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“And you, good sir,” she said, her lush mouth curving into a perfect cupid’s bow. “Which ‘Jack’ would you be? Not Sprat, clearly.”
Sweet Jesus. Had she just made reference to Bertie’s girth? His companions gave low oooh’s that slid into muffled laughter, which caused the prince to drop her hand and resettle his vest over his bulging middle with a sharp tug…deciding whether to be a good sport about it.
Clearly in the grip of madness, the chit blundered on.
“No, no, don’t tell me. Not Jack O. Lantern either—far too handsome for that. Nor Jack Ketch—too lively. Nor Jack A. Dandy—though you certainly are well-dressed enough for the part.” She bit her lip and then eyed him with flirtatious appreciation. “Clearly, sir, a man of your superior aspect and august bearing could only be…Union Jack.”
A howl of approval went up from the others.
She produced a mischievous smile, which the prince returned.
“By damn, you’re a perceptive wench, you are,” he declared, grabbing her hand and using it to reel her closer.
“So I’ve been told, sir.” She exerted just enough resistance to keep from being drawn down onto his lap. “And my ‘perception’ says that you and your company of gentlemen are in high spirits this evening.”
A raw, male kind of laughter was their response. She was flirting with disaster. Literally. Jack straightened in his chair, tensing. If she didn’t watch her step, she would find herself in serious trouble. Times five.
“I’ve taken the liberty of asking our innkeeper to prepare some of our special wassail for you. It’s the finest for counties around.” She swept the men with a playful grin. “Known far and wide to corrupt church deacons, improve the looks of spinsters and cure seven kinds of scurvy.”
The prince’s booming laughter brought a dazzling smile to her memorable features, tinged, perhaps, with a bit of relief.
“You say this is your inn?” the prince said, studying her. “The last time I was here, I was greeted by the owner himself. A fellow named Eller.”
“Squire Eller was my husband, sir. Upon his death two years ago, the house and inn passed to me.”
“You’re a widow then.” The prince raised an eyebrow and smiled.
Just then a large bowl of warm, spice-fragrant wassail arrived in the innkeeper’s beefy arms, and the prince allowed the woman to pull away from him in order to serve it. Shortly, the sounds of a spirited fiddle wafted through the inn, growing louder as an old man appeared, warming up his strings.
Music. Jack studied the bold-as-brass widow with mild surprise. To soothe the savage beasts. Very smart indeed.
The old boy’s first selection was appropriate: the lively, patriotic, “Drink Little England Dry.” As the widow ladled out the wassail, she began to hum and then to sing. When she served the prince, she motioned for him to join her. He looked her over, as if deciding whether she might be worth the effort, then threw back his head and belted out the lyrics. His participation startled his companions. They glanced at each other and, as she served them, introduced themselves by their assumed names and joined in.
Soon all were singing and drinking except Jack, who scooted his chair back a few inches and watched the wily widow and his fellow hunters from beneath lowered lids. Clever she might be, but the odds were not in her favor. What was she thinking, flirting with them all?
As she handed him his cup and urged him to take up the verse, he met her eye and shook his head—hoping she would take it as the warning it was. When she merely shrugged and went on to the next man, he buried his nose in his drink and wished that for once he could just get pissing drunk himself.
For three years he’d hunted and gambled and dined with the prince…handling details and smoothing over sticky situations. He had a reputation for clear-headedness and loyalty…the legacy of his clear-headed and loyal family. Following a longstanding English tradition, they had given up a sizeable parcel of land to enlarge Bertie’s grounds at Sandringham when the prince’s home had been built adjacent to their family seat. The prince had rewarded that generosity by drawing the stalwart St. Lawrence sons into his circle and allowing them to seek their fortunes in his exalted company.
Jack sighed. Not that Bertie’s exalted company had included any marriageable heiresses of late. The future monarch was partial to “hunting” in places populated by his favorite quarry: married women.
The old fiddler—Farley, the widow called him—transitioned seamlessly into another familiar tune: “Dance for Your Daddy.”
“Surely, gentlemen, you know this one, too.” The widow swayed her cup in time to the music. “It’s played by every town musician at every country dance in England.”
All Jack’s companions joined in spirited song, taking turns supplying verses, one drumming accompaniment on the tabletop. Jack groaned when she planted herself before the prince with a gallant bow and held out her hand. Bertie downed the rest of his drink, rose and began to step in time with her.
Jack struggled to tamp down the tension collecting in his loins as he watched her turn gracefully and sway with seductive pleasure. She seemed to enjoy her precarious position. But then, what woman of the world didn’t love being the center of wealthy, powerful men’s attentions? And she clearly was that: a woman of the world. Every smile, every word and every movement proclaimed her well-practiced in the art of flirtation.
