CHRISTMASWedding Belles
NICOLA CORNICK
MARGARET MCPHEE
MIRANDA JARRETT

CONTENTS

THE PIRATE’S KISS

Nicola Cornick

Author Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

A SMUGGLER’S TALE

Margaret McPhee

Author Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

THE SAILOR’S BRIDE

Miranda Jarrett

Author Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

THE PIRATE’S KISS

Nicola Cornick

Author Note

From the time that I first started reading—and loving—romance novels, books with pirate heroes have been amongst my very favorites. Georgette Heyer’s Beauvallet possessed all the heroic qualities I most admire—courage, daring, integrity and honor. The mysterious Frenchman in Daphne du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek and the dashing Rory Frost in M. M. Kaye’s Trade Wind ran off with my heart. I owe all of those writers a huge debt for the inspiration and enjoyment that they have given me over the years.

A couple of years ago, when I was researching my family tree, I discovered that two of my husband’s ancestors had been smugglers and pirates in Dorset at the end of the eighteenth century. Escaping from the authorities, they were last heard of in the Bahamas!

The lure of the pirate hero is a difficult one to resist—what could be more appealing than a man who lives outside the law and yet has his own code of honor and courage? In The Pirate’s Kiss* Daniel had loved and lost Lucy years before. Now they meet again and find that the attraction between them has never died. But can they find love again, or is it too late?

This story is dedicated to all the readers who wrote to me after they had read The Rake’s Mistress, asking for Daniel de Lancey to have a story of his own. Here it is—just for you.

Nicola

Chapter 1

Suffolk, England, November 1808

NOTHINGever happens here…

Lucinda Melville sighed and put down her pen. The casement window of her bedroom was open, allowing crisp winter air to flood in. It brought with it the scent of cold sea mixed with the fragrance of pine, and carried the distant sound of breakers on the shore and the hoot of owls down in the forest. A full moon shone bright in the black sky. It was a night made for romance, but Mrs Melville had no time for that sort of thing.

She picked up her pen again.

Nothing ever happens here…But pray do not think that I am complaining, dear Rebecca. I am more than grateful to you for finding me this position with Mrs Saltire. Indeed, I think that when Eustacia marries, as she is set to do in the New Year (to the dull but worthy Mr Leytonstone, just as I predicted), I will seek another governess’s post in this locality. Woodbridge is a charming town. We take tea at the assembly rooms and visit the theatre, provided that the entertainment is not too racy, of course. It is all entirely delightful, and very proper for a governess companion.

Lucinda paused again, thinking. There had been a time in her life when matters had not been so staid and unadventurous, but that had been a very long time ago and was soon dismissed again.

She dusted the letter down and closed the writing box. As nothing else had happened she had no more to tell her childhood friend, Rebecca Kestrel. Besides, Rebecca and her husband, Lucas, were to join their party in a couple of months’ time, for Christmas at Kestrel Court, so she would save the rest of her news, such as it was, until then.

Lucinda went across to the window and leaned her arms on the sill, resting her chin on her hand as she stared out into the dark. When she had first heard from Mrs Saltire that they were to spend autumn in the Midwinter villages she had been quite concerned, for everyone knew that there had been the most scandalously diverting occurrences at Midwinter a mere five years before, when the members of a dangerous spy ring had been captured. It was not at all the type of environment that Lucinda thought appropriate for her young charge. Miss Eustacia Saltire was a sweet girl, but she was deplorably romantic in her inclinations, and Lucinda was very concerned that Stacey would become quite over-excited by her proximity to people who had actually been involved in the shocking events of those times.

Balanced against the danger of encouraging Stacey’s wayward imagination, however, had been the possibilities provided by a family connection to the Duke of Kestrel. Mrs Saltire had the good fortune to be distantly related to the Duchess of Kestrel, and it had been the Duchess who had suggested that Mrs Saltire might like to bring Stacey to Midwinter for a few months. Mindful of the fact that the Duke still had several eligible relatives unmarried, and also that Stacey simply had not taken during her first season in London, Mrs Saltire had eagerly agreed. The journey had been accomplished, made all the smoother by the attentiveness of the ducal servants, and they had now been situated at Kestrel Court for eight weeks.

Lucinda sighed again. It would soon be time for her to start applying for a new post, for Stacey was now betrothed to the worthy but dull Samuel Leytonstone, who had a solid fortune and a manner to match. Secretly Lucinda thought that Stacey could aim higher than a young man who behaved as though he were already in flannel vests, but she kept the unworthy thought to herself. Mr Leytonstone was steady and rich and reliable, and one had to count such matters above trifling things such as passion and gallantry. Lucinda knew all about the dangers of rash youthful passion, and if a tiny part of her still craved excitement she usually managed to ignore it.

Lucinda knew all about Making Do too. In her youth her looks had been no more than tolerable—dark blonde hair and cool blue eyes had been unfashionable at the time—and her parents, an indigent vicar and his social climbing wife, had been delighted when she had become engaged straight from the schoolroom. But then the plan had gone awry.

