The Tiger's Bride

Quite suddenly, Sarah’s amusement vanished. By the light of a hanging lantern she recognized a portly man leaning over the tiny, dark-haired woman on his arm. If Sarah wasn’t mistaken, that was The Honorable Mr. Forsythe, Senior Accountant at the East India Company and a deacon of her father’s small congregation! Her lips folded into a tight line. How would she would ever face the man…or his wife…across a church pew again?

Ducking her head to avoid any further compromising sights, Sarah followed her guide down a dim corridor. Almost immediately, the real purpose of the House of the Dancing Blossoms began to impress itself on her consciousness. Female giggles drifted through thin bamboo walls, punctuated by an occasional male grunt and, suddenly, a tortured groan.

Sarah stopped abruptly at the sound. Her first startled thought was to rush to the poor victim’s aid. Before she did so, the groan ended in a long, shuddering sigh, followed almost immediately by a muttered phrase in English that made her blush to the tips of her ears.

“Come!” her guide whispered, beckoning furiously.

Sarah hurried after him, trying without much success to ignore the sounds that emanated from the chambers they passed. By the time the boy opened the door to a small, dimly lit room, she knew her face was as red as the silk banner hanging just inside the door. To her relief, the room was empty. Her nerves jumping, she turned to her escort.

“Cap-i-tan come come, same place?”

Number Five Nephew bobbed his head. “Yes, Big Sister. Every nightee, same same.” He shooed her inside. “You waitee, he come. Then we go, quick quick.”

As the door closed behind her nervous escort, Sarah drew in a deep, steadying breath. She needed to cool her cheeks and compose her thoughts for her imminent meeting with the scandalous Lord Straithe.

According to the gossipmongers, James Kerrick had started down the road to ruin some eight years ago. Then a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, he’d been caught in a most compromising situation with his admiral’s wife. The fact that he’d just been cited for extraordinary heroism in one of the last naval battles of the Napoleonic wars didn’t mitigate his disgrace. In short order, he’d been dismissed from the Navy, ostracized by society, and shunned by a rigidly disapproving older brother. Undaunted, he’d purchased his own ship and charted a course of dissolution and dissipation ever since.

His brother had died some years ago, Sarah had learned, and the cashiered naval officer had become Third Viscount Straithe. His brother had avenged himself on the black sheep who’d disgraced him, however, by selling the family estate to a land-hungry squire just before he died. Straithe now held the title, and nothing else.

It went against Sarah’s grain to turn to such a man for help, but he was her only hope. Unfortunately, he hadn’t shown the least sign of wanting to aid her. He’d ignored her repeated notes requesting his presence at the Mission House on a matter of some urgency. When she’d tried to contact him through his man of business, Straithe had instructed the clerk to palm her off with a donation to the Mission and the excuse that the captain was too busy to concern himself with the affairs of the colony.

Evidently he wasn’t too busy for regular visits to the House of the Dancing Blossoms, Sarah thought in some pique. Well, at least Straithe’s disgusting habits had given her the means to track him down.

Tipping her hat back, she glanced around the small room. The chamber wasn’t particularly well equipped for the serious discussion she needed to have with Straithe. Aside from a low, lacquered table in one corner that held a porcelain teapot, several handle-less cups and a plate of fruit, the only other piece of furniture in the room was the bed. Canopied and enclosed on three sides by curtains painted with scenes that brought the blood rushing to Sarah’s cheeks once more, the massive platform dominated the chamber.

She turned away from its erotic splendor, reminding herself that she was no schoolgirl to be shocked at such vulgar displays. She’d nursed her mama during the childbed fever that eventually claimed her. She’d tended to her brothers and sisters and many of her papa’s flock. She’d seen more sickness and death than many women of her age and class. Nevertheless, she had to fan herself with her sleeve for some moments before she felt composed enough to face the man she’d come to see.

When the door slid open long moments later and he stepped inside, Sarah’s first, uncensored thought was that the phrase “as black as sin” might have been coined to describe his hair. The disordered locks gleamed with a dark luster that caught the lantern light and made her fingers itch to smooth it back from his brow, much as she did Charlie’s when he came to her flushed and panting after a hard game of cricket.

