Sophia James - The Wild Wellingham Brothers - High Seas To High Society / One Unashamed Night / One Illicit Night / The Dissolute Duke

‘Cold blood? A mid-ocean encounter between two warring ships.’

‘You would excuse this English duke?’

She turned away and looked back towards Falder. From here the lights of the house showed bright against the hills behind it. ‘My father lived by the sword just as surely as he died by it and before I came here I thought that Asher Wellingham was of the same ilk. But now? I think he is as honourable as you are and I would not see him hurt.’ She swallowed as she felt Azziz’s large hand come to rest upon her shoulder.

‘You like him, don’t you, girl?’ His voice was soft. ‘How do you think he would react if he knew of your Sandford blood?’

‘Badly.’ Her response was as honest as the question asked.

‘And if he exposes you, there will be little that anyone could do to stem the damage. Trust him and you could well be as dead as your father and what will happen, then, to Miriam and Ruby? If you will not think of yourself, at least think of them.’

Emerald shivered. For the very first time in all of her life she had met a man who made her feel like a woman. A man who made her imagine things that she had not before even considered.

Naked beneath his jacket and walking into the barn, a part of her had wanted him to follow her in and take away her virginity. She was twenty-one and she had never bedded a man. It was time. It was beyond time. The throb of lust deep within her loins surprised her and she was pleased when Azziz left his warnings at that and turned towards the line of trees that ran across the eastern ridge and away from Falder.

In the moonlight the garrets and turrets of the house were light against the sky and, skirting the pebble-chip pathways beyond the gardens, she saw a silhouette in the bay window. Stopping, she retraced her steps and crept through the undergrowth directly in line with the uncurtained window.

Asher stood against the glass, looking out. Behind him, hovering in the alcove, was the painted image of his long-dead wife. Watching him. Tying him to a sadness that was all consuming and never ending. She could so often see that wounded look in his eyes, like a man who bled from a gash he could not find and had ceased to notice his own hurt.

Melanie Wellingham, the dead Duchess of Carisbrook.

Everything had to do with her and with his broken hand and his blind brother. And it was all intertwined with Falder, a thousand years of history bearing down hard upon his shoulders. She started forward and stopped. What could she say?

Kiss me. Love me. Let me stay here. Here. For ever. Where the names of your ancestors march through the centuries and the shivers of memory are kind.

Kinder than my own memories. Much kinder.

A ship in the midst of an angry sea and the promise of another storm chasing hard on the heels of the first one. The English ship with the promise of well-laden hulls and Asher Wellingham waiting, sword in hand, on his quarterdeck with two dozen men behind him. An easy target. Slow. Cumbersome. The lightning off the sea silhouetting everything.

She had felt his focus and his expertise, but had still been surprised as he had swung through a swathe of sailors to reach her father. It was the whine of a cannonball that threw him into her path, and into the radius of her blade, though he had laughed as her sword crossed his own. ‘You have chosen the wrong pathway, lad. Throw in with me and I will see that you have safe passage back to England—you are too young to be losing your life to the likes of this motley crew.’

Grasping her sword tighter, she had fended him off, though his proficiency was a revelation. He had been playing with her. The realisation had come with a great rush of amazement, given her own ability at swordplay, and she had been pleased to see the amusement harden as she had cut across his left sleeve and drawn blood. If she was going to die, she had wanted it to matter, though his sudden feint had her fighting arm pinioned against the mizzenmast.

‘Drop the sword and I will spare you. It’s not my way to slaughter innocents.’

His breath had mingled with her own and it was then that their eyes truly caught.

Tight and close.

‘Lord, you’re a girl.’ Amazement narrowed his eyes as he brought his hand across the quivering fullness of her lips. Even now through the gathering years of time Emerald could still feel that caress, still feel the way her body had simply melted into heat.

Unexpectedly sweet. Undeniably woman. In the middle of an ocean, in the middle of a battle, she had run her tongue across the saltiness of his thumb and shock had claimed them both.

She had seen it in the shards of his eyes, the paler ring of brown flaring golden. And she had felt it in the sudden rush of blood beating in her throat, though her father’s shout had broken the spell as he advanced upon them, murder in his eyes. In a quick protection she had rammed the hilt of her sword hard across Asher Wellingham’s temple and upended him into the sea. A chance at least to cheat death. Ten summers of sailing with Beau had at least taught her that.

‘Lord,’ she said aloud and banished such memory, running her hands across the knife tucked into her belt.

Right. Wrong.

Good. Bad.

Aboard the Mariposa she had been her father’s daughter. But here she was no longer sure of anything at all.

‘Asher.’ She whispered his name and held her fingers up against the warmth of sound.

A home. A family. Responsibilities. Accountability. Unlike her father, the Duke of Carisbrook took these things seriously and she admired him for it, the questionable morality they had lived by in Jamaica less certain here.

Stepping back into the shadows, she cursed her father and headed to the sanctuary of her room.

Asher paced up and down and remembered the sight of Emma Seaton coming unclothed towards him, the water slick upon her body and the sand marking her feet.

She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

His eyes flicked to the painting of his wife in the small alcove and for the first time he found it difficult to remember her face in life. The exact colour of her eyes, the sharp line beneath the bridge of her nose.

Instead the image of Emma Seaton walking from the water towards him kept replaying in his mind, the butterfly tattoo as surprising as the deep curling scar upon her right thigh. He had enough wounds on his own body to know the mark of a sword when he saw one.

Where had she got it? When had she got it? And why, despite taking everything else off, had she not removed her gloves? What was she hiding there?

He began to smile as he lifted a glass of water to his lips.

Water?

Today even his choice of beverage was different. Emma Seaton made him different. More alive. She made the very air of Falder ring with a vibrancy long missing.

And what might have happened had he followed her into the barn? He would have taken her hard and fast without a care for who was around or what the consequences might have been. She did that to him with her sun-browned skin and her turquoise eyes. Made him careless and reckless. Brought out the man he used to be. The man who had loved and risked and lost.

Lord. What the hell was happening to him? He had to stop it, for she was dangerous to everything he had made himself believe in.

Rules. Regularity. Carefulness. Control.

In chaos came loss. Of all the men in the world, he should be the best to know it.

He flicked open the casement of his timepiece.

Four o’clock. Outside the wind was mounting and the quarter-moon was high. He glanced down at the atlas in front of him and traced his fingers across the ragged outline of Jamaica. Emma’s home. The place where she had been formed. His eyes wandered further west into the shoals of the Yucatan Channel.