She had been betrothed for four years to her childhood sweetheart—a man who, humiliatingly, appeared to have forgotten her existence as soon as she was out of his sight, a man with dash and brilliance and the prospect of a glittering naval career. Eventually the most appalling of news had filtered its way back to her, conveyed by the gossips and scandalmongers who made it their business to upset as many people as possible. Her betrothed was a criminal. He had abandoned his promising naval career and had taken up instead as—whisper it—a pirate.

That was the moment Lucinda’s heart had broken. So she had married the first man who asked, had been widowed two years later, and now here she was, at nine and twenty, earning her own living and putting youthful folly firmly where it belonged—in the past.

Lucinda spotted a moth that was coming dangerously close to the candle flame. She trapped it gently in her cupped palms and released it out of the window, worrying as soon as it was gone that the night would be too cold for it and it would perish.

As she turned to close the casement a flicker of movement caught her eye, away on the edge of the woods that bordered the garden at Kestrel Court. She stopped, staring into the shadows. The leaves rustled in the slight breeze and the scent of pine mingled with the fresher, salty smell of the sea and the crispness of the frosty night. Lucinda paused, her hand on the window latch. There was no one there. The skipping shadows and her imagination were playing tricks.

At least she hoped so.

But a nasty suspicion had lodged in her mind and would not be shifted. What if it was Stacey, making an assignation with a young man? What if—perish the thought—Stacey was planning an elopement?

Before the dull but rich Mr Leytonstone had proposed, a certain Mr Owen Chance, the Riding Officer stationed in Woodbridge to catch smugglers, had asked Mrs Saltire’s permission to pay his addresses to Stacey. Mrs Saltire had refused graciously, politely, but very finally. She had pointed out elegantly that Mr Chance had good birth but no money, and precious little prospect of making any in a backwater like Midwinter. But Owen Chance was a good-looking man, with a charm to match, and, being fair, Lucinda could see that he quite eclipsed poor Mr Leytonstone. One could not imagine Mr Chance in a flannel vest. In fact Lucinda could tell that Stacey had imagined Mr Chance more as a knight on a white charger, and her mother’s refusal to countenance his suit made him all the more attractive.

There had been tears when Mrs Saltire had pointed out the financial realities of their situation to her daughter, and then Mr Leytonstone had proposed and been accepted. Stacey had gone very quiet and suspiciously biddable, but Lucinda was not convinced…

If Stacey was regretting her betrothal and making midnight assignations with the dashing Mr Chance…Well…Lucinda shook her head. It would be very foolish because, apart from any issues of propriety, she would catch her death of cold out on a night like this.

It was past twelve and time for bed. Lucinda heard the clock at the bottom of the stairs chime the quarter-hour. Mrs Saltire would be asleep by now, tucked up with her laudanum, and Stacey, whom Lucinda had caught reading Ivanhoe earlier in the day, was probably dreaming of romantic heroes, not creeping out into the grounds of Kestrel Court to meet one.

Nothing ever happens here…

Lucinda put up a hand to pull the curtains shut, then paused as the flicker of movement caught her eye again. A man on horseback was riding very slowly down the track that bordered the gardens of Kestrel Court. Lucinda could see his outline in the moonlight. It looked disturbingly like Mr Chance, on the raking bay mare upon which he had caught Stacey’s eye in the first place.

A floorboard creaked on the landing, and then there was the sound of a step on the stair. With a sharp sigh Lucinda snatched her cloak from the chairback where she had left it earlier, and flung it about her shoulders. She grabbed the candle from beside her bed, and hurried out into the corridor. It was not the first time that her role as governess had involved her in counselling against an improvident love affair. She did not want Stacey to ruin herself in a foolish elopement and then rue it for the rest of her days when the love was gone and there was no money on which to live.

The house was silent. A lamp burned in the porch, but the night porter was not at his post, though the front door was unlocked. Deploring such laxity on the part of the servants, Lucinda turned the handle and went outside, down the steps and onto the gravel sweep. Her candle flickered and went out, doused by the sharp sea breeze. For a moment she blinked in the sudden darkness, but then her eyes adjusted to the moonlight and she could see a figure slipping between the trees in the lee of the park wall. At the same time she heard the sound of hooves on the frosty ground. Could that be Mr Chance, coming to carry off his bride? Lucinda screwed up her face as she imagined Mrs Saltire’s hysterics when she discovered that her little ewe lamb had thrown herself away on a pauper.

She hastened after the fleeing figure, but Stacey—if it were she—had already lost herself amongst the trees that bordered the park. The night was quiet now. Suspiciously so. Lucinda held her breath, straining to hear any sound that might give her quarry away, but there was nothing except the wind in the top of the pines and the distant beat of the waves on the shore.

Perhaps she had been mistaken. Perhaps Stacey really was tucked up in bed. It was a servant she had heard on the stair and she was out here chasing shadows. The cold was eating deep into her bones now. It was no night for an elopement. Feeling foolish, Lucinda turned to go back to the house.

The moon went behind a cloud, but in the moment before it disappeared Lucinda clearly saw a man crouching in the lee of the park gates—and in the same instant she saw what he could not: the menacing shadow of the Riding Officer moving silently along the wall, coming closer all the time. She caught her breath on a gasp, and the hidden man turned his head at the sound. With a shock of recognition Lucinda knew him.

