Page 45 of Captain Jack’s Woman

Abruptly, Kit sat bolt upright. No matter what rationale he gave, Jack had no right to meddle in her affairs. Yet here she was, being taken home like a wayward child who’d been caught watching the adults at play. And she’d let him! What was the matter with her? She’d never let anyone, even Spencer, treat her with such high-handedness.

“You really are an arrogant swine!” she exclaimed.

Jerked from salacious dreams, Jack didn’t trust his ears. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me. If you had any real concern for my welfare, you’d turn Delia around this instant and take me back to the ball. Only now it’s too late,” Kit ended lamely. “There won’t be enough time before the unmasking.”

“Time for what?” Jack was puzzled. If she hadn’t gone to the ball for a lark, what possible reason could she have?

“I wanted to meet someone—to see what he’s like—but you kidnapped me before I got the chance!”

The aggrieved note in Kit’s voice was genuine enough to touch a chord of sympathy. And awaken Jack’s curiosity.

“You were waiting for a man? Who?”

Beneath her breath, Kit swore. Damn! How had that slipped out?

Despite her surge of temper-assisted courage, Kit hadn’t lost her wits. “Never mind—no one you’d know.”

“Try me.”

Kit’s senses pricked. Jack’s deep voice was rapidly developing that tone of command she found particularly difficult to resist. “I assure you he’s someone with whom you’re definitely not on a first-name basis.”

Jack’s attention had focused dramatically. What man had Kit been waiting for and, more importantly, why? What reason could a woman of her ilk have for looking over a man incognito? The answer was so glaringly obvious that Jack wondered why he hadn’t thought of it the instant he’d laid eyes on her in the ballroom. Kit, more than twenty if experience was any guide, had recently returned from London, where doubtless her life had been rather fuller. Particularly with respect to male company. She had no lover at present—a fact he’d bet his entire estate on—and was on the lookout for a local candidate. Obviously, she had someone in mind. Someone other than himself.

Then her preoccupation in the shrubbery flooded his mind with a radiant light. “You were waiting for Lord Hendon.”

At the bald statement, Kit pulled a horrendous face. “What if I was? It’s no concern of yours.”

Hysterical laughter bubbled behind Jack’s lips; manfully, he swallowed it. Christ—this mission was descending into farce! Should he tell her? What if she didn’t believe him? A strong possibility, he had to admit, and one he couldn’t readily overcome. Convincing her might jeopardize his mission. Telling her might jeopardize his mission. Hell! He was going to have to convince her he was a better lover than his reputation made him out to be.

A sudden vision of what his fate might have been, if he hadn’t been previously acquainted with Kit and had remained at the ball, threatened his composure. Reappearing in North Norfolk as himself looked set to be even more dangerous than assuming the guise of a smugglers’ leader. The local ladies were stalking him with a vengeance—on both sides of the blanket. He could have ended with Kit as his mistress and Lady Marchmont’s drab protégé as a wife!

Jack’s eyes narrowed. There was every possibility that scenario would still come to pass, but it would be on his terms, not theirs.

A disgusted snort brought his attention back to the slight figure before him. He felt the warmth radiating from her body, separated from his by a handbreadth. Only by exercising the most severe discipline had he resisted the temptation to pull her back against him, curving her body into his.

“Thanks to you, I’ll probably never get another chance!” Disgruntled, Kit shifted and immediately remembered what was pressing against her back. Her temper overcame her maidenly reticence. “Damn it! Can’t you stop that? Make it go away or something?”

She twisted about to try and get a look at the offending article. Jack’s hands clamped about her shoulders and forcibly restrained her.

There was a distinct edge to his words. “There is a way to make it go away. If you don’t sit still, you’ll be providing it.”

The raw desire in his voice petrified Kit into abject obedience. Inwardly, she railed. What was it about Jack that gave him this strange power over her? Not even the most ardent of London’s rakes had made her feel like mesmerized prey about to be devoured, inch by slow inch. Her skin was alive, nerve endings flickering in fevered anticipation. He was her predator; every time he threatened, she froze. As if immobility could protect her from his strike! Her instinctive response was so illogical, she’d have laughed if she could have eased the knots in her stomach long enough to do so.

Jack stared at the back of Kit’s wig, his frown only partly due to physical discomfort. He could hardly miss the effect his words had had—Kit sat as rigid as a poker, all her alluring warmth gone, an icily disapproving aura cloaking her slender frame. Inwardly, he swore. He wished she’d stop vacillating—first hot, then cold; steamy one minute, frigid the next. Every time he alluded to their inevitable intimacy, she pokered up. Maidenly virtue was certainly not the cause. Which left the irritating conclusion that her strange behavior was her idea of playing vixenish games.

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “A word of advice—if you wish to secure Lord Hendon as your protector”—what a joke—she was going to have him as her protector regardless—“you’d be better served by curbing your hoity ways, dropping your manipulative playacting and relying on your beaux yeux to take the trick.”

Kit’s jaw dropped.

It wasn’t the shock of why he thought she was interested in Lord Hendon that held her in raging silence—after her initial surprise that struck her as exquisitely funny. But that he had the nerve to suggest the effect he had on her was assumed, presumably to attract him, to suggest that she was manipulative, sent her temper into orbit. Her larynx seized; her ringers curled into claws. She’d seen manipulative females aplenty in London—tizzy, dim-witted women with more hair than wit. And she’d laughed over their theatrical and frequently transparent antics with her cousins. To be classed with their kind was the lowest form of insult.

“My manipulative propensities?” she inquired silkily, as soon as she’d regained control of her voice. Her tone would have sent Spencer for the brandy, but Jack had yet to experience her temper unleashed. “That, my good man, is certainly a case of the pot calling the kettle black.”

My good man? Jack’s scowl was as black as the night sky. “What the devil do you mean by that?” Had he said hoity? The damned woman ought to be on the stage. Now she was pulling rank on him like a bloody duchess!

To Kit’s ears, Jack’s growl was pure music. She was spoiling for an argument with him, infuriatingly arrogant oaf that he was. “I mean,” she said, enunciating carefully, “it hasn’t escaped my notice that anytime I’m in danger of winning a point, you wield that…that thing between your legs like a bloody sword of Damocles!”