Chapter 6

Fury gained the darkened hallway in an instant.

"No, James. It distresses me to shatter your illusions, but you try me."

In a bound he reached the bottom stair, his eyes blazing blue-ice slits.

"Confound and damn you to hell, Fury." At least he'd the common decency to keep his voice low. "Obviously you're not paying enough attention to what I'm saying to you here."

A lesser woman might have quaked. She wasn't a lesser woman. Astonished perhaps. James Flint Blackmore always kept a tight rein on his temper. Perhaps because he never felt passionate enough about anything to lose it, the Calypso aside. This must be one of the first times in his life anyone had denied him anything.

Too bad.

"I see." She tilted her nose a few degrees higher and sailed past him. "Not paying attention? Just because I'm not agreeing with you? Well, I think when it comes to the dunce's cap, your head's a much better fit than mine."

"My head?" His feet pounded so hard up the stairs beside hers, she'd to hold her skirts higher to stop him standing on the hem. "How's that, when your head's the one made of muffin dough?"

"Mixture, James, mixture. And mixture, dough or not, you're not holding any rods over it. Not anymore."

"Over your head? I been halfway over the Caribbean, sweetheart, and let me tell you, that's one position that ain't never been heard of. You, do something I told you? When was this exactly?"

The fury he exuded like a bad smell was astounding. The cheap jibe less so. Pride, a man's most tender part. Flint, the great and mighty, would naturally find it hard to believe any woman could possibly be impervious to his sunny, bountiful charms.

Grasping her skirt tighter, she sailed on. "Now, you know how very vexed you get when you start sounding like a Savannah farm boy instead of the scourge of the Caribbean. But perhaps you haven't been taking yourself them damned fine elocution lessons since you wound up top of the bill at a lil' ole slave auction."

Why she mocked him like this, bringing up things he'd sooner die than admit to, she'd no idea--but then again, why shouldn't she?

"Damn you, Fury, it's little old,' not lil' ole', and well you know it."

"Yes. The old Flint, now there's a man I might conceivably have been frightened of. But this new you? Hmm "

"What I remember, you weren't exactly scared of the old me either."

"First impressions can on occasion be misleading."

Before she could stop him, he lunged for her wrist and she crashed into the metal banister. Remembering last night's unfortunate debacle with Thomas at this self-same spot, she muffled a shriek.

"Then just you tell me if I'm wrong here. About that little business with Celie." He gritted his teeth and tightened his fingers. "And now, your lately shuffled-off-this-mortal-coil husband, lying face-down in a box. In your cellar, Fury."

She made a sterling effort to stand squarely on her own two feet, when actually it was Signor Santa-Rosa's cellar. Butshe was right about something. What Celia had been to him. She'd thought she was, all that time on the Calypso, although he'd always denied it. Now he'd just given it away. Well, well, well.

Taking a breath, she looked at him squarely. "I believe she would have been Lady Celia to you."

The choking sound that issued from the back of his throat told her all she needed to know, except for whether Lady Celia had known him as Captain Flint, scourge of the Caribbean, or the more respectable Captain Blackmoore, who could pass himself off at a governor's dinner table as a legitimate seafaring man--and who could fool an enemy fleet into thinking that was all he was.

"Whatever her name was, Celie or Celia, doesn't make no difference seeing as she's dead." Another grit of his teeth. "Like everyone else who comes into contact with you. You ever think that's why people don't like you?"

People didn't like her? She had known Flint never cared a jot for her. But to hear that it wasn't just him?

In truth she wanted to cry at her own stupidity--after she first excoriated his cheekbones with her nails.

She lunged and he grabbed both her wrists.

"No, docile's hardly the word for you. It never was."

"Why should it damn well be. The things you did to me."

"What things?"

"Oh, please, allow me to spend the night telling you, when I've nothing better to do. But since you're asking, why don't we start with the way you took my virginity?"

"Took it? Hell. You were giving it away."

"So it pleased you to believe."

"Never saw you refusing, sweetheart." His gaze picked over her face. Then he narrowed his eyes seductively. "Leastways " He yanked her closer, so close she could feel the hard press of his body through the enveloping layers of satin and wool. "I'm offering now to get you out this little hole you're in."

"I don't need any shovel of yours for that. I've got myself out of more than one of these in the past seven years, since you left me."

"That's not how it looks to me this time, which is why I've just about had enough of this. Now, sweetheart, you want that heir or not?"

She almost fainted with shock. Straight to the point as ever. So straight she was appalled by what flamed in her blood, how he towered, and how his body scent and strength was pure, beckoning male. She'd only to reach out and sweep the hair back from his face to let him take control, as he always had.

