chapter nineteen

She had had too much to drink. Amanda wasn’t sure where that thought had come from, but it filtered through the golden haze induced by the seemingly innocuous concoction she had been drinking. The realization should have brought shame with it: a lady never allowed herself to become intoxicated. But, she comforted herself, she wasn’t truly drunk. Only a bit—what were the words her father had used?—“on the go.”

It was Matt’s fault, of course. He was sitting across the table from her, idly sipping at a glass of port, his eyes gleaming faintly as he watched her. He had mixed the fruity-tasting beverage she had been consuming, and had said not a word to stop her as she had drunk several glassfuls. Punch, he had called it. She tried to eye Matt sternly, but her eyes now saw two of him. Two Matts. The thought was appalling and, at the same time, so appealing that she giggled.

“You’re drunk,” he said indulgently, his lips crooking into an amused smile as he observed her.

“I am not.” Amanda meant to sound dignified and might have succeeded—if not for the wayward hiccup. Matt’s grin broadened while Amanda scowled at him. He was laughing at her. He always seemed to be laughing at her. For a moment her befuddled brain tried to tell her something, to remind her that lately he had not laughed at all, but she could not quite grasp the memory. But it didn’t matter anyway. This was Matt, her Matt. If she had to get drunk—loathsome word—she could have picked no better companion. He would watch out for her.

“Do you want any more of that pudding?”

Amanda looked down at the remains of the blanc mange and barely repressed a shudder. The sight of it made her stomach queasy. She shook her head and stood up . . . The room seemed to swim around her, and she had to clutch the edge of the table for support. Matt caught her arm, steadying her. Amanda shook her head to try to clear it, and only succeeded in making the room spin harder.

“I feel dizzy,” she said, surprised. Matt now slid his arm around her waist. Amanda leaned thankfully against that supporting arm as he drew her toward him. He was still seated, leaning negligently back in the hard chair he had pushed away from the table. Amanda felt his hard thigh against hers, and then he was pulling her down onto his lap. She curled up against him docilely, enjoying the warm comfort of his body. He felt so hard and strong and male . . . Luxuriously she let her head slip sideways to rest against his shoulder. Sighing, she looked up into his face.

He was looking at her with an expression that was not quite a smile. Amanda studied him, a faint frown knitting her brows. His eyes were more gray than silver as he returned her look, and one thick black eyebrow was tilted up as though in question. He had shaved, leaving his cheeks and jaw smooth and clean-smelling, with just the faintest dark shadow under his skin to remind her of the bristly whiskers that would roughen his face before morning. After his bath he had clearly not bothered to comb his hair. It lay in a blue-black tangle of curls about his forehead and ears. The scar gleamed faintly pale against his bronzed skin. Amanda followed it from his temple to where it ended beside his mouth. That strong, decisive mouth with its slightly fuller lower lip that was parted now, revealing even white teeth as he smiled at her.

“You’re beautiful,” she said gravely, continuing to stare at him. His eyes flickered.

“So are you.” If his voice was just a bit thicker than before, she didn’t notice it. She was too busy staring at that perfectly shaped mouth. She raised her hand to touch it. Beneath her fingers it was warm and surprisingly soft. He kissed her fingers, the gesture gentle. Amanda sighed with contentment, allowing her arms to slip around his neck.

“I do love you,” she said, and her head nestled confidingly against his chest. Beneath her ear she could hear the heavy thud of his heart. She could have listened to the sound all night.

“You shouldn’t say what you don’t mean, Amanda.” Despite the warmth of his arms around her, there was a faint hardness in his voice. Amanda frowned. What had she said? Oh, yes, that she loved him. But he knew that—she had told him so before. Again a niggling memory tugged at the edge of her consciousness, and again it slipped away.

“I do love you,” she repeated for emphasis, tilting her head back against his chest as she stared up at him. Her eyes were like huge, cloudy amethysts as they met his. Her hair, dried now, framed her small face in thick swirls of silk. Against the deep blue of the robe, it gleamed like dark fire. Looking down at her, Matt thought that he had never seen a woman look lovelier, or more sweetly innocent. My red-haired angel, he thought with a pang. Then, remembering her perfidy, he hardened his heart against her. He might have been foolish enough to fall in love with her, but he was certainly not foolish enough to betray it.

