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might well, but why draw back from a promising new keeper when you seem to be without one while my youthful employer is at sea, Eloise?’

      ‘To make you more eager, of course,’ she explained, as if it was perfectly obvious to any masculine idiot who hadn’t pickled his intellect in brandy.

      ‘Just how eager do you expect your lovers to be? Is seeing me so burnt up by the lure of paradise between your finely displayed legs that I’d have promised you everything I have, short of a soul I long ago sold to the devil, not desperate enough for you?’

      ‘Obviously not,’ she parried, doing her best not to blush at the thought of what they would probably be doing right now if she hadn’t drawn back.

      She imagined they’d somehow be striving for a fulfilment her body ached for with a merciless, hard knot of frustration at the centre of her that felt as if it might never relax on being denied what was natural and right between lovers. ‘Lovers’—that was the key. It was what they didn’t have—not one sliver of love flowed between them, so none of it would be right, however hot and needy they were for each other. Although she would never marry, she wouldn’t let herself fully love a man outside it unless she really did love him. That seemed about as unlikely as Captain Darke falling at her feet and swearing undying, unswerving devotion to a woman he despised, for all he claimed to want her so hotly.

      ‘What else do you expect of a man, then, if that’s not enough?’ he asked.

      ‘Affection,’ she told him rather forlornly, knowing she’d probably never gain it from this guarded, isolated man. ‘And a little respect.’

      ‘Very hard qualities for a female in your profession to find, I would have thought,’ he mocked her almost angrily, as if no woman had a right to demand so much of a man she was thinking of taking to her bed, always supposing they managed to get that far.

      ‘Hard ones to seek anywhere, Captain Darke, let alone on the streets,’ she said, with what she knew would look like too much knowledge in her dark-blue eyes as she met his hard gaze.

      ‘Aye, I’ll grant you that much bravery, or should that be impudence rather?’ he said reluctantly and she didn’t know whether to feel smug or guilty.

      She reminded herself he was so drunk she could probably have pushed him over with one hand when he first staggered across the open door of that bedchamber and made her jump nigh out of her skin. If she’d pushed him away hard enough at any time during this surreal encounter, he would very likely have fallen in a heap and gone back to sleep as sweetly as Kit’s watchman, and nothing they’d done in the last half-hour had caused a stutter in Coste’s impressive snoring. The world ticked on and she and Captain Darke ticked with it and suddenly it felt as if their bittersweet interlude had been little more than a wicked daydream. She put a hand out as if to grasp it, but a picture of him ardent and wholeheartedly wanting her with every sense evaporated under her touch. Such fantasies weren’t for the likes of them; she knew too much and he’d learnt too much for that sweet pipe dream to ever come true.

      ‘I’d curtsy to acknowledge your extraordinary graciousness,’ she told him in the hard, cynical voice she thought Eloise would use to protect herself from her enemies, ‘but somehow I’ve forgotten to be suitably servile these last few years.’

      ‘Aye, it’s easy to grow accustomed to luxury and money. Harder than I hope you’ll ever know to manage without them when they’ve become such a part of your life you can’t imagine losing everything,’ he said and she wasn’t fool enough to think he was worrying about her future.

      ‘I started out with nothing more than the clothes I stood up in, Captain, but you fell a lot further, I think?’

      ‘You may think what you wish, but don’t expect me to confirm or deny your fantasies,’ he told her abruptly, the story of his sorry downfall obviously forbidden ground.

      ‘I can pick out the nob in a crowd any day of the week, so don’t try to pretend you’re not one, Captain.’

      ‘Then be content with being right and leave it at that, my dear.’

      ‘Again, I’m not dear to you in any way, Captain Darke. Let’s stick to the truth as often as we may.’

      ‘And if that’s as often as usual, it won’t be heard much.’

      She shrugged and reminded herself how little she wanted him to know her true self, even if she would dearly love to know his. ‘So be it,’ she said carelessly.

      ‘Not much point in me asking what you’re really doing here then, I suppose?’

      ‘Not much,’ she confirmed with a nonchalance she hoped masked her shudder at the thought of what she’d escaped tonight—and how she’d done it.

      ‘Well, I suppose we’re done with each other for now then, at least until morning.’

      ‘Yes, I really suppose that we must be, Captain.’

      ‘For good, if I had my way, Miss La Rochelle,’ he informed her gruffly enough for her to know he still wanted her and bitterly resented her for it.

      ‘Now your way would be downright boring and I make it a rule never to be so tedious that gentlemen of my acquaintance truly prefer my room to my company,’ she fantasised cheerfully.

      Perhaps from now on she would be herself, as she’d seldom dared to be while she had tried to move amongst his true kind as if she belonged—and blatantly did not. Whatever it cost her to be the girl who’d belonged nowhere in particular once again, that girl was who she was. And to be that person she had to sleep. At least she’d be safe from the predators who stalked the night-time streets, so until it was too early for Charlton and his ilk to be abroad, she could allow herself the luxury of sleep and hope she’d have resolve enough to take up her new life come morning.

      She took the candles he carefully didn’t offer her and lit a new one off them, after fetching some from Kit’s dusty and unused drawing room, handing the guttering ones back to him and giving him a significant look she recalled her mother darting at her when she wanted her to go to bed and saw no reason to tell such a grown-up girl to actually go there. By saving herself the fact and almost the feel of his all-too masculine gaze on her nether regions, outrageously outlined as they were by Charlton’s breeches, she had to watch his lithely masculine legs, narrow hips and lean body as he effortlessly scaled the stairs ahead of her instead.

      She decided she was turning into some sort of 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 to woman 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 of pack-ice, or drown in a brandy bottle,

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