He nodded. ‘After this, should you change your mind, you will be able to give me a very pointed hint. There are a number of places where a jab or a blow is extremely painful and will win you time to get away. If you will allow me to take you in my arms, like so—’
Dita knew she was still flushed, and it was hard to remember that she was supposed to be fighting and not yielding.
‘Make your fingers stiff and jab here, then raise your knee …’ Her hand and knee hardly made contact before he twisted away, eel-like. ‘You have it to perfection. Now, let’s try again.’ Alistair took her in a firm embrace, turning so his broad shoulders were to the bunk. ‘Try for the solar plexus.’
‘You are holding me too tightly,’ she protested. ‘That isn’t fair!’ It was no longer a game, but she could not have said quite why not. She felt hot and bothered and far too close to him. Her nipples, she could feel, were peaking hard against her bodice, her breathing was all over the place and the wretched man was stroking his fingers down her spine.
‘Rakes don’t play fair, Dita,’ he murmured, bending to nibble her ear. ‘Stop palpitating and think about what I showed you. I have all the time in the world while you decide what to do.’ His tongue traced hot and moist down to the lobe and she jumped as though he had pinched her.
‘You …’ Think, Dita, your hands are free. He said something about ears … Oh my lord, he is sucking my earlobe … She raised her hands, grabbed both Alistair’s ears and twisted. The result was instant.
‘Aagh!’ They stood, a foot apart, glaring at each other, then Alistair began to laugh. ‘Excellent.’ He rubbed his ears with a grimace. ‘You see, there is no point pussyfooting about. If you are serious, then act and put everything you have into it. What you should have done, the moment I released you, was to use your knee. If you had done it hard enough, I would be rolling about on the floor by now and you would be out of the door.’
‘Thank you,’ Dita said. ‘If I ever encounter a wolf, I will know what to do now.’ She still felt unsettled and aroused and simmering beneath that there was anger with herself for feeling that way—and with him for manipulating her so. She turned and opened the door. ‘A wolf, or any other kind of deceiver. Good day, Alistair.’
‘Wait.’ He took her arm and pulled her back into the cabin, pushing the door to with the flat of his other hand. ‘What exactly do you mean by that? Who has been deceiving you?’
‘Why, you, of course. You make love to me and then you lecture me on defending myself against rakes. Are you a lover or a seducer? A friend or is this just a game? You made love to me here before and you know full well you could have ravished me if you had wished it—I had no defences. You caressed me on deck until I was a trembling wreck and you held me in your arms just now and made me melt for a foolish second. You know how to make me react to you, you seem to understand me all too well, but I do not know who you are any more.’
‘I am an awful warning, that is what I am,’ he said with no humour whatsoever. ‘I want, Dita my dear, to make love to you and because I know you are not a virgin I want to take advantage of that. So far, I have had enough self-control not to risk leaving you with child. So, yes, I am a rake and a seducer. And yes, I know I should not make love to you and I know I will try to kill any man who does, because part of me remembers that I grew up defending you. So that makes me a hypocrite as well.’
‘You remember me as a child?’
‘Yes, of course I do! We have discussed this—how could I forget the trouble you got me into, time and again?’
‘I was sixteen when you left. Do you remember me then?’
‘Not really.’ He frowned. ‘I’d been to Oxford and then I was away—London, travelling, staying with friends—for much of the time after that. When I came back you were still too young for parties and balls, so I didn’t see you at those. You had grown up, I can remember that: all eyes and hair and gawky long legs.’
‘We kept bumping into each other, though,’ she reminded him. ‘Out riding and walking, in the grounds. You seemed happy. Excited even.’
His face became expressionless. ‘Oh, yes, I was in wonderful spirits.’
He had been different, she had sensed that. Laughing, light-hearted, even, she could see in retrospect, just a little flirtatious. She had been falling in love with him, all unknowing that that happiness and flirtation had not been for her. Another woman?
‘The last day. The day before you left,’ she persisted. ‘Do you rememb
er … meeting me that day?’
He frowned, troubled. ‘No. I was angry and I was devilish drunk by the evening, that I do know. I woke up with one hell of a hangover. It is all very fuzzy. You were there though, weren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she conceded. ‘And, yes, you were angry and a little drunk.’
‘I am sorry. You obviously went away and left me to it—very wise. I got a lot drunker.’ Alistair turned and began to put the cabin to rights.
He did not remember. He did not recollect her finding him in the garden of Lyndonholt Castle with a bottle in his hand and another at his feet, distracted, both furious over something and desperate with grief. She had pulled him towards the house, worried that he would stumble into the moat, and somehow had towed him up the stairs to his bedchamber. As she had pushed him in through the door he had turned and the pain in his face had torn at her heart. Her friend was hurting. And so she had stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, for comfort. Only she had missed and found his mouth and feelings she had never known flooded through her and she had put her arms around his neck and he had pulled her to him and into the room and.
As she stood there now, all she wanted to do was walk into his arms and turn up her face to his again. He would kiss her, she was certain. She should leave, she knew that. He was no longer a desperate, drunken young man who did not care what he was doing. But there was a question she had to ask, even though she dreaded the answer and knew that if she asked it, things would never be the same again.
‘If you want me so badly,’ she said before she could lose her nerve, ‘why not marry me?’
It rocked Alistair back on his heels. She saw him recoil and found she had bitten her lip. It hurt, but not as much as his reaction.
He recovered in the blink of an eyelid. ‘Is that a proposal?’ he drawled.
‘No, it is a rhetorical question; there is no need to panic. When I marry—if I marry—it will be a love match. I do not have to settle for less.’ She put up her chin and stared back into the cynical amber eyes that watched her. ‘I want you, but I do not love you. Half of the time I do not even like you, as the child I was did.’
‘And there you have it. You want love and emotion and devotion.’ He shrugged. ‘I do not. Love is a fantasy, overrated at best, poison at worst. Those giggling girls on board would tell me they loved me if I gave them the slightest encouragement, and they would convince themselves they meant it, any of them. What they love is my title and my money.