Her second thought was that the bed, as huge as it was, would hardly hold him. Having glimpsed Straithe at a distance once or twice, she knew he towered over most other individuals. Until now, though, she’d never appreciated just how big the man was.

For a wild moment, she wondered how in the world he managed to fold those long legs encased in tight, buff-colored trousers and black boots into the Chinesesized bed. Not that he’d be wearing his boots when he occupied that curtained platform, she reminded herself, then flushed again at the direction of her wayward thoughts. Giving up all hope of controlling what she knew was an unbecoming wash of color, Sarah lifted her chin and waited for him to acknowledge her presence.

He certainly took his time about it.

Slipping the pale, nervous nephew a coin, he slid the door panel shut. Sarah saw him wince when it banged against the door frame. His black brows lowered into a frown, as if the mere sound of the bamboo striking bamboo pained him. When he turned and saw who stood at the foot of the bed, his frown deepened into a decided scowl.

Sarah stiffened as startlingly blue eyes raked her from head to toe. When his gaze lingered far too long on the slope of her bosom, evident even under the loosely fitting blue cotton robe, her hands curled into fists inside the wide sleeves.

His gaze returned to her face at last, and the dangerous look on his face lifted the hairs on the back of Sarah’s neck. She found herself quite unable to break the silence that stretched between them. After a long, tense moment, Straithe shrugged out of his green frock coat and tossed it onto the foot of the bed.

“I take it Mei-Lin is indisposed,” he drawled. “I hope you know her repertoire. I’ve developed a decided partiality for her version of the Fluttering Butterfly.”

Sarah wet her lips. Obviously, Straithe was not at all pleased to find someone other than his chosen paramour awaiting him in this decadent chamber. Before she could respond, he lifted a brow in mocking inquiry.

“Perhaps you have your own specialty?”

Sarah shook herself out of her uncharacteristic timidity. He was only a man, after all. There was no reason for her flesh to raise into goose bumps at the mere sound of his voice. Deciding to let her actions speak for her, she drew herself up to her full, if not particularly impressive, height and tugged off the concealing straw hat.

As she’d known it would, her hair drew his eyes like a lodestone draws iron filings. Sarah realized that the heavy mass must be frizzing in its usual undisciplined manner all over her head. The humidity of Macao’s summers defied her every attempt to subdue the stubborn mass. An undistinguished color somewhere between brick and ginger, it was hot, heavy, and the bane of her existence. One of the banes, she amended, remembering her father. At the thought of The Reverend Mr. Abernathy, she lifted her chin.

“I’ve come to speak with you, Lord Straithe.”

“Have you, Miss Abernathy?”

The fact that he knew her name took some of the starch out of Sarah’s spine. It was one thing for her to recognize the rogue who caused a veritable storm of gossip whenever his ship appeared in the bay. It was something else again for the dissipated lord to recognize her.

“How do you know who I am?” she asked, curiosity overcoming her nervousness at his rather sinister expression.

“Why shouldn’t I know you? You appear to know me.”

“I hardly think the one leads to the other.”

“Does it not, Miss Abernathy?”

Sarah stiffened at the mockery in his deep voice. Gathering her dignity, she met his sardonic look with a steady one of her own. “Macao is a small community. It would be strange indeed for me not to recognize someone of your reputation.”

That black brow went up another notch.

“And it would be stranger still,” she continued, “not to notice someone of your…generous…proportions. Which explains how I know you, my lord. Now perhaps you’ll explain how it is that you recognize me?”

The saturnine expression on his face deepened. One corner of his mouth curled downward as he crossed both arms, straining the shoulder seams of his linen shirt.

“As you say, Macao is indeed a small community. There aren’t more than a handful of Englishwomen in residence. It would be difficult for any man not to notice someone of your…generous…proportions.”

Sarah didn’t care for the way he’d turned her words back on her. She’d never enjoyed anything close to Abigail’s sylphlike slenderness, but until this moment she hadn’t considered herself more than well-boned. She soon realized, however, that Lord Straithe considered only a particular portion of her anatomy generous. His blue eyes traveled once again down her throat to her bosom and stayed there for a thoroughly unnerving length of time.