“Come, I’ll put you to bed.” He was standing up, lifting her easily in his arms. His plans for the evening had gone awry, but he wasn’t truly sorry. The kind of refined sexual torture he had had in mind for her tonight went against every dictate of his heart. What he wanted to do more than anything was to kiss her breathless, and make love to her until he died of it. But with his heart in its present uncertain state, that was better left undone. There was no telling what he might reveal under the heady influence of wine and passion.

“I thought you were going to make love to me.He had lowered her to the bed, but she continued to cling to his neck, refusing to release him. She was pouting, her mouth compressed in a lovely bee-stung bud that made him ache just to look at it. It cried out to be kissed . . .

“Not tonight, Amanda.” He must be mad, to refuse the one thing he would have sold his soul for. But his emotions were in such a turmoil that he didn’t dare risk it. If he made love to her now—she warm and sweet and pliant, he feeling the way he did—he would be lost for all eternity. She would own him, body and soul. Even if he could somehow arrange it so that he never saw her again, she would be emblazoned in his heart forever.

“Please, Matt. I want you to.” If his blood had not been pulsing through his veins like a scalding tide, he would have laughed at the irony. The very words he had meant to force her to say, with his lips and hands, she had uttered without coercion. She wanted him, finally. And he wanted her. God, he wanted her.

“Let me go, Amanda. You will regret this in the morning.” But his voice was thick, and his attempt to pull back was halfhearted at best. She looked delectable, lying back against the rough-woven blanket that covered his bunk, her hair a glittering nimbus against the brown cloth, her skin startlingly white against the gleaming blue silk of the robe. Through its thin folds he could see the outline of her body clearly. Her breasts strained against the material, seeming to cry out for his touch, her nipples aroused and clearly visible . . .

“Make love to me, Matt.” She was seducing him, this chit of a girl, with her husky voice and luscious body, seducing him with every glance of her violet eyes, every movement of her lips—and he was helpless. He could no more have stopped himself from sitting on the edge of that bunk, from leaning forward and placing his lips against hers, than he could have stopped the pounding of his heart.

As she felt his lips against hers she sighed with satisfaction. Matt drank in the brandy-tinged sweetness of her breath and felt the last vestige of his resistance melt. Angel or devil, whatever she had done, she was his, and he would have her. And keep her.

Amanda accepted his kiss, conscious of a dreamy satisfaction as his mouth slanted with hungry passion across hers. He was no longer fighting her, but giving in to the desire that consumed them both. When his hands opened the robe and slid beneath it, she arched against their touch. She loved the feel of them on her breasts, loved the faint tremor that shook them as he touched her nipples with gentle fingers and then bent his mouth to them. At the touch of that hot, warm mouth, she moaned, and her arms came up to clutch his shoulders. He quivered in response, and Amanda rejoiced in her ability to make him react in such a way. Matt was so tall, so strong, so invincible. Neither deprivation nor torture nor the threat of death had managed to bow that proud black head. Yet now, beneath her hands, he was a trembling supplicant. The realization made her humble, and, at the same time, curiously proud.

The robe was open all the way now, exposing her body to his eyes and touch. Amanda felt no shame, only a fierce need to have him make her totally his. She loved him, she belonged to him. It was right that he should claim her.

He kissed every inch of her skin, from the hollow beneath her ears to the soft instep of her feet. By the time he returned to her lips she was gasping. His mouth closed over hers, taking it with a savage hunger. Her arms locked around his neck, and she clung to him, blind and deaf to everything but her own spiraling desire.

