The Jezebel (Taskill Witches 3)

It took him back to a childhood memory he had long forgotten, of his parents sitting this way. Of course, they didn’t have fine crystal or port, but it was the notion of a man and wife either side of a warm hearth at the end of a hard working day that struck him and made him feel rather odd, as if he had been cast into a different life to the one he was currently used to.

I should be thinking of the tides and who is on duty on deck, not what passes between a man and his wife at the end of the day. Such landlocked notions were irrelevant to Roderick Cameron, or should have been.

“Thank you for this evening,” Maisie said, pulling him back from his thoughts.

When he looked at her, he found she had her head cocked on one side, as if she had been watching him.

“You really are a considerate man, aren’t you?”

Was she teasing him now? “I try to be, even though I am not used to a woman’s company or the finer things in life.”

“That much is obvious.” Mischief flickered in her eyes.

Roderick raised his eyebrows.

She blinked at him in a languid, sensual manner.

How could such a simple thing affect him so? He had the wild urge to fling her over his shoulder and cart her off to the bedroom. Something about her made him lose rational thought from time to time. That was dangerous. No man, let alone a man of the sea, could afford to be so thoroughly distracted by a woman that he reacted irrationally. Roderick needed to be more sensible about this arrangement. It was imperative that he forgo his curiosity about her background and focus on his ship and the voyage.

He brooded on that fact awhile and stared into the flames.

When he looked back at her he realized she’d kept studying him from under lowered eyelids, and she had that certain glow about her that she got when they came together to couple.

“When do we have to be back at the ship?”

“Not until after the turn of the tide, at dawn.”

“Oh.” Her eyelids fluttered beguilingly as she thought about it. “Will we stay here at the inn?”

Her question was quite innocently delivered, but he saw that she was thinking on it, and her demeanor was considerably more agreeable than it had been during their meal. Was this a ploy to keep him from asking her more questions? It mattered not, for he knew he shouldn’t care about the woman’s origins.

She arched her neck and leaned toward him.

It quickly stirred his desires, desires that had been simmering steadily all the while. “I have secured a room for the night, one with a decent, roomy bed and a roaring fire.”

“I see.” Her mouth lifted at the corners.

Roderick decided she was a temptress. That part of her, at least, was no mystery. “Does that arrangement suit you, my lady?”

“Most definitely.”

The irony struck him. Now that they were talking of intimacy she was so much more agreeable and forthright. Moreover, she did not attempt to hide her interest, like most maidens might. A Jezebel she was indeed, just as Clyde had proclaimed, for she had cast aside her shame along with her virginity.

Nevertheless, it still rankled that she wouldn’t confide in him. “Yes,” he deliberately drawled, “we do seem to get on so much better in matters of a carnal nature.”

She gave him a quizzical glance. “Beware your sarcasm, sire, or I shall develop a headache.”

Roderick rose to his feet. “I do not intend to give you time to have one.”

Reaching over, he took her by the hand.

“It is a good thing I find your prowess as a lover makes up for your lack of good manners, Captain,” she said as she stood up. Humor shone in her eyes.

Roderick shook his head, not allowing himself to say any more, not with the serving girls hovering by the door, waiting to clear the table. But once he got her alone he would say and do plenty, and none of it would involve good manners.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Does milady need a maid to assist?” The innkeeper looked at the pair of them with barely concealed amusement.