Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch. Miranda Jarrett

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СКАЧАТЬ “First you disappear for hours on end when surely you must know I need you, and then, when you finally decide to grace me with your presence once again, you try to break the door down like some sort of rampaging barbarian!”

      “You needed me?” repeated Jeremiah, mystified, fixing on the only part of her tirade that might make sense. “Needed me how?”

      “Oh, stop hanging about there in the hall and come inside!” She opened the door wider and stepped back so he could pass, one hand on the door and the other awkwardly behind her back. “Though I suppose I’ve said that all wrong, too, haven’t I? Well, come along then, correct me!”

      “It’s a companionway, not a hall,” he said as he reached out and shut the door. Though it was day above, in the windowless cabin she’d been forced to light the candle in the lantern again to see enough to dress, and on her coverlet he saw her brush and a mirror, and the little ivory combs she used to pin up her hair. “But that’s the least of what doesn’t make sense, Caro. What the blazes did you expect of me?”

      “It’s what you expect of me!” she cried indignantly. She shoved her hair back from her face. “You toss your coat over your shoulders and fumble a knot into your neckcloth and there you are, decent enough to breakfast with the king himself, while I’m trapped here, struggling like some poor cat in a sack, desperate for a little decent consideration of my plight!”

      “Enough, Caro, enough!” He’d never seen her fuss and fume like this, and he didn’t care if he never saw it again. “How can I defend myself when you won’t even tell me what I haven’t done?”

      “This!” She turned abruptly to face the bulkhead. In the candlelight he saw how her hand bunched together the black bombazine of her gown, holding it tight at the waist. Above and below her hand the gown was open, to her hips, the lacings hanging loose from the eyelets on one side, and to his stunned surprise, that was all: no shift, no petticoats, no stays or corset, only creamy, flawless skin that seemed almost luminescent in the candlelight.

      “Now you understand, don’t you, Jeremiah?” she asked over her shoulder, oblivious to his speechless response. “There is absolutely no way I could do up those lacings myself. I know, because I’ve tried and tried until I nearly wept with my own clumsiness.”

      He reminded himself he was a man of the world, a man of experience, but though he knew he should look away he couldn’t, his gaze riveted in admiring fascination to the angled glimpses of her skin. How the devil was he going to act as her lady’s maid, politely ignoring this sort of display? He’d always tried to be a gentleman where ladies were concerned, but this was more than any gentleman should have to withstand. And here he’d been worrying about seeing her in her nightgown!

      “Caro, sweetheart,” he began, his mouth dry. “Caro, I’m not sure I can do this.”

      “Certainly you can,” she said promptly. “Sailors are supposed to be very good with knots and lines and ropes and things. How different can this be?”

      “Oh, it’s different, Caro. Trust me.” He cleared his throat, running his hand back through his hair to keep it from touching her. “Now I’m no expert on such kickshaws and furbelows, sweetheart, but shouldn’t there be more—more petticoats or some such?”

      “Of course there should be, but please, please don’t tell your sister!” She turned gracefully halfway around, beseeching him over her shoulder. “I wore the petticoats yesterday because she’d ordered both these mourning gowns for me for this voyage, and I did want to please her, but they’re hot and heavy and stiff and I hate how they tangled between my legs when I walked.”

      Lord help him, she wasn’t making this any easier at all. Tangled between her legs, for all love!

      “Several years ago, when the fashions were so very bare, one wasn’t supposed to wear a stitch beneath one’s gowns, and I—well, I didn’t. I still don’t, if I don’t have to.” She smiled, the quick conspirator’s grin he’d come to recognize meant trouble for him. “You’re a man, Jeremiah, so you’ll never know how dreadful it is to have whalebone stays and hoops jabbing into your ribs whenever you laugh.”

      “I can imagine.” Oh, he imagined, all right, imagined everything there was to imagine.

      “Then you’ll understand that I’d rather Desire didn’t know. I don’t want her to think me ungrateful.” She turned away from him again, releasing the fabric she’d bunched in her hand. “Now help me, please, Jeremiah, so we can go up on deck together. I’m sick to death of this wretched little cabin and I can’t wait to see the sun again.”

      If she could be so cavalier, than so could he. He took a deep breath and forced himself to study how the back of the gown was constructed. There was one wider tie that seemed to pull the high waist together, and then a narrower cording that must weave the two halves of the back together. No challenge at all, really.

      “You must remember I’m only pretending to be a married man,” he said gruffly. “I suppose you’ve grown so accustomed to your husband doing this for you that you think nothing of it.”

      “Frederick? Helping me dress?” She laughed, not scornfully but with genuine amusement, yet enough to rankle Jeremiah.

      “I suppose you have a whole flock of maidservants to help you instead in that big house of yours,” he said as he untangled a knot she’d worked into one of the laces. “Things are different for a countess, aren’t they? Where I’m from, husbands and wives help each other, and not just because of a lack of servants, either.”

      “That’s not the reason,” she said quickly. “It’s that Frederick does not choose to be so familiar, not that we’ve so many servants.”

      ‘’ ‘Familiar’? Is that what you English call it?” Jeremiah laughed but without much enthusiasm. “I thought that was the whole reason for bothering to marry in the first place.”

      “Don’t make judgments about my marriage, Jeremiah.” With her face turned away he couldn’t see her expression, yet he could feel her body tense, her amusement replaced by edginess. “I don’t doubt that what we have differs from your notions of a husband and wife, but in our way we’re happier than most married people I’ve seen. Frederick understands me.”

      “Will he understand you asking some other man to do up your clothes like this? Will he understand you pretending to be my wife, sharing this cabin with me?”

      “He would understand the circumstances,” she said firmly, though she’d hesitated a moment too long for her conscience to be as clear as she wanted Jeremiah to believe. “In any event, it’s not as if the gown laced in the front. What can my back alone signify?”

      “Oh, Caro,” he whispered roughly, “you shouldn’t tempt me to prove you wrong.”

      With just his fingertips he traced the long, sweeping curve of her spine, grazing so lightly along her skin that he felt her shiver. Smiling to himself, he ran his hand upward, spreading his fingers so he felt not only the shallow valley, but the soft rise of her back on either side, and this time she gasped. But she didn’t move away, and she didn’t tell him to stop.

      And he didn’t.

      Caro never would have asked him if she’d thought it would lead to this. But how could she have known? No one had ever touched her like this before. She felt both his hands now as he kneaded the tension from her shoulders, his thumbs working deep into her muscles, СКАЧАТЬ