Enticing Temptation

Chapter 1

October 3, 1887  Black Horse Inn, Near The London Docks

            “Is that Captain Cameron at the table over in the far corner, dressed all in black?” Cat Landsdowne asked in a hushed voice as she leaned toward her companion, Quintin Radbyrne, seated next to her. They were both facing toward Captain Cameron’s table. They’d arrived at the Black Horse Inn just a few moments ago, after a man, Quintin sent to search out Captain Cameron, sent word where they were sure to find the captain tonight.

            “Yes,” an equally muted reply came from Quintin Radbyrne.

            “He’s not at all what I expected,” Cat said looking at the tall, well-built man seated at a table across the inn dinning room from where she and Quintin were. Captain Cameron was in conversation with three other men at his table. His head rose almost a foot above the others as she studied him. She knew a great deal about the captain, part in thanks to her grandfather and part from Quintin’s research on the man.

            Captain Myles Cameron had hair as black as coal, very similar to her own midnight color, worn unfashionably long and tied at the nape of his neck in a queue with a leather strap. Worn as men did at the turn of the century when England was fighting Napoleon Bonaparte. The style made him fascinatingly attractive and more masculine looking than the majority of men Cat was acquainted with.

            From this distance, she was unable to discern the color of his eyes and she wondered what they would be once she saw him up close. That would probably occur tomorrow, she thought, if her grandfather had his way and Captain Cameron answered the summons to appear at the Duke of Markham’s house in the morning. Quintin had informed her of the missive sent several hours ago on their way to the docks.

            He was a big man, not only in height but in build as well, broad shoulders with a large masculine chest. He had a handsome face with a square jaw, a patrician nose and high cheekbones. He sported an untidy looking black mustache and beard, that Cat thought, he kept trimmed to look that way, which added all the more to his rugged appearance and good looks. She wondered if the beard was abrasive or soft to the touch of one’s fingers. That, too, she would probably find out tomorrow. Yes tomorrow night most likely.

            Overall, he was much handsomer than she expected him would be, but just as rugged looking, as she pictured he might be. Yes, Cat thought, he was a very handsome man indeed. Yes…she liked her first impression of Captain Myles Cameron.

            “He’s with his first mate, Jackson Pruitt, the one in the blue shirt,” Quintin informed her. “I don’t know who the other two men he’s speaking with are.”

                                                                *                 *                *

            Myles suddenly felt that funny feeling as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he knew someone was watching him. His eyes quickly scanned the dinning room before they locked onto a very beautiful dark-haired woman facing his direction seated on the far side of the inn’s dinning room.

            She was an enticing morsel of temptation, his mind thought, as they stared at one another across the inn dinning room. There was nothing demure about the way she stared back at him. She was taller than most women, with hair as black as midnight, upper class from the appearance of her dress or an expensive courtesan and that thought made him want to smile. He wondered what color her eyes were. From where he was sitting, it was hard to tell. They looked dark, maybe blue, he thought. He liked her pert little nose as well and her luscious rosy lips. He wasn’t the only man in the inn ogling her, he noticed. She was the type of woman to turn heads wherever she went and she probably knew it.