Bronwyn Scott - One Night With The Major

Maybe she was being a bit indecent tonight. Pavia shook her filmy veils loose for fullness and laughed softly to herself at the irony. Tonight those English ladies would be right. She meant to lose that virginity Wenderly seemed to prize so much. In exchange, she would gain her freedom and that was worth any price. It was not a decision she’d taken lightly, but rather a decision she’d been forced to after pleading and begging and appealing to her father’s sense of reason failed to produce results. He was set on the match. Not even her mother could sway him. So now Pavia was taking matters into her own hands.

If life had taught her one thing so far, it was that there were no happy ever afters being handed out by handsome princes. If a girl wanted a happy ever after she had to make it for herself, seize it if she had to, invent it out of whole cloth if she must. If she didn’t, someone else, namely her father, would. Then, it would be his happy ending at her expense. That was untenable. Under no circumstance was her happy ever after the purvey of another, especially not a man. Not her father and certainly not the man he’d selected for her to marry. That’s what had happened to her mother—she had been married off to an Englishman and forced to live in an alien culture that had no sympathy for her. Pavia vowed silently once more that such an ending would not be for her.

She fastened the last veil across her face, leaving only her eyes visible as she marked the location of her target. He was the best choice she’d had in the three nights of her journey to London. In the other places her entourage had stopped, the men had been too rough. She might be acting rashly, but she was not without her own cautions. She didn’t want to end up battered, or with a disease, or, worst of all, with a child. At least she could control the latter. She had vinegar sponges waiting back at her own rooms in another inn. The quality of her candidate, however, was not nearly as controllable. Pavia sighed. When she’d designed this plan, she hadn’t realised how complicated it would be. She’d simply wanted to relieve herself of a ridiculously over-valued English inconvenience.

She considered her candidate one last time as the previous dancer finished. Would he be a decent lover? Would it hurt? The girls at school said it did, but they only had hearsay to go on. The women in her uncle’s palace, where sexuality was not nearly as taboo as it was here in England, had told other, more pleasurable stories. Whom did she believe? Perhaps it depended on the lover. This man in the corner looked as if he possessed some honour, but not too much, not enough to make him ask questions, or to make him stay, just enough to keep him from taking extraordinary advantage of her. The way he stared at that ale suggested he was someone who had his own demons to worry about. It also suggested that perhaps the hardest part would be persuading him to take what she was offering.

Pavia bit her lip, considering the option of failure for the first time. In all her imaginings she’d not thought of what would happen if she missed her mark. There was no time to think about that now. She’d fail for certain if she stood here all night. The girl behind her gave her a little nudge. It was her turn. She slipped a pair of tiny cymbals on to her thumbs and forefingers and opened the door. She gave a nod to the fiddler, who moved into a slow tune. It wasn’t Indian, to be sure. Irish, perhaps? She didn’t care, as long as it had a sinuous, haunting melody made for the undulation of hips and the sway of bodies.

She began to dance, slowly, evocatively, drawing all eyes towards her with the ringing, rhythmic click of her cymbals. She worked through the crowd deliberately, gracing a man here, another man there, with the tease of her attentions. She couldn’t be obvious about her target, couldn’t race over to him or it would be too transparent. But it must be him. Only the best would do for Pavia Honeysett.

The last made her smile behind her veils. She’d been raised in wealthy privilege, the only child of a tea merchant. She’d been taught to expect the best. Tonight would be no different. A man reached out for her as she passed. She moved beyond his grip, scolding him by turning her attentions towards another. But she understood the warning. She’d teased them with her glances and swaying hips; they would expect her to deliver on those promises. She’d reached the divide between the milieu of the long trestle tables and the soldier’s table at the wall. He seemed intent on not looking at her, the only man in the room who wasn’t looking. She would change that.

Pavia dropped a veil from the gold-coin belt about her waist, revealing a full glimpse of smooth leg. That got his attention. He was a man, not marble, after all, despite what his chiselled features suggested. She caught his eye and held it—demanded it, actually, with her hips. With a step forward closing the meagre distance between them, she smiled with her eyes, letting him guess at the lush mouth hidden from view beneath the silk draping.

Her candidate was a handsome man up close, golden haired and well kept. A firm mouth went with that strong, straight jaw, topped with sharp blue eyes that matched the strength of him. This was better than she’d hoped for. He’d be moving on, unlikely to linger in London. If she was lucky, he was already on the move to fulfil orders. The world was a big place. They would never see each other again after tonight. But first, she had to entice him and she had only six veils remaining. She couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.

* * *

Major Cam Lithgow was not a man who made mistakes, but he was making them in droves tonight. The first mistake was coming down to the taproom, wanting to drown his sorrows in ale, only to discover there was live entertainment. He should have left then. Not leaving was his second mistake. His third was making eye contact with the exotic dancer. His fourth was not looking away. How could he? She was dressed in carefully draped veils that simultaneously revealed and concealed the exquisite body beneath, all held carefully in place by a gold girdle that spanned a slim waist and rested on the delicious curves of her hips, jingling provocatively as those hips swayed their promises.

To his dismay, his body was becoming ‘interested’ in those promises, his mind interested in the dark eyes that held his. He’d not bartered on this when he’d come downstairs to the taproom.

The dancer loosened another veil from her belt with sensual skill, drawing the fabric across her body before letting it pool in his lap in blatant invitation. Behind her there were hoots and catcalls from the deserted crowd. There were growls of disappointment, too. Cam tensed. Jealous, disappointed drunk men were dangerous. Did she understand that? She’d played with them and then turned her back quite literally to choose the one man in the room who was least apt to accept her invitation. They weren’t likely to be very forgiving of the slight. Hell, he could see it now. If he didn’t claim her and take her upstairs, the taproom would brawl over her, competing for the right to be her second choice whether she wanted any of them or not. And he’d end up defending her whether he wanted to or not because a man of honour could do no less.

The dancer leaned backwards an impressive degree, letting her hips undulate in a sinuous, vertical line, like the hypnotic writhe of a cobra, skeins of silky black hair cascading from beneath the veil that hid her face except for the dark, wide, almond-shaped eyes. The man in him was aroused against his better judgement. She righted herself, her hips returning to a horizontal sway, and she reached for him. More precisely, she reached for his sword, pulling it from its sheathe in a lightning snatch before he could react. He’d let his guard down—he’d thought she was reaching for him or for the scarf in his lap. Now he was unarmed in a potentially dangerous environment.