Heat surged through Sarah’s cheeks with a vengeance. The urge to cross her arms over her chest and shield herself from Straithe’s inspection battled with an equally compelling urge to smack his face.

These very proper impulses gave way almost immediately, however, to the very improper one that frequently overtook Sarah at the most inopportune times. After a brief struggle, her sense of the absurd won out over other, more violent emotions. Lifting rueful brown eyes to the blue ones watching her with such lazy menace, Sarah gave a low, reluctant chuckle.

“Touché, Lord Straithe. Or, as my brother Harry would say, a neat riposte.”

Chapter Two

At the sound of her low, musical chuckle, Jamie Kerrick felt his jaw tighten ominously. He was in no mood for laughter.

“You have a damned peculiar sense of humor, Miss Abernathy,” he growled.

She nodded. “I fear you’re right. I’ve been told on more than one occasion that it’s my worst fault Or one of the worst,” she amended with a small smile.

Jamie glared at her, unable to comprehend her levity. If the truth were told, he was having difficulty comprehending much of anything at this moment. His temples pounded from cup after cup of syrupy-sweet plum wine and his temper tugged at a short rein from hours of fruitless negotiation with the mandarin who controlled the port. More to the point, his loins ached in anticipation of what normally occurred in this chamber.

From the instant he’d turned and discovered that the woman waiting for him wasn’t his usual companion, his tenuous hold on his temper had grown more uncertain with each passing moment.

He’d identified her immediately, of course. There weren’t many young Englishwomen in Macao with her generous physical endowments, and damned few who’d have the audacity to track him down to the House of the Dancing Blossoms. She was certainly her father’s daughter, Jamie thought sourly.

He’d met The Reverend Mr. Abernathy briefly the last time he was in port, just before his first mate pitched the missionary overboard. The crew of the Phoenix hadn’t taken kindly to the wild-eyed zealot who’d stormed aboard and tried to point out the error of their admittedly loose ways. Especially since they’d just completed a rough, three-month voyage and were far more interested in boat girls than baptisms.

Jamie had glimpsed the man’s daughter for the first time just a few days ago. She’d been taking the air on the Praya Grande with a lively young lad at the time. At first he’d mistaken her for a governess, given her dowdy dress and sturdy, no-nonsense walking boots. But even the unadorned green gown couldn’t disguise her noble feminine attributes. A man would have to be blind or dead from the neck down not to appreciate that prominent bosom, and Jamie was neither. The information that she was the missionary’s spinster daughter had quickly killed his incipient interest, however. He much preferred willing, experienced matrons or the delightful residents of the House of the Dancing Blossoms to dedicated, desiccated virgins.

Seeing her now at close quarters, Jamie wondered if he should have pursued his initial interest. Miss Abernathy possessed a mouth as full and generous as a man could wish for, a slender nose, and eyes that looked out on the world with a disconcerting directness. Fringed by thick, black lashes, their brown irises flecked with gold, they reminded Jamie of fine sherry poured from a crystal decanter. At this moment, they glowed with the remnants of her surprising, irritating, and wholly unexpected laughter.

“I can think of worse faults than humor, Miss Abernathy,” he said slowly, drawn despite himself by her lively countenance.

“Not for a missionary’s daughter.”

“But then you’re a most unusual missionary’s daughter,” he retorted.

Her mouth quirked. “And are you acquainted with enough of us to have any yardstick by which to measure, Lord Straithe?”

The pert response took Jamie aback. “A damned unusual missionary’s daughter,” he muttered, as much to himself as to her.

“Well, yes,” she answered, her smile fading at his uncivil tone. “I suppose I am or I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

Tired of word games, Jamie decided it was time to rid himself of this audacious female and summon the delectable Mei-Lin to soothe his aching temples. Among other parts.

“I assume your presence has something to do with the notes you sent me, and not any desire to learn the intricacies of the Fluttering Butterfly.”

“The fluttering…?”

With a mocking grin, he gestured to one of the painted panels decorating the bed.

A wave of color washed up her neck. Lifting her chin, she glared at him. “Of course not!”

