Anastasia Black - Dangerous Beauty.pdf - Angelia Whiting - SilverWitch

DANGEROUS BEAUTY

An Ellora’s Cave Publication, April 2005

Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.

1337 Commerce Drive, #13

Stow, OH 44224

ISBN MS Reader (LIT) ISBN # 1-4199-0207-5

Other available formats (no ISBNs are assigned):

Adobe (PDF), Rocketbook (RB), Mobipocket (PRC) & HTML

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales

is purely coincidental. They are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

Edited by Pamela Cohen .

Cover art by Syneca .

Warning:

The following material contains graphic sexual content meant for mature readers. Dangerous Beauty has

been rated S-ensuous by a minimum of three independent reviewers.

Ellora’s Cave Publishing offers three levels of Romantica™ reading entertainment: S (S-ensuous), E (Erotic),

and X (X-treme).

S- ensuous love scenes are explicit and leave nothing to the imagination.

E- rotic love scenes are explicit, leave nothing to the imagination, and are high in volume per the overall

word count. In addition, some E-rated titles might contain fantasy material that some readers find

objectionable, such as bondage, submission, same sex encounters, forced seductions, and so forth. E-rated

titles are the most graphic titles we carry; it is common, for instance, for an author to use words such as

“fucking”, “cock”, “pussy”, and such within their work of literature.

X- treme titles differ from E-rated titles only in plot premise and storyline execution. Unlike E-rated titles,

stories designated with the letter X tend to contain controversial subject matter not for the faint of heart.

DANGEROUS BEAUTY

Anastasia Black

Chapter One

East End Docklands, London, 1838

A steam tug blew a mournful note, which echoed flatly across the water. Its passage

and the wake of the ship it towed rocked the Artemis where it was tied up at the dock.

The motion told Seth Harrow that he had indeed made it back on board last night. It

also drew attention to his thick head, which began to thump at the motion. He

swallowed dryly, keeping his eyes shut against the daylight filtering through the

portholes of the captain’s cabin, and remained perfectly still upon the mattress, riding

out the subtle rocking of the ship.

With luck, this would be his last day in this stinking city. Last night had

reacquainted him with the vices and venom of the fat, old broad of a town. Tucked

away in fresh, feisty Albany, deep in the colonies, he’d forgotten how the double

standards here could crush a man’s spirits and break his back in all but body. Well, he’d

been reminded, and now he was ready to leave. Just one last piece of business, and he

could break out the sails and head for Ireland.

Home . The thought came with a deep longing, an ache for the familiar. And

whenever he thought of home, he remembered Liam as he had seen him last, sitting in

the courtroom with a stricken expression on his white face as the sentence had been

passed down.

A warm, light hand slipped over his naked hip, and Seth opened his eyes, startled.

He rolled his head to the right, slowly, and found himself staring at a sleepy-eyed

redhead. She lay on her side, and she was smiling a little. He could see a sliver of dark

green eyes showing under her lowered lids. Her hand was stroking his thigh, and his

knees fell apart under her coaxing fingers, as they fluttered against the inside of his

thighs.

A good deal of the previous evening’s activities was restored to his memory then,

and he smiled.

“And a fine mornin’ to ye, too, Duchess,” he said, rolling over to face her.

She smiled more fully, her excellent teeth flashing, and her eyes opened a little

more. “Your Irish is showing, Seth.” Her voice was deep, husky, but with an upperclass

preciseness that had not slipped even when she had been deep in the throes of

orgasmic passion—he remembered that much about her. She was a genuine blue blood.

She had been slumming last night, looking for a raw entertainment that cotillions

and balls could not provide. The duchess had paused at the door of the dockside pub

for a brief moment to lower the hood of her green velvet cloak, pulling off her gloves

and assessing the men in the room. She had seen Seth, sitting on a stool, and had come

straight over.

Dangerous Beauty

“You may buy me a drink, Captain,” she had said, her voice throaty. She had given

him a knowing smile he’d instantly understood. Like a gentleman, he’d stood and

offered her the stool, and sent for another glass of rum.

