CHAPTER ONE
FOR FIFTY THOUSAND pounds, Nicholas Warre didn’t give a damn what his bride looked like.
He curled his hand around the jamb of the tavern’s side door, with Malta’s night breeze at his back and a host of raucous Mediterranean drunks shoving their way past him, and glanced at William Jaxbury. “You’re absolutely certain?”
Jaxbury’s gaze leveled on their prize, Lady India Sinclair. His gold earrings glittered in the muted candlelight that spilled through the doorway, and his dark red Barbary turban made him look like a corsair devil. “Recognize that tricorne anywhere,” he said, and ducked quickly out of view on the other side of the doorway. Amusement danced in his eyes, damn him. Always laughing when there wasn’t one bloody thing to laugh at.
Inside the tavern, Nick’s betrothed perched on a stool, deep in conversation with a companion who could only be Miss Millicent Germain. Lady India’s full attention was fixed on something—someone?—across the room. That tricorne blocked her face, and a black waistcoat obscured her figure, but he had a clear view of a shapely leg clad in breeches and a white stocking. Her black buckled shoe tap-tap-tapped the stool’s leg.
“Second thoughts?” Jaxbury asked, eyes gleaming.
“No.” A man didn’t have second thoughts about a bank draft that would finally put an end to his misery. “I shall go in through the main door, while you stay here and wait for my signal.” And then—
Good God.
She’d turned her head, and he found himself staring across the tavern at her profile. Even as he watched, she glanced at something over her shoulder and gave him a quick but full view of her face. His hand constricted around the doorjamb. “Jaxbury, you bloody bastard. You could have warned me she’s got a mouth that’ll have every man in London reaching for his breeches.”
The words scarcely left his tongue before Jaxbury had his fist clenched in Nick’s shirt. “Besmirch Lady India again, and you’ll answer to me.” There was no laughter in those eyes now.
“Did I besmirch her? I could have sworn I merely commented on her beauty.” And beauty was the dead last thing he needed in a wife. He thought of Clarissa—so lovely yet so deceptive—and checked a sudden urge to lay his fist into something. Jaxbury’s jaw, for example.
Even from this distance and dressed like a man, Lady India screamed sensuality. The men in that tavern were either sodomites or blind.
“Let me make one thing clear, Warre.” Jaxbury’s blue eyes glittered like cold sapphires. “Lady India’s a virgin, and whatever else happens, you’ll go easy on her even if I have to stand by the marital bed and watch.”
Nick curled his lip. “Enjoy that, would you?”
Jaxbury’s fist tightened in Nick’s shirt. “Careful, or you may find I’ve changed my mind about this folly.”
“This ‘folly’ does not require your approval.” Enough was enough. Nick pushed Jaxbury away and started forward.
Lady India’s days of wanton adventure were about to come to an abrupt end.
* * *
“FOOL’S ERRAND IS an insulting way to speak of something as profound as my deflowering, Millie.” India took a swig of ale and studied a square-jawed, dark-haired sailor through the crowd. Finally setting foot on Malta was a blessed relief for so many reasons.
“Nothing profound originates in a waterfront tavern,” Millie said.
India felt her foot resume its tapping. The tavern roared with conversations in every language, teemed with whores, barmaids and men who were too drunk to see past her waistcoat and breeches.
But she would make sure one of them saw the truth. Tonight.
Millie gripped her tankard as though she were the one about to invite the carnal knowledge of a Mediterranean stranger. “If you’re smart,” she continued to warn above the din, “you’ll keep your flower intact.”
“Smart is merely another word for prudent, dull and biddable.” And accomplished, well-versed and literate, but this sailor was one person who wouldn’t care that India was none of those things. He laughed at something his hollow-cheeked companion said, revealing an intriguing gold tooth. India leaned across the table toward Millie. “Do you think he’s Egyptian? I think I might like to be deflowered by an Egyptian.”