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‘Ah, now I can see why you were truly so unsuited to the tonnish ideals of marriage à la mode. You, Miss Alstone, destined as you are not to be a miss for very much longer, are a romantic.’
Stung by the accusation, when she’d always thought herself such a cynic, Louisa was about to loudly dispute such a slur when she made the mistake of wondering if he could be right.
Chapter Eight (#ulink_e4b2d175-65ee-518a-8f1e-c1b2b8eb50e1)
‘I have never felt the slightest need to sigh and yearn over a man,’ Louisa lied defensively, ‘and least of all over you, Captain Darke.’
‘Good, because I’m not worth wasting a moment’s peace on,’ he said curtly and a fierce desire to argue that statement shook her, but she fought it with an effort she must think about later.
‘I’m not going to marry you,’ she said as definitely as she could.
‘You’re such an odd mix of cynicism and vulnerability, my dear. I’ll probably spend a lifetime trying to understand you,’ he said, as if he hadn’t heard.
‘It will be a lifetime separate from mine,’ she insisted for the sake of it more than out of any passionate certainty. She was so busy feeling hollow inside at the idea that the sounds she was waiting for from outside hardly seemed important any more.
‘Why the devil is a ship docking hard by, Louisa?’ he barked at her and she felt his frustration as he gripped her as if he’d like to shake her.
‘It’s come for me, of course—what’s the point of having a brother with his own shipping empire if I can’t call on it when I need to?’ she replied coolly.
‘You don’t trust me to keep you safe, then?’
‘It’s not a matter of trust,’ she argued uncomfortably.
‘Now there you’re so very wrong, Miss Alstone.’ His voice was so low she did her best not to hear it as he turned to the master of the coastal brig she’d summoned here once the tide was right. ‘What the devil do you want?’ he barked when a shadowy figure unlocked the riverside door and stood outlined against the night.
‘My sister,’ Christopher Alstone replied grimly, opening his dark lantern and making Louisa blink. ‘So what in Hades are you doing here?’ he demanded.
‘Kit!’ Louisa exclaimed on a huge sigh of relief and confusion as she ran into his arms. ‘I missed you so much,’ she told him fervently.
‘It’s mutual, you confounded nuisance of a female,’ he informed her abruptly, even as she felt at least half of his attention slide to Hugh Darke and his muscles stiffen like a fighting dog scenting a challenge. ‘What have you done to my sister?’ he ground out, as if he knew exactly what they’d been doing, but surely even her powerful brother couldn’t see through walls?
‘Nothing,’ she said impatiently. ‘And what are you doing here?’ she asked, standing away from him to examine his deeply shadowed face.
‘I asked first,’ he said silkily, his eyes not moving from Hugh and she wondered if these two warriors were about to try to kill each other over her.
‘And you’re clearly as annoying as ever,’ she sparked back, determined not to be sidelined and silent while they decided her future between them.
‘Clearly,’ he agreed with that flinty lack of temper she knew from experience was his most effective weapon in an argument. ‘An answer, if you please?’ he demanded starkly and Hugh Darke moved Louisa aside to confront her brother.
‘I was trying to persuade her to marry me, until you interrupted us,’ he said, as arrogantly challenging as if he’d just thrown down a knightly gauntlet and fully expected to have it thrown back in his face.
‘Oh, good,’ Kit said mildly and Louisa felt her rage soar almost out of control at the exact moment his seemed to deflate.
‘Good? Do you really want this idiot to marry me?’ she raged.
‘Why not? Lots of other idiots have asked you to do so and they only mildly annoyed you. At least this one seems to have found a way of holding your full attention while he puts the question, even if I don’t like anything else about him being shut in here alone with my little sister.’
Drat him, but why did her brother have to be so uncannily perceptive? Because he was Kit Stone, she supposed: precociously successful, driven and even more stubborn than she was.
‘Speaking as the idiot in question, I don’t care about your ruffled pride and your reputation for icy detachment, Miss Alstone. I just want you to agree to marry me, so your brother doesn’t have to beat me to a bloody pulp and we can all go home, before eating our dinner and getting on with our interrupted lives with no more of your infernal melodramas,’ Hugh told her impatiently.
‘Which is exactly why we should not marry, since your dinner clearly matters to you a lot more than I do,’ she said, rounding on him now that Kit seemed more an amused bystander than her avenging guardian.
If she let herself think about the volumes that detachment spoke about her brother’s belief in Captain Darke’s bone-deep sense of honour, she might start respecting the devilish rogue herself and she knew precisely where that would get her—marched up the aisle before she came back to her right senses again.
‘On the contrary, I’m exactly the right husband to deal with your wrongheaded ideas and headstrong ways. Any other man would be driven demented by your starts inside a sennight.’
‘He could be right,’ Kit observed traitorously.
‘And I’ll be flying to the moon any moment now,’ she scorned, but the idea of arguing with Hugh Darke for the rest of their born days suddenly seemed a little bit too promising.
‘I’ll take you there, Eloise,’ he whispered in her ear and she wondered how he’d managed to creep so close behind her that she was all but in his arms once more, and in front of her brother as well.
