Free The Captain's Christmas Bride by Annie Burrows Page B

he’d stripped her, taken her, was creating a maelstrom of conflicting feelings to surge within him. Though uppermost was the desire to do it all over again. Which was out of the question.
    He cleared his throat. ‘We need to reach an understanding.’
    She sighed, as though relieved. ‘Yes. Indeed we do. But before we go any further, I just want to thank you for your forbearance.’ She glanced at his clenched fists again. This time they tightened in genuine anger. What kind of man did she think he was?
    ‘My...forbearance?’
    A frown flickered across her face. ‘Yes. You could have told my father exactly what I’d done, last night. Destroyed his fondness for me at one stroke. Instead, you...tried to shield me. I noted the number of times you tried to take the blame. Saying I didn’t know what I was doing—’
    ‘You didn’t,’ he said brusquely. ‘Only a complete innocent would have lured a man out into a place such as this, dressed the way you were, and think he’d stop at a few kisses.’
    ‘Well, I—that is, thank you.’
    ‘I didn’t mean it as a compliment,’ he retorted. ‘It’s just the sort of hen-witted scheme Lizzie would come up with. Dressing herself like a whore, teasing a man who’s been so long without a woman he’s practically cross-eyed with the wanting, and then expecting him to make an honest woman of her when he does what any red-blooded man would do in the circumstances.’
    ‘You’re very cross. I understand that—’
    ‘Do you? Do you really understand how
cross
I am?’ He marched over to her and seized her upper arms. Shook her a little. ‘I didn’t come here to get tangled up with the likes of you. It was bad enough having to come here in the first place. And now I am here I should be dealing with my sister, not—’ He broke off, shaking his head as he considered the wild goose chase Lizzie had led him on from the moment he’d come ashore.
    ‘Is she in some kind of trouble?’ Lady Julia peered up at him as though she really cared what happened to his sister.
    ‘I didn’t come here to talk about Lizzie,’ he growled, thrusting her away from him. God, what the nearness of her did to him. The scent of her. The feel of her soft flesh, even through layers of cotton, or whatever it was she was wearing.
    ‘You were the one who brought her into the conversation. I thought that perhaps that was what you wanted to talk to me about. Her future. If I can be of any help—’
    ‘You? You are the very last person into whose care I would entrust a high-spirited lassie like Lizzie. As if she isn’t enough of a handful.’ He spun away from her, thrusting his fingers through his hair, not caring for once that by his gesture he was betraying his agitation. Not only to her, either. Anyone looking at him five minutes from now would know he’d done it, because it would be standing up in a spray of disordered spikes.
    ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, coldly. ‘What did you wish to speak to me about, then?’
    He whirled back to her.
    ‘Aye—that’s just it. Just like her. Standing there looking at me as though butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, when you are probably hatching some devilish scheme.’
    ‘I’m not hatching any kind of scheme.’
    ‘Of course you are. Everyone plots and schemes, in my experience, from the lowest rating trying to get extra rum to the Admirals of the Fleet jockeying for public recognition.’
    ‘I’m not like that!’
    ‘You are. If that...’ he gestured to the bench expressively ‘...wasn’t the result of some devilish scheme, intended to entrap some poor man, then I don’t know what is.’
    She coloured. ‘It wasn’t a devilish scheme. David has been in love with me for ages—’
    ‘Hah!’
    ‘But he couldn’t pluck up the courage to propose. Papa was set against the match. Because of the...the discrepancy in our fortunes, our stations.’
    ‘I’ve never heard anything so maudlin, or so unlikely, in all my life.’
    ‘You