One Night with the Major
Autore
Bronwyn Scott
Letto da
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Capitoli
24
Chapter One
Pavia Honeysett needed a man and she had her sights set on that one in the corner, the one in the navy-and-gold uniform with his back to the wall, perhaps out of a soldier’s habit, his eyes fixed on his ale, but she could tell even at a distance he wasn’t seeing it. His thoughts were far from here.
She studied him from behind the taproom’s kitchen door, amid the chatter of the other dancing girls who would be performing tonight. She took in the breadth of his shoulders, the straightness of his jaw. In a boisterous taproom, eagerly awaiting the night’s entertainment, he remained apart from the group in all ways: in bearing, in appearance, his clean-shaven jaw and golden hair a sharp contrast to the rough-hewn, home-spun male camaraderie around him. He was alone and he was perfect. It had taken her three nights of dancing in the taverns from Yorkshire to London just to find him. Now she only had to reel him in.
Pavia adjusted the gossamer fabric of her dancing veils one last time and swallowed hard. Now that the moment had come, she was nervous. She reminded herself she should feel lucky, not anxious. This was what she wanted—a chance to claim her own freedom. She’d planned for it since the moment the summons to London had arrived at Mrs Finlay’s Academy for Excellent Girls. She’d spent her pin money bribing the Academy grooms for the names of likely taverns where she could dance. This one, the Tiger’s Tooth, on the outskirts of the city, was supposed to be her best chance. It hosted nightly dancing entertainments featuring girls of all sorts of backgrounds from all parts of the British Empire. It had been easy to blend into the colourful milieu of dancers gathered in the kitchen waiting their turns to perform.
Applause erupted from the taproom for a dancer who claimed to be Persian. Pavia doubted the authenticity of that claim, but not the girl’s appeal. Men would not care with breasts like that. Pavia looked down at her own more modest ‘charms’ and hoped they’d be enough. One more girl to go and then it would be her turn. Unless... Unless she lost her nerve and slipped out the back door.
No, she wouldn’t think such things. It had to be tonight, or it would be too late. Tomorrow, she would be in London and under her father’s thumb, a pawn to be used in her father’s bid for social advancement. Pavia’s pulse began to race anxiously with all that meant. She was to be a virgin sacrifice in marriage to the Earl of Wenderly, a man old enough to be her grandfather. Both the men were rich, although her father liked to point out that he was richer by far, but Wenderly had a title and her father, for all the tea in China, quite literally, did not. Her father might be Oliver Honeysett, founding partner of Honeysett and Crooks, the largest importers of English tea, outstripping even the legendary Twinings Company, but he was still a Cit, still nouveau riche, one of the nabobs who’d made his fortune in India. In short, a man who’d worked for his money, a man who could rise no higher in the world without a title and it galled him.
She was to be his way into those lofty ranks of the peerage, the guarantee that if he did not possess a title, by God his grandchildren would. They would be the sons and daughters of an earl. But she didn’t want to marry Wenderly. She wanted something different for her life. She wanted adventure, to see the world, to live among her mother’s people again in India where she could be wanted for herself. The colour of her skin mattered not at all in the palace of her uncle, the Rajah of Sohra. Here in England, it was the only thing that mattered, the one thing men were willing to overlook in exchange for her father’s money or, in Wenderly’s case, her virginity. Wenderly was desperate for it, in fact, and that worried her a great deal, especially coupled as it was with the rumours whispered about him behind lace fans at deportment class. It was common knowledge among the girls at Mrs Finlay’s Academy who were scheduled to come out that no decent woman would have him. Then eyes would slide her way and the girls would nod to one another knowingly. No decent English girl, that was. But the Indian girl would do nicely. The implication was clear. In their minds, to be Indian in England was to be indecent.
Maybe she was being a bit indecent tonight. Pavia shook her filmy veils loose for fullness and laughed softly to herself at the irony. Tonight those English ladies would be right. She meant to lose that virginity Wenderly seemed to prize so much. In exchange, she would gain her freedom and that was worth any price. It was not a decision she’d taken lightly, but rather a decision she’d been forced to after pleading and begging and appealing to her father’s sense of reason failed to produce results. He was set on the match. Not even her mother could sway him. So now Pavia was taking matters into her own hands.
If life had taught her one thing so far, it was that there were no happy ever afters being handed out by handsome princes. If a girl wanted a happy ever after she had to make it for herself, seize it if she had to, invent it out of whole cloth if she must. If she didn’t, someone else, namely her father, would. Then, it would be his happy ending at her expense. That was untenable. Under no circumstance was her happy ever after the purvey of another, especially not a man. Not her father and certainly not the man he’d selected for her to marry. That’s what had happened to her mother—she had been married off to an Englishman and forced to live in an alien culture that had no sympathy for her. Pavia vowed silently once more that such an ending would not be for her.
