Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #2)

Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #2)
Tessa Dare




CHAPTER ONE

GRAVESEND, DECEMBER 1817

In fleeing the society wedding of the year, Sophia Hath-away knew she would be embracing infamy.

She’d neglected to consider how infamy smelled.

She paused in the doorway of the fetid dockside tavern. Even from here, the stench of soured ale accosted her, forcing bile into her throat. A burly man elbowed her aside as he went out the door. “Watch yerself, luv.”

She pasted herself against the doorjamb, wondering at the singular form of address implied in “luv.” The man’s comment had clearly been directed toward both of her br**sts.

With a shiver, she wrapped her cloak tight across her chest. Taking one last deep breath, she sidled her way into the dank, drunken confusion, forbidding her gray serge skirts to brush against anything. Much less anyone. From every murky corner—and for a squared-off tea caddy of a building, this tavern abounded in murky corners—eyes followed her. Suspicious, leering eyes, set in hard, unshaven faces. It was enough to make any young woman anxious. For a fugitive young lady of quality, traveling alone, under the flimsy shield of a borrowed cloak and a fabricated identity …

Well, it was almost enough to make Sophia reconsider the whole affair. An unseen someone jostled her from behind. Her gloved fingers instinctively clutched the envelope secreted in her cloak. She thought of its brethren, the letters she’d posted just that morning, breaking her engagement and ensuring a scandal of Byronic proportions. Seeds of irrevocable ruin, scattered with the wind.

A cold sense of destiny anchored her rising stomach. There was no going back now. She could walk through far worse than this shabby pub, if it meant leaving her restrictive life behind. She could even endure these coarse men ogling her br**sts, so long as they did not glimpse the secret strapped between them.

Her resolve firmed, Sophia caught the eye of a bald-headed man wiping a table with a greasy rag. He looked harmless enough—or at least, too old to strike quickly. She smiled at him. He returned the gesture with a completely toothless grin.

Her own smile faltering, she ventured, “I’m looking for Captain Grayson.”

“ ’Course you is. All the comely ones are.” The gleaming pate jerked.

“Gray’s in the back.”

She followed the direction indicated, moving through the crowd on tiptoe in an effort to keep her hem off the floor. The sticky floorboards sucked at her half boots. Toward the back of the room, she spied a boisterous knot of men and women near the bar. One man stood taller than the others, his auburn hair looking cleaner than that of his company. A brushed felt beaver rested on the bar nearby, an oddly refined ornament for this seedy den. As Sophia angled for a better view, a chair slid out from a nearby table, clipping her in the knee. She bobbled on tiptoe for a moment before tripping forward. The hem of her cloak caught on her boot, and the cloak wrenched open, exposing her chest and throat to the sour, wintry air. In her desperate attempt to right herself, she clutched wildly for the wall—

And grasped a handful of rough linen shirt instead.

The shirt’s owner turned to her. “Hullo there, chicken,” he slurred, his breath rancid with decay. His liquor-glazed eyes slid over her body and settled on the swell of her br**sts. “Fancy bit of goods you are. By looks, I would have priced you beyond my pocket, but if you’s offerin’ …”

Had he mistaken her for some dockside trollop? Sophia’s tongue curled with disgust. Perhaps she was disguised in simple garments, but certainly she did not look cheap.

“I am not offering,” she said firmly. She tried to wriggle away, but with a quick move, he had her pinned against the bar.

“Hold there, lovely. Jes’ a little tickle, then.”

His grimy fingers dove into the valley of her bosom, and Sophia yelped.

“Unhand me, you … you revolting brute!”

The brute released one of her arms to further his lascivious exploration, and Sophia used her newly freed hand to beat him about the head. No use. His fingers squirmed between her br**sts like fat, greedy worms burrowing in the dark.

“Stop this,” she cried, making her hand a fist and clouting his ear, to no avail. Her efforts at defense only amused her drunken attacker.

“S’all right,” he said, chuckling. “I likes my girls with plenty o’ pluck.”

Desperation clawed at her insides. It wasn’t simply the insult of this lout’s hands on her br**sts that had her panicking. She’d forfeited her genteel reputation the moment she left home. But his fingers groped closer and closer to the one thing she dared not surrender. If he found it, Sophia doubted she would escape this tavern with her life intact, much less her virtue.

Her attacker turned his head, angling for a better look down her dress. His grimy ear was just inches from her mouth. Within snapping distance. If she bit it hard enough, she might startle him into letting her go. She had all but made up her mind to do it, when she inhaled another mouthful of his rank sweat and paused. If her choices were putting her mouth on this repulsive beast or dying, she just might rather die.

In the end, she didn’t do either.

The repulsive beast gave a yawp of surprise as a pair of massive hands bodily hauled him away. Lifted him, actually, as though the brute weighed nothing, until he writhed in the air above her like a fish on a hook.