Terror and amazement jolted through her. Past and present collided violently. Lucinda started to tremble. She could see that the man had spotted her and was about to speak; she saw too that Owen Chance was urging his horse forward silently, every sense alert for the slightest sound.

Lucinda acted on instinct. She raised a finger to her lips in a beseeching gesture and saw the fugitive pause, and then she was beside him in one silent move, clapping her hand over his mouth. She pulled him deeper into the shadow of the gate and leaned forward to whisper in his ear.

‘Be silent! There is an excise man on the other side of the wall.’

Touching him as she was, she could feel the tension that ripped through his body at her words. Every muscle he possessed was taut and ready for flight—or fight. He moved slightly, silently, to grasp the pistol in his belt.

Lucinda eased her hand from his mouth and rested it warningly on his shoulder. They were both utterly still. She could not even hear his breathing. But she was more aware of him than she had ever been of any other person in her life. She was pressed against the unyielding lines of his back. She could feel the warmth of his skin and she could smell him, a scent of fresh air and salt and leather that went straight to her head and made her senses spin, and also made her wonder, quite outrageously, if he tasted of the sea as well.

The tension spun tight as a web and seemed to last for ever, and then there was a chink of harness. She heard Owen Chance swear softly, and the horse snorted as he pulled on the rein. The shadows shifted and the horse and rider turned towards the Woodbridge road to be were swallowed up in the darkness. The frost glittered on the road behind them. Lucinda released the man and stood up slowly, every muscle in her body protesting at being clenched so tight.

The man got to his feet and they stood looking at each other in the moonlight. Lucinda felt breathless—a natural enough condition, she assured herself, since she had forgotten to breathe during the entire encounter. Twelve long years slipped away as though they had never been, and she was a young girl again, fathoms deep in her first love. She had thought never to see this man again…

‘So…’ he said. His voice was smooth. ‘I must thank you for saving my skin. I had no notion that he was there.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘Muffling the horse’s hooves is an old trick. I cannot believe it almost caught me.’

‘You should be more careful,’ Lucinda said. She was glad that her voice sounded so calm when inside she was trembling. Did he not recognise her? Had she changed so much? It seemed impossible that he would not know her when she had known him instantly. A spasm of bitterness twisted within her. Perhaps it was not so surprising. He had, after all, forgotten her as soon as he had walked out of her life. Why would he remember her now?

She saw his teeth flash white as he smiled. ‘I will take your advice in future. But you, mistress…What made you decide to help me when ninety-nine of one hundred females would have screamed loud enough to bring every last Riding Officer in the vicinity down on me?’

Lucinda regarded him steadily. She was not entirely sure why she had helped him when she had reason enough to wish him dead. But instinct, as old and deep as time, had made her save him rather than condemn him, and she did not want to question why.

‘I did it for the sake of your sister, Daniel de Lancey,’ she said, reaching for an acceptable half-truth. ‘Rebecca would not wish me to condemn you to hang if I could save your neck.’

He went very still. ‘Do I know you?’

‘You did once,’ Lucinda said.

He took her chin in his hand and turned her face up to the moonlight, and Lucinda took the opportunity to study him as candidly as he was scrutinising her. He had not changed so much from the young man she had last seen twelve years before. He still had intensely dark hair, untouched with grey, and dark eyes that had once bewitched every young lady in the county—eyes so black she had once imagined fancifully that they were darker than midnight. Differences were there, though. His face was leaner than she remembered, hardened, perhaps, by experience and adversity—the line of the jaw harsh, the mouth firm. And he was no longer the lanky youth he had once been, but had filled out with hard muscle beneath his coat, so that his shoulders were broad and he seemed taller, tougher, altogether more dangerous.

Her skin prickled with awareness beneath his fingers. Emotions stirred. Old memories…She had been so young, only seventeen, but there had been nothing childish about her feelings for Daniel de Lancey. He had been her first love—her only love, if she were honest. And she had never forgotten him, not even when humiliation and pride had flayed her alive, and common sense and practicality and every sound, rational reason she could ever come up with had prompted her to let his memory go.

He pursed his lips into a soundless whistle.

‘Lucy Spring…By all that’s miraculous…’ There was something in his eyes, something of nostalgia laced with a wickedness that made her heart turn over. But she was a sensible widow now, not a lovestruck young girl who would fall for his shallow charm a second time.

‘Lucinda Melville,’ she corrected primly.

His hand fell. ‘Of course. I heard that you had wed. You did not wait for me as you promised.’

Emotion raked Lucinda suddenly, as raw and painful now as it had been eight years before, when she had heard of his betrayal. ‘You did not come back for me as you promised.’ The hot words tumbled from her lips before she could help herself. ‘How dare you reproach me? You left me without a word. I waited four years, Daniel! And then I heard that you had abandoned me—abandoned everything you had previously held dear!’ There was a wealth of bitterness and humiliation in her voice. ‘Did you expect me to wait for ever?’

It seemed a long time before he replied. His face was in shadow and she could not read his tone. ‘Yes,’ he said, at last. He shifted a little. ‘Yes, I suppose that I did.’

