Page 14 of The Smuggler & the Society Bride

Gabe, me lad, that’s hoisting sail before hauling in the anchor. He had no proof whatsoever that she’d lost control and her virtue, only a wild conjecture based on her spirited nature and sudden appearance in Cornwall.

Still, a man could hope.

Already she drew him strongly: her smile, her sharp wit, her odd combination of pride and vulnerability. And she had tantalized his body from the start. If she were no longer an innocent maid, there would be no need to refrain from seeing if she’d be equally susceptible to dallying with another rogue. And he was just the man to find out.

Suddenly the dull days of waiting, marooned in Sennlack until the next cargo was ready to be fetched, looked more appealing.

Chapter Seven

Honoria practically ran for the door, aware of Mr Hawksworth’s puzzled gaze following her, the words he’d tossed out with such levity still cutting into her heart like a sabre’s slash…creating a scandal that would banish one from one’s family forever.

She halted outside the door, trying to calm her racing pulse. He must indeed come from ‘proper folk,’ for that one phrase, obviously meant to be lightly taken, validated his good character more than anything else he could have said. A rogue comfortable operating outside the law would never have conjured up such a remark, and only one secure in the backing of one’s family could speak so slightingly of losing that support.

Perhaps no one fully understood the true value of one’s place within a protective, encircling clan, until one lost it.

Still, she’d acted like a looby, running off like that. She’d been trying to discourage him by assuming an overbearing, disdainful manner, not scare him away from a crazy woman.

Perhaps she’d be more successful at the latter than she’d been at the former. Her thoughts still too much in disorder to sort out, she pushed them, and questions about the all-too-attractive free-trader, from her mind and went off to carry out her aunt’s commissions. By the time she’d dropped by several shops and stopped to dispatch some letters at the post, her nerves had steadied.

Her last errand took her to the draper’s shop that stood on a rise to the north of town, overlooking the harbour. After handing over her aunt’s order for cloth and lace—suspicious now about the origin of those items—she walked out, pausing to gaze down at the cove where a dozen ships rode at anchor. Some were obviously fishing craft, but several vessels, sleek of line and with sails reefed and ready, looked as if they were straining at their mooring lines, yearning to sprint into the freshening breeze. One of them must be the Flying Gull.

Unbidden, the memory of the captain’s handsome face flashed into her mind. What had possessed her to speak so frankly? She was supposed to be discouraging him, an unsuitable man far below her in station. Though she was not yet sure what her eventual station would be. Was a disgraced gentlewoman still a gentlewoman? Maybe she had fallen to the level of a common smuggler.

Whatever his station, he’d not been easy to discourage.

Curiosity sparked as she considered his behaviour. Now that she thought about it, Captain Hawksworth was rather well-spoken. Much better-spoken, in fact, than any common seaman or soldier she’d ever heard.

Might he be the son of a gentleman? When she added his genteel speech to the polish of his manners with Aunt Foxe and the innkeepers, she could not help but conclude he must have sprung from the gentry.

Who was he, then? His birth could not be too elevated, certainly, or he’d never be here doing what he was doing. Though the words were meant to be humorous, the fact that he’d mentioned being banished—though not yet entirely—seemed to indicate he might be the black-sheep son of some baronet or squire. Or perhaps he was related to the peerage, but born on the wrong side of the blanket?

The natural antagonism of being raised a bastard—blood to wealth and power but barred from claiming it himself—might explain the curious dichotomy of his thinking: suffering no qualms of conscience about breaking smuggling laws, but drawing the line at inciting bloodshed to bring in his illegal cargoes.

Whoever he was, he probably was not the equal of Lady Honoria Carlow. But he might well be on a level with a Miss Foxe.

Honoria found that conclusion both disturbing and intriguing.

Still, what had possessed her to confide in him? It had been easy enough to depress his pretentions when he tried to ply her with absurd gallantries. But when he abruptly switched to sincere compliments that seemed to approve her actions, and serious inquiries that suggested he was genuinely curious about the girl behind the outward mask of beauty, then he’d succeeded in luring her to speak candidly even as his nearness intensified the strong physical pull she’d been trying to ignore.

