But none of it was enough to bring her any relief.

  “Are you rubbing your clit against my thigh?” Magnus questioned incredulously, the instant tensing of Olivia’s body enough to tell him that was exactly what she’d been about. “I have released a monster!” He raised his eyes heavenward. “This is meant as punishment, not pleasure, Olivia,” he added sternly. “What did you say?” he prompted after she’d mumbled something too softly for him to hear.

  She turned to give him another glare from those glittering violet eyes. “I said I am not the only one who deserves to be punished, when you are as much to blame for last night as I am.”

  Magnus had ceased all movement the moment he saw the tears glistening on the pallor of Olivia’s cheeks. One of his hands remained on her back holding her in place, the other on her still bared and red and heated bottom cheeks. “I am not spanking you because of last night.” He pulled up her drawers and rearranged the skirt of her gown to cover them before turning Olivia in his arms.

  She gave a pained gasp as he settled her so that her sore bottom was seated on his thighs.

  A single glance at his face now caused her to bury the dampness of her cheeks against his chest. “Then why did you spank me?” She sniffled against his shirt.

  “For running away from me this morning,” he explained gently.

  “I was not running away from you. I was—I was—I was ensuring you did not have to see me again this morning,” she finally managed to defend.

  Magnus did not enjoy seeing this fiery woman so discomposed, especially when he knew the spanking he’d just administered to be partially responsible for it.

  He’d had a temper when he was younger, but his years as an officer and then admiral in the navy meant he had learned to control those impulses. Knowing Olivia was not only absent from the house, but had actually run away from him had snapped that control as if it were no more than a twig.

  “You must have known that once I had finished my conversation with your uncle, I would want to see and speak with you,” he gently admonished.

  Olivia’s head remained bowed. “Is it not already humiliating enough that I have insulted my aunt and uncle’s hospitality with my scandalous behavior, without also having to suffer through the embarrassment of listening while you berate me for it in front of them?”

  Magnus drew back until he was able to fully see Olivia’s damp and flushed face. “Olivia, why do you think I called to speak with your uncle this morning?”

  Some of her usual fire gleamed briefly in her eyes before she gave another sniffle of misery. “To inform him he needs to take a firmer control of me and my actions, before I embarrass him and his family as well as myself.”

  It was so far from the truth, Magnus could have laughed at the irony of it. Except he didn’t think Olivia would appreciate his laughter when she was looking, and obviously feeling, so miserable.

  His arms moved to hold her more tightly against him. “I called upon your uncle this morning to formally ask his permission to spend time with you until I leave tomorrow to sail back to London. Once back in England, with your agreement, I will visit your parents and ask your father’s permission for the two of us to marry.”

  Whatever response Magnus had been expecting to his words, it wasn’t to have Olivia push away from him with a look of horror on her face before she struggled to her feet and stepped back and away from him.

  “No,” she told him forcefully, her cheeks now flushed with anger. “No, and again no! I will not now, nor will I ever, agree to marry you!” She turned on her heel and ran across the sand, far more fleet of foot than Magnus’s bulk had managed when he joined her a few minutes ago.

  Chapter Ten

  It was unacceptable.

  Inconceivable.

  Unbearable, Olivia decided as she once again paced the confines of her bedchamber within the Fitzgeralds’ household.

  How could Magnus have ever thought her so shallow and Machiavellian as to attempt to entrap him into a marriage he didn’t choose or want?

  How could he ever think that she would try to pressure him into marriage through such underhanded means?

  Maybe it was not quite as despicable or in the same way her aunt had used Magnus all those years ago in order to hide her affair with another man, but it was still beyond acceptable for Magnus to even think Olivia would try to use trickery to force him into a marriage with her.

  So Olivia had done the only thing she could do, which was to vehemently refuse him. There must be no possibility, no doubt in Magnus’s mind, that she would not now, or ever, consider marrying him.

  After which, she had run back to the house so that he shouldn’t see her heartbreak and so feel even more pity toward her.

  All that had happened twenty-four hours ago.

  A whole day and night of misery for Olivia, after she had stood at her bedchamber window, her presence hidden behind the curtains, and watched a stern-faced Magnus as he entered the carriage. It had then driven away without him giving so much as a single glance toward the house on the off chance he might catch a glimpse of the woman he had intended asking to marry him.

  As if he would wish to see her again!

  Magnus was not in love with her, nor would he ever be. As such, it was for the best if they didn’t meet or speak again, Olivia had told herself.

  If only her heart believed that too.

  Instead, it was broken, fragmented into a thousand, a million, pieces. Irreparably so.

  Because she loved Magnus, and the thought of him believing her capable of such machinations and subterfuge only made her heart ache all the more.

  She had cried for so long yesterday, and with such heartbreak, she hadn’t believed she had any more tears left in her to cry.

  Except she did. Hot, fat tears that had soaked her pillow throughout the night and even now once again scalded her cheeks as they fell, shredding her emotions.

  No one had warned her that falling in love could feel like this. The realization, so joyful at first, only to be reduced to never-ending pain when the person she was in love with didn’t return those feelings.

