A Most Unladylike Adventure by Elizabeth Beacon Read Free Book Online Page A

female satyr and felt herself flush at the wicked thoughts the sight of his muscular form roused in her rebellious body. Tonight she’d felt powerfully male limbs so intimately against her own and not even wanted to flinch away; she’d known the astonishing novelty of actually yearning for the thrust and rhythm of that very particular man deep inside her, to show her what no words could ever tell her about the wild, sweet potential of it all. Never mind her unwanted success among the polite world, tonight she’d gone from schoolgirl towoman and never mind the physical fact of her virginity, still exactly as it had always been.
    Tonight Captain Darke had taught her to truly want; even now part of her did so as she undressed in Kit’s second-best spare bedchamber, did her best to perform a brief
toilette
, then blew out her candle and slid between cool linen sheets. She shifted in protest against that unfulfilled need as she stretched luxuriously on the feather mattress and decided her terrifying climb to freedom had been worth every precarious step. Tonight she’d found out exactly why Charlton Hawberry wouldn’t do as her husband, even if she wanted one. Now all she had to do was find out the Captain’s quirks and qualities if she was to take him to her bed and maybe even her heart. That thought sobered her, as she considered the impossibility of Captain Darke ever returning so huge and compelling an emotion as love, even if she had no more desire to be trapped into marriage than he did.
    Could any woman reach the last traces of gentleness and vulnerability that must still exist under all that armour of indifference and cynicism, or why would that armour need to be so strong? A colder, less ardent soul than the one he’d sought to bury under layers ofpack-ice, or drown in a brandy bottle, would survive without the embittered shell Captain Darke had grown to survive, but could she get inside it if all she found out when she got there was how much he refused to trust his emotions? And how on earth would she ever persuade him she was worthy of his trust if he found out when he took her to his bed that Eloise La Rochelle was as big a lie as hard, embittered and dangerous Captain Darke?
    *
    Hugh woke reluctantly and groped for his pocket watch even as he bit back a loud moan at the brightness of a new spring day and the lying promise of a London sky washed clean of all its sins, until it besmirched itself again with the smoke and stink of a great city. He might be less cynical about the day, he supposed, if the sharp sunlight wasn’t falling across his eyes unveiled by shutters or curtains, just as he’d so often fooled himself he liked it. Might be, but he doubted it, as full memory of the night before kicked in again and another shot of agony tore across his aching forehead at the very thought of Miss Eloise La Rochelle, who was very likely waiting to torture him over the breakfast table at this very moment. If she could find it underall the detritus he and Coste had deposited there, of course.
    Rubbing an exploring hand over his villainously rough chin, he winced at the idea of having kissed even that intrusive and annoying gadfly of a woman in such an ungentlemanly state, even though he’d been drunk and driven by some unholy need he still couldn’t fully comprehend by the light of day. She might not be a lady, might not have been accustomed to respect and good manners from her seducers before she encountered his friend Kit and decided to hang on to him with both hands, but Hugh had once been a gentleman so it was a matter of honour not to harm a woman of any stamp. He should have taken a second shave of the day to insure that he didn’t hurt her soft skin, if only he’d known he’d be kissing such a wanton siren last night. ‘Failed again, Hugh,’ he scolded himself cynically. ‘Proved yourself a rogue once more, as per expectations.’
    Not bothering to even make the effort to cling to well-bred restraint in