His fickle cock retreated in abject terror, leaving him to his fate.
* * *
El triedto keep a stern expression on her face but could not keep a quirk of a smile from the corners of her mouth when she saw how thoroughly she'd cowed Percy. She was tempted to draw out the moment, but instead produced a tiny key from a secret slit inside her tunic.
His reaction was comical. He whooshed out a breath he'd been holding and bent over at the waist, gripping his knees. In one swift movement she unlocked the ankle chain that attached him to the cannon ball. She could have told him he was lucky he wasn't one of her other prisoners who had suffered such a fate. Those men, and one particularly vicious woman, had been held in irons on the lowest level of theLady Muirgenwith nothing to eat but bread and water.
When she bent over to roll the heavy chain and cannon ball out of the way toward a storage chest in her cabin, she was clasped by a pair of strong, iron-like hands from behind. Without pause for negotiation, she launched one of her self-defense moves by initiating a painful wrench of his thumbs which she planned to follow with a quick toss of his bulk over her shoulders to the floor where she could give him a proper thrashing.
Percy must have had the same expensive instructor she employed, because he anticipated and dodged her every move. Instead, she found herself dragged over to her spacious bunk and settled onto his lap. Once again, she tried another master move of kicking back to his, um, tender parts with her boot.
The man must have more than two hands. They were everywhere. Whenever she tried to buck against him, he soothed her like a high-spirited mare, all the while maintaining his iron grip.
"We could have had an afternoon of tender touching and sweet words, but I'm afraid you always insist on rough encounters, Captain."
"All I have to do is shout out one word, and this cabin will fill with guards who will crush you like the toad you are, Percy Whitcombe."
"Ah, that is indeed the rub." He whispered low, his warm breath teasing at one of her ears. "But I don't think you will. Will you, Eleanor?" He reached around her breasts with one of his hands which he slipped beneath her tunic. His fingers gently explored before finding a willing nipple that sprang to attention, despite the massive ire she'd been saving up to release against the bastard. She sighed and leaned into his touch.
Perhaps she'd underestimated the Duke of Chelmsford. Perhaps she'd also underestimated her own attraction to an arch rogue parading as an aristocrat.
12
5 DAYS LATER
THE LADY MUIRGEN, CAPTAIN'S CABIN
Somewhere North of the Azores
Percy watched Eleanor's face as she slept in the morning light shining through the glass bezel embedded in the top deck. He pushed tendrils of hair from her face, still damp with sweat from their volatile love-making. Unbidden, the vision of the curve of her cheek and her extravagant, reddish eyelashes on a girl child shattered his thoughts with a vengeance.
His unchecked fantasy blazed on with Eleanor as his docile duchess in the huge ducal bed at Whitsunby Hall in Surrey. And there the fantasy ended. He found he could not imagine the wildly insatiable woman now sleeping peacefully in his arms ever consenting to take on any title that began with "his." Or, heaven forbid, answering to "Her Grace."
He wished there were someone from whom he could seek advice. There was no one. No one in their right mind would counsel him on how to bring a beautiful, vengeful pirate to heel. She was like a wild, wounded creature, determined to run free on her own terms. You ventured near at your own peril. God knows, he'd been burned enough by the bright fire that was Eleanor Goodrum.
She stirred and moaned a bit, thrashing in her sleep. "No," she bit out and pushed at his chest. She kept repeating "no" until he gathered her up in his arms and rocked her until the night terror passed and she relaxed a bit. Anger and sadness battled within him. She'd been nothing more than a child when the brutes to whom her father owed money had passed her around like some piece of chattel.
He knew she'd never consent to belonging to him, but, by God, no one would ever hurt her again if he had any say in the matter. But then there was the matter of her murky business dealings. He couldn't allow her partnership to destroy his brother, could he? How could he reason away the dark deeds of which he suspected she was guilty? He was still struggling with the puzzle that was the warm, soft, sleeping woman in his arms when she woke and opened her clear green eyes that blazed like emeralds in the morning light.
He ran a finger softly over the scar that marred the left side of her face. "Who did this to you?"
"I earned this scar in a fight for my life, and this ship."
Percy paused, confused. "A fight?"
"Yes. The man who turned over this ship and his crew of smugglers to me was the captain who seized me from the ship you and your father put me on."
"How is that possible?" He regretted his words the minute they left his mouth.
"You're not the only man who thought that was wrong. His first in command challenged my right to become captain."
"And he did this to you?"
"He didn'tdoanything to me. He challenged my right to lead the ship's crew. The only way to survive his challenge was a fight to the death."
"Surely there was another way...you, you could have..."
She interrupted him brusquely. "There was no other way. I lived, he died, but not before he left me with this." She laid her hand over the scar and roughly pushed his away.
