and wondered how soon he could drown it in brandy again. The sooner he got rid of the confounded woman and got back to this useless excuse for a life the better, he decided bitterly, then frowned fiercely at the intruder, which made it a crying shame she probably couldn’t see in the dark how very little he wanted her here.
‘So you’re playing at being in charge of Kit and Ben’s business ashore, whenever you manage to stay sober enough to care if it sinks or swims for the odd half-hour you can spare it, whilst they’re both busy risking their lives to make your fortune for you?’ the intrusive female asked Hugh, condemnation heavy in otherwise dulcet tones.
How irresistible her voice might be if she ever found anything to like about him, he mused foolishly. As it was, her question echoed about his head like knife blades and he wondered if she’d been sent to torture him with her nagging questions and the haunting scent of her, the ridiculous sensuality of her very presence in the same room with him when it was too dark for him to see the outline of her superb body. A vital, unignorable here-and-now allure that somehow reminded him with every breath that she was a very human woman and not a haughty goddess after all. A woman well used to satisfying a man’s every fantasy on her back—as long as that man had enough gold in his pockets to pay for the privilege. And, thanks to Kit Stone and Ben Shaw, he had more than enough gelt to buy a lovely woman for their mutual pleasure nowadays, and keep her in comfort while he did so. How unfortunate that the one he wanted at the moment belonged to a friend he already owed so much to that he must leave her as untouched as a vestal virgin.
‘I mind my own business—would I could say the same for you, madam,’ he informed her sharply, in the hope she couldn’t read his bitter frustration at her unavailability or discern his ridiculous state in this gloom.
‘Kit and Ben are my business,’ she informed him impatiently and confirmed every conclusion he’d already reached about her, which really shouldn’t disappoint him as bitterly as it did somehow, especially considering he already expected the worst of her and most of her gender.
‘Not at the moment they’re not, since there’s a few hundred leagues of ocean between you and their moneybags, so you’ll just have to ply your trade elsewhere until they return,’ he drawled as insultingly as he could manage.
‘That’s it! Out you; go on, you get out of this house right now, you verminous toad!’ she ordered as if she had every right to evict him from the house Kit had told him to treat as his own while he was away.
‘Firstly, you’ll cease your screeching, my girl,’ he ordered as he grasped her arms in a steely hold, in case she started scratching and biting in retaliation for being thwarted as was the habit of her type—bred in the gutter and inclined to revert to it at the slightest provocation he decided unfairly, considering he’d long ago concluded nobody could help where they were born, mansion or hovel, and that he preferred hovel dwellers over their better-off neighbours nine times out of ten.
‘Damn you, I’ll screech as long and as loud as I choose to,’ she snapped back and he shook her in the hope it would rob her of breath. Her noise and her closeness and the elusive, womanly scent of her as she fought his grip with a determination he secretly admired was making his head pound again.
‘Secondly, you’ll get out of my room,’ he went on doggedly.
‘We’re not in a room; even if we were, it wouldn’t be yours.’
‘Irrelevant,’ he dismissed and felt something strange under the controlling grip he couldn’t bring himself to make a punishing one, despite his disillusionment with her sex and the urgent need he felt to be rid of her before disaster struck, something besides warm, soft, tempting woman. ‘And what the devil are you doing running wild about the place dressed in a man’s shirt and breeches and not just asking for trouble but begging for it, you idiot woman?’ he demanded harshly, quite put off his list of demands by that shocking discovery.
At least he wished fervently he really did find her unconventional attire shocking, instead of far too sensually appealing for comfort or safety as his exploring hand on her neat derrière made her squirm even more determinedly against him and curse him with an impressive, if far from ladylike, fluency while she was doing so.
‘How I choose to dress is none of your business and never will be,’ she informed him sharply at last, but if she could still blush he was almost sure she was doing so from the sudden increase in body heat under his exploring fingers.
‘No, it’s clearly Kit Stone’s or Ben Shaw’s business, and therefore mine in their absence,’ he asserted, senses sharpening despite the brandy, as he felt a terrible threat to his jealously guarded aloofness in that demand for more information and carried on all the same. ‘Come on,’ he urged recklessly, making her obedience irrelevant by tugging her after him all the way downstairs and into the kitchen, where at least a fire was still burning faintly, even if the manservant Kit employed was snoring in the porter’s chair in the hall, more drunk than Hugh had managed to become so far despite all his efforts before this confounded woman came along and spoilt his chance of a decent night’s stupor.
Now, he supposed bitterly, he’d have to endure his usual nightmare-haunted sleep replaying a past he’d so much rather forget, if he was to be allowed any rest this night at all, which currently seemed doubtful with Kit Stone’s woman actually here in the flesh rather than in spirit for once and making sure he had no chance of resting, even when he wasn’t dreaming about her writhing under him, moaning out her desire and then her lusty pleasure as he satisfied every single one.
Setting a taper to the dying fire, Hugh lit a candle, decided he didn’t believe his eyes and lit a whole branch of them. He wasn’t often rendered speechless nowadays, but he couldn’t think of a single word to say as his eyes roved over this extraordinary night visitor with numb astonishment. Numb because all the blood and feeling he still had left in him rushed straight to his loins and stopped there to torture him with the mere sight of such blatant allure. It should definitely be a crime for any woman to go about dressed like that, he decided bitterly. A felony carrying with it some sort of severe but not deadly punishment that would put her off taunting poor devils like him with her goddess’s body and those endless, neatly feminine legs. An amateurish attempt at binding her breasts had only made them seem all the more worthy of a sensual exploration and as for that sweetly rounded derrière of hers … If she didn’t realise what a temptation it posed to any red-blooded male who set eyes on her, then she ought to be locked up for her own safety until he’d taught her to know better.
‘What the devil are you doing strutting the streets at night dressed like a female resurrectionist or an undertaker’s apprentice?’ he finally managed, faintly surprised, until they came out of his mouth, that he’d got that many words left in him.
‘It’s nothing to do with you what I choose to do, or where I decide to go while I’m doing it,’ she told him and wrenched her arm out of his slackened grip at last so she could fold it belligerently across her body, trying her best to look as if she’d every right to go about dressed in black breeches and a dark shirt with a black cravat knotted about her slender neck. Her crow’s-wing dark locks suddenly cascaded down her back, like the wickedest promise he’d seen in a long time, when she shook her head defiantly at him and her neat black-velvet cap finally gave up trying to contain so much dusky luxuriance.
‘You just made it a lot to do with me, Witch,’ he informed her hoarsely and let his eyes rove as they pleased over the very feminine body he’d reluctantly fantasised over since the black day he’d found her waiting in Kit’s office, looking as if she had every right to