He looked at her now, at the full breasts that he had played with last night. They

were white in the dim light, tipped with rose-colored nipples that crinkled hard even as

he studied them. “Ye had no objection to my Irish last night, I recall.”

Her hand gripped his engorged and ready cock, and he drew a sharp breath.

“I recall listening to an educated man,” she said. Then she relented, her grip on him

loosening and her hand beginning to stroke with a practiced caress, the fingers sliding

over the ridge of flesh at the tip. They felt soft, maddeningly arousing.

Seth swallowed. He dredged up habits of speech he hadn’t used for years. “It is

quite astonishing how one can be misled by appearances, is it not?” The rounded

pronunciations were an echo of school halls and manorial estates.

“He sounds like a right proper gent, don’t he?” another soft voice said. A small

hand slid over his waist from behind.

Seth swiveled to look over his shoulder. A petite blonde with small breasts was

sitting up behind him. Her hand caressed him.

Annie. Now he remembered all of it. Annie, the duchess’ maid, who shared her

adventurous spirit.

A flash of sense-memory came to him—lying on the bed, arms flung wide, as they

had attacked him with their mouths and hands, the multiple sensations building a swift

explosion of pleasure in him.

He growled and reached for the woman, bringing her over to the same side as the

duchess. She shrieked and giggled as they sprawled together, and the redhead sat up,

too. They both reached for him again. The look on the duchess’ face was one of a

predatory, hungry animal.

That was when the hesitant knock sounded on the door.

Seth frowned. “Go away!”

The knock came again. Firmer this time.

“That’d better be you, Harry, or I’ll have your guts for garters, whoever you are.”

“It’s Harry,” came the answer, muffled.

Seth looked at the duchess and gave a rueful smile. “A moment only,” he assured

her.

While Annie pouted, the redhead fell back against the pillow with an exaggerated

sigh. “A moment only, Seth. My patience will only stretch so far.”

Seth climbed over the duchess and looked around for his trousers, which he found

beneath a pile of stiffened petticoats and a corset. A shirt, one of the tattered ones he

wore at sea, hung on a nail driven into the wall. He threw that on, too. Not bothering to

button it, he cracked open the cabin door.

Anastasia Black

Harry’s sun-bronzed features, and the almond-shaped eyes, peered back at him

through the crack. “There’s a boy here, up on deck. Says he must speak to you. Says he

has a message.”

The news he had been waiting for. Seth nodded, and opened the door enough to

slip through.

Harry craned his head for a glimpse. Seth shut the door firmly and smiled. “You’ll

just frighten them.”

“Two?” Harry said, blinking.

“I’ll wager neither of them has ever seen a Chinaman before.” Seth gave the long

braid hanging between Harry’s shoulder blades a gentle tug and walked up the passage

to the steep steps that climbed to the main deck.

“I ain’t never seen a duchess before, neither,” Harry said, following along behind.

“They’re all the same, undressed.” Seth stepped out onto the deck, taking a lungful

of the thick, damp air. A fog hung about the Artemis , so thick he could barely see the

ship docked next to them. He certainly couldn’t see the far side of the river. It curled

about the deck, thick strands about the rigging, making everything sound flat, muffled.

“Sodden old England… I’d forgotten what a miserable place this could be.” He

looked over at the gangway, where a small boy in ragged pants and dirty shirt stood

clutching the bulwark with a death grip, his eyes wide, staring down at the dirty, oily

water swirling between the sides of the ship and the stone dock. “You, boy,” he said

softly. “Don’t be afraid. Come here.”

The boy visibly swallowed and shuffled forward. He doffed his cap quickly, as if

he’d only just remembered the custom.

“You have a message for me, lad?”

He nodded. He was staring over Seth’s shoulder now, and his eyes grew even

bigger. Seth glanced at Harry standing at his shoulder.

“This is Harry Hang. He won’t hurt you. Give me the message, boy.”

The boy reached inside his shirt and brought out a thick envelope with a red seal on

the back. “’Is eyes are all funny-lookin’.” The boy didn’t take his eyes off Harry as he

held out the envelope.