If he needed further proof, it came as Bertie’s hands began to wander over her as they danced. She slyly chided him and rearranged his hands, but, Jack noted, submitted to more of the same by continuing to dance with him.
When another of the hunting party, a west-country baron seated beside him, rose to cut in, Jack grabbed his arm and pulled him back down in his chair. A second man, a marquess by title and heir to a duchy, staggered forward minutes later, intent on claiming a dance, but Jack propped his legs up on a chair in the man’s path and glared him back onto his seat on a nearby bench. Each protested, but a not-so-subtle jerk of Jack’s head in Bertie’s direction reminded them that a woman’s company was the prince’s prerogative. They grumbled but reined in their irritation and settled back in spirits-soaked curiosity to watch their prince’s unusual conquest.
As surely as one song led to another, one bowl of wassail led to another. The more they sang, the more deeply they imbibed, and it didn’t take much of a wit to deduce that that was the cunning widow’s intent. Jack felt a growing admiration for her determination and no small relief that her plan was working. If it had failed, he would have found himself up to his arse in trouble, along with her.
His companions continued to mellow, their rum-weighted eyes shining with memories as they began to recount tales of first dances and first loves. He groaned quietly. Having to listen to their sentimental ramblings while cursedly sober was almost more than he could take.
And having to watch the tempting widow settle on a stool by the prince’s knees and allow him to tousle her hair and fondle her neck soon had him rigid with unwelcome heat. Especially when she looked his way with those electric-blue eyes and caught him staring at her. She gave him a provocative little smile that set the skin of his belly on fire.
MARIAH finally allowed herself to relax a bit as she sat by the prince’s knee. The camaraderie that developed as the rum and music worked their magic surprised her. She doubted these worldly, overprivileged men had ever had a night quite like this one. The prince had lowered his guard and begun to muss her hair affectionately, as if she were a cherished pet. She might make it through the evening without her heels in the air after all.
As the light from the hearth lowered, out came campaigning songs and sentimental favorites that made the men’s faces soften further…all but the dark, handsome “Jack” who had withheld himself from the merriment and wassail, but not from searing looks in her direction. It was a relief when he slouched in his chair, laid his head back, and closed his memorable eyes.
The clock struck one and the cups were filled yet again.
“Never had s-such fun with m’ trousers on,” the prince said thickly, after the mantel clock struck two. Swiping a meaty hand across his drink-reddened face, he propped his drooping head on his palm. There was a weak “hear, hear” and a mute wave from a sluggish hand across the room.
Fatigue and drink claimed them one by one. Jack O. Lantern laid his head on a table; Jack A. Dandy sprawled on his back on a bench, snoring loudly, and Jack Ketch pulled a second chair over to prop his feet up and closed his eyes. Jack Sprat staggered off toward the stairs and managed to haul himself—hand over hand—up to his room.
As the prince’s eyes closed and he sank irretrievably into his cups, the bronze-eyed Jack, whose alias—by process of elimination—was Jack B. Nimble, became more alert. Though he still slouched in his chair, Mariah sensed an awareness about him that belied his appearance of dozing.
When the prince’s head hit the top rail of his chair, she saw Nimble Jack sit straighter. When the prince began to snore, his eyes opened fully.
Mariah waved Old Farley to a halt and gave him a grateful smile. The old fiddler nodded, rose, and shuffled off to his quarters in the stables…leaving her and Nimble Jack the only ones awake in the public room.
Her heart started to pound as he rose from his chair. He was taller than she’d realized, and his broad shoulders and long, muscular legs gave him an aura of physical strength that made her want to step back. She didn’t, but regretted it when he loomed over her and her knees weakened.
When he spoke, his deep tones generated a shocking vibration in her skin. She had to shake herself mentally to make sense of what he’d said.
“—cannot leave him here.” He took the unconscious prince by the arms, pulling him forward in the chair. “Show me the way to his room and help me get him into bed.”
She fought the urge to rub the gooseflesh his voice raised on her arms and shoulders. What was the matter with her? She hadn’t had that much of Carson’s brain-fuddling brew.
She stepped up onto a chair to grab a lantern from the rafter while Jack tried unsuccessfully to hoist the limp royal onto his shoulders. With a huff, she inserted herself under one of the prince’s arms, dragging it up and around her shoulders. Muttering irritably, Jack took the other arm and helped her haul the bulky future monarch to his feet.
“Come on, Bertie, give us some help here,” he growled.
But it was only when she spoke—“Come, Your Highness, time for bed. You do want to go to bed, don’t you?”—that some sense of what was happening penetrated the fog in the prince’s head. He roused enough to bear some of his own weight and allow them to propel him forward.