She shuddered with what she told herself was revulsion, but he’d reminded her how it felt to soar in his arms, to strive for the very moon and stars, and she sighed in besotted anticipation of doing it all again.
‘Not until you’ve put a wedding ring on her finger, you won’t,’ Kit warned as he eyed them very suspiciously once more. ‘And what’s all this Eloise business?’
‘You really don’t want to know,’ Hugh said with a return to his austerely apart, piratical-captain look as he withdrew his warmth and strength from her.
Louisa shivered at no longer feeling him next to her—how could she know if her scent and sound and touch were as deeply imprinted on his senses as his were on hers? He was so detached all of a sudden it was as if she’d dreamt that feverish interlude in his arms when neither of them seemed able to hold anything back from the other. She was almost glad when Kit decided this was neither the time nor the place for such an important discussion and put aside that comment to pick over later and eyed her pale face with brotherly concern.
‘I probably don’t either, but let’s get Louisa out of here. We can deal with Eloise and the details of your wedding in the morning.’
‘No, I can’t go home with you, I need to get away,’ Louisa argued, an illogical sense that she needed to escape nagging at her even now she had two powerful protectors instead of just the one.
‘Why?’ her brother asked.
‘Because Uncle William has been scheming to marry me off to a worm of a man, who probably offered to share my dowry with him, and both of them will be hot on my trail by now.’
‘He’ll answer to me for it, then, but why would that mean we can’t go home?’
‘The insect abducted me and kept me in his bedchamber for a night and a day and made sure my uncle and aunt saw me there, so they could exclaim loudly about my wickedness and their scandalised feelings. They forbade me their roof, unless I instantly married the repulsive toad, which I refused to do needless to say.’
‘That need not worry you, Miss Alstone. He won’t pollute the world for very much longer,’ Hugh Darke gritted between his strong white teeth and, given the fierce look in his eyes, she believed him.
‘How would your killing him help me? You would have to flee the country and I would still be the centre of a fine scandal, all the more so if I was stupid enough to have married you in the meantime. It would seem as if I ran off with you after growing bored with him.’
‘She’s right, Hugh,’ Kit intervened as Hugh Darke rounded on her with his best master-of-all-I-survey glare. ‘You need to leave the worm to me,’ Kit added, offering that caveat to soothe the devil of temper so very evident in Hugh’s furious gaze and stirring hers instead.
‘No, he’ll only dirty your hands,’ Hugh gritted furiously, quite lost to reason, even if her brother only had more masculine folly to offer. ‘What’s his name, this insect-worm?’ he asked fiercely.
‘Do you think I’m fool enough to tell you that, when you will only add to the scandal already surrounding me by calling him out?’
His hands closed about her arms, as if he wanted to shake some sense into her and she condemned her senses for leaping to attention, even at his angry touch through her second-hand jacket and gown. For a betraying moment she swayed towards him, as if her body and her senses were begging for a kiss despite her growing fury.
‘He must not get away with it, Louisa, I can’t let him,’ he gritted as if her lost reputation mattered to him more than it ever could to her. As surely as she knew Charlton would walk away if she was teetering on the edge of a cliff, she knew this man would plunge off it himself, if that was what it took to save her.
‘Don’t you think me capable of making him sorry he was even born, then, Hugo?’ Kit said almost gently.
‘I do, but it should be my job. No, make that my pleasure.’
‘It can’t be and you know why,’ Kit said obscurely and Louisa’s ears pricked up at the veiled curb in that short sentence. Then she felt the reminder bite into the man still holding her arms as if he didn’t know quite what to do with her.
Hugh jerked away from her, seeming horrified that he’d ever laid hands on her in the first place and watched those very hands with revulsion, like a very masculine Lady Macbeth, after she’d driven herself mad with murder and ambition and couldn’t wash the imaginary blood off them.
‘I know, so how can I wed your sister? I forgot what I am in the heat of the moment,’ he whispered and it was as if he and Kit were talking about something deeply important she wasn’t going to be told.
‘Whilst I suspect I don’t want to know about the heat of that particular moment, we both know there’s nothing to stop you marrying. The rub will come if you fail to make my sister happy afterwards and I’m forced to kill you,’ Kit told him implacably, and any illusion she’d suffered that he was resigned to what had taken place between herself and Hugh tonight melted away like mist in the July sun.
‘That would go quite badly with me, either way,’ she muttered mutinously.
‘Not as badly as you knowing the truth about me would,’ Hugh said, looking glum about her predicted unhappiness and softening her heart, if he did but know it.
‘I told you my tale,’ she challenged him, and if Kit chose to think it was the one about her abduction and lost reputation, then so be it.
‘And you think mine is that simple—just a few words and a rueful smile at how easy that was to get out of the way and go on?’
‘As mine was?’ she demanded, furious with him for brushing aside her fears and peculiarities as if they didn’t matter.
‘I didn’t mean …’ he blundered on.