The blue robe was removed and thrown aside. She was naked, but he was still fully dressed. Amanda felt the rough barrier of his clothes between them and writhed against him in silent protest. She wanted him naked, too. He was unbuttoning his shirt, his fingers clumsy, his eyes passionate as he looked down at her lying naked beneath him. Amanda stared into his eyes as her fingers moved to help him. Together they removed his shirt. As he tossed it to the floor, her eyes dropped from his to feast on his broad, muscled shoulders and powerful chest. His body was as beautiful as his face. The thick mat of black hair ran down his chest in a V, inviting her to run her fingers through it. And she did. He caught his breath as her nails scraped against his skin, pausing briefly to flick over the male nipples, which rose in quaking delight. Fascinated at this response that was so much like hers, she remembered how he had kissed her breasts—and lifted her head to press her lips to one of the flat brown nipples in its nest of dark hair.

“God, Amanda.” The words were a groan. His hand tangled in her hair, and he pulled her head away from him to take her mouth in a smothering kiss. Amanda kissed him back wildly, feeling as if she were on fire. She wanted him so much she thought she would go mad.

He pushed her back against the bunk, his hands fumbling with his belt buckle while he continued to kiss her. Amanda’s fingers clutched at his hair, stroked the broad back with its raised scars, dug into the wide shoulders. He tore his mouth away from hers only to jerk off his boots and then his pantaloons. Amanda watched him, her eyes openly admiring. His buttocks were firm and round, totally unlike her own soft posterior. The backs of his thighs and calves were muscled and strong-looking . . . Then he turned around. Her eyes went to the enormous thing that jutted between his legs. It was every bit as fearsome in appearance as before, but instead of being frightened she was intrigued. She wanted to touch it . . .

Standing beside the bunk looking down at her, he towered over her. Amanda half closed her eyes and lifted a tentative hand to touch the part of him that was still strange to her. He flinched as if her touch burned him. Her hand drew quickly away, and her eyes opened wide to stare at him. Had she hurt him? But the groan that issued from between his lips spoke more of pleasure than of pain. Before she could puzzle it out, he was beside her on the bed, one hand capturing hers and guiding it back to him. With his encouragement, she closed her hand around him, entranced as she felt it throb and seem to grow larger beneath her touch.

The feel of her soft little hand hesitantly holding him, learning to stroke and caress him, was both an ecstasy and a torment. Gritting his teeth, Matt tried to hold out, tried to stop himself from losing control as he had every other time he had made love to her. This time he wanted it to be right, for her as well as for him. He wanted her to experience the wonder of love as fully and gloriously as he would. But he couldn’t wait. She was kissing his shoulder, her teeth nipping at his flesh, her hands learning all too quickly to give him pleasure with the motion he had taught her. If she didn’t stop, he would explode in her hand. He groaned, catching her wrist and pulling her hand away from him. Her teeth sank into his shoulder in protest. Suddenly Matt knew he couldn’t bear it any longer. He had to take her now, this instant, or spill his seed ignominiously on the blanket.

He rolled on top of her, his knees parting her thighs, his mouth coming down on hers in a kiss that rocked them both with its intensity. Her legs parted for him automatically, and he was slipping inside, driving home in her softness.

It was glorious. That was Amanda’s last conscious thought as he took her, his hard body weaving a spell of unimagined rapture. Of their own volition, her legs came up to twine about his waist and her arms clung to his neck. Against her breasts she could feel his heart thud as though he were dying. Instinctively she arched her body to meet his thrusts, and her hips began to move in time with his rhythm. The tight little coil of pleasure that began in her belly spread out along her veins and then burst, flooding her with delight. She quivered with the unexpected joy of it, feeling herself caught up in a whirlwind of ecstasy so strong that it swept everything before it. She cried out his name once, twice—and the world went dark.

“I love you. Oh, God, I love you,” Matt groaned against her throat in that final, earth-shattering moment. Then shuddering, he went limp.

He realized what he had said and stiffened, feeling her soft and yielding beneath him, knowing he had betrayed himself utterly. She would know that she had him where she wanted him at last. He hated to move, to face her, but it had to be done. Finally he lifted his head to look warily at her. Her eyes were closed; her lashes lay like thick black fans against her cheeks. He had to fight the cowardly impulse to slink off into the night. But he had to face the consequences of his loss of control.

“Amanda?” he whispered, dreading to see her triumphant smile. She didn’t move, and he frowned and repeated her name. A gentle snore was his answer. She had fallen asleep. He was instinctively affronted. Then he thanked God she had not heard . . .