But not only would she rather die than have her guests coming from their chambers to find the cheap, chiseling bastard taking control against the banister or even the wall the stairs, as she had learned last night, were not ideal how could she ever forget the last time he'd issued a similar threat, about her wanting something or not?

Then her trunk, or rather Lady Celia's, had landed with a thud on Fishside Wharf. She wasn't having the Beaumont heir doing the same.

"No. Not particularly. I believe I've said all there is to say on that subject. In fact, you might even say I've changed my mind about all of it. So, get your thieving hands off me now. Thank you."

He huffed out a breath. "Fine." His voice seemed to come from way down in his boots. "If that's what you want. Satisfied?" He held up his hands.

What? My God. That Flint Blackmoore, the scourge of various seas, should accept defeat like a beaten dog too was too perfect. Now she could go back up the stairs, although with her hair hanging over her eyes and her dress in disarray, she probably didn't look half as good as she had coming down them.

"It is. Yes." She summoned her best smile. Serenity was the key to this, after all. "Thank you. It has, of course, been a pleasure seeing you. As ever. Now, if you will also kindly step aside?Thank you so much."

Grasping her skirt, she resumed her ascent of the stairs.

The little smile framing his mouth should only be construed as alarming were this Captain Flint. He wasn't. No, he was only a pitiful excuse. A shadow of his former self.

Besides, had he wanted to raise any roofs, he'd have done it by now. Certainly he wouldn't have let her go. Flint Blackmore wasn't a man to prevaricate.

But after his shabby attempt to blackmail her, there would be no money.

Why should she part with even a half farthing's worth of what she was bound to inherit when she produced the heir? To him?

A quarter's worth would be too great.

Especially as there were no circumstances on the face of this earth in which she could now seriously countenance Malmesbury as the father of the Beaumont heir. Unless he first disposed of his valet? Or she did. No. She needed to rethink this. Fortunately she was near enough the top of the stairs and her bedroom to do so.

Vellagio? Or Southey? It would have to be Southey. Seeing as there was no-one else in the whole of Genoa she had tabs on and she wasn't having the Beaumont heir fathered by a pervert.

"Same here, seeing you, sweetheart." Flint's drawl came from behind her.

What a surprise. As ever he had to have the last word. Well, he was welcome. It was all he was going to get.

"But the acquaintance isn't over yet."

"Really?"

"Nope. Your Grace!"

She froze. How could he yell like that? In a way guaranteed to waken maybe not the dead exactly, but

"Duke Malmesbury! Sir! Your Grace, you anywhere there, sir?"

"What?" A muffled sound came from the Blue Chamber. A damned pity the Blue Chamber stood so close to the top of the stairs. The stairs Flint now bounded up like a moutain goat.

"Stop it, James! You are not to bring them out here!"

"Don't say I didn't warn you. Signor Vella-ghio! Duke Malmesbury! Damn it, what the hell's the other one's name again? You know, I forgot."

It didn't much matter what the other one's name was, as Southey's door flew open first. Malmesbury followed him onto the landing, carrying a candle and wearing a nightshirt and cap. And Vellagio came out of a door further along, stark naked.

"Damn it, Fury." Southey staggered down the stairs toward her. "Amn't I hic the lucky one? Hic. Well, come on come on gel. Come on. Can't guarantee anything right now, but I'll damn well do me best. Hic."

That they should come out here and stand and look expectant, when all she could think about was what Flint was going to tell them, didn't make her groan. It made her consider the marble stairs as a resting place. But she couldn't very well lie there.

What she knew of these men wouldn't outweigh the fact Thomas lay in the cellar and she wasn't Celia Fury Shelton. She was now, anyway, and had been since she had married Thomas. It was just before, during the time Flint knew about, when she hadn't been Celia anything, but plain Fury Fontanelli, and Celia had been like Thomas dead.

Flint smirked down at her. "Should have just tried me the other way, sweetheart. I'm an awful lot safer."

Dear God, it would mean the ruin of everything if he opened his big mouth. She'd meant to secure the future. And now the only way to do that was by taking this man into her bed.

She couldn't. She wouldn't. Her pride and every other part of her rebelled. She'd sooner run. She'd sooner abandon everything.

Yet, she also did this to outfox Lady Margaret, didn't she? Should she give the woman the pleasure of denying her everything, after every agony she had suffered with Thomas, just because of this man? This stranger from her past? Who had done everything to hurt and humiliate her? Who was damned well to blame for the fine mess she was in?

Who did she hate more? Well?

In that instant she made up her mind.

She'd wait to hear what he had to say first.