‘Give over, Emma.’ His mouth was close to her ear, whispering his decadent suggestion, the feel of his body intoxicating as she arched into him, giving him full access to her neck, letting him trail kisses up its length to her earlobe. She let his teeth nip the tender flesh, his breath feathering against her ear. She couldn’t give over any more without giving over entirely and that would be foolish. She knew what this was. The game of seduction he’d begun on the bluff was adding another delicious layer.
Tonight she seemed helpless to resist, even knowing better. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe it was best to get this first initial contact out of the way, remove all the anticipation and curiosity that often motivates first kisses. And perhaps she should play a little after all? She wouldn’t know what Ren intended if she didn’t let him advance. At least that’s what she told herself as his mouth closed over hers, his tongue running over the seam of her lips. She gave him entrance, her own tongue eager to duel, eager to taste.
Surely, there could be no harm in letting her guard down just for a moment. She had been fighting for so long, been on constant alert to the hidden agendas of others. Ren was no threat to her forty-nine per cent, he already held the majority and she knew what he was playing for. His agenda was not nearly as secretive as those who’d come for the funeral. They’d come to assess the spoils, to assess how they could best use her for their own advancement. But Ren’s agenda was clear even if she didn’t agree with it.
Ren’s hands were at her waist, strong and firm. It would be a very little thing indeed, only a matter of inches, to raise her hands to those broad shoulders. It didn’t have to mean anything, just a few moments of freedom, a few moments for herself. That decided it.
Emma slid into his arms, revelling in the feel of his mouth, the caress of his tongue as it claimed hers with the confidence of an expert lover, a man sure of his reception, her mouth drinking him in as much as he drank her. He tasted faintly of dinner’s wine, smelled of vanilla and clean, healthy male.
Her body moved against him of its own accord. This was a kiss that demanded full participation, not just mouths but bodies. She could feel the heat of him, the masculine strength of him where their bodies met, the power of his thighs where they pressed against her skirts, his body fulfilling the promises it had alluded to on the bluff. It was a potent signal that here was a man who understood pleasure was best when shared. Here was a man who would not seek pleasure only for himself. It was also a signal that this had gone too far. This was only to have been the experiment of a moment.
Emma broke the kiss with a little shake of her head. ‘We have to stop.’ Her voice sounded breathless to her own ears.
‘Why?’ Ren rested his forehead against hers, his eyes dark and dancing.
It was hard to think of a reason with him so close. ‘We hardly know each other,’ she said softly. Even that was a lie. She knew enough about him to know this was the road to no good.
‘I think you underestimate how much kissing can tell you about a person, even strangers.’ Ren gave her a wicked grin in the gathering darkness. He had one arm braced against the wall over her head, his body still indecently close to hers, giving her no quarter. ‘For instance, you’re an extraordinarily passionate woman. You do not kiss only with your mouth, but with your hips, your arms, with all you have.’ His free hand had dropped to her waist, his thumb drawing lazy circles low on her hip, pressing firmly, erotically, through the fabric of her gown. ‘You deserve a lover who is worthy of your passion.’ His mouth was at her neck again, his implication blatant.
‘You think you are that lover?’ Emma fought to sound aloof when her body was surging with desire. Never had she’d been so overtly pursued and she found the honesty of that pursuit heady in the extreme. She was passionate, yes. An easy conquest? No.
‘I could be, Emma. You’ve been alone too long.’ His eyes lingered on her lips. ‘I’ve issued a bold invitation, nothing more. The rest is up to you.’ Then he was gone, levering his weight off the door frame and slipping out into the night, the Caribbean darkness swallowing him entirely the moment he stepped beyond the reach of the lamplight.
Emma stared after him, thoughts forming, disintegrating and reforming in the wake of his departure. Gridley’s aggressive visit today had reshaped her perception of what Ren could mean to her. Instead of seeing him as a second antagonist to fight, he could be an ally given the right incentive.
Ren could stand between her and Gridley by virtue of being the majority shareholder. And he would. He’d demonstrated as much already. But for how long? What if Ren decided to sell in the future, or what if Ren returned to London? How could she entice him to stay?