‘I never received anything from you,’ Lucinda said. ‘No word, no letters…Did you write to me at all? Did you even think of me?’

There was a silence. She could still remember the stifling conventionality of the vicarage drawing room where, over tea each and every day, her mother’s visitors would press her gently on whether she had heard from her fiancé yet and commiserate maliciously with her when she was forced to admit she had not.

‘It was a long time ago,’ Daniel said, and Lucinda’s heart wrenched to have her suspicions confirmed. He had not written. He had not cared.

‘So it was,’ she said. ‘And now I am a widow and you are a pirate, so I hear.’

She saw him grin. ‘You heard correctly.’

She looked at him. In boots and a tattered old frieze coat he looked more like a yeoman farmer—except for the pistol and sword at his belt.

‘You do not look much like a pirate,’ she said. ‘How disappointing.’

Daniel tilted his head on one side. ‘How do you know what a pirate looks like? Have you met any others to compare me with?’

‘No,’ Lucinda conceded. ‘I was basing my judgement on literature only.’

‘Ah. Blackbeard?’

‘And Calico Jack.’

‘Neither had any style, so I hear.’

‘They are both dead,’ Lucinda said repressively. ‘It is not a career with good prospects.’

Daniel laughed. ‘You always were the practical one.’

‘And you were reckless and dangerous,’ Lucinda said.

‘So, no change there. Which is why I am a pirate. We both made our choices, did we not, Lucy? Mine to be wild and irresponsible and yours to marry for money.’

‘I am a governess,’ Lucinda snapped, ‘not a rich widow.’

‘I heard,’ Daniel said. ‘Fine justice that you threw me over for Leopold Melville and then he turned out to be penniless.’

The anger and hurt that Lucinda had spent years repressing jetted up. ‘By what right do you say that, Daniel de Lancey? I waited and waited for you, but you never came, did not even send word!’ Her voice rose. ‘Do you think it was right that I should be obliged to wait on the whim of a man who did not care enough to send just one letter?’ She glared at him. ‘You were an arrogant, selfish, heartless boy, and you are no better now as a man! I wish I had not saved your skin just now.’

Daniel had listened to her outburst without a word, but now he took a step towards her. He put his hand on her wrist. Neither of them was wearing gloves. His touch scalded her.

‘Will you give me away, then?’ he demanded. ‘Run back to the house and raise the alarm?’

‘Of course not,’ Lucinda said contemptuously. ‘What good would that do? You would be long gone before the militia were out.’

His fingers tightened. ‘But you would like me to be caught?’

Lucinda shrugged angrily. ‘You deserve no sympathy from me.’

‘Perhaps not. But you helped me, all the same. Why was that, Lucy? If you bear such a grudge against me?’

Lucinda shivered a little, for beneath the anger that smouldered in both of them she sensed something else, something much more perilous. Old passion as hot and brittle as burning sticks.

Daniel was rubbing his fingers over the tender skin on the underside of her wrist, sending ripples of sensation cascading along her nerves. ‘Why?’ he asked again, softly this time.

Lucinda tried to snatch her hand away but he held on to her. ‘And what,’ he continued, ‘were you doing out here in the dark? Meeting a lover?’

‘Mind your own business,’ Lucinda snapped, seizing on his second question so she did not have to answer the first, more difficult one. ‘If you must know, I was out here looking for Miss Saltire. She has a tendre for Mr Chance, the Riding Officer, and I was afraid that she had made a foolish decision to elope.’

Daniel smiled a little. ‘You would not approve of that, of course.’

‘No, indeed. I know how misleading youthful passions can be.’

‘But instead of Miss Saltire it is her governess who is out meeting a gentleman in the moonlight.’

‘You are no gentleman.’

‘That’s true. Which probably makes me even more dangerous to tryst with.’

‘Then I shall leave.’

‘Very wise,’ Daniel said. His tone became contemplative. ‘Last time we parted you kissed me goodbye.’

There was a short, sharp silence. ‘I remember,’ Lucinda said, adding crushingly, ‘It was not a very good kiss, was it?’

She remembered that it had been sweet, though, despite their lack of experience. And, truth to tell, she had little more knowledge of kissing now than she had had then. One could not count Leopold’s fumbling attentions as adding to her experience. It had been endurance rather than passion that had been her companion in the marriage bed. Leopold had accused her of coldness and had turned from her in fury.

She suspected that Daniel’s experience with the opposite sex, in contrast to her own, had increased in leaps and bounds—a suspicion confirmed when he said, ‘No doubt we could do better now.’

Lucinda’s stomach muscles clenched with a mixture of nervousness and longing. She tried hard to ignore it.

‘No doubt we could,’ she said. ‘But such things were over between us a long time ago, Daniel.’

‘Then consider it no more than an expression of thanks.’

‘Most people,’ Lucinda said, ‘would make do with a handshake.’

Daniel smiled. ‘But not me.’

He drew her in to his body and the shadows merged and shifted as his arms closed about her. His lips were cold against hers. Lucinda had imagined that she would resist him, but now she found that she did not want to do so. Their bodies fitted together as though they had never been apart, as though the intervening years had never existed.

