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

My Dearest Capn.: Forgive me I would be most poor pitiful company tonight the Morn will serve us Both better anon.

Yrs. C.

“How long ago did she return?” he asked, tracing his fingers over the raised crest.

“Not long, sir, a quarter of the hour. Would you like me to take a reply back up to her?”

“No,” he said with a sigh. “No reply.”

Poor, pitiful company, indeed, he thought. Well, if he chose not to share his afternoon with her, then she was equally entitled to keep hers to herself, too. But still he wished she’d come.

“Will the lady be joining you, sir?” asked the serving girl timidly. “Should I fetch out your supper now?”

“No, lass, on both counts. I find I’m no longer hungry, and neither is the lady.” He emptied the tankard and slowly headed back upstairs, taking a candlestick from the barkeep to light his way.

Searching for his key in his coat pocket, he noticed the strip of light shining from beneath his door and frowned. He knew he hadn’t kept a light burning when he’d left; besides, by now, any candle would have guttered itself out. Instinctively he drew the knife he always carried, and hung back to one side as he shoved the door open with his foot.

“Jeremiah?” called Caro warily.

“Caro?” Feeling foolish, he quickly tucked the knife away as he came into the room and set his candlestick on the mantel. “What in blazes are you doing here?”

“I was lonely,” she said. She was sitting on the bench near the window with her feet tucked up and her arms hugging her knees, her pale hair bright by the light of the single candle. Behind her the sky was full of stars, and the sliver of new moon was doubled in the bay. If he’d found the view beautiful earlier, now, with her in it, he found it downright magical.

She rested her chin on her knees, watching him. “Aren’t you going to ask again how I got into your room?”

He shook his head. “This is Naples, not my sister’s house. From the king on down, no one’s expected to behave with any sort of propriety. Most likely you have to bribe the servants here to be able to keep to your own room.”

She laughed. “Then I should have kept my money.”

“I like the surprise, anyway,” he said, shrugging off first his coat and next his waistcoat, tossing both onto his sea chest, followed by his neck cloth and his shoes and stockings. The room was warm, and like most sailors he felt more comfortable barefoot and with less clothing. After the weeks together in the tiny cabin, such casual familiarity before Caro seemed automatic. And yet because they now were in a bedchamber in an inn, an inn in Naples, he was aware of a new tension between them, a charged undercurrent swirling around them both. “And I was feeling a bit lonely, too.”

She smiled, thinking how he never would have made such an admission on that first night. She liked watching him move about the room, even his simplest gestures lithe and spare. He was so handsome, she thought with a little catch in her breathing, and she loved him so much, that what she was doing couldn’t possibly be wrong.

“I’m sorry about supper,” she said softly. “But I wanted to see you alone.”

She rose from the bench, and he stared. He couldn’t help it. She wore a dressing gown of deep blue silk, nearly the same color as the night sky behind her, that draped and slipped around her in rich, shimmering folds. Where the dressing gown fell open in front, he could see that she wore a night shift of palest blue, the linen so fine as to be almost transparent across the darker tips of her breasts and the shadowy triangle at the top of her thighs.

“You never wore that aboard the Raleigh,” he said, his voice low. He had never seen her in any color before save white or black. Hell, he’d never seen any woman dressed like this, tempting as sin itself, and he felt the temperature in the room rise another ten degrees.

“That’s because I bought it this afternoon.” The way he was watching her, his green eyes half-closed, made her shiver with anticipation. Before Jeremiah, she had found that raw, hungry look in men’s eyes disturbing, even frightening, but with him she felt only excitement. “The shops in Naples, it seems, respect the local sense of propriety.”

“Or lack of it. You couldn’t find anything like that in Providence.”

“Nor in Portsmouth, either.” She smiled shyly, daring to ask the question she knew was rhetorical. “You like it, then?”

“Oh, aye, I like it. I like it very much.” What the devil had that old woman said to her this afternoon? This time, there was absolutely no mistaking Caro’s intentions, and he found himself torn between wanting her with an intense desire that was almost painful, and the knowledge that to take her would be wrong, dreadfully, disastrously wrong for them both.

She lifted her arms to smooth her hair back from her forehead, her breasts thrusting upward through the sheer fabric, and he felt his whole body tighten in response. If he didn’t speak up soon, he wouldn’t be able to.

He forced himself to raise his gaze to her face. “Caro, sweet, listen to me. Tomorrow I’m leaving for Tripoli to try to find Davy and Frederick.”

“I know.” Her eyes were luminous, deep blue like the silk in the candlelight. “That is why—”

“No, lass, hear me out. The pasha there has declared war on America, and though that won’t stop me, it will make things damned difficult.”

In spite of his resolve, he reached out to her, tenderly cradling her jaw in the palm of his hand. “The odds aren’t smiling on us, Caro. The Barbary corsairs don’t follow the usual rules of war for prisoners, and the one that has Davy and your husband is the worst of the lot. He could have killed them both already, sweet.”

She shook her head vigorously, her unbound hair swinging across his wrist. “Lady Byfield says they’re alive. She’s had word through the envoys that all the prisoners on the list still live!”

“Pray she’s right, Caro.” He traced little circles on her cheek with his thumb, marveling as he always did at the softness of her skin. “Then pray for me, too.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because when I’m gone, sweetheart, I want you to remember the moonlight and the stars and the fishing boats with striped sails,” he said tenderly. “I don’t want you to regret a blessed thing.”

Her smile was unexpectedly bittersweet. “My whole life is too full of regret already. If I left you now, I would never forgive myself for what I had missed.”

“Be sure, Caro,” he warned, knowing that this time there would be no turning back for either of them. “Be very sure.”

She nodded, almost afraid to meet his gaze. Briefly her courage faltered. What if he said no? What if he dismissed her, or worse yet, laughed in her face? But she wanted more memories of Naples than moonlight and fishing boats. She needed this night with him to keep her warm through the lifetime of emptiness that remained before her at Blackstone House.

“You and I are always pretending we’re what we’re not, aren’t we, Jeremiah?” she said, hesitancy and daring mingled in her voice. “But tonight I would pretend one more time with you. I will be your Caro, yours alone. I will be innocent again, the girl I once was, untouched by any man except for you.”

His eyes narrowed as he listened, lingering over her lush, rounded body in the blue silk, a woman’s body, not that of an untried girl. Yet the game intrigued him, outlandish as it was; to pretend she was still a virgin was to make her husband and her marriage magically vanish. If this was what it would take to ease her guilt, than so be it. He wanted her too much to care any longer. Besides, the idea of being her first lover, even as a game, was enough to make his body quicken with growing interest.