She fastened the last veil across her face, leaving only her eyes visible as she marked the location of her target. He was the best choice she’d had in the three nights of her journey to London. In the other places her entourage had stopped, the men had been too rough. She might be acting rashly, but she was not without her own cautions. She didn’t want to end up battered, or with a disease, or, worst of all, with a child. At least she could control the latter. She had vinegar sponges waiting back at her own rooms in another inn. The quality of her candidate, however, was not nearly as controllable. Pavia sighed. When she’d designed this plan, she hadn’t realised how complicated it would be. She’d simply wanted to relieve herself of a ridiculously over-valued English inconvenience.
She considered her candidate one last time as the previous dancer finished. Would he be a decent lover? Would it hurt? The girls at school said it did, but they only had hearsay to go on. The women in her uncle’s palace, where sexuality was not nearly as taboo as it was here in England, had told other, more pleasurable stories. Whom did she believe? Perhaps it depended on the lover. This man in the corner looked as if he possessed some honour, but not too much, not enough to make him ask questions, or to make him stay, just enough to keep him from taking extraordinary advantage of her. The way he stared at that ale suggested he was someone who had his own demons to worry about. It also suggested that perhaps the hardest part would be persuading him to take what she was offering.
Pavia bit her lip, considering the option of failure for the first time. In all her imaginings she’d not thought of what would happen if she missed her mark. There was no time to think about that now. She’d fail for certain if she stood here all night. The girl behind her gave her a little nudge. It was her turn. She slipped a pair of tiny cymbals on to her thumbs and forefingers and opened the door. She gave a nod to the fiddler, who moved into a slow tune. It wasn’t Indian, to be sure. Irish, perhaps? She didn’t care, as long as it had a sinuous, haunting melody made for the undulation of hips and the sway of bodies.
She began to dance, slowly, evocatively, drawing all eyes towards her with the ringing, rhythmic click of her cymbals. She worked through the crowd deliberately, gracing a man here, another man there, with the tease of her attentions. She couldn’t be obvious about her target, couldn’t race over to him or it would be too transparent. But it must be him. Only the best would do for Pavia Honeysett.
The last made her smile behind her veils. She’d been raised in wealthy privilege, the only child of a tea merchant. She’d been taught to expect the best. Tonight would be no different. A man reached out for her as she passed. She moved beyond his grip, scolding him by turning her attentions towards another. But she understood the warning. She’d teased them with her glances and swaying hips; they would expect her to deliver on those promises. She’d reached the divide between the milieu of the long trestle tables and the soldier’s table at the wall. He seemed intent on not looking at her, the only man in the room who wasn’t looking. She would change that.
Pavia dropped a veil from the gold-coin belt about her waist, revealing a full glimpse of smooth leg. That got his attention. He was a man, not marble, after all, despite what his chiselled features suggested. She caught his eye and held it—demanded it, actually, with her hips. With a step forward closing the meagre distance between them, she smiled with her eyes, letting him guess at the lush mouth hidden from view beneath the silk draping.
Her candidate was a handsome man up close, golden haired and well kept. A firm mouth went with that strong, straight jaw, topped with sharp blue eyes that matched the strength of him. This was better than she’d hoped for. He’d be moving on, unlikely to linger in London. If she was lucky, he was already on the move to fulfil orders. The world was a big place. They would never see each other again after tonight. But first, she had to entice him and she had only six veils remaining. She couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.
Major Cam Lithgow was not a man who made mistakes, but he was making them in droves tonight. The first mistake was coming down to the taproom, wanting to drown his sorrows in ale, only to discover there was live entertainment. He should have left then. Not leaving was his second mistake. His third was making eye contact with the exotic dancer. His fourth was not looking away. How could he? She was dressed in carefully draped veils that simultaneously revealed and concealed the exquisite body beneath, all held carefully in place by a gold girdle that spanned a slim waist and rested on the delicious curves of her hips, jingling provocatively as those hips swayed their promises.
To his dismay, his body was becoming ‘interested’ in those promises, his mind interested in the dark eyes that held his. He’d not bartered on this when he’d come downstairs to the taproom.
The dancer loosened another veil from her belt with sensual skill, drawing the fabric across her body before letting it pool in his lap in blatant invitation. Behind her there were hoots and catcalls from the deserted crowd. There were growls of disappointment, too. Cam tensed. Jealous, disappointed drunk men were dangerous. Did she understand that? She’d played with them and then turned her back quite literally to choose the one man in the room who was least apt to accept her invitation. They weren’t likely to be very forgiving of the slight. Hell, he could see it now. If he didn’t claim her and take her upstairs, the taproom would brawl over her, competing for the right to be her second choice whether she wanted any of them or not. And he’d end up defending her whether he wanted to or not because a man of honour could do no less.
The dancer leaned backwards an impressive degree, letting her hips undulate in a sinuous, vertical line, like the hypnotic writhe of a cobra, skeins of silky black hair cascading from beneath the veil that hid her face except for the dark, wide, almond-shaped eyes. The man in him was aroused against his better judgement. She righted herself, her hips returning to a horizontal sway, and she reached for him. More precisely, she reached for his sword, pulling it from its sheathe in a lightning snatch before he could react. He’d let his guard down—he’d thought she was reaching for him or for the scarf in his lap. Now he was unarmed in a potentially dangerous environment.