What a difference a day made. Initially, selling or leaving were things she’d favoured in order to maintain her independence. But she’d underestimated Gridley. If Gridley had told Ren he meant to push his suit, more trouble than she’d realised was brewing. Being married to Gridley not only put Sugarland under his control, but it put her under his control as well.
This was her greater fear. Having been under a man’s control before, the experience did not recommend itself as worth repeating. Emma closed her eyes, pushing memories of Thompson Hunt and his cruelties to the back of her mind. Whatever Thompson Hunt had done, she had no doubts Arthur Gridley would be worse.
Thompson Hunt had been a selfish con artist with a malicious streak, nothing more. Arthur Gridley was a sadist and, in her opinion, a murderer. Those were two claims no one would believe if she made them as his wife, assuming she lived long enough to make them at all. She was certain their marriage would be a short one, just long enough for him to ensure Sugarland was his at last.
Emma opened her eyes and blew out a breath, refocusing her thoughts on the present. She needed Ren to stay, perhaps in a more permanent capacity than majority shareholder. How to ensure that, especially if he ever learned Sugarland wasn’t as solvent as perhaps he’d been led to believe? Did she dare to risk with him what she would not risk with Gridley? Marriage was the most permanent bond she could think of.
But even then, marriage wouldn’t prevent Ren from leaving her and sailing back to London, especially if it was an empty marriage done for convenience. It didn’t have to be empty. If she could give him a passion to stay for, a warm bed he’d be reluctant to leave... He was a man unafraid of passion, of his own sexuality. Tonight had proven she could rouse those passions, ignite them. Her past proved sex could be a powerful weapon. It certainly had been when wielded against her. She would never stoop to Thompson Hunt’s level, but she would fight with all she had.
Emma twisted a strand of hair that had come loose, an idea coming hard and fast. What had she thought earlier? A woman could do anything a man could do... Men seduced women out of inheritances all the time. Ren might even be trying to do that very thing. He had made it clear he couldn’t be pushed away. Maybe he could be pulled in. Emma tapped a thoughtful finger against her chin. It would take time, she’d have to go slowly. Ren would never believe she’d done a complete about-turn so immediately. Nor would he trust a woman too loose with her favours. But it would be perfect. She’d use his own seduction of her as a smokescreen; while he was seducing her, she’d be seducing him. Into bed, and with luck, beyond.
* * *
‘I believe he can be seduced to our side,’ Arthur Gridley announced confidently to the men seated at the round table in his library: Miles Calvert, Elias Blakely, Hugh Devore and Amherst Cunningham. All Englishmen, all upstanding citizens of St Michael’s parish, all of them bound together under the common standard of having suffered financial setbacks over the last five years and, most importantly, all of them having concluded that wresting Sugarland out of Emma Ward’s control lay at the heart of any successful solution to their cash-flow problems. Outside of those commonalities, there were other private agendas that drew them together, politics making very strange bedfellows indeed, in some cases literally, and Gridley knew them all.
Cunningham nodded slowly, his dark eyebrows knitted together in thought. ‘We’ll have to act quickly before that hellcat gets her claws into him.’
‘I am working on that,’ Gridley said. ‘Dryden and I had a long visit today.’ He hoped a few salient seeds had taken root, particularly the one that warned Dryden off pursuing anything with Emma Ward. Emma was his. If anyone was going to wed her, or bed her, it was going to be him. He’d paid his dues. It had been unsettling to discover Dryden was a younger man. He’d been counting on someone older, less physically appealing.
‘Does Dryden have money?’ Miles Calvert asked. The light of the candles in the centre of the table cast his face in shadow, the whole of his expression inscrutable.
The darkness didn’t bother Gridley. He knew without seeing Miles’s nervous pale green eyes that Miles would be wondering if he could entice the newcomer to buy his moderate-sized plantation and add it to Sugarland’s holdings. Miles had been privately contemplating a buyer so he could take the profits and return to England.
Fortunately, Miles had done that contemplating over absinthe in the evenings with him. So far, Gridley had dissuaded Miles from such a course of action in general. It hadn’t been hard, there’d been no buyer until now. Miles was wondering if the arrival of Ren Dryden changed that. Gridley would have to make sure it didn’t.
‘I’m not sure,’ Gridley answered truthfully. ‘He dresses well and presents himself as an educated man. I would think he’s not entirely without funds, but how much?’ Gridley shrugged to indicate he thought it unlikely Dryden possessed enough to buy a plantation.
