Her bright eyes were full of many conflicting feelings,
and Diego could read them all. "You'll find veils useful,"
he told her and stepped behind the cabin's scarred
writing table. "Come here, Honoria Pyne."
She stood tensely in the center of the cabin for a few
moments, swaying easily with the movement of the ship.
The galley cut swiftly through the calm southern
Mediterranean, the rowers obeying the steady drumbeat
that set the time of their strokes. To Diego the drum was
as familiar as his heartbeat. He perceived it now only
because he noticed the subtle way her body moved to the
primitive rhythm. It was not the sound that quickened his
pulse, but the sensual sway of the woman's beautifully
rounded hips and breasts.
He couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to
see her dance.
"Why are you smiling like that, James?"
James looked at his father's puzzled face, then tilted
back his head and laughed.
"Some things," he said, "a man cannot discuss with
his father."
"Things of a delicate nature, I presume?" James
expected his father to look disapproving, but instead saw
fond amusement in his pale blue eyes. "It's a blessing that
you're still attracted to the young lady." He tilted his head
to one side. "You were thinking of Lady Alexandra, I
trust?"
The question struck James like a blow. His first
thought was,
Who
? He stared at the fish on his plate,
which stared blankly back, because he could not face his
father's discerning gaze as he replied, "Of course."
Lady Alexandra. Who the devil
was
Lady
Alexandra? Haughty, he recalled, stiff as a board, and
proud beyond bearing. There had been no life in her cold
eyes, nothing but disdain in her demeanor. She was a
duke's daughter, too good for the likes of him, and she
knew it. She was also Honoria Pyne. The two were one
and the same, and nothing alike. A rush of pain and anger
went through him with the knowledge that his Honoria
had lied to him. Every word she spoke, every deed, every
look and touch, all the passion, from the moment they
met, had been a lie.
His. Oh, yes. She had been his, in every way a
woman could belong to a man. His lips lifted in a grim
smile as he remembered how alike he and the duke's
daughter were on some basic, primeval level. It wasn't
just in how their bodies fitted so perfectly together; there
was a matching of souls between the duchess and the
pirate. After all, everything he had done was a lie, as
well.
"You should save your smiles for the lady herself,"
Edward Marbury said, and tossed a pile of envelopes
across the table. James looked up questioningly as the
fine, heavy stack of paper landed beside his plate.
"What's this?" He rifled through the pile.
"Invitations, of course," Edward Marbury answered.
"And a few letters."
Letters. James fought the surges of both bitterness
and irony. Everything between them had begun because
of a letter.
"What is this?" Honoria asked, as the pirate thrust
several pieces of paper across the table at her. A bright
smile flashed across his bearded face.
"We should have done this yesterday. How is your
sick friend?"
"
My betrothed," she corrected swiftly. It shamed her
to admit that she reminded herself of the sacred
relationship she shared with Derrick as much as she did
the corsair whose touch
… "
Derrick and I will wed," she reminded the Spaniard
.
"If you make it home."
His tone was a dangerous, frightening purr. Honoria
swallowed her fear. "If?" she asked coolly. "It is my
understanding that there is an unofficial agreement about
the return of captives between His Majesty's government
and the Bey of Algiers."
"Understanding?" He laughed softly. "Sweetheart,
you understand nothing."
She understood that he was large and dangerous
and frightening. She understood that she was in chains,
that the man she was to marry and her best friend were
locked in the hold of a corsair galley. She understood that
she was powerless, and that her captor was looking at
her in a bold way that she could only define as covetous.
It sent unnatural heat through her that shook her resolve
even more than the fear.
That disturbing glitter in his expressive, honey-
colored eyes changed to hard determination when he
said, "You will do as I say."
She eyed the blank pages, and noticed the inkwell
and quill pen, and the man's bright eyes. "What do you
want from me?"
"You can write, can't you? And read?"
She bridled at the hint of suspicion in the Spaniard's
tone. Lifting her chin proudly, she replied with a tart, "Of
course. In several languages."
"He
laughed
," she said. "The—bastard, laughed." How
well she remembered his laugh—lusty, boisterous,
alive
.
And so full of triumph, brimming and bubbling with wild
glee when he laughed at her that afternoon in his cabin.
"The faithless, lying, scheming—!"
"Who, my lady?"
Huseby's voice brought Honoria back to the present,
where she sat at the writing desk in her suite with a great
stack of correspondence laid out before her. She blinked,
adjusted the spectacles on her nose, and frowned up at her
maid. "Have I been talking to myself very much,
Maggie?"
At the use of her first name, the neutral expression
on Huseby's face softened considerably, becoming more
friend than servant. They were alone in the room as
afternoon wore into evening. Honoria vaguely recalled
sending her secretary off to her favorite bookseller with a
long list some time ago. She'd gone through tiring hours
of fittings with her dressmaker in the morning. The
woman and her assistants were still pouting because of
losing the battle over their employer's own taste versus
the
artiste's
longing to try her hand at all the latest styles.