Lucinda parted her lips instinctively and felt his tongue, warm and insistent, touch hers. She had wondered how he would taste, and now she knew: he tasted of the sea and the air and something clean and masculine and deliciously sensual. She felt shocked and aroused, and shocked by her own arousal. It had been such a long time. She had thought that her wild, wanton side was gone for ever. Sensible Lucinda, who advised debutantes against unruly passion, should not feel hot and dizzy and melting in a pirate’s embrace.

She drew back a little on the thought, and felt him smile against her mouth—a smile that turned her trembling insides to even greater disorder. She was afraid that her legs might give way if he let go of her now.

‘Was that better than last time?’ he whispered.

‘I…It was…’ She grasped for words, grasped for any kind of coherent thought.

‘You do not sound very sure.’

He sounded wickedly sure of himself. Before she could protest he had tangled a hand into her hair and tilted her face up so that his mouth could ravish hers with a thoroughness that left her dazed. She found that she was clutching his forearms, seeking stability in a world that spun like a top.

Have some sense. Push him away…

Instead, she drew him closer, sliding her hands over his shoulders, feeling the broadcloth of his coat rough against her cold fingers. His jaw grazed her cheek; that too was slightly rough with stubble, and the way it scored her sensitive skin made her shudder with helpless desire.

‘Lucinda…’ His lips were against her neck, sending the goosebumps skittering across her skin. She felt cold, but her head was full of images of a summer long ago. She could smell the flowers and the scent of hot grass, hear the buzz of the bees, and see Daniel’s hands trembling slightly as he unlaced her petticoat, his skin tanned brown against her pale nakedness.

Memory was powerfully seductive. She let go of all sense and pressed closer, arching to Daniel as his hand slipped beneath her cloak to find and clasp her breast, his thumb stroking urgently over the sensitised tip. She could feel how aroused he was, feel the strong, clean lines of his body moulded against every one of her curves. She opened her lips again to the demand of his, and for one timeless moment they stood locked together before he released her and stepped back with a muffled curse.

‘Devil take it, you always could do this to me, Lucy. I thought that after twelve years—’ Daniel stopped and Lucinda drew in a long, shuddering breath. Common sense was reasserting itself now, like a draught of cold night air. She felt tired and bitter, and aching with a sense of loss for what might have been, for all the golden, glorious promise that long-ago summer had held.

‘This is foolish,’ she said. Her voice shook. ‘It was all over long ago. I must go, Daniel.’

He did not try to stop her. And because she was never going to see him again Lucinda raised her hand to touch his cheek in a fleeting caress before she turned away and walked towards the house. She did not mean to turn and look back, but when she did he had gone.

Chapter 2

THE path down to the creek was treacherous in the dark and the frost, but Daniel had walked there sufficient times in the past to leave at least a part of his mind free to think on other matters—and tonight that other matter was Lucy Spring. He could still feel the soft imprint of her body against his, and smell the flower perfume of her hair, a summery fragrance, lavender or rose or jasmine. Daniel was not sure which it had been. It was a long time since he had had the luxury of strolling in an English country garden, but the scent and the memory of her still filled his senses.

He ached for her, his body still alive and sharp with arousal. He could think of nothing but the taste of her and the need to take her to bed. It was frightening, as though all the years they had been apart were cancelled out, counting for nothing, as though the youthful passion that had fired his life then had reawoken and was concentrated solely in her.

She had saved him from capture. Fatally, he had not been paying attention. His mind had been distracted. The day before he had had the melancholy duty of visiting Newmarket, to tell the mother of one of his crew that the lad—a boy of fourteen—had died of a fever contracted in Lisbon back in the autumn. Breaking the news had been a dreadful experience. The woman had looked at him with so much grief in her eyes, but had said no word of reproof. Daniel had wanted to pour it all out—how he had nursed the boy himself, praying desperately for his recovery, how they had thought he was improving only to see him slip away from them so quietly that the moment of his death had come and gone in a breath. He knew there were no other children to support her or comfort her through her grief. He had left a big bag of gold on the table, knowing that it was not enough, that it could never replace the only son who had run away to sea and died on a pirate ship.

He ran a hand over his hair. On the way back to the coast he had ridden hard, trying to outrun his demons, but they had stayed with him at every step. When the winter fog had come down as he reached the outskirts of Woodbridge, he had stabled the horse at the Bell and sought to drown his sorrows in ale. He had sat alone in the bar. No one had approached him. Either they’d known who he was, in which case they would not have dared speak to him, or they’d thought he looked too grim to be good company. For that was the truth of it. Once it had been enough to know that he was doing the King’s work, even if he was doing it outside the law, but now he felt old and sick of the fight. He had not seen his sister, his only family, for two years now. He was damnably lonely. And seeing Lucinda, holding her close in his arms, feeling her warmth as he pressed his mouth to the softness of her hair…That had almost been the undoing of him. He had not wanted to let her go again. He had watched her walk away, and it had been the hardest thing he had ever done.

It had been such a long time. He’d thought he had forgotten her. Now the vividness of his memories and the ache of his body told him it was far from over, no matter what Lucinda said.

