A Most Unladylike Adventure Read Online Free PDF

tortured by passion and his searing, insatiable need for her as she searched the Spartan-looking kitchen for something to eat instead.
    ‘Make yourself at home, why don’t you?’ he muttered ungraciously.
    ‘Certainly I shall and you can build up the fire whilst I do so,’ she demanded, wishing she could find something more appealing than a hunk of hard and cracked cheese and some pickled onions along with, of all things, a naval officer’s dress sword, in Kit’s larder.
    ‘Coste sends out for food whenever we’re hungry,’ Hugh told her as if that explained everything and, since they were both men, it probably did.
    ‘On the rare occasions either of you forsake the brandy bottle long enough to bother to eat at all, I suppose?’ she asked sweetly.
    ‘Whatever our domestic arrangements may or may not be, we certainly didn’t invite you here in the middle of the night to see if they were up to scratch,’ he mumbled gruffly as he bent to stoke the fire.
    ‘Which is just as well, considering you clearly don’t have any,’ she informed him disgustedly as she chewed valiantly on thehunk of cheese and wondered if even she was hungry enough to indulge in a pickled onion or two to force it down with, as she could see no sign of anything else remotely edible or drinkable.
    ‘We don’t need them,’ he informed her defensively, looking endearingly sheepish even as he did so. ‘Neither of us wanted a female nagging and criticising and poking her nose in everywhere it wasn’t wanted when we can manage very well for ourselves.’
    ‘No, you can’t. I can assure you that you and Coste really, really can’t manage anything more refined than a sty, Captain Darke,’ she told him fervently, as she finally gave up on finding anything else remotely edible in the dusty larder and purloined his branch of almost-gutted candles to make a more thorough tour round the dusty, dirty, unused room and the once-pristine scullery on the other side of the kitchen that turned out to be piled with every glass, tankard and mug Kit’s house possessed. All were dirty and looked as if they’d been so for too long. ‘And wherever have Mrs Calhoun and Midge gone off to?’ she asked at last.
    ‘Kit’s housekeeper wouldn’t stay once he’d been gone awhile, nor let Midge stop herewithout her. She said we lived like swine and she’d no mind to go on mucking out a pigsty every morning, so you two obviously have a lot in common.’
    ‘How very sensible of her, but wherever did they go?’ she asked and when he didn’t reply, she walked back into the kitchen to find him watching her as if he wished she’d conveniently disappear as well.
    Oddly hurt by his clear preference for her room over her company, she frowned and tapped an impatient foot as if waiting for his answer, when she suspected both women would be at Brandon and Maria’s rectory in Kent, awaiting the return of their master before they deigned to come back.
    ‘She just said Kit would know where to find her when he wanted his house made civilised again,’ he drawled unrepentantly.
    ‘How insightful of her,’ she said with a scornful glance round the room.
    ‘I’ll borrow a few deckhands to clean up next time we unload a ship.’
    ‘In the meantime you intend to go on treating my br…brave Kit’s house worse than a stable? At least a well-run stable is mucked out every day, but this place has obviously been going to rack and ruin ever since he left.’
    Was Captain Darke actually blushing? Louisa wondered. Her half-guttered candles were flickering annoyingly and refused to illuminate him properly, but she was surprised he’d even heard it could be done, let alone learnt how to do it himself.
    ‘He said I was to treat the place as my own,’ he excused himself gruffly.
    ‘And you truly think so little of yourself, Captain?’
    ‘Yes, Miss Eloise so-called Rochelle, I do, and this is all I want or need of any place I lay my head nowadays,’ he rasped harshly, as