Matt was gone when Amanda awoke. Sunlight poured through the small porthole, mocking her. With a groan Amanda shut her eyes again, rolling away from the light and dragging the blanket over her head in protest. She felt dreadful her—head hurt and her mouth felt as if it were full of cotton. Then the most dreadful memories chose that moment to flit through her mind. Had she actually done those things? Told Matt she loved him—not once but several times—sat in his lap, kissed him, begged him to make love to her? She groaned as she remembered. He had promised her that she would beg him, and he had been right. But she had never suspected that he meant to get her drunk. That was despicable.

Her memory of the latter part of the evening was far more hazy, for which she should probably be thankful, Amanda thought with a shudder. The impression that was indelibly imprinted on her brain was of a pleasure the likes of which she had never dreamed existed, but exactly how it had been achieved was better not examined too closely. It seemed to her that Matt had been as caught up in the maelstrom of passion as she, but, of course, he would be. Men were like that. He would get pleasure bedding a . . . a duck.

Amanda lay there for some little time longer, wishing that she could die and end it. When that didn’t happen, and the pounding in her head subsided a bit, she decided to get up. If lying abed would cure what ailed her, she would have been well long since. She would wash and dress and go out on deck for air. Perhaps that would make her feel better.

She was sitting on the side of the bunk, stark naked, her hands propped beside her and her feet testing the surface of the floor, when the door opened and Matt walked in. Amanda jumped automatically, but when she saw who it was, she lifted a hand to her head and groaned. That sudden movement had made her head feel as though a fiery nail were being driven through it.

“How do you feel?” Matt eyed her rather warily, she thought, but she was too miserable to puzzle over the look in his eyes. She glared at him.

“Horrible. And it’s all your fault. Beast.”

Some of the wariness left his eyes, and he grinned unsympathetically.

“Now, now, no name-calling. What you’re feeling is the result of too much punch, my girl. Of course, if I’d known you were a secret drinker I wouldn’t have mixed that punch, but how could I have known? From the look of you, you’d never touched a drop of liquor in your life.”

“You know I hadn’t,” Amanda muttered resentfully. Then, glaring at him again, she added, “If you came to gloat, you can just go away again. I feel ghastly enough without your grinning at me.”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“Yes,” Amanda said, and at that moment another pain attacked her head and she moaned.

Matt, still grinning, moved to the table and, picking up one of the bottles that littered it, began to slosh the contents into a glass. After a moment he turned to her, holding out a glass filled with a noxious-looking golden liquid. Amanda looked at it, then at him, with acute distaste.

“Is this the coup de grâce?” She was scowling, a fact that only made the laughter deepen in his eyes. He shook his head, continuing to hold out the glass to her.

“Drink it, Amanda, and I promise that you’ll soon feel better. I speak from experience.”

“I imagine so,” Amanda said sourly, eyeing the glass. Then, with a fatalistic shrug, she took it, downing the contents in a series of quick gulps. This side of death, she didn’t think she could feel any worse, and if it made her feel herself again, she would drink the filthy stuff five times over. But its taste on her tongue made her gag, and for one horrible moment after she swallowed the concoction, she was hideously afraid she would disgrace herself by being sick. Then she was sure of it. Her stomach growled warningly and with one killing look at Matt—he was laughing, the devil—she ran for the chamber pot in the corner and was violently ill.

“You swine,” she said feelingly when she had finished. He was kneeling beside her, wiping her face with a damp cloth.

“Rinse your mouth,” he instructed, passing her a glass of water. Amanda rinsed, spat, and drank the remainder thirstily. She had to admit that she did feel better.

“Come, get dressed. What you need now is some fresh air. And, a little later, breakfast.”

Amanda shuddered.

“You’ll be hungry shortly,” Matt promised, and hauled her to her feet and over to the bunk, where he sat her down and proceeded to dress her as if she were a small child.