Together—banging and bumping, trading orders and cautions—they dragged the prince up the stairs to the inn’s finest guest room. On the way through the door, his knees buckled. She dropped the lantern to use both hands to help hold him up. They half carried, half dragged him to the bed and dumped him on it.
They stood side by side staring at their future king, breathing hard.
“Should we remove his boots?” she whispered, starkly aware of Nimble Jack’s broad chest rising and falling and of the mélange of intriguing male scents about him. The only light available was from the lantern she had dropped just inside the door. Its glow reflected off the plank floor, casting the upper half of the room in soft shadows. When she looked up, he was staring at her. Tall, dark and potent.
Heaven help her, she stared back…at least enough to see that the bronze disks of his eyes had warmed with a rising heat…that his lips were parted…that his shoulders seemed to grow with each ragged exhalation. She couldn’t get her breath.
The next thing she knew he was moving toward her. She stepped back. His stride lengthened and suddenly his body met hers and swept her back against the wall beside the door. The impact set a pitcher and basin on the nearby washstand rattling.
She was stunned by both the physical contact and her own lack of resistance to it. Then slowly, so slowly that she could have easily escaped, he raised both of his hands, palms out, and planted them against the wall on either side of her. There he paused, waiting, looking at her.
She lifted her face enough to search at close range the features she had somehow memorized over the course of the evening. Those eyes—molten pools of gold…that skin—sleek and drawn taut over strongly carved cheekbones…those lips—broad and neatly bordered, just inches from hers. He roused something in her, something dormant, something not altogether welcome.
She didn’t mean to do it, made no decision, formed no conscious intent. The impulse came from memories stored in her very bones and sinews that made her stretch and arch her body upward, against his.
With a sound that was half groan, half growl, he leaned in and pressed her back against the wall. His body was hot and hard but strangely not shocking against hers; the intimacy was no longer foreign. She remembered. With every breath his body moved against hers like a tide lapping, testing, caressing the shore. Her skin came alive beneath her clothes. More, she wanted more contact. She wanted to feel him.
Her desire to touch and be touched rattled her to her very core. Trembling, she shoved her hands out to the sides…palms pressed flat against the wall…below his. And suddenly she understood why his hands were there.
When she opened her eyes and looked up, her gaze fastened on his parted lips. Kisses, she remembered kisses…mouth to mouth…intimate silk and moist heat. Her lips felt hot and sensitive, expectant. She wetted them, and gasped silently when she tasted the sweetness from the rum on his breath. She swept her tongue across her lip, luring him closer…so close that she could feel his warmth radiating into her skin and his breath curling across her cheek. But his head dropped to the side, and his mouth skimmed her temple, her ear, the side of her throat. The sensations were so tentative—was he touching her or was that his breath against her skin?
Cascading sensations sent a hum through her blood and a shiver through her body. Her nipples drew taut and tingled in a way she hadn’t experienced in a very long time. Holding her breath, she pressed her breasts into him, dragging them along his ribs. He countered her motion, giving her the stimulation she sought and adding a small, tantalizing undulation of his own…one that confirmed the effect she had on him.
Heat rushed to her breasts and her sex, concentrating and intensifying the sensations so that her sensitive flesh burned with the desire for contact. When his knee probed her skirt, she instinctively let it slide between her own and gradually, savoring the yielding, parted her thighs. Steam billowed through her senses as he fitted himself against her. Breath snagged in her throat as sensation mounted like waves.
More, she wanted more.
She pulled her hands from the wall, seized his face between them, and pressed her lips to his. He went perfectly still, and something in her clicked like the switch of an electric light. She froze as reality fanned away some of the steam in her senses.
Abruptly, he peeled himself from her body, leaving her to stagger slightly as she sank back against the wall. The chilled air that invaded the space between them was a rude shock. She was trembling and felt as if her knees had turned to rubber.
Sweet Heaven. What had happened to her?
Her mind clutched at impressions: his burning stare and his hands clenched at his sides…the throb in her woman’s flesh…the prince’s vigorous snores…the open door only three feet away…
She escaped into the hall and down the steps—having to hang on to the railing to remain upright. She headed through the inn’s darkened kitchen and pulled her cloak from the rack by the door as Carson rose from his chair by the hearth. His son, half awake and protesting being dislodged from his father’s lap, clung to his leg.
“You all right, Miz Eller?” The innkeeper dragged his hands over his face, glancing toward the dim glow from the public room.
“They’re out—the lot of them.”
“Just like you planned, eh?” The innkeeper flashed a weary grin.
“Just li-ike—” her voice cracked “—I planned.”
“Want me to walk ye up to th’ house, miz?”
“No—thank you,” she said, grateful for the darkness that hid her burning face. “Morning will come too early for you as it is.” She settled the cloak around her shoulders and pulled up its hood. “And it wasn’t me that drank a hogshead of rum this night.”