  That truth had seemed awful enough to her yesterday, but today, knowing that Magnus’s ship was sailing with the evening tide, it had taken on an agony of emotion the likes of which Olivia had never felt before nor ever wanted to feel again.

  Unfortunately, it was all she could feel at the moment. There was nothing else. No joy, no happiness, no contentment to be had. She wasn’t sure there ever would be again.

  So immersed was she in that misery, she could only stare blankly across the room when a knock sounded on her bedchamber door.

  Her aunt and uncle had been kind enough not to intrude upon or question her after she ran into the house and up the stairs yesterday, before shutting herself away. A maid had brought dinner and breakfast trays to her bedchamber, but Olivia had only drunk the tea on both, the food left untouched.

  Somehow, her aunt and uncle had persuaded Cecelia not to interrupt Olivia’s self-imposed solitude either, but she believed her cousin and best friend’s patience might now be at an end.

  “Yes?” Olivia answered dully.

  Cecelia opened the door and peeked round the side of it. “May I come in?”

  Olivia tried to smile, but knew she had failed miserably when the muscles of her lips refused to move. “I am not very good company, I’m afraid,” she apologized as she moved to sit on the side of her unmade bed.

  She had risen from her bed and bathed and dressed this morning, but had not yet allowed the maid in to tidy her room. She had grown fond of the maid her aunt and uncle had assigned to her for her visit, but felt totally unable to withstand that young lady’s cheerful chatter this morning.

  Cecelia’s expression was pained. “I do not understand. I thought you liked the admiral. You appeared to more than like him,” she added pointedly.

  “I do,” Olivia confirmed.

  Cecelia stepped into the room and quietly closed the door behind her. “Then why are you so miserable, and why did the admiral leave yesterday without so much as taking his leave of my parents before he did so? I am not the only one who is puzzled by both his and your behavior,” she chided gently. “Mama and Papa are at a complete loss as to what can have happened between the two of you after the admiral spoke to Papa.”

  Olivia drew in a long and steadying breath. The last thing she wanted was to start crying again. “The admiral only called on my uncle yesterday because, after the events of the previous evening, he felt as if he had no choice but to offer to marry me.” Her chin rose. “I felt the same compulsion to refuse him.”

  Cecelia winced. “That does not sound as if you did so politely.”

  “No, it was not in the least polite,” Olivia conceded as she thought of the manner in which she had raised her voice and glared at Magnus as she told him she would never marry him. “But neither was it acceptable to have him believe I am so devious as to require he propose to me simply because we indulged in a few clandestine kisses.”

  “Your ruffled appearance when you rejoined us that evening implied it was a little more than that,” her cousin reminded.

  Olivia felt the warmth of a guilty blush enter her cheeks. “Perhaps,” she allowed, her chin still held high. “But I do not want, nor will I agree to accept, any husband who believes I only acquired him through trickery and deception.”

  Cecelia gave a slow shake of her head. “Papa didn’t say the admiral had said or implied anything remotely like that.”

  “He could hardly accuse me of such things directly to my uncle’s face,” Olivia dismissed. “But I assure you, it is what Magnus now believes of me.” The thought of that felt even more painful than knowing he wasn’t in love with her.

  Magnus had made it clear when the two of them first met that he had no wish to deepen their acquaintance. The reason for which had become clear once her Aunt Franny told her of the admiral’s unhappy history with her family, specifically her Aunt Emelia. The fact Olivia looked so much like her had been an added insult.

  For Magnus to now believe Olivia was as duplicitous as her Aunt Emelia rubbed her emotions raw.

  Except she had refused his proposal.

  Well…she would have done so if he’d actually had the opportunity to make one before she left him in no doubt as to her aversion to the very idea of marrying him.

  “Olivia.” Cecelia sat on the bed beside her to take one of her hands in both of hers. “I believe you may have misunderstood both the admiral and his intentions. He told Papa that he wanted to spend time with you before he had to leave so that the two of you could become better acquainted before he asked you to marry him.”

  “Well, of course he did.” Olivia pulled away to rise impatiently to her feet and resume her pacing of the room. “He is too much the gentleman to ever directly insult a lady or impugn her honor to a member of her family.”

  Cecelia gave that statement some thought for several seconds before giving a shake of her head. “No, I am sure you have misunderstood the situation,” she stated firmly. “Did you give the admiral opportunity to actually say anything before you refused him?”

  Considering Olivia had been sitting on Magnus’s thighs, her bottom sore from the spanking he had just administered, the answer to that question was a resounding no!

  Something else she had no intention of confiding in Cecelia. “What should I have allowed him the opportunity to say to me?” she scoffed.

  Cecelia’s smile was affectionate. “I love you dearly, Olivia, but you can sometimes be totally unreasonable.”

  “I—”

  “Also,” her cousin continued firmly, “the stern-faced gentleman who left here yesterday morning was not the same quietly content-with-his-lot one who had arrived an hour earlier.”

  “Content with his lot!” Olivia echoed scornfully.

