The Scoundrel and I - Katharine Ashe Page 0,36
By God, she felt good, and smelled good, and he had to make this right for her.
“No one else would have gone to the extent that you have,” she said after a moment. “You can feel perfectly comfortable leaving it to me now.”
“That’s a tub of barnacles, and you know it. I won’t—what did you say?—feel perfectly comfortable abandoning you to this now, not comfortable at all.”
“You have no choice in the matter,” she said firmly.
“I damn well do. It’s half my fault and I’ll see this through, devil take it.”
“Captain,” she said, “I must ask you to respect my wishes—”
“While you disregard mine, is that it? Listen here, Miss Flood, a naval officer worth his salt don’t retreat from a battle—”
“Does not retreat from a battle.”
His chest filled with the most insane warmth. “Does not retreat from a battle,” he repeated. “He breaks out every gun on deck and pounds away at the enemy whether he’s got a clear shot or not.”
“Captain, while I appreciate the military metaphor—”
“Analogy.”
Her eyes snapped wide. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to grab her up and kiss her rosy cheeks and pink lips and make her sigh.
“While I appreciate the military analogy you have offered,” she said, setting her jaw like an adorable little mule, “with all due respect this situation is not a firefight, and—” She looked past him and then her head swiveled around. “Where are we? This is not Gracechurch Street. I do not recognize this neighborhood.”
He pulled the carriage to a halt along a row of houses on the street lined with flowering trees, and leaped off the box. A boy came and took the horses’ leads.
“Where are we?” she said as Tony came around to her side.
“My house.”
“No.” She gripped the sides of the seat. “Drive me home. Please. This instant.”
“Please and this instant? Undecided whether to request or demand, are you?” He offered his hand.
“Captain Masinter—”
“Anthony.” He smiled.
“You must take me home. Now.”
“I don’t know where your home is. You don’t trust me enough to tell me, though God knows I haven’t given you reason not to.”
A man and woman walking along the footpath stared at them. Tony bowed.
“Evening,” he said pleasantly, then to Elle: “You’re making a scene.”
“I am not making a scene, but if I were it would be entirely your fault.”
He extended his hand again. “Come inside and you can berate me while I find something for us to eat. I’m famished. You must be too.”
“Captain—”
“Oh, look, another of my neighbors out for a stroll. Think I’ll just invite—”
She climbed down and went up the steps and into his house with gratifying haste until the door closed and she rounded on him.
“What do you think you are doing, forcing me to enter your house? A bachelor’s house? At night, no less!”
“Nobody saw,” he said, “except the woman next door poking her nose through a crevice in her draperies. And the stable boy. And—”
Her hands flew upward and covered her face and her shoulders shook.
“How many servants do you have?” she mumbled through the cracks between her fingers. He had the damnedest sense that she wasn’t crying; rather, struggling not to laugh.
“Two. You’ve met Cob. He’ll be somewhere upstairs now, doing whatever it is he does now that he’s got a house instead of a ship to keep in order.”
Her fingers slid down to reveal her sweet eyes. “Mr. Cob served on the Victory with you?”
“Cabin steward and all-around mother hen. You had an ally in him tonight, by the by. He didn’t like the idea of breaking into my uncle’s house either.”
“He is a reasonable man, obviously.”
“My cook’s on furlough for the week. But I’m not entirely useless in the kitchen. Miss Flood,” he said with abrupt formality, and extended his arm. “Care to join me in the stateroom for dinner?”
Elle bit back the hilarity lapping at her—hilarity borne of equal parts horrible dread over her future and her need to not let this end—and walked past him to the stairs.
He was in fact far from useless in the kitchen. She offered help but he declined, bidding her sit at the table with a glass of wine and wait. As he prepared dinner with swift efficiency, she watched him and had the dangerous thought that she would like to watch him like this forever.
“How did you learn to cook?”
“Cook-room of a revictualling ship,” he said, arranging two plates and setting one before her. “Two years.” He offered a fork and her fingers brushed his