bring herself back to this room, to this time, and to push
the past back into the dark abyss where it belonged. She
found that she was seated behind the desk. While memory
had played its evil trick on her, her hands had broken the
seal on the letter. She'd crushed the dried wax, and it had
mixed with damp sweat of fevered memory so that her
fingers were stained red with it. The pristine linen of her
nightgown was also marked with the color, red on white.
Like blood on a bandage.
She held her hands up before her. She knew she was
staring at sealing wax—tinted and scented beeswax, and
no more. But she saw the blood, and the scent in her
nostrils was of gunpowder.
"I'm shot!"
Though Derrick's lips were close to her ear, she
barely heard his words over the pounding bellow of
cannon fire. Not that she needed words to know the truth;
she held him in her arms and his blood was on her hands.
All around, people screamed and shouted and ran.
Swords clashed and guns roared. Clouds of stinking gun
smoke hung in the air, choking her, further dimming
Honoria's frail vision. It was all so confusing, so
frightening. Three pirate galleys had come up on the
Manticore
with surprising speed. Though the
Manticore
was equipped with modern cannon, it was no war ship. Its
crew was outnumbered by the sailors who manned the
banks of oars on the corsair galleys. Barbary pirates
normally preferred to just threaten European merchant
ships and collect bribes for safe passage through
Mediterranean waters, but these outlaws had attacked
without warning instead.
"Desperate men," she'd heard Derrick say to the
captain as the attack began. "Looking for booty and
slaves. Taking what they can while they can."
"
Desperate because of your efforts, sir," the master
of the
Manticore
had replied. "If they know the Scourge of
Algiers is aboard, they'll kill you for sure
!"
Derrick laughed recklessly. "Then we'd best see that
they don't get the chance to board your ship, sir."
After that the fighting began in earnest. Honoria was
sent to hide in her cabin, but after a while she could take
it no longer and ventured onto the deck to see if the
Algerian scum had been driven off yet. But instead of the
victory she expected, the ship was being overrun with
boarding parties from the three galleys.
She frantically made her way to Derrick's side, and
he took a bullet in the shoulder just as she reached him.
He collapsed to the deck in her embrace and Honoria
forced her own terror aside as she concentrated on the
man she loved.
"I'm shot," he repeated, his tone disbelieving. He
grasped her hand so tightly she thought her fingers would
break. "Tell them nothing!'" he warned. "No matter what
they do to you, don't let them know who I am or I will
surely die." He gasped in pain, but went on bravely
despite it. His gaze burned fervently into hers. "They
know I courted a duke's daughter. Keep my secret, girl.
Do you hear me?"
She understood, and her heart sank even further at
the knowledge. She nodded. But before she could make
her promise to the brave man she loved, a hand grabbed
her arm and hauled her roughly to her feet.
"What are you doing on the deck, woman? Do you
want to die?"
The voice shouted in Arabic and she answered in
kind as she was whirled to face her captor.
"What does it matter where I am when you kill me,
you filthy animal?"
He wasn't filthy. The big man who held her was
dressed in sparkling white. He held a cutlass in one hand,
her in the other. His hair was hidden by the folds of a
turban, his lower face covered in a neatly trimmed brown
beard.
Without her glasses, the world around her was
mostly a blur, but her captor's face was crystal clear to
her in all the chaos. Cannon roared and guns continued
to fire, men shouted and swore and screamed, but around
Honoria the world went suddenly silent. Energy prickled
along her skin, arced like lightning between her and the
pirate. He smiled, bright teeth flashing in a wide,
sensuous mouth. It was not a kind smile, yet it sent a
shiver of response through her. His eyes were vivid and
beautiful, the color of amber and warm honey, the lashes
long and thick. And they were full of wild fury. They told
her that reviling him was a deep, dark mistake on her
part. When he threw back his head and laughed, she knew
that she would pay dearly for the words she had spoken.
"This is intolerable," Honoria announced. "Insufferable."
She would not think about any of it, or either of them.
She most certainly would not think about
him
. Diego
Moresco held no power over her now. So why was it she
could close her eyes and still feel his hands on her flesh?
Why was it that ashes that should have been long cold
still burned deep inside her? "Because you're a fool!" she
angrily answered her own questions. And to distract
herself from thinking about one of the males she hated,
she opened the letter from the other man who had
betrayed her.
"It was her?"
It was not right, it was not fair. It could not be. And
of course, she had run away. What more proof did he
need, James wondered bitterly. "Yes, sir."
"Lady
Alexandra?
Pyneham's
daughter?
Impossible."