But there was such bitterness between them. Daniel pushed the dark hair back from his forehead. She had called him selfish, and it was true. He had not thought, in his arrogant, youthful carelessness, what it must have been like for Lucy, left at home in the stifling atmosphere of the vicarage, fending off those spiteful tabbies who would be enquiring every day as to when he was returning to make her his bride. As the weeks had slid into months, and the months into years, with no word from him, what must she have thought? How must she have felt, sitting at home waiting for him? Could he really reproach her for breaking their betrothal and accepting Leopold Melville instead?

Daniel paused, listening for sounds of pursuit, but the night was silent. Not even the call of an owl penetrated the dark woods.

The worst thing was that Lucy’s reproaches were well founded. He had assumed that she would always be there for him. He had been complacent, certain of her love for him. For a while after he had joined the Royal Navy the sea had become his mistress, to the exclusion of all other loves. She was demanding, imperious, dangerous, exciting. She pushed all other thoughts from his mind. And then the Admiralty had approached him to leave the relative security of the Navy and strike out as a privateer, gathering information, working beyond and outside the law. It was made clear to him that he would be denounced as a pirate from the start, in order to give his apparent betrayal more credibility. The idea had appealed to his recklessness, and he had not thought then of Lucy, or home, or anything beyond the excitement of the moment. He had been a damnable fool. He had thought that one day he could go back for her and everything between them would be as it had been.

Eventually word had come to him that she was married, and the shock of it had brought him to his senses. He had realised what he had lost. But it was too late. Now he knew they could never go back.

The challenge came out of the darkness and he gave the password. One of the crew stepped onto the path in front of him. Even though the Defiance was a privateer, his men were drilled as on a regular Navy ship, disciplined and sound.

‘Welcome back, sir.’ Daniel’s deputy, Lieutenant Holroyd, sounded relieved. The crew were jumpy as cats when he was ashore. ‘There is someone to see you.’

The Defiance was berthed in a deep, wide tidal pool, close under the trees of Kestrel Creek. The tide was high and Daniel could step aboard from the bank. It was one of his favourite moorings, but it was a dangerous one given the length of time it took to sail out of the creek to the open sea. But then nowhere was safe for a pirate. That was one of the things that had attracted him to the life in the first place—The freedom and the sense of risk. He had been young then, and dangerously wild. These days he realised that he valued a cool head as much as reckless courage.

There was a lamp burning in his cabin, spilling warm golden light across the papers on his desk and illuminating the still figure of the man who sat waiting for him.

‘I heard that the Riding Officer was out,’ Justin, Duke of Kestrel said, rising to greet him. ‘I am glad to see you made it safely back.’

Daniel shook his hand. He had worked with Kestrel for the last five years, providing the Admiralty with intelligence on French shipping movements during the Wars, chasing the French from British shores, smuggling refugees from Napoleon’s regime. Daniel liked Justin; he was tough but fair. They were also linked by the marriage of Daniel’s sister Rebecca to Justin’s brother Lucas, but they seldom referred to their family connection. Their relationship was strictly professional.

‘Chance almost caught me,’ he said now. ‘He’s good, but I think someone tipped him off.’

Justin Kestrel’s brows snapped down. ‘Norton?’

‘It must be.’ Daniel threw his damp coat across the back of a chair and loosened his stock. Many people thought that John Norton, the infamous pirate and French spy, had died alongside his mistress in the wreck of his ship five years before, but Daniel knew better. He had seen the ravages of Norton’s piracy along the Suffolk coast of late, and knew that Norton was using Daniel’s own name to cover his tracks. He had sworn to bring Norton to justice once and for all.

‘We are trying to catch him,’ Justin said.

Daniel’s mouth set in a grim line. ‘So am I,’ he said. ‘Before he sullies my name for ever with his cruelty.’ He shot Justin Kestrel a look. ‘That might seem strange to you, Kestrel,’ he said, with a lop-sided smile. ‘Honour amongst thieves…’

Justin shifted in his chair. He was a big man, and the cabin seemed almost too confined for him. He looked at Daniel directly with his very blue eyes.

‘There was another matter that I wished to discuss with you, de Lancey. You may not have heard that your cousin, Gideon Pearce, has died.’

Daniel absorbed the news and found that he felt nothing at all. Years ago his cousin had denounced him as a traitor and a disgrace to the family name. The only family that mattered one whit to him was Rebecca.

‘As you know, he was childless,’ Justin Kestrel continued. ‘You are now Baron Allandale.’

Daniel’s mouth twisted derisively. ‘I am no such thing. He disinherited me.’

‘No, he did not. At the end, it seems, blood was thicker than water.’

Daniel raised his brows. That had surprised him. ‘Nevertheless,’ he said, ‘I cannot inherit as a wanted criminal.’

Justin Kestrel put the brandy glass down. The lamplight shone on the richness of the amber. ‘The government wishes you to take up your title. They think it is time you came in to port. They are willing to grant a public pardon. Should you wish to continue a career at sea they will offer you another commission in the Royal Navy, as a commodore.’

‘A promotion?’ Daniel said dryly. ‘Is the Home Secretary also willing to state that I have been working in secret for the government the whole time?’