There was just something about his smile, she recalled, that invited her to share his humour. About his eyes, so intensely blue she could understand Tamsyn’s tendency to poetry. His gaze seemed to penetrate beneath the surface, to see not just golden hair and china-blue eyes, a well-curved body and smooth skin, but down to the questing, turbulent, passionate, unsettled soul within. And not just to see, but to like what he saw. She’d been suffused by this deep, instinctive sense of connection, this feeling that he knew and understood her as no one but Hal ever had.

In fact, Captain Hawksworth reminded her vividly of her brother: strong, dashing, going his own way independent of family, a bit of a rogue walking the fine line between propriety and disgrace. Could the Hawk become as good a friend to her as Hal had always been?

Nonsense, she thought, reining in her runaway thoughts. ’Twas sheer loneliness pushing her in this absurd direction. She’d been away from Society too long, stripped of anyone of an age in whom she might confide. She was a candidate for Bedlam indeed if she was beginning to cast a rogue Irish smuggler into the role of friend and confidant.

Especially when he’d not only managed with embarrassing ease to level the barriers of her hauteur, but called forth from her a potent physical response that intensified each time she met him. Just an hour ago at the inn, even not knowing who or what he was, she’d been so tempted to touch his hand, to see if the mere pressure of her fingers against his would elicit another spark like the one that had blazed through her when he took her arm in the churchyard on Sunday. She’d had to wrap her fingers around her mug to resist the urge.

With her emotions still at such a low ebb and her ability to resist his charm so demonstrably weak, she must avoid casting Gabriel Hawksworth in the role of friend. She didn’t think she could bear the crushing disappointment such a naïve hope was almost certain to make her suffer.

Resolutely turning away from the sea, she thrust her hand into the small secret pocket in the lining of her cloak—and felt the stone, still there where someone had put it the night of her disgrace. A bit of clear, polished glass, facetted on one side almost like diamond, smooth but unfinished on the other.

She hadn’t discovered it until several days after that night, but immediately recognized the significance. She, who had been a Diamond of the Ton, now was worthless as glass.

It had to have been placed there by the same someone who had gone to such pains to set up her disgrace in the garden, someone calculating and thorough enough to make sure her ruin was complete, someone who knew her family well enough to gage their reaction.

But who? For the first time since that night, she forced herself to consider events so painful and distressing that until this moment, she’d not been able to bear examining them.

She and Anthony had had a sharp quarrel earlier that day, he pressing her to accept as an engagement gift a heavy, ornate diamond parure that had been in his family for generations. Although supposing in the end she couldn’t refuse, Honoria hadn’t wanted it—especially not after having found a much finer, more delicate and intricately wrought set in the jeweller’s shop. The disagreement led to harsh words: she accusing him of not caring what she preferred, he accusing her of thinking always of her own pleasure, heedless of tradition and the feelings of family.

Still angry that night, she’d looked forward to flirting outrageously at the ball they were both to attend, to punish him for speaking so unkindly. Then Anthony ruined her plans by not being present to become annoyed and jealous. So she’d been relieved—and touched—when a footman brought her a verbal message begging her to meet him in the garden, where he would show her a surprise he knew would make her happy.

Triumphant—just knowing he’d acceded to her wishes and purchased the new diamond set—without further thought, she’d left the ballroom and hurried to the rendezvous point the footman described, a small arbour at the far end of the dark trail leading from the ballroom. And found waiting for her not Anthony bearing gifts, but Lord Vickers Barwick, one of the most notorious and unprincipled rakes of the Ton.

She’d been too shocked in the first moment to speak as Lord Vickers, his eyes glazed with drink, slurred out how excited he was to discover she was interested in a little dalliance. And then he’d reached for her…

Gritting her teeth and squeezing her eyes closed, Honoria shut down the memories while a chill shook her body and nausea clawed up her throat. Enough. Clenching her hands together, she willed the sick feeling away and swiped at the tears that had begun to drip unnoticed down her cheeks.

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