Percy looked down on the girl gazing up expectantly in the moonlight. "Would you like to see for yourself?" He took note of how she'd stiffened, obviously fearful of having him lift her up. Percy knew next to nothing about children, but he strongly suspected this child had been terrorized and abused at some point in her short life.
She shifted nervously from one foot to another, no doubt weighing the chances of possibly being hurt against the joy of getting to see Molly's new colt.
Finally, she seemed to come to a decision and held out her arms. Percy obliged by hoisting her up to the level of the top of the stall.
She crowed in delight, squirming to lean closer for a better look and curling her arm around his neck. "She's beautiful. You did good, Queen Molly." The larger horse whickered in the dark.
Now that the tiny girl was in his arms, Percy was puzzled at how clean she seemed and the quality of her clothes, but he was determined. He had to rescue the poor urchin from the clutches of Captain Eleanor Goodrum, even though he was beset by conflicting emotions.
There apparently were two Eleanors: the innocent, abused girl who'd sailed out of Bristol Harbor toward what he and his father had envisioned as a better life; and now, the embittered, vicious woman she'd become after the gods knew what she'd had to endure to survive after her ship had been seized by a privateer.
Although he couldn't avoid the strange longing impossible to excise from his heart, not to mention the rest of his body, as the clear-headed Duke of Chelmsford, he had responsibilities. His responsibilities to his family, society, and his conscience outweighed the strange attraction he'd formed. He refused to allow the monster she'd become to continue to destroy everything in her path.
In the midst of contemplating the she-devil's demise, arms like steel crushed him from behind, a hand holding a cloth smelling of a sweet, cloying substance closed over his mouth, and he knew no more. The mighty Duke of Chelmsford collapsed into a heap on the straw-covered floor of the Totteridge stables.
El gazed down at the comatose man who refused to get the hell out of her dreams every night and sighed. While Obadiah finished binding Percy like a Boxing Day goose destined for the holiday table, she motioned to Lilith who still cowered against the door to Molly's stall. When the small girl raced toward El's waiting arms, she hoisted her up and gave her a quick buss on the cheek. She'd carry the child back to her warm pallet in the room beneath the eaves she shared with the other girls training to be kitchen maids and cooks.
El's lips curved into an indulgent smile while Lilith clung to her neck. She breathed in the warm smells of lavender soap and small girl.
"He was kind to me and Molly. He held me up so I could see her new colt. Who was that man? You're not going to hurt him, are you? He's not a bad man, you know." The small girl's chattering finally faded into sleep just as El walked through the front hall door opened by Footman John.
She nodded at her servant and smiled at the memory of the small girl's pleading. Apparently, El was no longer alone in having the impossible Duke of Chelmsford invading her dreams.
He was a dangerous man who wielded charm like a silken club to worm his way into a woman's soul. But now she was in control.
* * *
Percy awoke suddenly,his head feeling as though he'd been drinking bad gin for a fortnight in London's lowest stews. He was inside an elegant, large carriage with the windows covered tightly with blood red satin. No outside light leaked through. It could have been the middle of the afternoon or the darkest hell of a night.
From the sound of jingling harnesses outside, there had to be four horses or more pulling the conveyance, a fearfully expensive contraption, apparently. His vision still blurry, he stared warily at the inside roof from a prone position along one of the seats. He struggled to establish what had happened, where he was in that moment, and how in the hell he was going to extricate himself from the current mess in which he found himself.
Happily, there was another human being seated across from him. After carefully levering himself upright, accompanied by multiple visual spins of the interior of the carriage, he finally identified the other person - Eleanor. She calmly sipped at what looked like a steaming cup of coffee. A side bit of a table had folded down from the side of a door to accommodate a silver service. Without asking whether he would like some of the hot, black brew of the gods, she poured one and handed him the fragile porcelain cup on a saucer. She replaced the sloshing pot into a small alcove designed to hold the container while the carriage lurched along an uneven road.
He couldn't say she smoldered exactly, but he could almost sense steam rising from the woman across from him. He chose to sip at his coffee in silence and wait to see what the hell she'd do next. For all he knew, this could be his last day on earth, but by God, she'd give him some answers before she had him obliterated.
"Where are we going?" he finally demanded.
After a calm sip from her own cup, she gave him a two-word answer. "In circles."
Despite his lofty ducal consideration of his situation, his stone-hard cock immediately interpreted her answer as cause for rising to celebrate whilst the conveyance proceeded "in circles."
He stared a bit too long at her lush lips as she devoured her remaining coffee. When she saw him staring, she deliberately pulled a small bunch of grapes from within a large wicker hamper from Fortnum's. She extended a handful to him before placing one in her mouth, sucking and chewing before deliberately and slowly licking her lips whilst placing her empty cup and saucer back within the hamper.
Percy joined her on her side of the carriage, forgetting his head which still ached as if split asunder by a woodsman's axe. He didn't care. More specifically, other parts of his body were ready to forget the pain and move on to pleasure.
He gazed directly into her eyes, like roiling, deep green pools at the bottom of a thunderous waterfall. He expected to find the gaze of a Jezebel, a loveless gleam of lust. What he saw instead gutted him: vulnerability; warmth; and something that struck fear into his heart. He hoped to hell he was wrong, but he thought he detected a gleam of hope.
He could not,wouldnot fall in love with this woman...spy, pirate, blackmailer, ruthless wench.
8
JUNE, 1826
CAPTAIN GOODRUM'S CARRIAGE
El would have given anything to know for a certainty what nonsense was wafting through Percy's mind now. She had to somehow block his infernal snooping through her carefully constructed empire of secrets.
What she gleaned from the dark, unflinching blue of the depths of his eyes were uncertainty, a touch of fear, and lust...ill-contained, raging lust. She'd never been missish about taking advantage of a man's ill-advised sensual feelings about her person. However, there was a fine line between controlling and being controlled, and she was terrified she was close to falling across that very line.