Justin Kestrel shifted. ‘With some persuasion, perhaps. Spencer is a reasonable man, and he has served at the Admiralty so he understands your role.’

Daniel grimaced. The government was notoriously and understandably reluctant to reveal the names and activities of their spies. He knew they would far prefer that he disappear quietly to live in the country.

‘They must want me to turn respectable very much,’ he murmured. ‘I wonder why?’

Kestrel seemed to be choosing his words carefully. ‘You are a peer of the realm now, and you are seen to be flouting the King’s laws. If you were to carry on as a privateer after this you would be beyond pardon. Already some of your activities—the smuggling, for example—place you technically outside the law, no matter that you engage in it in order to obtain information.’

Daniel laughed. ‘I engage in it in order to obtain good French brandy,’ he said.

‘Precisely.’

There was a silence.

‘There is a very fine estate in Shropshire,’ Kestrel continued, ‘and another in Oxfordshire.’

‘It is a long way from the sea.’

‘Perhaps you might wish to settle down, though—marry, even…?’

Daniel’s thoughts flew instinctively to Lucinda. Where had that idea come from? Two hours before he would have said that marriage was the very last thing he would ever contemplate. Marriage and piracy were fundamentally opposed. Yet here was Justin Kestrel with the suggestion that he might be married off and settled in Shropshire with a wife and family—the 28th Baron Allandale, respectable at last. And he was getting into dangerous waters, for he was thinking of Lucinda in his life and in his bed, her warmth thawing the cold loneliness that had ambushed him of late, her love fending off the darkness that threatened his soul.

He shook his head sharply. He was mad even to think of it. Lucinda hated him for his callous disregard for her feelings all those years ago, and anyway, respectability bored him. It was deadly dull.

He thrust his hands into his pockets. ‘And if I refuse?’

Kestrel raised his brows. ‘Are you going to?’

‘Yes, I think I am. I like my way of life too much to give up now.’

Kestrel grimaced. ‘Think about it before you turn us down. It’s a good offer. If you refuse, then Spencer will cut you loose and in the end you will surely hang.’

‘Despite my service to the Crown over the years?’

‘Despite that.’ Kestrel nodded towards the brandy bottle. ‘Officially you are outside the law, de Lancey.’

‘You drink my brandy,’ Daniel said. ‘You order my brandy.’ All the same, he knew Justin was right. In his dealings with spies and smugglers and criminals he had, inevitably, blurred the line. If he refused to conform now, to come into port and accept his barony, he knew the government would deny he had ever worked for them—and he could not prove it. He would be cast adrift.

‘I do drink your brandy,’ Justin Kestrel agreed. ‘I am a hypocrite. I like your brandy. I like you, de Lancey. Too much to see you hang. Think of your sister if you won’t do it for any other reason.’

That, Daniel thought, was below the belt. If anything was likely to sway him it was the thought of all that Rebecca had suffered for him in the past. But now she was settled with Lucas and their growing family. Would his return add so much to her happiness? He knew that the answer was probably that it would. He knew it, but then he thought of the stifling tedium of life on land and he shook his head. He could never go back to that now.

‘It is too late. The answer is no.’

Justin Kestrel’s expression was impassive. ‘I am sorry for it, but I am not surprised.’ He held out a hand to shake Daniel’s one last time. ‘You are on your own then, de Lancey. Goodnight.’

After he had gone, Daniel lay down in his bunk with his hands behind his head and thought about Justin Kestrel’s offer. He cared nothing for having a title, and he had thought that he would care nothing for the estates, but conscience, which had hardly troubled him these ten years past, stirred uncomfortably, reminding him of all the people whose livelihoods depended on him now. He could not simply neglect his estates and let them go to ruin, taking people’s future with them. With the title came responsibilities—responsibilities he did not want to be burdened with. Was that not what he had always done, now he came to think of it? Had he not run from those who depended on him? Run from his duty? He had preferred the reckless excitement of the hunt to facing up to his responsibilities at home.

He thought of Lucinda, waiting for him in vain all those years and telling him in no uncertain terms that very night that the love that had been between them was long gone, even if they both knew that the flame of their wild passion was scarcely extinguished. If there had been a way back from that…But there was not. There was no way back to the past. He knew that. Nor could he see himself settling to the life of village squire. But he would write to Rebecca and see if there was a way she might help the people of Allandale on his behalf.

And tomorrow he would take the Defiance out to sea and outrun his memories. He would hunt down John Norton. And he would make sure that he never saw Lucinda again. This time he would make sure that he forgot her.

Chapter 3

‘LADIES, ladies,’ the Duchess of Kestrel said reproachfully. ‘Your concentration is wandering today.’ She closed her copy of King John and placed it on a side table. ‘I know that Shakespeare’s histories may not be the most romantically engaging of his works,’ she added, with a slight smile in Eustacia Saltire’s direction, ‘but I thought it was the type of improving book that would suit our little reading group. My dear Mrs Melville—’ here Lucinda jumped guiltily ‘—pray tell me, what do you think of the piece?’