“No, it weren’t.” Carson chuckled. “Ye were somethin,’ miz.”
“Yes. Well.” She paused with her hand on the door latch, before stepping out into the chilled autumn night. “I think we’d both be advised to forget everything that happened here tonight.”
2
MARIAH stewed with dread the next day, even after giving orders to turn away all callers with word that she was indisposed. So when Carson’s boy arrived in the afternoon with word that the prince had received a message that put him in a bad humor, climbed aboard his horse and ridden off to Scotland, she wilted with relief.
She had been delivered from the consequences of her brazen behavior.
She should have felt grateful, but instead she was seized by an unholy restlessness. Stalking down to the inn, she went from room to room, sorting and rearranging, clearing rooms and then moving the furniture back. Nothing pleased her. If she hadn’t feared a servant revolt, she’d have begun scrubbing walls and pounding rugs, spring-cleaning six months early.
At wits’ end, she sent for Old Farley to bring some soothing music up to the house. But she sent the old boy away again shortly after he began to play. Every note evoked the memory of a brooding golden-eyed presence.
Even a week later, the restlessness had not lessened.
Desperate to spend the tension inside her, she put on her oldest clothes and went to work in her garden one morning. The oak trees were bare, the flowers had died back, and the shrubbery—all but the balsam and holly—had surrendered to the cold and shortened days. But even here, on her knees in her beloved garden, she had trouble banishing thoughts of that night.
“Tart,” she said irritably, jamming her spade into the cold, dark earth. The autumn sun was too pale and remote to warm the ground where she was planting bulbs beside the arbor walk. Her gloves were caked with wet soil, her fingers were half frozen, and her back ached from the bending. But she was determined to set these blessed daffodils.
“That’s how you are behaving, you know. Like a tart.” She straightened onto her protesting knees. “I am not.”
Glowering, she stabbed the earth again and snatched up another handful of papery golden bulbs.
“I did nothing wrong. He accosted me.”
Though to be fair, accosted was painting it a bit black. He hadn’t kissed her. Hadn’t set hands on her. There wasn’t even a name for what he’d done to her. But it was intimate and pleasurable and furtive, which, by all decent lights, made it wrong, wrong, wrong.
And just like that, she was immersed in the memory she had tried to keep at bay and reliving those erotic sensations in the prince’s darkened sleeping room. Warmth and breath commingled…bodies pressed hard together, hungry, straining for more…Her throat tightened at the thought and her breath came quicker. It was the strange nature of the encounter, she told herself, that made it so difficult to dismiss.
Curse “Jack B. Nimble” for rousing such desires in her.
After Mason had died she had locked away that part of her. It hadn’t been easy; her worldly older husband had been a remarkable lover who tutored her expertly and boldly cultivated her passions. When he died unexpectedly, she had been blooming into her sexual prime and struggled nightly to subdue the desires he had so deftly roused. But then she learned of the entailment that placed her husband’s land in the hands of distant relatives. Left with no income, only an aging house and a coaching inn in bad repair, she had to scramble to survive and poured the energy of her stubborn desires into the hard work of remaking the inn into an establishment capable of supporting herself and her people.
The result was that the Eller-Stapleton had never looked so fine or received such brisk trade. It seemed, after two grueling years, that her life and her business were on the brink of flourishing—despite the debts she had incurred—and that was satisfaction enough.
Until a week ago.
She shoved bulb after bulb into the damp, pungent earth, each time giving the dirt above it a smack, daring the bulb to show its head until spring.
Thus occupied, she didn’t hear Carson’s boy approach.
“Miz?” She turned so sharply that she fell back on her rear, scattering the bulbs she held across the ground. Young Jamie stood with hands in his pockets and a grin on his round, cold-reddened face. “Ye got callers, miz.”
She pressed a hand to her chest to contain the racing of her heart.
“Yes? Who is it?” The cold had set her nose running. She sniffed.
“Gen’lmen. Pa said I should bring ’em up.” He stepped to the side and revealed two men standing on the path some distance away.
Mariah scowled at their caped greatcoats and black top hats. Whoever they were, they dressed like bankers. The thought made her heart seize.
She started to rise and realized her skirts were twisted around her, exposing her old woolen stockings and muddy boots. She knew there was dried dirt on her face, where she’d pushed her hair back earlier; she looked a mess. But then, she hadn’t invited them here. Clumsy from the cold, she staggered to her feet and brushed her skirts before realizing that her dirt-caked gloves were making her even more of a mess. Scowling, she pulled them off and threw them into the wooden trug that held her tools.
The men’s backs were to her; they seemed to be surveying her garden.
“You wished to see me, gentlemen?”
They turned as she approached.
