“It is a threat only if you would regret my death.” He breathed unevenly. “Arabella, I beg of you.”

She touched him. Desperate though she had been to hold him off again and again, now she wished only to please him.

It was not what she expected. He moaned his pleasure, which she had thought he must feel, but she felt pleasure deep in her too as she touched him, exploring. He covered her hand with his and showed her what he wanted, moving her hand on him until he released her and aided her with the thrust of his hips instead.

“Is this all you want of me?” she said with a shaky voice.

“Yes— No.” His voice was strained. “God no.”

“Then what?”

“I want you to get on me.” His hands came around her hips. “But first . . .” He tugged the chemise from beneath her behind and dragged it up. Her arms and hair caught in it. He held her still, arms raised, hair spilling everywhere. “Oh, God, duchess.”

“I cannot see your face,” she laughed behind the curtain of her hair, “but you sound pained.”

“Pain, yes.” His hand encompassed her breast, warm and teasing the nipple. “Yes.” Then his mouth was on her, around the nipple, hot and wet. He bit lightly. Pleasure rippled through her.

“Free me.”

He dragged the nightrail off. Her hair fell in cascades. He twined a lock around his hand and by it he drew her to him.

She smiled and it felt glorious to allow herself for this moment to enjoy happiness. “Then you are, after all, the sort of man who will drag a woman to your quarters by her hair?”

“Not when she has already invited me into hers.”

“I did not invite you. You picked the lock.”

“The door was unlocked. You expected me.” His fingers stroked a tress from her brow. “You fight me. But you wanted me to come.”

She took his hand and placed it on her waist, and then with her other hand she found his arousal. She went up onto her knees and he said nothing as she fit herself to him, but he watched her face and his breaths were uneven. It was not the same as she remembered it from the beach after those first moments of pain. He was enormous and she was awkward.

His hand tightened on her waist. “Arabella, let me—”

She pressed her lips to his and he sank his fingers into her hair and held her to him as he kissed her.

“Come, beauty,” he said against her lips. “Open for me. Let me give you what you seek.” The tip of his tongue traced her lower lip, his hand curving around her breast. He stroked a thumb over the nipple and she shimmered like raindrops within. She bore down on him and was stretched, then full, then overcome. There was so much of him. Too much in her body and too much of him in her raw heart.

“You will not break.” He tilted her head back and kissed her throat as she sought breaths. “You were made for this,” he murmured, his mouth hot on her neck, his fingertips trailing down her belly. “For me.”

His thumb slid through the hair on her pubis and stroked her intimate flesh. She heard herself make a sound, a whimpering moan, and could not stop. He caressed her and spoke to her softly, and she pressed to him, desperation surging in her.

“More,” she whispered. “Please.”

He thrust her onto him. She moaned and went onto her knees then took him inside her again. Deep, in the back of her throat and everywhere, he pleasured her. He was solid, his hands strong, and she wanted all of him at once. She held his face in her palms and kissed him and greedily took him farther into her. She wanted more. She wanted him inside every part of her.

When the moment came, he held her, and she did not shatter into pieces or break or fight him. Instead she clung to him and when she would have cried his name, she bit her lips.

His skin glimmered with sweat, his chest rising and falling in heavy breaths. She ran her palms down the contoured muscle to his belly and allowed her fingers to cover the wound so near to where they were joined.

“You lived,” she whispered.

“I was well motivated.” He stroked the hair back from her face and pulled her to him. He kissed her tenderly, gratefully, she thought. Her heart was too full.

She drew away and separated them, and he lay back on the mattress and released a great breath. Cold in her damp skin without his body to warm her, Arabella wrapped the coverlet around her and curled up on her side facing him.

“Have you had what you wanted, Captain?”

His eye was closed but a smile lurked at the corner of his mouth. “I have had what I wanted, little governess.” His voice was a quiet rumble, as though he were already half asleep.

“I am leaving here in the morning.”

“The hell you are.”

“I am.”

“How?” He turned his head then rose onto his elbow to face her. “Will a caravan of wandering Gypsies arrive and steal you away?”

“There will be no stealing away. I will simply leave as I arrived, through the front door, in a carriage.”

He stroked a fingertip along her shoulder, pushing the coverlet down her arm, his gaze following. “I don’t believe you. But if I did, I would not allow it.”

“Will you instruct the servants not to let me go? Will you lock the doors against my departure?”

His nostrils flared like an angry horse. “No.”

“Then I will leave.”

He got off the bed, and pulling his breeches over his tight buttocks and fastening them, moved to the bellpull and snapped it down. “Then you will need sustenance for your journey,” he said in an unremarkable voice, with the same lordly charm he used with the rest of his houseguests. He took up the dressing gown he had draped over a gilded chair and shrugged it over his shoulders. It was black and satin.

She sat up, drawing the bedclothes with her. “Even dressed as a lord you look like a pirate.”

He smiled and went to the door. “If you believe I look like a pirate, then you’ve never seen a real one.”

“Have you known real pirates?”

He went into the corridor, drawing the panel nearly closed behind him. But his speech with the servant he had summoned was sufficient to announce to the household that they were lovers, if the gift of the tiara had not already.

He returned, closed the door, and crossed to the hearth.

“I was eleven years in the navy during wartime,” he said, placing a fresh log on the grate then taking up the fireplace poker. “I have known everyone.”

“You were heir to a dukedom. Why did you go to war?”

He settled in a chair before the restored fire. The scarred side of his face was lit with gold light. “My uncle wed a young bride. I was never expected to be the final heir. In any case, after the Treaty of Paris, I withdrew from the navy.”

“But you did not return to England. And you did not answer my question.”

“I was at Cambridge when my brother escaped his guardian and disappeared into France.”

“France?” In the middle of war against England.

“Though I tried for a year, I could not find him, protect him. I . . .” His brow drew down. “Gavin Stewart was our family’s physician for many years, and a friend. He suggested that I put myself to good use instead of fretting to distraction.” He rubbed a hand over his face, pressing his fingertips momentarily against the scar. “And I am fond of boats.”

“Did you . . .” She had never imagined he had lost someone too. “Did you ever find your brother?”

“He found me. By then I had control of an allowance through the property my father gave me, although not yet my fortune. But my brother was still too young to claim independence from the man who had been our guardian after our father’s death, and our uncle, who was our legal guardian, refused to intervene. So I sent Christos money.”

“You sent money into France? Was that not illegal?”

“And so we return to the subject of pirates.” He grinned but there was little real pleasure in it, and although he sat relaxed, his hands draped over the chair arms were tight.