Free The Captain's Bluestocking Mistress by Erica Ridley Page A

was heaven.
    His tongue met hers and a delicious shiver shot down her spine, electrifying her skin. He tasted of tea, but also of a spice she could not define. He tasted of virile man, she supposed. Of Captain Xavier Grey. Everything about him was strong and sure and masculine and completely irresistible. She wanted to be his. She wanted him to be hers.
    Her knees weakened. He felt like home and danger and hope all wrapped into one. Her breath escaped in tiny bursts when she remembered to breathe at all. He didn’t just make her feel desirable. He proved with every consuming kiss, with the thundering of his own heart against hers, that his desire for her was powerful enough to devour them both.
    She was already lost.
    He pulled away, gasping, and ran a shaking hand through his hair.
    It was all she could do not to sway right back into his embrace.
    “Was that heroic?” he rasped. “Or was it a selfish man doing what selfish men do?”
    She gazed back at him in wonder. Her lips were tender from his kiss. “It was beautiful.”
    “It was foolish.” He turned back to the bucket and reached for the next dirty saucer. “It shan’t be repeated.”

Chapter Ten

     
    It was all Xavier could do not to stick his head in the bucket of soapy water and drown himself for being such an imbecile.
    Was grabbing Miss Downing and kissing her meant to teach her a lesson of some sort? What pearl of wisdom, precisely, had he intended to impart, other than if the snow didn’t ease up soon, he was going to have to build an impenetrable ice hut and encase himself inside?
    He supposed he’d meant to prove that he was not an honorable man, nor a wise object upon which to pin one’s cap. A smart man would not have kissed her. An honorable man absolutely would not have done.
    Why couldn’t she see that by dubbing him “hero” of this charade, he would prove himself unheroic with the mere acceptance of the role?
    Heaven knew he’d been unheroic enough to last a lifetime. When he’d realized he could not be trusted around others, he had sunk to the most desperate of solutions. At first, he’d shuttered himself inside his mind. When that proved unsustainable—curse the empathy of true friends!—he’d managed to shutter himself in a tiny cottage, a solid mile from the nearest posting house.
    Then she came along. And he’d kissed her.
    The smart thing to do—the only thing to do—was to be heroic enough for them both. If she would not watch out for her best interests, he would have to work twice as hard. Thrice as hard. Oh, God, was he ever hard…
    He groaned. If he was ever to acquit himself in some small way, she must retain her innocence. And obviously, it was up to him to ensure that happened. Miss Downing was unlikely to assist him in his mission to preserve her chastity.
    She seemed to believe his home a fortress of anonymity, within which all depraved acts could be wantonly enjoyed without a soul ever becoming the wiser. As if she believed whatever happened in the captain’s cottage, stayed in the captain’s cottage.
    Naïve beyond all reckoning. He shook his head. There were no such things as secrets.
    He had staff that would arrive as soon as the roads were passable. She had servants—and a brother—who would at some point wonder what had become of her. If there weren’t likenesses nailed to every wall across England already. And of course, she had yet to make it home without calling attention to her adventure. He grimaced. Good Lord.
    Even if he outfitted her with a chastity belt and a wimple, hundreds of people would cross her path between Chelmsford and London. People with eyes, ears, and wagging tongues. The only chance that remained of returning her home with her reputation intact was to ensure there was little reason to doubt it. Starting with never learning she’d crossed his door.
    He must resume his scheme of converting her image of him into one of a mere acquaintance. It had to work. One did not seduce one’s