  “Yes,” Cecelia rebuked. “I sincerely believe you have misjudged the admiral to a degree you owe him an apology for not even showing him the politeness of listening to what he wished to say to you.”

  “How could I do that when the first thing he did when he found me on the beach was spank me for having left the house the minute he arrived?” Olivia felt stung into defending.

  It was obvious from the way Cecelia drew in her breath and then bit her top lip that she was attempting not to laugh at this disclosure. But the mischievous glitter in her eyes finally won out, and she fell back on the bed as she burst into peals of delighted laughter.

  “It isn’t that funny,” a disgruntled Olivia finally complained when that laughter showed no signs of abating.

  “Oh, believe me, it really is.” Cecelia sat up, the laughter still bright in her eyes. “Olivia, can you not see you have met the man who is more than a match for you? On any level you might care to think of.”

  Of course, Olivia knew that. She would be a fool not to. Magnus was as intelligent, if not more so, than her. He was confident and handsome. As strong-willed and determined as she was.

  Those were all the very reasons she had fallen so deeply in love with him.

  “Moreover, he is a man who has not run roughshod over your feelings, as so many gentlemen in Society are apt to do,” Cecelia continued softly.

  “He spanked me!”

  Once again, Cecelia had to bite her top lip to stop herself from laughing. “Yes, he did, and from what you have told me, you deserved it,” her cousin reproved once she was able to talk. “But he also expressed a wish for the two of you to spend more time together so that you might become better acquainted. Only after that, and no doubt with your permission, would he wish to approach your parents in regard to a marriage proposal.”

  When the situation was put in such reasonable terms…

  Was it possible Olivia had misjudged and misunderstood the reason for Magnus’s visit yesterday?

  Cecelia seemed to think it highly possible.

  If so, how did Olivia set about righting the wrong she had done him?

  Especially when Magnus and the three ships under his command were due to set sail on this evening’s tide!

  Magnus was standing on the deck of his ship, having already given the order to set sail, when he spotted the small fishing boat bobbing out from one of the island’s many coves. The billowing white sail prevented him from seeing who was inside the boat, but the direction the wind was blowing put the small vessel directly in the path of his own ship.

  He turned to the captain. “I thought all provisions were already aboard?”

  “They are, my lord,” the other man confirmed.

  “Then what—” Magnus broke off as a gust of wind buffeted the single sail of the much smaller craft, allowing him to catch a glimpse of a familiar figure at the tiller.

  Olivia!

  Dear God, Olivia was sailing that small wooden boat directly in the path of his two-thousand-ton warship.

  Chapter Eleven

  “—ten, eleven, twelve,” Magnus counted through gritted teeth as his hand landed hard on the bare arse of the woman currently draped across his thighs as he sat on the window seat in his cabin.

  A woman he wanted to strangle with his bare hands rather than spank her.

  He had literally been inwardly paralyzed with fear a short time ago, after taking over the ship’s wheel for himself so that he could hold a course that would allow his men to hook onto Olivia’s precariously bucking boat before they could bring her on board his equally wildly rocking ship. Mere seconds after they had done so, the small fishing boat she had been rescued from was smashed to pieces beneath the prow of his ship. A fate which could also have befallen Olivia if his men had not been successful in their rescue.

  Even the thought of that was enough to make Magnus land an even harder smack to her bared arse than those he had previously given her.

  “Ouch!” Olivia complained loudly as she turned to frown at him. “I should have thought your temper would have cooled by now,” she added with a pained wince, no doubt for the reverberating soreness of her bottom.

  “You thought wrong,” he snapped, holding her in place as he glared at her, the strain which had arisen between them yesterday forgotten for the moment. “What on earth possessed you to be so reckless as to deliberately sale a small vessel at my warship when it is in full sail?”

  God knows what his men had thought when, once Olivia was safely on board, Magnus had passed control of the wheel back to his helmsman and then lost no time in striding down the steps to swing Olivia up into his arms. His expression had been grim as he carried her into his cabin and kicked the door firmly closed behind them.

  What his men could not know was that two seconds later, Olivia’s coat and bonnet had been cast aside and she was draped over his thighs. The skirt of her gown was up, her drawers down, as Magnus landed smack after smack on flesh that was already red from having received the same punishment yesterday.

  “Whatever the reason, it could not have been important enough for you to almost lose your life over it,” he snapped in his impatience—and terror—with the memories of her near demise.

  “I disagree—”

  “And you will have ample opportunity to do exactly that when I am finished spanking you,” he bit out harshly. “For now, I am still intent upon inflicting enough painful smacks to your arse that in future, you will know that to do anything so foolishly reckless again will result in an even worse spanking!”

  She made a face. “There is no need for crudity.”

  Magnus had no idea how, even draped over his knees, her arse exposed for all to see, Olivia still succeeded in delivering a rebuke for his ungentlemanly language.

  He snorted his disgust. “I am currently so angry with you, I am surprised I am not shouting it, and many more words you would consider unacceptable for a lady to hear!” he assured grimly.