The Sandalwood Princess

Automatically, her hands went out to break free, but they were trapped against his chest, and she was imprisoned in the hard strength of his arms. She looked up, alarmed and confused, only to watch his face blur into darkness as his mouth crashed down on hers.

It was not happening.

Her trapped hands knotted into fists, and she squirmed against the unrelenting snare of his body, only to strike muscle and heat. Shocked to the core, she shuddered and ceased struggling.

She didn’t know what to do. And then she didn’t want to do anything, because the insistent pressure of his mouth eased. The kiss grew gentler, more coaxing... and more dangerous. Far more dangerous, for he tasted of the sea, yet more of himself, and that was sweet and heady like opium. Her lips answered and, like a drug, the taste and scent of him stole through her in a stream of languorous warmth that sapped the strength from her muscles and left longing in its wake.

Her hands opened against his coat, crept up the sea-tinged wool to his shoulders, and on, to curl around his neck. The air was filled with the salt sea, and with the scent of him, of smoke and spicy soap, and she needed into the warmth and the strength of him. It wasn’t happening. It was a dream. She’d dreamt it before.

Helplessly, her muscles answered every light pressure of his hands, turning into each caress as though his touch were music. Mad, sweet music, irresistible. She became a serpent in his arms, a cobra moving to some enchanted flute. Dark and dangerous the spell, too, for at its edges something wild waited.

His fingers tangled in her hair. His tongue, cool and feather light, teased her lips, tempting and tantalising until they parted.

The waiting, wild demon sprang then, and the dream became another world, fierce and dark and hungry. His tongue invaded and demanded, sending fiery shocks through her. Her fingers tightened about his neck, while her body strained against his, and her heart raced so she thought it would burst from her.

His lips left hers to trail teasing kisses upon her brow, then down along the bones of her cheek, and on to her neck and the hollows of her ear, where he lingered to torment until she moaned. Then his mouth found hers again, and drank possessively, while his hands dragged from her shoulders down the length of her body to her waist and hips, moulding her to him.

That was when it crackled within her, the fear. She heard a low, choked cry—her own. Yet it was not happening. It was a dream.

He broke the kiss, but his hands moved to clasp her waist tightly. His breathing was laboured, as hers was. When he spoke, his voice was low, hoarse.

“I really... don’t want... to let you go,” he said, striving for breath between words. “But you are driving me mad and...” His eyes were dark, hot, intent. Damp tendrils clung to his forehead. The hands at her waist gripped harder.

Numbly, she looked about her. Not a dream. Good Gad.

She snatched her hands from his neck.

“Stay with me,” he whispered.

She pushed frantically, then pulled at his fingers, trying to loosen his grip of her waist. “Let me go,” she gasped. “Please. Oh, Lord, please let me go.”

He exhaled a long sigh and his hands released her.

Tears sprang to her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out. “I didn’t mean—oh—” Then she fled.

Philip watched her slip away into the shadows, and willed himself not to pursue her. He couldn’t bring her back. Even the Falcon could not swoop down and make off with this prize. He smiled ruefully. Make off where? He hadn’t any place to take her. What had he thought—that he might ravish her here, on the deck, in some dark corner amid the casks and ropes? Idiot.

He returned to his eternal position at the rail and stared down at the water.

Any lingering doubts he’d entertained had vanished the instant he’d kissed her. She was innocent. Her mouth had told him so. Hers was not the response of a practised seductress-—he’d had enough of that kind to know—but of the child she partly was, utterly untutored in lovemaking.

Shocked, he’d very nearly stopped it as soon as it had begun. Another moment’s struggle, surely, and he’d have released her, for unwilling women were not to his taste. He would have stopped it, certainly, were it not for those confiding hands, creeping up to his neck, and were it not for her ripe, trusting mouth’s willingness to follow his lead. That had quite undone him.

She’d succumbed too quickly, and so sweetly. Her slim, beautiful body had curved so naturally and so warmly to his. He’d wanted to wrap her around him, to lose himself in her erotic innocence, even as he taught her.

Oh, he’d lost himself all right, in needless torment. He knew perfectly well he couldn’t seduce a naive gentlewoman, yet that was exactly what he’d commenced to do. The temptation had been, quite simply, quite completely, irresistible.

Even now, his heartbeats refused to steady. Even now, the taste of her mouth, of her skin, lingered, along with the scent of patchouli and the sweet heat of her slim body. He glanced down at his fingers, white-knuckled, clutching the rail.

He told himself it was but a kiss. A prolonged one, admittedly, but at most no more than a passionate embrace. He’d embraced countless women, Asian as well as European, and bedded scores of them. This painful arousal was simply the result of seven months’ enforced abstinence.

Tomorrow he’d be free of this accursed ship, and of her, and there would be other women. He could buy half a dozen tomorrow, in Portsmouth. He need simply endure this one night, a few hours, and it would be over at last.

Accordingly, since only a few hours remained, the intrepid Falcon headed for the forecasde, with the very sensible intention of drinking them away.

Amanda felt reasonably steady by the time she entered the cabin, though she rested her back against the closed door for a moment.

Mrs. Gales looked up from her needlework. A shadow of concern swept her calm countenance, and she rose.

“Are you ill, my dear?” She crossed the cabin to take Amanda’s arm.

“N-no.”

“You were above?”

“Y-yes. Talking to Mr. Brentick. I thought it best to— to keep him occupied.”

“Poor dear, you must have been quite uneasy.”

“I’m fine,” Amanda said. Her glance flew to the cot, where Bella lay, snoring. “Is she all right?”

“Certainly. It was only a bit of laudanum, after all, and I’m sure she was careful how much she drank.”

“And Padji?”

“He carried her in, men said he was going above,” Mrs. Gales answered, as composedly as though Padji’s carrying in an unconscious Bella were an everyday event. “He did not want to be absent overlong.”

“D-did he get it?”

“I presume so. He was grinning like a naughty boy.”

“Where is it?” Amanda’s legs would support her no longer. Shakily, she lowered herself onto the banquette.

“I don’t know. He only put her on the cot and left, with that smug grin on his face.”

Never one to waste words herself, when action was more efficient, Mrs. Gales quickly found her brandy flask and pressed it into Amanda’s hand. “There’s no more to be done now, my dear,” she said gently, “and no point in worrying. Have a sip. You’ll feel better. Then you must try to get some sleep. We have an anxious morning ahead of us, I daresay.”

Chapter Eleven

Philip did not return to the cabin until shortly before daybreak. Getting dead drunk had taken an unconscionably long time.

He’d scarcely fallen asleep when a cannon blast shot him upright, and twin blasts of pain shot through his eyeballs. He gazed wildly about. Seeing no evidence of destruction, he finally realised that what he’d heard was some inconsiderate brute banging on the door and shouting.

Philip dragged himself from the mattress. An anchor had, apparently, fallen repeatedly upon his head, and his mouth was redolent of low tide. He’d not brought himself to so revolting a state in years.

The knocking and shouting recommenced with renewe

d vigour. Philip staggered to the door and unlocked it.

One of the mates with whom he’d dissipated stood in the passage looking abominably fresh and alert.

“Time to be off,” the mate announced. “Captain’s on fire to be gone, and I better warn you—in his mood he’s not like to give you more than a quarter-hour.”

Philip bit back a profane retort. The commander had not taken yestereve’s last-minute request well. In wartime, East India men customarily stopped at Portsmouth, for they travelled in convoy. England was not at war at the moment, however. The wind having risen briskly, Captain Blayton had adamantly refused to make the unscheduled stop.