Dangerous Beauty Read online

  Dangerous Beauty

  by

  Tracy Cooper-Posey & Julia Templeton

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2012 Tracy Cooper-Posey & Julia Templeton

  During the night of the annual, prestigious Sweet Pea Ball, two lives are about to be changed completely.

  Natasha is one of the most beautiful women in London. Thanks to Vaughn Wardell, the man she once thought she loved, she has learned not to suffer fools and finds most men arrogant beyond tolerance. Her mother, however, will have her married before the end of this, her third season, no matter what it takes and Natasha will fight her every step of the way.

  Seth Harrow is an uncouth Irish sea captain fresh from the colonies of Australia. He’s dressed as a lord and carries a secret that will tear London society apart. He’s in London for one small task before heading to Ireland. He has no time for giddy debutantes and the hypocrites of society, but must deal with them both to achieve his goal.

  In one watershed night, Seth and Natasha will face hatred, bigotry and soul-searing passion. The outcome will plunge them into a maelstrom of love, life...and death.

  Praise for Dangerous Beauty

  You will fall in love with Natasha and Seth. If you enjoy a well written historical romance, then I recommend you pick up Dangerous Beauty, you won't be disappointed!—Cupid's Library Reviews

  The love story of Natasha and Seth is beautifully written. I could not put this book down.—Coffee Time Romance

  Dangerous Beauty is fantastic—you will struggle to put it down. It is truly historical romance at its finest! Anastasia Black writes books which deserve a place on keeper shelves everywhere!—ECataRomance Reviews

  Dangerous Beauty is a dynamic continuation of Forbidden that you will not want to miss.—Romance Junkies

  I absolutely loved this book. Get it, you’ll love it.—Fallen Angels Reviews

  Dangerous Beauty

  by

  Tracy Cooper-Posey & Julia Templeton

  This is an original publication of Tracy Cooper-Posey & Julia Templeton

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2013 by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Text design by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Cover design by Dar Albert

  Wicked Smart Designs

  http://wickedsmartdesigns.com

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  SECOND EDITION: September 2012

  ISBN 9781927423240 Smashwords Edition

  Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  Templeton, Julia

  Dangerous Beauty/Tracy Cooper-Posey—2nd Ed.

  Dangerous Beauty/Julia Templeton—2nd Ed.

  Romance—Fiction

  Historical– Fiction

  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. 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 to his side.

  “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.

  Harry’s sun-bronzed features and 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.

  “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.

  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. 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, producing 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.

  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.