Seduced by a Pirate

TEN

Generally speaking, Phoebe ate her meals with the children. She saw no point in dining by herself, and it was much more congenial—if sometimes wearing, given Nanny McGillycuddy’s conversational style—to listen to the children’s chatter. She’d had enough of solitary dining in the first seven years of her marriage.

But Griffin had said he was returning home for supper. She would have a grown-up seated across from her at the dining room table, a rather fascinating idea.

She planned a menu with the cook—three courses instead of her usual two—and instructed the downstairs housemaid to set the table in the dining room. Then she ordered a bath and sat in it for a good forty minutes, trying to calm her mind.

And not succeeding.

Griffin was her husband, and he didn’t want to break off the marriage. She could already tell that what Sir Griffin Barry didn’t want to do, he didn’t do. She could see it in every lineament of his body, in the set of his jaw.

She raised her knee in the bath and watched water roll off her knee and down her leg. It had been one thing to face her wedding night when she was twenty, with the confidence of feeling both delectable and young. She had been utterly certain that her young husband would find her enticing.

There was something smoldering in Griffin’s eyes that told her he still felt that way, but she was no longer so assured.

She soaped her knee for the fourth time. Two thoughts kept chasing themselves around her head: the first was a memory of her mother talking of tearing pain. That didn’t sound any better now than it had fourteen years ago. And the second and more important was that she was old. Practically wizened. Dried up. Over thirty.

It made the blood roar in her ears to even think about that number. On her marriage night her breasts and her waist had been perfect. Now her hips were rounder, and her bosom was larger. Her breasts hadn’t kept the teacup shape they’d had at seventeen.

Griffin, on the other hand, had only improved over the years. He was everything a woman ever dreamed of in the privacy of her own bed. His eyes, shoulders, even thighs, even . . . She had seen what he looked like from behind.

Now he was the delectable one.

She swallowed hard.

Are you ready for me to wash your hair?” her maid asked, jolting her out of that train of thought.

Yes,” she murmured.

An exciting day,” May said, as she poured jasmine soap onto her hands and then began massaging it into Phoebe’s hair.

Yes.”

If you don’t mind the presumption, my lady, Sir Griffin is as handsome . . . well, as handsome as ever a man was! Even Nanny said as how he was fine looking.”

Nanny? Really?”

May laughed. “She said a man with those thighs could father ten children and we’d have to teach you how to plead a sick headache.”

Hush,” Phoebe said, and May quieted, which just meant that Phoebe went back to worrying.

By the time her maid was rinsing her hair, Phoebe had reconciled herself to the fact that her marriage was going to be consummated that very night.

For all Griffin had promised to wait, she wasn’t stupid. Everything about him was strung tight. She was a challenge that he meant to conquer, his feelings all the more acute for the debacle of their wedding night. There was something hungry in his eyes that sent a thrill right down her legs. He craved her.

She felt as if her blood was overheating. She stood up, determined to put on clothes before May noticed that she was trembling slightly.

Then it struck her that she didn’t have any seductive clothes, gowns designed for a man’s appreciation. All of her clothes were retiring, costumes that informed the world that she was not a debauched woman, even though she had no husband.

May handed Phoebe a length of toweling and then turned to the wardrobe. “The blue gown will be just right. I’ll remove the fichu that tucks into the bodice.” Her smile was naughty, which made Phoebe wonder.

Her maid was not married. Phoebe had never seen her smile like that.

The blue gown was made of the lightest of lightweight cottons, so thin as to be transparent, although of course it had an underskirt.

It had an underskirt, because even as she watched, May began ripping the lining away. Too busy pulling out the small stitches, May didn’t even look up at Phoebe’s gasp.

He’s a pirate, my lady. A pirate. You have to make him stay in England. We need a man about the house. You can’t keep a pirate at home by wearing a little cap on your head and pretending you’re as bloodless as a Quaker.”

Anxiety spilled into Phoebe’s stomach again. Even her household didn’t think much of her chances of keeping Griffin interested. Not given that she was an old woman of thirty-four, likely infertile, probably wrinkled in places she had never thought about.

With a silent groan, she straightened her shoulders. If only he’d come home five years ago. Or even four years ago, when she was thirty. Thirty seemed better. Vastly younger than thirty-four.

No corset,” May said, “and no chemise, either.”

Phoebe had never dreamed of such a scandalous way of dressing. She opened her mouth to refuse—and paused. What did she know of these matters? Nothing. Maybe wives seduced their husbands nightly by leaving off their chemises.

