Read Online I Married the Duke by Katharine Ashe - Free Book Online Page A

sailors cupped tins of tea and biscuits in their palms. They nodded. A few nostalgic fools even saluted as he walked by and entered his cabin. He drew open the door to his bedchamber.
    In a chair propped against the wall, Gavin came awake with a start. He shook his head free of slumber. “How much brandy did ye give her, lad? She’s been out cold the nicht.”
    Luc cupped his palm around the back of his stiff neck, remembering her distress at the tavern in Plymouth, knowing her sleeplessness on board. “I think it is entirely possible that she hadn’t slept in days before this.”
    “Aye.” Gavin nodded. “So ye put her to sleep.”
    “It seemed the swiftest solution.”
    Gavin took up his satchel and patted Luc on the shoulder. It was a familiar gesture, banal, and yet Luc felt the affection as though it were the wool blanket that cocooned the woman in his bed.
    “She’s no taken fever. Ye’ve done guid, lad. As ye always do.”
    He stepped back to allow Gavin through the door. Then he entered his bed cabin and sought out her form in the dimness. Miles—the old mother hen—had wrapped her in his own favorite blue wool blanket and tucked it around her neck. Her breaths were deep, her mouth open slightly.
    “When you examined her,” he said over his shoulder, “you touched her face.”
    “Aye.”
    “What did her skin feel like?”
    The Scot’s grin rolled through his words. “Fancy the lass after all?”
    “No, damn you.” The inevitable pause. “Yes.” He shrugged. “She took those children upon herself at no thought to her own disadvantage.” And she was a servant to society debutantes. So he, heir to a dukedom, might as well lose his head over her.
    “Ye’ve got a weakness for a soft cheek, lad.”
    “And you have a weakness for dancing girls. Hang me for my vice and choke on the rope, old friend.”
    Gavin chortled and went across the day cabin. “Ye’ll have to dose her wi’ drink again to settle her belly. Take a dram yerself while yer at it, lad. Ye look like ye coud use it.”
    Luc turned to the sleeping woman.
    Wrapped in the fine wool, she barely made a dent in his cot. He knew she’d taken little to eat aboard; Miles and Joshua had both reported to him. But she looked like she hadn’t eaten well in weeks. In the dimness of dawn stealing in through the shutter, her lips were dry and pale, her cheeks slightly sunken, and her skin less silken than he had been fantasizing, rather more like sailcloth. When she awoke, those brilliant cornflowers would open wide with surprise, or flash with indignation or warm with feeling she could not entirely conceal. But for now only the triangle of orange hair at her brow relieved the severity of her face.
    He acted next purely from desire and without hesitation: he reached over and tugged the linen head covering back.
    A halo of satin fire hugged her skull like a knit cap. Not orange or red. Flame, burning hot toward white. Like polished copper.
    He pulled the covering entirely off, freeing a length of fiery beauty that caught his breath in his throat with awe that sank straight to his groin. There was so much of it . It would reach to her waist when she stood. It was impossible not to imagine her above him, the shining tresses cascading over her bared shoulders and breasts and draped across his chest. Or spread upon white sheets, his hands tangled in her glory as he worked his way into her.
    He stifled the groan rising in his chest. He should move away.
    He went to his knees beside the cot and touched his fingertips to her brow. He had felt the satin before at the nape of her neck. Now he turned his knuckles against her skin, teasing himself only, and drew them through the straight, heavy strands, closing his eye and feeling the caress deep in his body, then deeper.
    It felt good. “Dear God.” Too good .
    Her breath stirred against his skin. “Praying, Captain?”

Chapter 4
    The Servant
    L uc withdrew his hand and sat back on his heels.