“I was born in China,” Harry said. “A long, long time ago.”

The boy considered this. Harry’s western speech seemed to reassure him a little,

and give him confidence. “My guv told me about them Chinamen. Ain’t they supposed

to wear funny white pajamas and round pointy hats, and have plaits down their

backs?”

Seth laughed a little as he broke the seal on the letter. “Not Harry. Just the braid,

now.”

Harry turned his head to display the hip-length braid to the boy.

“Why?” the boy asked with innocent directness.

Dangerous Beauty

“So that when I die, God can pull me up to heaven,” Harry explained.

The boy shook his head firmly. “God don’t do that, ‘e makes you take a boat.”

“Like this one?” Harry asked, with a smile.

Seth tuned out their unconventional theology discussion and read the cursive script

on the sheet. He frowned at the news it conveyed.

“You’re to give me tuppence,” the boy said to Seth, nodding at the letter. “’E said

‘e’d put it in that there letter.”

“That he did,” Seth agreed. “Harry, fish two pennies out of the ship’s purse for

him.”

“Aye, Cap’n,” Harry said, and went below.

The boy was given his tuppence and skipped down the gangplank, delighted with

his well-earned treasure trove.

Harry spread his legs, finding his balance on the gently rolling deck, and crossed

his arms. “Good news?” He glanced at the thick, cream-colored sheet of paper in Seth’s

hand.

“In a way.” Seth rubbed his chin, considering the matter, and heard the rasp of a

day’s growth under his fingers. “She’ll be at the annual Sweet Pea Ball this evening.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” Harry said judiciously.

Seth shrugged.

“So why do you look like you’ve bitten into whale blubber?”

“It’s one of those height of the season, oh-you-simply- must -attend events that

everyone on the ton dutifully turns out for and makes silly fools of themselves.”

Harry laughed a little, even as puzzlement drew a furrow between his brows.

Seth took a deep breath and laughed at himself, too. “Harry, you have to see one of

these things to believe them. The women will spend a year’s worth of your wages on

one gown, and they’ll be dressed to within an inch of their lives, squeezed into corsets

and weighed down with jewelry that would keep your six kids eating for five years.

The men…” He shook his head. “The men will wear black broadcloth and satin, and

white shirts with collars so stiff and high you can’t tuck your chin to your chest. When

they get to the ball they will take off their coats and hats and gloves, and they will

immediately put on another pair of gloves.”

Harry stared at him. “Why on earth would they do that?”

“So that when they dance with a lady they will not soil her gown, or her skin, with

their bare fingers.”

Harry thought about that one for a moment, then started laughing. “That’s a good

joke, Seth,” he said between chuckles. “Very good.”

“I’m not joking.” A sigh escaped him. He truly was back in England, land of the

aristocrat.

Anastasia Black

Harry wheezed out another chuckle, and took a breath. “And you’re going to this

thing?” His big barrel chest, powerful with muscles built from hauling wet canvas

across rigging and belaying heavy ropes, bounced up and down, as the paroxysms of

mirth rippled through him.

“ What? ” Seth demanded, spreading his hands wide.

Harry pointed at him, tears squeezing out of his eyes. “You. You will be a hare

amongst rabbits—a big loping, patched, piebald hare.”

Seth smiled a little, looking down at himself. The trousers were acceptable enough,

but his big bare feet, the ripped and stained shirt that was once his best, but now hung

in tatters around his shoulders. His calloused hands sported rope burns, and were a far

cry from the bathed and pampered gentility he intended to move amongst tonight.

“There’s a thing about them you don’t know, Harry. Appearance is everything. If I

look and sound like them, they’ll assume that I am one of them.” The thought reminded

him of the two women he’d left to their own devices below decks, and he stirred,

folding the letter and sliding it into his trousers pocket.

Harry was looking out over the bulwark at the cobblestones on the dock, and the

stone lip. His good humor had faded. “It’s a strange world, indeed.”

