My Lord and Spymaster

an excerpt      

He cupped her cheek, turning her till he had her whole attention. "Stay with me, Jess. It's cold out there and it's dark and it's raining." In the rookeries, five or six men were waiting for her, hoping for a quiet minute to bash her over the head.

"It is raining." Her topaz-colored gaze was beginning to shift out of focus as the brandy hit.

"And you're drunk as a wheelbarrow. Getting there, anyway."

"I'm drunk?"

"Three sheets to the wind, as we say at sea. Let's finish the job." He tipped up the bottom of her glass and made her drink, hurrying her through the rest of it, getting the medicine into her before she fell asleep. " That's right. Last drop.

"Drunk." She let him have the empty glass. "I can't think anyway, so it probably doesn't make much difference. You would not believe how strange it is inside my head."

"Why don't you relax and enjoy it."

"I don't do that sort of thing. Get drunk, I mean. I'm a very serious person."

She was a serious person in danger of rolling off the bed in a few minutes, all boneless and relaxed.

She watched him set the glass away on the table. "Papa said not to do anything daft. But I think I did." She frowned. "Maybe did. You ever catch fish in a pool, Captain? The way they dart off when you go after them. It's like that, trying to remember. There's something I have to do."

"Let the fish be for a while. You'll remember in the morning." All that brandy in her and she was still rummaging through her mind, worried as a conscientious clerk with a misplaced invoice. It was a stubborn woman he had naked in his bed tonight. But she didn't object when he gathered her together and laid her down on the pillows. Didn't object when he stroked her hair and the back of her neck. He watched her thoughts dissolve like snow melting off a roof. After a while, her fingers uncurled their grip on the blanket. The gold locket slipped to nestle between her breasts. Her truly excellent breasts.

Her eyes were half closed. "You have lots of women, Captain? You look like somebody who's had lots of them." Her voice was dreamy. She was already lost in what he was doing to her face and her neck.

None like you. Never anyone like you. "Not so many. A sailor can go without when he needs to. I don't grab, if that's what you mean. I ask. Tonight I won't even ask. Are you warm enough? I can get another blanket."

"What? Oh, yes. Toast. Be warm in a snowdrift with you doing that to me."

He leaned over her, looking down, admiring the golden woman he had, half asleep, in his bed. She put her hand up between them, not pushing him away, just touching him with sleepy curiosity. Softening. Accepting him. It was the first in a long line of surrenders she'd make, and never realize she was making.