She was more comfortable setting fashion than trying to
be fashionable, and was not going to pretend to try to fit
in again. People her size didn't fit in, they stood out, and
might as well enjoy the unavoidable.
A housemaid had left a pot of tea and a plate of
sandwiches on a corner of the desk a while ago. The tea
was cooling, and Honoria had no appetite. Another maid
had made up the fire against the evening chill and drawn
heavy velvet curtains, muffling the sound of rain
pattering against the window glass. The room was full of
shadows despite the gas lights glowing in wall sconces.
The brightest spot in the room was around her desk,
where a tall branch of fragrant beeswax candles behind
her head added both light and warmth to the area. A
footman
had
delivered
yet
another
stack
of
correspondence a half hour or so ago, but there was a lull
in the household traffic for the moment.
"Alone at last," Honoria said. She took the
opportunity to stretch her arms tiredly over her head and
out to her sides. She finally brought her hands to rest,
folded demurely, on top of a letter she'd been reading
over and over while her thoughts ranged wildly into her
misspent, misguided past.
Maggie Huseby moved a pile of fabric swatches
Cousin Kate had left and sat down in the chair nearest
Honoria's desk. "You've been talking to yourself quite a
bit since yesterday, my lady," Huseby answered Honoria's
question. "It's a habit I'd thought you'd outgrown."
"So had I," Honoria confessed. She sighed. There
she was, feeling sorry for herself—another bad habit
she'd tried to eschew. She eyed the fabric swatches that
Huseby had put on the desk. The colors and materials
were rich: velvets and brocades in emerald green, royal
blue, peacock, cream, champagne, old gold, turquoise,
silver gray, and midnight.
"You've gotten us quite worried, those of us who're
up from Lacey House," Huseby went on. "We're used to
you sometimes going for days without speaking a word.
Do you recall those two new chambermaids at Lacey
House who thought you were mute?"
Honoria smiled slightly, recalling the incident a few
months before. "I didn't mean to frighten those poor girls,
but I was rather annoyed when they accidentally set fire
to the bedroom. I didn't yell at them until I'd gotten them
to safety, though."
"That's true, my lady. But they swore it was a
miracle that restored your voice."
"The miracle was that I didn't sack them."
"You shouted at them like a fishwife."
"I have never met a fishwife, but I will take your
word for it. Of course I shouted. They very nearly burned
down my home."
Huseby smiled. "Wouldn't want that to happen, my
lady. We Husebys and Pynes have lived there nearly two
hundred years. Fine old families—and their retainers—
need their places."
"I want to go home." Honoria sighed. "I am so
heartsick, Maggie. Homesick!" she hastened to correct
herself. She had surged to her feet, and now sat back
down, her bottom-hitting the chair with a firmness that
was almost painful. This caused her to twitch in a most
indecorous fashion. She swore.
Huseby watched her calmly through all this.
"Homesick," she said with an understanding nod. "Yes.
Of course."
Honoria was annoyed at the woman's mild tone, but
then, everything had annoyed her since she'd come up to
London. She sat back in her chair and folded her hands on
the desktop once more. She sounded as calm as usual
when she said, "Everything is simpler at home."
She kept busy at home. She kept to herself. She
occupied her mind with books. She had enough physical
exercise so that she got a good, honest night's sleep when
she took to her bed from sheer exhaustion. Her days were
orderly, her pursuits intellectual; she occupied time with
good works and charity rather than frivolous social
engagements. She rarely even thought of Derrick Russell.
If Moresco's dark presence was harder to banish from her
soul, at least she didn't go about mistaking every
devilishly handsome, tall, broad-shouldered man with
wavy brown hair and amber eyes she encountered for a
Spanish corsair who'd no doubt been hanged eight years
ago.
Hanged. Without realizing it, a hand went to
Honoria's throat. A fist squeezed her heart, and she
couldn't breathe for a moment.
"Simpler." Huseby nodded. "Your life is simpler
when you've got everything under your control, you
mean."
Honoria took a deep breath. She didn't
know
he'd
been hanged. He was clever enough to have escaped.
"Precisely. Which is just as it should be." She managed to
smile despite the fact that she really wanted to cry. She
hated that tears had been threatening for hours and hours.
Come to think of it, how often, even in London society,
did she encounter devilishly handsome, tall, broad-
shouldered men with wavy brown hair, eyes like warm
honey, and…
his
voice?
"James Marbury," she said, surprising herself. "What
do you know about him?"
Servants knew everything. Huseby didn't try to deny
it. "The butler says he heard that…"
Overhead the sun blazed down out of a perfect sky. The
whitewashed walls of the Casbah rose above the sparkling bay,
gleaming like a pearl against the forested mountains behind the
ancient town of Al-Jaz'ir. Diego moved from the deck of the moored
galley onto the gangplank, dressed in fresh white robes and a
twisted scarlet and black turban. His clothes proclaimed him to be
a renegade westerner, a corsair under the patronage of the Bey of