The Scoundrel and I - Katharine Ashe Page 0,44

it was always thus. Now she understood the reason for it. The effort it must cost him to make no mistakes would be enormous, and the anxiety he must feel—recognizing that he would not even know if he did make a mistake—must be terrible. She wanted to throw her arms around him and tell him that he was more than a war hero; he was simply a hero.

“I should like to convey you to call upon my sister,” he continued. “She has awaited your visit for several days now.”

“Sister.” Charlie snorted. “Likely story.”

“Charlie,” Elle snapped. “You are being ridiculous.”

“No, Gabrielle, I am not. I understand the nature of men much better than you do, and I—”

“I advise you, Mr. Brittle,” the captain said, “to reconsider your words before you continue speaking. Or, ideally, to simply cease speaking entirely.”

With each word, he was making her want more fervently to drag him into the press room and ravish him on the spot. Her heart was bursting.

“I will not cease speaking,” Charlie said. “You have been carrying on a secret flirtation with Miss Flood here in this shop, that any number of our neighbors have witnessed.”

“If the neighbors have witnessed it,” the captain commented in his wonderful, easy voice, “how do you suppose it’s secret?”

Charlie’s jaw flexed. “Twist my words. But I will not sit back and allow this to continue. You, sir—”

“Captain.” A feral warning smoldered in his gaze fixed firmly on Charlie’s face, and a shiver of heat went straight from Elle’s lips all the way to her belly, to fan out in the most decadently wicked manner between her thighs.

“Captain Libertine, I’ve no doubt,” Charlie spluttered. “Why, he probably has a woman waiting for him in every port, Gabrielle. Don’t you, Captain?”

“Not at all,” he said, and his gaze slid to her. Deviltry glimmered in it. “I’ve at least two or three per port.”

“Captain,” she said with a smile she could not restrain. “You mustn’t tease Charlie. He will think—”

A woman walked through the open shop door behind him.

Casting the captain a glare, Charlie went forward. “Good day, ma’am. How may I help you?”

“Good day,” she said softly. “I am searching for—Oh, here he is. How lucky.”

The captain’s features went slack. He turned his shoulder, looked at the newcomer, and Elle actually saw his chest compress in a sudden exhale.

“Captain,” the woman practically sighed, her face a pale oval of genteel feminine loveliness. “I am so happy to find you finally. You cannot imagine what a search I have had.”

“The little ones,” he said abruptly. “Are they all right?”

“Little ones?” Charlie said.

“The children are as well as can be expected,” she said. “They would be glad to see you.”

The captain inhaled thickly, his shoulders falling.

“Intended to call upon them—you all—this afternoon,” he said.

Charlie’s face was livid. Elle’s stomach churned. She grappled for the doorjamb behind her, found it, and gripped it until its edges bit into her palms. There was cotton in her ears, and a whooshing sound, like the rustling of the branches of trees beset by storm winds.

“You must wonder how I have come to find you here,” the woman said sweetly. She was all sweet, gently bred, blond softness. But perhaps a bit too slender; her cheeks were gaunt. And her dress and bonnet were of fine quality but thin from use, the ribbon frayed. “I called at your house first. Your manservant said that he had barely seen you in days. He sent me to another house, the home of Madame Étoile? Her parlor was so grand that I was afraid to sit down.” She offered a takingly modest smile. “The lady of the house was not in, but her assistant said that I might find you here.” She glanced about the office and seemed to notice Elle for the first time.

“Who is this, Masinter?” Charlie said. “Another poor female you’re hoodwinking? Perhaps a bit of fluff on the side?”

The woman’s eyes widened.

The captain stepped toward her. “M—”

“Madam, who are you to this man?” Charlie demanded.

“I—I am—” She gazed up at the captain mistily. “Captain Masinter has asked me to marry him. I am his betrothed.”

~o0o~

There was a quality of nightmare to the next minutes that Elle could not overcome, no matter how she tried to remind herself that she had fully anticipated this, that she had even experienced it before, in this very room, and therefore should not be surprised that her insides were twisting in knots of sticky hot pain, and the blood all