Prompted as much by his pounding, swirling senses as by the way she stuck her nose in the air, Jamie couldn’t resist taunting her just a bit.

“You might find it enlightening,” he suggested provocatively.

She pursed her lips, looking remarkably like the governess he’d previously thought her. “It’s no use trying to embarrass me, Lord Straithe. I’m well past the age of missishness, but I do wish you would refrain from any more suggestive, ill-bred innuendoes.”

Jamie took a perverse satisfaction in her prim, disapproving expression. The laughter that had so irritated him was completely gone from her eyes now. He refused to admit that he felt its loss.

“If you will meet with men in brothels, you must learn to accustom yourself to far worse than suggestive innuendoes.”

He strolled forward, intending to shock her and send her on her way. Lifting one hand, he ran a careless knuckle down her heat-stained cheek. The soft, creamy texture of her skin surprised him almost as much as his touch startled her.

She took a hasty step back. When she discovered that the bed blocked any further retreat, consternation flooded her expressive eyes.

“Lord Straithe! I must insist that you refrain from such…such…”

“Such intimacies?” he murmured, beginning to enjoy his game. “No, I think not.”

Her eyes widened at his deliberate response, and she tried to edge sideways. Jamie planted one hand against the carved teak bedpost, blocking her escape. He leaned forward until his lower chest brushed the enticing mounds of her breasts. Her very generous breasts. The contact sent St. Elmo’s Fire dancing along his nerves and heated blood still warm from several cups of plum wine. Curling one finger under her chin, he lifted her face to his.

“Women who wait for a man in a room such as this, Miss Abernathy, must live with the consequences.”

The low words, half lazy threat and half challenge, hung between them. For endless moments her golden brown eyes held his. Then she gave her head a little shake, as if to clear it.

“You know very well why I’m here, Lord Straithe.”

“Do I?” he murmured, leaning down to nuzzle the springy curls at her temple. The faint scent of chamomile soap filled his nostrils, so different from the heavy mixture of jasmine and musk that usually assaulted his senses in this chamber.

She jerked her head away. “I do wish you would cease this ridiculous behavior. You must know that I only came here because you wouldn’t answer my summons to the Mission House.”

“At this point, Miss Abernathy, I don’t particularly care why you came.”

She put up both hands to push at his chest.

Once, James Kerrick had possessed a conscience that might have made him draw back at this point. But he’d long since put behind him the ideals of his youth where women were concerned. Moreover, he’d learned to read their contradictory signals all too well. A token resistance. A flutter of lashes over eyes that affirmed what soft lips denied. A trembling, breathless sigh that signaled surrender. All sent their own silent message.

Jamie hid a smile. The missionary’s daughter was most definitely trembling. He could feel the vibrations from his chest all the way down to his toes. With an ease born of long practice, he bent and captured her mouth with his.

She tasted like sweet, warm honey, he thought in some surprise, before a combination of wine and reckless hunger banished all rational thought. Wrapping an arm around her waist, Jamie dragged her up against his chest. Her lush breasts pressed into his shirt. Her breath puffed out with a little sound that might have been a gasp or a sigh. With smug male assurance, Jamie decided it was a sigh.

He widened his stance, bending her back over his arm so that she had to cling to him to keep from tumbling onto the bed. A wild, pounding need rose in him, made fiercer by the way she twisted against the hardening bulge in his trousers. With the unerring skill of an experienced and generally considerate rake, Jamie rubbed his upper body against hers. He knew that the pleasure shooting through him from the friction would generate a similar sensation in the sensitive tips of her breasts.

It did.

Jamie felt hard little pebbles rise beneath her blue cotton robe. His muscles quivered with the need to lay the woman on the bed, to tug off her tunic and bare those rigid points to his touch and his taste.

As he lifted his head and stared down at her red, swollen lips, a faint echo of a long-forgotten code of honor sounded in the recesses of his mind. Jamie ignored it without any difficulty. Releasing her, he stepped back to rid himself of his shirt.

“If you’re quite finished, Lord Straithe, I wish you would compose yourself so we may proceed with the matter that brought me here.”