What couldn’t be avoided must be endured.

She allowed May to dress her in the remains of a perfectly good gown, without a scrap of underclothing, which made her feel the veriest trollop. And reminded her that she had to inform Griffin about the children’s parentage immediately. The moment he came in the door.

May piled her hair on the top of her head in a disheveled bun, leaving strands to curl around her ears. Then she produced a little box.

What’s that?” Phoebe asked suspiciously.

Kohl,” May said. “We’ll brush it on your eyelashes.”

No.”

But my lady . . . look, I have some lip color as well.”

No.” There was no question in Phoebe’s mind about this. She wouldn’t disguise what she was, and who she was.

Obviously, Griffin intended to sleep with her. But if she didn’t quicken with child after six months, he might well leave. Meanwhile, she wasn’t going to pretend to a youth she no longer possessed.

But at least she would have him first. For a time. Under her anxiety was a kind of brewing excitement. After all, she’d been alone for years. When male eyes met hers on the street, she turned her head instantly. Part of the reason she avoided society was because men, even gentlemen, tended to assume things about a woman whose husband lived overseas. Or, in this case, on the sea.

They assumed she was lustful and lonely, and desperate for marital pleasures. She had never been such, and had received any such advances with disdain.

But now . . . slowly . . . she was realizing that no matter the reason that Griffin wanted to consummate the marriage, it meant that she could try those things. Perhaps she would have a child of her own. Perhaps it wasn’t too late.

May adjusted Phoebe’s necklace and stepped back. Without a fichu tucked into the bodice, her gown barely skimmed her nipples. If she pushed her knee forward, she could clearly see the shape of her thigh.

She began to shake her head, but May overrode her. “This is what you’re wearing, my lady.”

Phoebe frowned. Had she really lost control of her household to the extent that not only Nanny but also May felt free to order her about?

You look beautiful,” her maid said. “Just look at yourself, my lady. Really look.”

Phoebe really looked.

She was beautiful. That is, still beautiful. She had grown up with her father’s confident belief that he could barter her face and dowry against a title. But her mother had never fostered vanity. “The tilt of your nose is nothing to be proud of,” she would say. Phoebe had grown accustomed to ignoring her appearance.

Looking critically at the glass, she could see that while her air of dewy youth had evaporated, there was a kind of sensuality to her lips and her breasts and even the curve of her hip that made up for it.

Yes,” May said. “There you are.” She sounded as smug as a preacher on Sunday afternoon. “You’ll do. That pirate’s a lucky man, and he knows it.”

Phoebe needed to go downstairs and check with Cook, see if the table had been set properly, make sure the children were tucked into bed. But she turned at the door and took a final look at the mirror.

Her father had bought Griffin the first time, but it was up to her this time. She wasn’t bartering herself for a title.

She wanted the body behind the title.

She wanted Griffin at her side, for as long as she could keep him. She wanted a man—Griffin—to look at her with bold hunger, even if he tossed her on the bed, for all the world as if she were a possession rather than a woman.

The air she drew into her lungs felt overheated, bringing with it a swell of agonized longing.

To belong to him. To own him. To caress and explore him.

She had never looked at men’s bodies closely, but somehow she had done so to Griffin. After only an hour or two in his company, she could trace the shape of his chest in her mind, the way it swelled from a narrow waist. The shape of his arse, muscled and powerful and altogether male.

Sensual images shot through her mind. It was as if a dam broke somewhere deep inside and a flood of erotic longings broke free. She could imagine herself caressing all that golden skin. Kissing it. Putting a hand between his legs, where no good woman ever even glanced.

Kneeling before him . . .

She hurried from the room so that May wouldn’t see her face.

All this wild energy couldn’t be normal. Men and women couldn’t walk about feeling this madness racing up their legs.

Now her imagination had broken free, it was offering her image after image. She saw herself running to greet Griffin at the front door. He snatched her into a kiss so fierce that her head bent back against his arm. Their desire was so heady that they sank down in the entry, right there, on the floor, and she pulled him on top of her, shameless and joyful.

She was tempted to slap her own cheek. This was lunacy. As if something like that could happen. What about the children? The servants?

Had she lost her mind? She felt like one of those widows whom the ballads made fun of, the ones who walked about ogling young men.

Yet she didn’t want to ogle young men.

She only wanted one man, one pirate with a tattoo and a limp.

Her husband.