Page 125 of The Pirate and the Pagan
“Then you’ll arrange it so that I can be Brittania?” she pressed.
“Barbara, no, you can’t have everything you want under the sun, and bargaining with your body when you know I’m hot for you is acting like a strumpet.”
“Oh, you brute!” She picked up a crystal bottle of heliotrope and flung it across the bed. “Take back your gifts, I don’t want them!” she cried.
He noticed with a jaundiced eye that she never flung back any of the jewels he had given her.
“I hate you, Charles! Get out of my house and never come back,” she shouted as if he were the meanest lackey.
His temper snapped and he slapped her face, hard. She began to sob, and when he held out his arms she went into them and buried her face against his neck. His lips nuzzled her ear and he whispered, “Go on and cry, you’ll piss less.”
Her tears turned to laughter and she turned her face up to his and said provocatively, “A man who doesn’t give his woman a hard slap when she’s begging for it doesn’t have that woman’s respect.”
“You know I’m not a violent man, but you drive me to it on purpose,” he said, stroking her generous curves until she almost purred. She reached up to rub her body full length against him then lowered her hands to knead his hard buttocks. His hands and mouth moved across her flesh so temptingly that her knees buckled and they fell entwined onto the bed. He rolled her under him and she immediately separated and lifted her knees in blatant invitation, then he dove into her and the heavy seas of passion rolled through them and over them.
After Lord Lord Ruark Helford had served his king and country, he immediately set sail for Cornwall. His mouth curved whenever he thought of Summer and how she had taken her own sweet time in returning to Helford Hall from London. It was her way of showing him that even when he held all the cards, she wouldn’t come begging. Well, he’d been away almost three months—long enough for her to have had some private time at Helford Hall with Ryan. Now, however, she was going to have to learn to share their son. She was also going to have to learn to be a wife again as well as a mother.
He swore that from now on he would tell her and show her exactly how deep his love for her ran and in return he wanted all of her love, given without reserve. He anticipated with lusty relish a second honeymoon.
However, when Mr. Burke and Mrs. Bishop claimed that Summer was not there, that she had never been there, he was stunned. He immediately sailed back to London and by now he was frantic with worry. Straightaway he went to Court and made inquiries. No one had seen her for months, since before the fire, and he went to Lil Richwood’s house on Cockspur Street with dread in his heart. He wasted no time bantering with Lil. “She never turned up at Helford Hall. She must have been in touch with you,” he insisted grimly.
“Ruark, darling, I do believe you are accusing me of lying,” she drawled.
“Not lying, precisely, but there’s something you’re not telling me,” he insisted.
“Whatever makes you say such a thing to me, Ruark?”
“Because you’re not frantic with worry over her. If you had no idea where she might be, you would be mad with anxiety—filled with mental anguish, as I am, until you went out of your mind.”
Lil cast him an apprehensive little glance. “Ru, darling, sit down.” She patted the satin-covered love seat coaxingly as if she were about to divulge a confidence. She looked at his dark brows and thought he looked like Lucifer after his fall from grace. His black hair was in wild disarray from running his distraught fingers through it.
“I hoped I wouldn’t have to be the one to tell you this. I don’t want to hurt you, Ruark. I believe that Summer went off with your brother, Rory. I believe she is in love with him.”
A wail of anguish came from Helford’s throat which sounded like a wounded wolf. Lil wished with all her heart she had never told him, for he was plainly devastated by the news.
Summer had stopped living. She had stopped daydreaming, stopped wishing, even stopped thinking. She existed—barely. In her heart she knew she would never again know a moonlit night on the balcony overlooking the garden at Helford Hall. Ebony and her dawn ritual were lost to her forever. When she had first been imprisoned, she felt outrage at the injustice of it all, but since then she had killed; she had become unclean, evil. Her son would be better off without her, so it was only right that she had lost him.
She had lost her husband. She had lost her lover. She had lost her looks, her youth, her health. She no longer cared. She was numbed to passivity; frozen, encased in ice, impervious to any further pain or torment.
She was so thin, her wrists and ankles looked delicate enough to snap. Her clothes and skin were layered with so much dirt she was unrecognizable. Her hair had grown but the lank, greasy shags were now plastered down the back of her neck.
* * *
Under cover of darkness the Phantom slipped silently up the Solent, past the Isle of Wight, into Portsmouth Harbor. Prince Rupert, disguised as an ordinary seaman, disembarked and was soon swallowed up by a waiting carriage. Black Jack Flash had safely delivered him to France and returned him twice in the last month without one soul being the wiser. He was acting as proxy for his cousin King Charles in a secret matter, namely handling the transfer of money from Louis to Charles for favors rendered.
Rory Helford never lingered in a port. Before dawn his Phantom would be safely out of Portsmouth, tucked snugly in a hidden cove off the Isle of Wight. Though he never appeared to be in a hurry, he wasted no time returning to his ship. He knew immediately he was being followed and his hand slipped over the carved handle of his long knife to caress it intimately. Damn and blast the man, thought Rory. I hate to take life unnecessarily.
He was in black from head to foot and easily concealed himself by slipping behind an iron capstan. As the seaman stood glancing about in the dark, Rory stepped silently forward and wrapped his forearm about the man’s throat. His knife, palmed in his other hand, pricked into the man’s kidney. “Talk fast and make it good,” he threatened.
“Black Jack, it’s me, Gitan. I sailed with you once. I lost an arm, remember?”
Rory’s hand slipped down the man’s shoulder to feel the empty sleeve. “Turn about slowly,” he ordered, “so I can see your face.”
The swarthy Breton was indeed Gitan. Rory grinned. He could let him live. The only people he allowed to know his identity were those few who had sailed with him. “You need money, Gitan.” It wasn’t a question.
“That’s not why I’ve been watching for you,” he denied. Rory arched a black brow.
“It’s a woman. Four or five months back they brought in women prisoners on a ship from London. The soldiers arrested a woman right here on Portsmouth dock and shackled her to the others. She gave me a message for you. She said she was your woman.”