Hugh Devore broke in with a shake of his head, dismissing Calvert’s financial concerns. He was a beefy, heavier-set man with greying hair and he spoke with a commanding voice. ‘It’s not money that matters, it’s relationships. What I want to know is who Dryden’s connections are. How well did he know Merrimore? We know he’s a cousin, but were they close? Was Merrimore likely to have told him about us? If so, what might that have been? Are we friends or enemies?’
The last was said with the faintest hint of accusation. Gridley bristled at the implication that somehow he was to blame if they were exposed. ‘I assured you months ago and I assure you now that the risks we so covertly refer to are secure. Merrimore suspected nothing, he told no one because in his mind there was nothing to tell.’
Hugh Devore was not satisfied. ‘We took an enormous risk at your urging, Gridley, and we lost. You were wrong in your assumptions. Nothing turned out as you purported and now we have a cousin on the scene, one more person that stands between us and our goals.’
Elias Blakely nodded his head in concurrence. Amherst Cunningham said nothing, but looked distractedly at his hands. So that was how things stood these days. A little faction was growing within his group, Gridley noted. He would have to calm them with a reminder of what he held against them. He wasn’t above a bit of blackmail to ensure compliance. But first, perhaps some soothing was in order.
‘I don’t recall seeing you in Merrimore’s sickroom taking those risks,’ he reminded Devore and Blakely. ‘That was all me. In that respect, gentlemen, your hands are clean.’ Never mind that they’d given permission for what he’d done in there. He’d remind them about that another time. Accomplices were just as guilty as those who executed the act.
Devore sat back in his chair, hands laced across a healthy show of stomach. ‘Be that as it may, Emma Ward has refused you, making our risky efforts for naught. Sugarland, either through legal deed or marriage, is beyond our grasp at present.’
That statement had everyone’s attention. The men at the table leaned forward in earnest. Six months ago when Merrimore’s demise was imminent, they’d decided the best, least intrusive way to take Sugarland from Emma would be to marry into it. The most likely candidate had been himself. Devore and Cunningham were already married, Miles was a ‘confirmed bachelor’ and Elias Blakely wasn’t much to look at and prone to ill health besides.
‘I will renew my courtship now that she’s had a chance to see what reality looks like,’ Gridley replied. ‘I will remind her of my promises to Merrimore and play to her sentimentality.’
‘And Dryden?’ Devore asked astutely. ‘Does he have matrimony on his mind?’
‘I’m not sure what Dryden has on his mind. I only spoke with him the once and he’s only just arrived,’ Gridley reminded the group with a note of censure. ‘I’m not a mind reader, although at times many of you think I am. I think the best course forward is to hold a dinner party for him so each of you can take his measure. We can plan how to deal with him from there.’
Elias Blakely spoke for the first time. ‘In the meanwhile, there must be something we can do to urge Emma Ward towards our conclusion. I don’t need to tell anyone here that time is critical. We are poised at the beginning of the harvest. Once the harvest is in, decisions will be made about next year. All of us will be making those decisions, too, and money is tight. If we cannot secure Sugarland, some of us might make different decisions about the following year.’ He swallowed and said quietly, ‘Plantation prices are dropping. Some of us may decide to sell before prices drop further.’
Gridley fixed him with a hard stare. ‘If anyone were to do that, it would ruin the cartel we’ve worked so hard to put together. All of us standing united can drive the prices of sugar back up. Then, we’ll be in the money.’
‘Only if Sugarland is with us,’ Miles put in, his eye always on the bottom line. ‘If Sugarland continues to stand alone, we’ll never achieve the ability to control the prices.’
Gridley gave a tight smile. He was growing weary of the effort of dragging the group along behind him, but he needed them. It would pacify them if he resumed an active courtship of Emma, so he would do it. He would give her two weeks’ respite from exploding chicken coops and obeah dolls before he launched his new campaign. His dinner party for Dryden would be the perfect venue for resuming his courtship.
Privately, he didn’t think such measures would be enough. But there were other ways to urge Emma to the altar that had nothing to do with the delicacies of romance and everything to do with the hard choices a person makes to save the things they love.