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

‘More practice, I think, Jack, if an ill man can beat you…’

‘Hardly ill. You look better than I’ve seen you look in a long time.’

Asher turned away as guilt sliced into him. There were days now when he barely remembered the past, days when what had happened was blurrier, less real. All that seemed true now was centred about Emma and her laughing turquoise eyes.

‘I’m going back to Falder tomorrow.’ He gestured to his arm, freed now from its bandage.

‘Because you think they could try again?’

‘If they do, I’ll be ready this time—no one could surprise me there.’ He slashed his blade through the air as if to underline intent.

‘I’ll see to my affairs and come up and join you before the end of the week.’

‘I am not certain as to the safety of it.’

‘You think it’s that dangerous?’

‘I do.’

‘It’s Emma Seaton, isn’t it? All this has happened since she came. And now she’s here under your wing? And her aunt, too, I’ve heard. Take care, Asher, for there are whispers.’ A question lay in the air between them.

‘Whispers?’

‘Some say she is a fortune-hunter who targeted the largest fortune in London with her well-timed faint.’

‘And what do you say, Jack?’

‘I’d say, if she makes you happy who gives a damn about anyone else; besides, I like her too. She’s different.’

After Jack had gone he stood in the gardens at the back of the house and lit a cheroot, pulling on it gratefully after the afternoon of exercise.

He had bedded Emma every night since shortly after the attack, and every night she had told him that she loved him.

My God. Loved him. If he had any guts he would have given her the words back. But he couldn’t. Not yet. Not until he knew exactly who she was.

He screwed the sapphire ring on his finger around and around and made himself think.

She loved him, but she would not marry him. Why? When they arrived back at Falder, he would get the truth from her for London and the smaller house here hemmed them into properness.

Apart from the night time!

Grinding out the burning end of the cheroot beneath his feet, he wished he could go to her now and smiled as he looked at his timepiece. Four o’clock in the afternoon. For years he had dreaded the dark and now he welcomed it. Just another change she had fashioned in him. Another way she had made him different.

They lay on the covers, the fire in the grate sending flickering shadows across the walls and tingeing Asher’s body with the soft glow of orange. His back was to her and her fingers traced the marks that stood up in knotted pearly welts.

She noticed how the skin on his forearm tightened at the contact and chanced a question.

‘I saw marks like these once in Jamaica?’

She felt his interest.

‘The man who sported them had seemingly lost his mind in a pirates’ colony on Turks Island off the Silver Bank Passage. The law never took his ramblings seriously and so nothing was done, but I heard a few years later that the ship of an English lord had levelled the place clean away, blown it from the face of this earth with every last person standing in it, as revenge for what he had suffered there.’

‘A fine tale,’ he replied evenly.

‘Your tale?’ she questioned just as smoothly.

‘I am a duke of the realm, Emma.’

‘You are a man who keeps a blade hidden in the folds of his sleeve. I saw it at the Bishop’s party and wondered why you should have a need of it here?’

‘I had thought it well concealed.’ His voice held the hint of respect. ‘And besides…’ His finger brushed over the puckered skin on her thigh. ‘There are times when the childhood that you profess to does not quite add up. The mark of a sword and an indigo tattoo, flame-scarred hands and an excellence in the Chinese art of acupuncture. Truth be known, your secrets are probably every bit as heady as my own.’

She laughed to ease the tension, feeling his observations permeate the space between them. A hollow sort of sound that had his eyebrows rising.

‘I said to you once before that I could protect you—’

Before he could finish she placed her finger across the smooth and full line of his lips.

‘And I said to you once that there is nothing that you need to protect me from.’

He rolled on top of her so that she felt the hardening ridge of his manhood against the juncture of her legs.

‘All my life I have been around women who have needed…protecting. My mother, Lucy, Melanie. But you…you are different…stronger…’

Their eyes were at a level and the truth was suddenly important.

‘I cannot marry you, Asher.’

‘Why?’

‘Because…because I cannot.’

‘And yet you can be my mistress?’

She nodded before she could stop herself.

‘Every night you tell me you love me. And sometimes when you sleep you speak in your dreams and you say it again.’

A single tear slipped from her eye and trailed its way down her cheek.

‘If you would trust me.’ He whispered it into the quiet of the night beneath the swathe of heavy curls under her right ear and she turned away, her fingers skimming across the dark red scar on his forearm. Still healing. A reminder of how fragile life really was and how easily it could be taken away.

If she lost him…

If she caused any of his family harm…

No, she would travel to Falder for the map and then she would be gone. It was the only honourable thing to do.

The birdsong had only just started in the trees beside Carisbrook House when they left London. Robins, sparrows and finches, vying each other for the one perfect note. A quiet refrain, Emerald thought, compared with the ear-splitting cries of the birds back home in Jamaica.

Miriam, Lucy, Taris, Asher and herself sat in the second coach. In the first coach, full of the Wellingham servants, Toro sat on top with the driver. Emerald had seen the outline of the weapon concealed beneath his jacket as she had come down the steps to the street; she guessed that Azziz on their coach would be as well armed. It pleased her that Asher was taking the threat of the McIlverrays seriously and was allowing little chance of attack.

Feeling the warmth of him next to her, she looked across as he pulled the lush and ample furs over her knees. Today he was preoccupied, the brown in his eyes sharper than it usually was and blood from an ill-taken shave seen on his jawline.

‘Are you warm enough?’ He addressed the query to them all and refrained from catching her eye. She frowned. When he had come to her room last night, he had been slick with heat and want and need, but today the shadow of uncertainty lay between them, unspoken questions and impossible answers. Easier indeed to lose oneself in the promise of flesh, the darkness adding another layer of distance.

Lord, the whispered memories of night were like a shout in this confined space. Looking down, she saw the knuckles of his hand between them whitened to the bone. He felt it too, then? How could he not? She coughed to clear her throat and hoped that he did not hear the racing beat of her heart.

It was colder out of London, and the drizzle from yesterday had turned into a hard beating rain, the windows already fogged up from their breaths.

Emerald tried to see outside across the shoulders of her aunt and wished that she had made certain she was by the window. She had three knives concealed on her person and would have strapped her sword through her belt if she could have. But how? The shape of it could hardly be explained and this way her silent weapons held an element of surprise.

‘You seem well recovered, Miriam.’ Lucy leaned forward to speak more on the topic and Emerald used the moment to question Asher.