Strangely, Amanda did not feel the least embarrassment at his ministrations. She supposed it had something to do with the last vestiges of the stuff she had drunk, but it seemed perfectly natural for him to see her naked, to pull her chemise over her head, to help her into a clean pair of breeches—these were smaller and a much better fit; Amanda surmised that they must belong to Timmy, the cabin boy. When she was in a clean shirt, he ran a comb through her hair, and before she could mutter a grudging thankyou, he had swept her up in his arms and was carrying her from the cabin.

“Don’t think that this makes up for what you did,” Amanda told him resentfully as he crossed to the rail with her and sat her down on a coil of rope so that she could watch the play of sunlight on the smooth surface of the sea.

“What did I do?” He was leaning on the rail less than a foot away, his eyes crinkled against the sun as he looked down at her. Clad in severe black pantaloons and boots, his white shirt unbuttoned to the waist, he looked infuriatingly handsome. Amanda glared at him.

“You know what you did. You got me drunk deliberately so I would . . . beg you.” The last two words were a furious mutter, and her cheeks glowed bright scarlet in embarrassment and rage. She had not meant to refer to what had taken place between them the night before, but shame was eating at her like a worm in an apple, and she had to make it clear to him that only strong drink—and his trickery—had made her behave the way she had.

“I did not get you drunk deliberately.” He looked serious as he met her eyes. “That wasn’t what I had in mind when I told you I’d make you beg. As for last night, you have nothing to be ashamed of, Amanda. That’s the way it’s meant to be between a man and a woman.”

For a moment he looked so much like the earlier Matt, in the cave, that she stared at him wide-eyed. He was being kind to try to set her at ease, and that didn’t accord with the character of the man she had come to know aboard ship. This was the Matt she had grown to love . . . She was overwhelmed with an urge to heal the breach between them, to try once more to convince him of the truth . . .

“Matt, I truly didn’t turn you over to the authorities. Won’t you believe me?” she said softly, rising and coming to stand beside him at the rail. The breeze blew her hair back from her face in a rippling mass of curls, and the sun caught it, bringing out glints of gold in the glorious deep red. Matt stared down at the small face turned up to his, at the perfectly modeled cheekbones and small, straight nose, at the decided chin and deep-rose mouth, at the amethyst eyes that looked up at him so pleadingly. His mouth tightened, and he turned to look out to sea.

“I understand how it happened,” he said stiffly, as Amanda watched the dark profile silhouetted against the halcyon sky and deep blue sea. She felt a quick stirring of hope. “I said cruel things to you that night, and you were still shocked from finding out that lovemaking was not exactly what you’d been expecting. I know why you became angry, and, after having watched you in the throes of several temper tantrums, I understand what happened: you went to the constable and told him where to find me, but later you realized just what you’d done and came to warn me. That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it, on the beach that morning?”

Amanda felt the hope that had been soaring inside her flutter and die. He wasn’t going to believe her, not now, probably never.

“I did come to the beach to warn you, but I hadn’t told anyone—not a living soul—that you were there. Matt, you’re letting your judgment be colored by things that have nothing to do with us. I’m not your mother, and I didn’t betray you.” This last was a calculated gamble, a last, desperate attempt to break through the shell he had set around his heart. Amanda felt him stiffen beside her, saw dark color wash high into his cheekbones. His knuckles were white against the wooden railing as he gripped it hard; then he turned to look at her, his eyes a gleaming silver as cold and remote as the moon.

“Zeke has been telling tales out of school, has he?” His tone was grim. “I must compliment you, Amanda: you are remarkable. You managed to get around Zeke—who hated you before he ever laid eyes on you, by the way—in less than a week. And now? Will you take him to bed, too, so that you can watch while the two of us kill each other?”

The unexpected ferocity of his attack shook Amanda. She blanched, staring up at him disbelievingly while her eyes slowly darkened to huge purple pools. Then, as the full sense of his words penetrated, her mouth tightened and her eyes shot sparks at him. Without a word, she slowly drew back her hand and slapped him hard across the cheek.

“I feel sorry for you,” she said contemptuously as he stared at her, one hand automatically coming up to touch the reddened cheek. Then, turning her back on him, she walked with quiet dignity across the deck to their cabin. She was so angry she was not even aware of the shocked stares of Zeke and the crew as their eyes swung between Matt’s still figure and her own retreating back.