Jamie’s hand stilled on the ties of his shirt. He stared at her, sure that the brisk, no-nonsense voice couldn’t have come from those well-kissed lips.

It had. With an audible sniff, she tugged at the hem of her blue robe and settled it firmly around her hips.

“Really, my lord, you’ve wasted far too much of my time with this foolish attempt to scare me off.”

It took a moment for Jamie to remember that scaring this female off had been his original intention when he swept her into his arms a few moments ago. Somehow he’d forgotten that in the course of discovering what a delectable armful she was.

“Do sit down.”

“See here, Miss Ab—”

“At once, if you please!”

Jamie blinked. After years of captaining a crew composed of the most rowdy riffraff ever collected on one ship, he was more accustomed to giving commands than to being commanded. By anyone. That the determined Miss Abernathy would stand there and issue him orders in that schoolmarmish tone of voice astounded him. His temples pounding in earnest now, his blood still hot and heavy, Jamie debated whether to comply with her extraordinary order or toss the contrary female onto her back.

Sarah hid tightly clenched fists in the folds of her voluminous sleeves, praying that the black-haired rogue towering over her couldn’t see what effort it cost her to inject just that combination of exasperation and disapproval into her voice. Not by so much as a flicker of an eyelash did she betray the fact that his kiss had sent a rush of heat to every one of her extremities.

To her infinite relief—and secret, shameful disappointment—Straithe slowly lowered his long frame to the edge of the bed. The rope springs creaked and groaned under his weight.

“All right, Miss Abernathy, I’m sitting.”

Sarah let out a long, shallow breath. It still trembled on her lips when Straithe smiled at her evilly.

“In approximately ten seconds, however, I’m going to be lying. Unless you wish to lie beside me, or under me, you’d best state your business and be gone in exactly that amount of time.”

“Ten seconds is quite enough,” she responded crisply, and plunged into the purpose of her clandestine visit. “I know that you plan to run cargo up the China coast in violation of both the East India Company’s restrictions and the Emperor’s edicts. I wish to go with you.”

He stared at her as though she’d suddenly sprouted horns.

“It’s a matter of some urgency, Lord Straithe. My father made a secret visit to the mandarin who governs Fukien. We must find him and bring him home immediately.”

His answer, short and succinct, brought Sarah’s chin up.

“Don’t be vulgar,” she admonished tartly.

“I’m going to be more than vulgar, Miss Abernathy,” he responded, rising slowly. “I’m going to—”

“In exchange for your assistance,” she interrupted, “I’ll secure you the services of a pilot.”

That caught his attention, she saw with grim satisfaction. He froze just a few paces from her, his blue eyes narrowing. For the first time since she’d entered this chamber, Sarah felt a measure of her customary confidence return.

“How the devil did you know I needed a pilot?”

“I do wish you would refrain from using such language in my presence.”

A low, strangled sound rose in his throat.

“Really, Lord Straithe, you needn’t growl at me like that. I’d like to conduct our business with some semblance of dignity.”

“We have no business.”

“Of course we do. My sources tell me that you’ve not been able to hire the services of a pilot to land your goods.” Her sources being Cook’s redoubtable and quite extensive network of blood relatives, in-laws and compatriots, of course. “Nor will you be able to do so.”

“It that so?”

“Yes, that’s so. You should know, sir, that word of your past smuggling activities has reached even the Celestial City. The Emperor sent a message sealed with his own personal chop to His Excellency, Lord Wu Ping-chien. He wants a halt to all illegal trading in general, and yours in particular. The decree has circulated throughout Mong Ha that anyone who guides the Phoenix to any port other than Canton will lose his head.”

Jamie stared down at her, his mind working furiously. So that was why he’d been kept dangling for the past three days. Why the mandarin in charge of ports had smiled and nodded and accepted the customary bribes with a gracious wave of his hand, promising all but providing nothing except plum wine. The wily old bastard!

Well, despite the Emperor’s edict, Jamie had no intention of sailing upriver to Canton. Other ship captains may dutifully load and unload their cargoes there, under the watchful eye of the East India Company, but not Jamie. He’d been his own man too long to bow to the authority of a bunch of damned clerks.