Seth recognized Harry’s sudden change in mood. Mild alarm touched him. “Don’t

get all superstitious on me, Harry.” Harry sometimes drew upon his exotic eastern

upbringing, bringing forth snatches of Oriental wisdom that often proved prophetic. “I

go to the ball, I see her, we leave for Ireland. That’s it.”

Harry shook his head a little, studying the swirling fog. “Step off the ship and you

step into a foreign land where nothing makes sense. Strange worlds can be dangerous.”

Seth gave a little laugh and clapped Harry on his broad back. “I grew up amongst

these people, Harry. I’ll be fine. Just fine.”

Seth turned and hurried back down the stairs, and pushed open the cabin door.

He was greeted by the sight of the duchess lying with her eyes closed, soft

whimpers escaping her, as Annie knelt between her thighs, her tongue lapping at her

mistress’ folds. They were fully occupied with each other.

Seth’s cock sprung to immediate attention, hard and ready. He closed the door

softly, removed his shirt, and loosened and dropped his pants as he moved to the end

of the bed. He grasped the hips of the maid and swiftly thrust into her from behind. She

gasped, and her hips pushed back against him, encouraging him. He was reminded yet

again of the previous evening when he had mounted the duchess and she had writhed

against him in pleasure and whispered in his ear, “Fuck me hard, Seth.”

Blue blood. Lower class. They were all the same in the end. The elite weren’t any

better than those they disdained. Everything that had happened in Seth’s life confirmed

it, even this moment of primal pleasure.

He came with a growl of defiance and rage, throwing his head back, his hips and

pelvis thrusting hard against the girl as she wriggled with pleasure.

Dangerous Beauty

As soon as he had caught his breath he escorted both women out of his cabin and

off his ship, into the waiting carriage. He extracted a dollop of satisfaction by ignoring

the buxom Duchess’ drawled protests that he had not taken care of her.

But the satisfaction quickly melted, and the rage burned on.

* * * * *

Natasha glanced at the giant papier-mâché swan floating overhead, as did the other

four hundred and fifty-five guests at the Sweet Pea Ball. Their delight, however, was

probably genuine. They swirled around each other, greeting and gossiping, taking the

measure of each other.

Did these events never change? Just last week she had been at the Abernathy’s

annual ball, an elaborate affair for the daughter of the Duke of Devonshire, where cigars

wrapped in pound notes had been distributed to all the men and heart-shaped

chocolates direct from Belgium were presented to each woman. Natasha released a

heavy sigh and looked out the window.

The lights in the garden below beckoned. Escape . What she wouldn’t give to be a

world away from this place! Or even at the townhouse, tucked in her favorite chair

while reading John Polidori’s The Vampyre . Her mother would be horrified if she

discovered that the headache that had been forcing Natasha to retire to her room early

each evening these last few days had been a ruse that gave her privacy to read the lurid,

shocking novel, and shiver over the deliciously wicked passages.

“Natasha, dear, will you please bring me a glass of punch?” her mother asked,

fanning herself exuberantly with the fan she had purchased just that morning. It had

been the most expensive fan in Madame le Boutelliers’ shop, and absolutely lacking in

good taste. Natasha knew her mother had chosen it deliberately, for Aunt Susannah

had been with them and such an expense, so casually dismissed, was a subtle way of

reminding her sister how much she owed her better-off older sibling. The point had not

been lost on either Susannah or Natasha.

“Hurry,” her mother added, “for I fear this heat shall be the death of me.”

Resisting the urge to roll her eyes at her mother’s dramatics, Natasha nodded and

walked toward a liveried servant in a bright red jacket. The bewigged young man

remained expressionless, though his gaze drifted toward the low décolletage of her

gown. The side of his mouth curved the slightest bit.

Natasha didn’t bother pretending to be shocked. In truth, the servant’s reaction

pleased her. The gown had been the most daring at Madame le Boutelliers’ small

store—a creation of royal blue silk with an extremely tight bodice and scandalously low

neckline that made her full breasts appear larger. Her mother had approved the choice,

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