She leaned backwards again and began the undulation, this time balancing the sword on her hip. Cam held his breath, torn between warning her how sharp the blade was and remaining silent for fear that speaking out would ruin her concentration. Miraculously, the sword lay steady. She became a dervish, then, taking the sword in hand and whirling about, a swirl of colours and veils in time to the music. When the music slowed and the whirlwind abated, his sword was balanced atop of her head. The room was alive now, the crowd clapping to the rhythm of her movements and the music; all of it pushing him towards a decision. Save her from the mob, or leave her to her self-imposed fate. He’d not come down here looking for adventure but it seemed adventure had found him anyway.
She turned a fast circle, the sword never slipping from her head and Cam made up his mind. Perhaps his mind had already been made up the moment their eyes had met. Her circle stopped. He rose and held out his hand. Good lord, he didn’t even know if she spoke English. This was madness. But he couldn’t leave her here when it was clear she had no idea of how much danger she might be in from men who might not hesitate to strip those veils from her, who might decide to make a plaything of her for their own amusement, who might not ascribe to the idea that a person was a person no matter the colour of their skin. There were too many ‘mights’ for his taste. Too much to leave to chance.
She dipped him an English curtsy, returned his sword and without a word let him lead her up the stairs. How did this happen to him? How did he find himself in the most unwanted circumstances? This was not an adventure he would have sought for himself. He was probably the only soldier in the British army who didn’t want to be back on English soil. Balaclava had been a bloodbath and he’d been the one to live to tell about it, a prospect so daunting, he couldn’t sleep at night—he still woke up screaming about it. But here he was—back in England and with one more responsibility to carry out when all he wanted was to be back with his troops and a life he understood, a life that pleased him.
At the top of the stairs, he ushered her into his chamber and shut the heavy oak door behind them. Cam leaned his head against the door frame, closing his eyes for a moment of clarity, savouring the coolness of the wood against his brow. Good lord, he had an exotic dancer in his room. His grandfather would die if he knew. Exotic dancers were not part of his grandfather’s plan for him.
Aside from the pleasure that came with the thought of niggling at his grandfather’s limited sensibilities, this was not how Cam had expected the evening to go. He’d gone down to the taproom in the hopes of forgetting everything, to put off his duty one more day. He could have easily ridden on to London tonight before dark, but that would have meant facing his grandfather, playing the returning war hero and the doting suitor to Caroline Beaufort, his intended, a young woman selected by his grandfather as worthy of a Lithgow with her exquisite looks and immaculate pedigree, but a woman who engendered nothing more than polite interest from him.
It was no wonder he loved soldiering. It was full of the adventures he thrived on—new places, new people, new tasks—where there was little time to spend worrying over the delicate concerns of etiquette, while life here in London spread before him like a vast empty wasteland full of useless occupations. Well, maybe it wasn’t quite an empty wasteland just yet. There was still the dancer to deal with. He needed to make it clear to her that she had his protection, that nothing else would occur in this chamber tonight. Despite what his body might have argued, he wasn’t in the mood. His mind was too fixed on the things he’d have to do tomorrow, like telling the Duke of Cowden his son, Cam’s own best friend, Fortis Tresham, wasn’t coming back.
Cam turned from the door, ready to make his pronouncement, and his mouth went dry. His dancer stood before him beautifully naked, her discarded veils at her feet, a tanned goddess come to life with high, bold breasts and a gentle hand over her shy nether pelt, a delicious contradiction of seduction and innocence. Had he really been about to refuse her? His body’s reaction laughed at the prospect, but his conscience pricked. How dare he think of pleasure when Fortis was dead.
He strode towards her, purposefully shrugging out of his coat and draping it about her. ‘You needn’t offer yourself to me. You are safe here.’ The coat was big, effectively hiding her, but it did nothing to dampen his response. With her face revealed, she fulfilled the promise of beauty: wide eyes, a full mouth, a delicate jaw that created a heart-shaped face and hinted at English antecedents.
‘Do you not want me?’ She sloughed off his coat, naked once more, her hands cupping her breasts, lifting them for his inspection.
‘It’s not that.’ Cam was uncharacteristically at a loss for words, he who shouted orders over the chaos of a battlefield. ‘It’s just that you don’t need to feel obliged.’ He’d never taken a woman to bed who felt obligated to be there and he wasn’t going to start now.
She moved towards him, reaching for the stock about his neck and tugging it free, determined to undress him. ‘And if I don’t feel obliged? Would you want me then?’ She smelled like adventure, all citrus and spice, a fragrance of the Far East, a fragrance of happier times, when he and Fortis had served two years for the Crown in India.
Cam swallowed hard. He was starting to lose this fight and maybe he should lose it. Maybe bedding her would help in some way with the grief he carried, a first step back towards living. No, that was ludicrous. He was simply justifying things now to please his body. He put his hands atop hers, stopping them where they worked the buttons of his uniform’s waistcoat. ‘I don’t know who you are. I don’t even know your name.’ He knew only that she was Indian and English, and beautiful.
She pressed a long, slim finger to his lips. ‘No names. It’s best that way, don’t you think?’ He didn’t think. He was starting to not think at all.