Diego—James, as he tried to remember to think of
himself—dropped his head into his hands. His elbows
rested on the polished wood of the writing table in the
viscount's study. He had spent many nights in this quiet,
book-lined room since journeying to London with his
father. It was his favorite place in the townhouse. His
father thought it an unpretentious place for a man of his
social standing to dwell, but Diego—James—thought the
place quite grand, though he'd had larger gardens at the
houses he'd called his own. His soul loved gardens,
fountains… small, private places of beauty surrounded
with walls so the outside world could not see—
"
La señorita duquesa
," he said. He lifted his head
and looked toward the study window.
The heavy red drapes were drawn, of course, against
the mild chill of the English night. He longed to escape
into that night. Gas lights and candles and the hearth fire
did too good a job of lighting the room. There were
places he could go with shadows enough to hide him, and
oblivion could be bought for a few hours, places where he
could be alone of his own free will instead of abandoned
by another's. But the window was too small for James's
wide shoulders to fit through, and his father took care to
stand before the door. There was no other exit. He could
leave if he truly wanted, but then he would have to face
his father's disappointment when he finally crawled home
hung over and battered from brawling. Because he
would
come back eventually. Having a home and someone who
wanted him meant too much to him, despite his lapses.
Better not to have lapses at all, he'd learned. James had
found out the hard way in Malaga that he would rather
face death, or even
Mamacita's
wrath and heavy hand,
than his newfound father's hurt look.
"I want," he said now, "to run away." To abandon
her before she abandoned him, perhaps? To end the game
before it started? He sighed. He'd made a vow; honor
dictated he at least try to fulfill it.
Edward Marbury put his hands behind his back. His
voice was calm and uncompromising. "No doubt you do."
"I thought I was prepared." There was a plan in
place; he knew his role, knew exactly what to do. His
world was in fragile order, but he had believed he was
beginning to make some sense of it, to find a path out of
the dark toward a high, honorable goal. James shook his
head again.
"You're sure it's the same girl?"
His father's suspicions rankled, but he understood
them. He looked up to meet the older man's worried gaze.
They had the same eyes, he and his father. Cat's eyes, she
had called them, and other things after they made love
that first time. He could still smell the jasmine on her
skin. James sighed, too confused to be angry.
"I was sober, sir," he reminded his father. "Taken by
surprise, yes, but I made no mistake." Besides, what other
woman in all the world had such height and hair? And he
remembered all too well the sweet curves of her body.
His mouth almost watered at the memory of that amazing
body. Frustrated, he ran his hands through his neatly
trimmed hair, then tiredly down the sides of his now
beardless face. Oh, he had made mistakes, all right. Many
of them. The worst mistake of all, eight years before.
Don't be a fool,
Diego told himself, as he laughed and
angrily pulled the tall woman closer. She fitted perfectly
against him, hip to hip, with the buxom, lush body of a
real woman beneath the concealing layers of heavy
clothing. She was dressed all in black, as he was all in
white. Her hair was loose about her shoulders, a tangled
mass whipped by the wind, blazing in the sunlight. It
should have been modestly covered. Her eyes blazed as
well. Without a veil to cover her emotions, her face
showed the world that she was utterly without fear, full of
brave passion. It was obvious that no one had ever
commanded this woman, that she didn't think anyone
could
.
Ibrahim Rais will call it your mistake if anything
happens to a valuable hostage,
he reminded himself, as a
bullet slammed into the deck near where they stood
.
You'll pay the price if she gets herself killed.
The woman, with her fiery temper and hair to match,
provoked him, with her words, with the wild anger she
turned on him. It wasn't only his temper she aroused,
either. In the midst of a battle when he had far more
necessary things to do, he came upon this milk-skinned
black-clad bundle of fury, and
—
"You speak Arabic!"
"Get your hands off me, pig."
When he responded to this insult with a few very
rude words in Spanish, her cheeks flushed bright red, and
she slapped his face. Diego laughed again, though his
cheek stung fiercely
—
but not as fiercely as the joy that
flooded him. "A scholar." He pulled her even closer,
putting his lips close to her ear. He whispered, "Tell me,
fox-hair, can you read
?"
She struggled in his embrace. "Let me go! I have to
help Der
—
my fiancé
."
"I should have let him die," James murmured. "That was
my worst mistake. Pity the wound wasn't deep enough to
do the job."
"Your temper, James…" His father paused, and then
he laughed. "All right, son, I won't try to talk you out of
that particular urge for revenge." The viscount crossed to
a side table and came back with snifters holding a small
amount of brandy for each of them. He handed James
one, then took a seat in a nearby chair. "I think we need to
revise our strategy, don't you?"
James tasted the powerful spirit, then answered,
"None of this makes sense to me, sir."
"Quite understandable. Or rather, quite confusing."
The viscount put his untouched glass down on the desk.
He looked intensely curious as he leaned forward and
said, "I hate to harp on this subject, because I'm sure you
trust your perceptions, but how is it that the Lady