‘Never mind what you meant, never mind your secrets. I haven’t got all night to spare for arguing with you. I’m tired and hungry and downright weary of rescuing ungrateful, lying, mistrustful idiots from their enemies. If neither of you intends to take me somewhere safe and warm and feed me, pray give me a hand up on to that brig of yours, brother mine, and I’ll get the master to drop me off at the nearest port downriver where I can buy myself a bedchamber for the night and a decent meal.’
‘Not in a hundred years, sister dear, and he’s long gone. I thought half of London must know he was casting off and none too happy to be going in the middle of the night, given the amount of noise he made about it.’
‘I didn’t hear him,’ she said stiffly and actually caught herself out in a flounce as she spun round to glare at her would-be bridegroom and dare him to comment.
‘Neither did I,’ he admitted meekly.
‘Lovebirds,’ Kit added sarcastically and Louisa wondered if she ought to kick one of them, even if it was just because they were men and couldn’t help being infuriating any more than they could voluntarily stop breathing.
‘What are we going to do, then?’ she demanded.
‘Go home,’ Kit told her implacably and, since there was nowhere she’d rather be, she allowed him to bustle her out of the warehouse and along narrow streets and alleys he knew even better than she did in the dark, then out on to wider and marginally more respectable streets where he hailed a cab, then sat back to watch the night-time streets roll past as if they fascinated him.
‘Where have you been, then?’ Louisa finally asked her brother, remembering she ought to be furious with him for disappearing as he had.
‘Here and there,’ he told her shortly.
Simmering with temper because it was better than letting her tiredness and uncertainty take over, she put her mind to Hugh Darke’s many mysteries as the little house in Chelsea and a degree of physical comfort beckoned at last.
‘Just as well you didn’t get back last night,’ she muttered as they arrived and her brother helped her down while Hugh paid the jarvey.
‘I’m not going to ask why not until I’ve had my dinner and a soothing shot of brandy,’ he said as he ushered her up the steps and rapped sharply on the door.
‘Hah! That’s a lot less likely than you think,’ she observed with a sidelong glance at Hugh that made Kit frown as Coste cautiously opened the door.
‘Let us in, you idiot,’ Kit ordered sharply.
‘Didn’t know it was you, now, did I?’ Coste mumbled as he stood back to do so.
‘You would have done if you actually made use of the Judas hole I had put in for once,’ his employer informed him as he used Coste’s candle to light those in the sconces round the cosy dining parlour they had got nowhere near last night. ‘Is there anything edible in the house?’ he demanded and put a taper to the fire laid ready in the hearth for good measure.
‘Aye, sir. Miss Louisa gave me money for food and a couple of cleaning women. We’ve a good pork pie and a ham and all sorts of fancy bits of this and that. There’s treacle tart, apple pie and gingerbread, too, but not so much of the treacle tart as there might be,’ Coste said with a reminiscent grin.
‘And you two somehow managed until now without my housekeeper and a kitchenmaid?’ Kit asked mildly enough.
‘Well, I was going to tell you about that, Captain …’ Coste trailed off, casting a look at Hugh that begged him to take over explaining their misconduct.
‘We two bachelors proved too rowdy to satisfy Mrs Calhoun’s strict standards of behaviour and she took herself and her daughter off before there was any gossip about them being here with two rowdy bachelors like us,’ he obligingly admitted, nodding at Coste to make himself scarce while he still could.
‘I warrant she did,’ Kit replied grimly. ‘Don’t forget to bring that pie and a pint of porter along with tea for Miss Louisa,’ he urged his retreating manservant and watched Hugh with cold eyes. ‘I trust my sister was not caught up in that rowdiness,’ he added with such mild iciness that even Louisa shivered in her seat by the fire.
Hugh shifted in his chair as Louisa carefully stared into the flames and Kit sighed rather heavily. ‘Later,’ he said portentously and Louisa felt as if the two men were once more having a silent but fierce conversation she didn’t understand, and that they had no intention of explaining any of it to her.
Hugh Darke wasn’t in the least bit overshadowed by her powerful brother. Despite her captain’s apparently subservient role in Kit and Ben’s empire, he acted as Kit’s equal and her suspicions about his true place in the world crept back and left her wondering why he took orders from even so compelling, and successful, a pair as her brother and Ben Shaw. She furtively surveyed her brother and her lover in turn, noting the similarities in their elegantly powerful builds and proud carriage. They were both dark-haired as well, of course, but that was about the end of any similarity between them and Hugh Darke was certainly the more mysterious and contrary of the two, even judged on appearance alone.
He had that strong Roman nose that looked as if it had been broken at some point in his varied career; emphatically marked dark brows frowned above his challenging silver-blue eyes and yet his mouth could have belonged on a poet or a troubadour, if not for the stern control he kept it under. She knew how sensitive it could feel against hers now, but the containment of it argued he’d been through a very hot fire to become the steely-eyed captain he was now. A younger Hugh Darke would be almost too handsome and appealing for his own good; she imagined this complex and contrary man carefree and laughing, and was glad to be spared that pristine version of him, since she was far too impressed with the current one to need any more encouragement.
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