’

      ‘I have plenty of plans for my future. It’s you I don’t know what to do with.’

      ‘I think we just demonstrated that you know exactly what to do with me,’ he said, sounding as silkily lethal as he must when examining any of his crew brought in front of him to explain their sins.

      ‘And you dislike being thought fit for only one purpose as much as I do?’

      ‘When did I imply any such thing, woman?’

      ‘With every word you drawl at me as if you’re right and everything I say proves how bird-witted I am.’

      ‘Only when you’re talking rubbish,’ he muttered impatiently, as if driven to the edge of reason by addle-pated arguments, when she ought to accept his words as proven fact, then do as she was bid.

      ‘It’s hardly rubbish to say we’re both unsuited to marriage and even more so to marrying one another.’

      ‘Yes, it is. We’ll do very well in our marriage bed, something we just proved to each other beyond all reasonable doubt.’

      ‘So my doubts are unreasonable and that’s all there is to marriage?’ she asked with a theatrical wave at the coffee stacks she was quite glad he couldn’t see. The very thought of them made her blush now they were discussing seduction and his peculiar idea that it automatically led to marriage.

      ‘Ah, now I can see why you were truly so unsuited to the tonnish ideals of marriage à la mode. You, Miss Alstone, destined as you are not to be a miss for very much longer, are a romantic.’

      Stung by the accusation, when she’d always thought herself such a cynic, Louisa was about to loudly dispute such a slur when she made the mistake of wondering if he could be right.

Chapter Eight

      ‘I have never felt the slightest need to sigh and yearn over a man,’ Louisa lied defensively, ‘and least of all over you, Captain Darke.’

      ‘Good, because I’m not worth wasting a moment’s peace on,’ he said curtly and a fierce desire to argue that statement shook her, but she fought it with an effort she must think about later.

      ‘I’m not going to marry you,’ she said as definitely as she could.

      ‘You’re such an odd mix of cynicism and vulnerability, my dear. I’ll probably spend a lifetime trying to understand you,’ he said, as if he hadn’t heard.

      ‘It will be a lifetime separate from mine,’ she insisted for the sake of it more than out of any passionate certainty. She was so busy feeling hollow inside at the idea that the sounds she was waiting for from outside hardly seemed important any more.

      ‘Why the devil is a ship docking hard by, Louisa?’ he barked at her and she felt his frustration as he gripped her as if he’d like to shake her.

      ‘It’s come for me, of course—what’s the point of having a brother with his own shipping empire if I can’t call on it when I need to?’ she replied coolly.

      ‘You don’t trust me to keep you safe, then?’

      ‘It’s not a matter of trust,’ she argued uncomfortably.

      ‘Now there you’re so very wrong, Miss Alstone.’ His voice was so low she did her best not to hear it as he turned to the master of the coastal brig she’d summoned here once the tide was right. ‘What the devil do you want?’ he barked when a shadowy figure unlocked the riverside door and stood outlined against the night.

      ‘My sister,’ Christopher Alstone replied grimly, opening his dark lantern and making Louisa blink. ‘So what in Hades are you doing here?’ he demanded.

      ‘Kit!’ Louisa exclaimed on a huge sigh of relief and confusion as she ran into his arms. ‘I missed you so much,’ she told him fervently.

      ‘It’s mutual, you confounded nuisance of a female,’ he informed her abruptly, even as she felt at least half of his attention slide to Hugh Darke and his muscles stiffen like a fighting dog scenting a challenge. ‘What have you done to my sister?’ he ground out, as if he knew exactly what they’d been doing, but surely even her powerful brother couldn’t see through walls?

      ‘Nothing,’ she said impatiently. ‘And what are you doing here?’ she asked, standing away from him to examine his deeply shadowed face.

      ‘I asked first,’ he said silkily, his eyes not moving from Hugh and she wondered if these two warriors were about to try to kill each other over her.

      ‘And you’re clearly as annoying as ever,’ she sparked back, determined not to be sidelined and silent while they decided her future between them.

      ‘Clearly,’ he agreed with that flinty lack of temper she knew from experience was his most effective weapon in an argument. ‘An answer, if you please?’ he demanded starkly and Hugh Darke moved Louisa aside to confront her brother.

      ‘I was trying to persuade her to marry me, until you interrupted us,’ he said, as arrogantly challenging as if he’d just thrown down a knightly gauntlet and fully expected to have it thrown back in his face.

      ‘Oh, good,’ Kit said mildly and Louisa felt her rage soar almost out of control at the exact moment his seemed to deflate.

      ‘Good? Do you really want this idiot to marry me?’ she raged.

      ‘Why not? Lots of other idiots have asked you to do so and they only mildly annoyed you. At least this one seems to have found a way of holding your full attention while he puts the question, even if I don’t like anything else about him being shut in here alone with my little sister.’

      Drat him, but why did her brother have to be so uncannily perceptive? Because he was Kit Stone, she supposed: precociously successful, driven and even more stubborn than she was.

      ‘Speaking as the idiot in question, I don’t care about your ruffled pride and your reputation for icy detachment, Miss Alstone. I just want you to agree to marry me, so your brother doesn’t have to beat me to a bloody pulp and we can all go home, before eating our dinner and getting on with our interrupted lives with no more of your infernal melodramas,’ Hugh told her impatiently.

      ‘Which is exactly why we should not marry, since your dinner clearly matters to you a lot more than I do,’ she said, rounding on him now that Kit seemed more an amused bystander than her avenging guardian.

      If she let herself think about the volumes that detachment spoke about her brother’s belief in Captain Darke’s bone-deep sense of honour, she might start respecting the devilish rogue herself and she knew precisely where that would get her—marched up the aisle before she came back to her right senses again.

      ‘On the contrary, I’m exactly the right husband to deal with your wrongheaded ideas and headstrong ways. Any other man would be driven demented by your starts inside a sennight.’

      ‘He could be right,’ Kit observed traitorously.

      ‘And I’ll be flying to the moon any moment now,’ she scorned, but the idea of arguing with Hugh Darke for the rest of their born days suddenly seemed a little bit too promising.

      ‘I’ll take you there, Eloise,’ he whispered in her ear and she wondered how he’d managed to creep so close behind her that she was all but in his arms once more, and in front of her brother as well.

      She shuddered with what she told herself was revulsion,