Lucinda gulped. She had not been thinking about Shakespeare’s King John for the past ten minutes, for her thoughts had been occupied by a far more compelling character—that of Daniel de Lancey. Truth to tell, she had been thinking about him from the moment she had left him the previous night until she had fallen into a restless sleep at about three in the morning. Then she had dreamed about him: disturbing, passionate, heated dreams, full of half-remembered desire that even now caused her limbs to tingle and a burning and undeniable ache to fill her.

She realised that Sally Kestrel was still looking at her, a flicker of concern in her very green eyes.

‘You look a little too warm, Mrs Melville,’ she murmured. ‘Are you sure you are not running a temperature? Have you taken a chill, perhaps?’

‘I…no, I do not believe so.’ Lucinda struggled to push away the mental images of herself entwined in naked consummation with Daniel. She felt hot and bothered and aroused. She had prided herself on her cool common sense for years, and now she realised that she was afire with lust—and for a man she did not even like any more. It was maddening. It made her furious. And it was typical of Daniel de Lancey that he could do this to her.

‘I do find the room rather stuffy,’ she excused. ‘I think I shall take a walk down to the cove and take some fresh air.’ She turned to Eustacia. ‘Would you care to join me, Stacey?’

Miss Saltire, a lively brunette, looked glum.

‘For my part I would adore it, Mrs Melville, but Mama has forbidden me to go out whilst the weather is so inclement. She thinks that I might turn my ankle or catch an infection of the lungs or ruin my looks with frostbite.’

Lucinda caught the Duchess of Kestrel’s eye. ‘Dear Letitia is very careful,’ the Duchess observed wryly. ‘Perhaps if you took the gig, Mrs Melville, then the groom could drive and Stacey could wrap up in warm blankets?’

Stacey looked even gloomier. ‘It is a capital plan, cousin, but Mama would not approve. She fears a carriage accident in icy weather.’

Lucinda nodded. She understood Mrs Saltire’s concerns. There were so many things to be afraid of in her world, especially when Eustacia was her only defence against penurious old age. Lucinda knew that Mrs Saltire could not bear for Stacey to lose her looks or run off with an unsuitable man, or do anything that might risk their futures. But she also saw the slump of Stacey’s shoulders, and wished that Mrs Saltire might allow her daughter a little more latitude—or Stacey would rebel with the very behaviour her mother dreaded.

She went up to her room to wrap up warmly and fetch bonnet and gloves. Although it was not much past two in the afternoon, the sun was already beginning to sink in the west as she made her way along the track that led from Kestrel Court down to the cove. The path plunged deep into the pinewoods and the air was fresh with the sharp scent and loud with the song of the birds. Lucinda walked quickly, glad to feel the crisp chill of the breeze on her face. She had been active all her life, loving to walk and ride, and sometimes the determined staidness of life in the Saltire household chafed at her. Out here, in the open air, she felt a lift of spirits.

She had gone only a little way along the track when she heard the sound of hoofbeats and, turning the corner, espied Owen Chance on his bay mare, making his slow way towards her from the direction of the cove. Remembering the events of the previous night Lucinda immediately felt guilty for her part in helping Daniel evade capture. She liked Owen Chance. It was a pity that instinct and an older loyalty had set her against him.

There was a deep frown on Owen Chance’s forehead. The sort of frown, Lucinda thought, that a man might well wear when he had failed to capture a notorious pirate. Nevertheless, his expression lightened when he saw her, and he reined in, removing his hat and bowing with a flourish.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Melville! I trust you are well?’ He looked around. ‘Miss Saltire does not accompany you on your walk?’

Lucinda smiled at the transparency of his interest. It was clear that the poor man was as besotted with Stacey’s dark prettiness as she was taken with his charm and dashing character. It was only a shame that the whole affair could come to nothing.

‘Not today, I fear,’ she said, and saw his handsome face fall with disappointment. ‘I am going to the cove,’ she continued, with determined cheerfulness. ‘Are you travelling from that direction, sir?’

Owen Chance frowned again. ‘I am, ma’am, but I would urge you against such a walk today. It will be dark within a couple of hours, and there is talk of the smugglers being out tonight. If you could take word back to Kestrel Court and ask them to lock all the doors safely at dusk…?’

Lucinda’s heart jumped. Could the smugglers be Daniel’s men? She had no illusions, and knew that Daniel’s shady business would necessarily involve him in smuggling as well as piracy and goodness only knew what other nefarious activities. And Chance had almost caught him the previous night. If he planned a trap tonight then he might achieve what he had singularly failed to do before and take Daniel prisoner. She could not, for the life of her, repress the flicker of apprehension that ran through her body at the thought.

She cleared her throat. ‘How vastly frightening,’ she said, hearing the false brightness in her own voice and hoping that Owen Chance would ascribe it to excitement rather than nervousness. ‘I expect they are a desperate bunch?’

‘Criminals,’ Chance said contemptuously. ‘They deserve to hang.’

Lucinda’s heart battered against her ribs. ‘I am sure you are correct,’ she said. ‘There was once an infamous privateer in these parts, was there not? I suppose he is long gone, though.’

‘You suppose incorrectly,’ Owen Chance said. His voice was cold. ‘He still smuggles with the worst of them, and spies for France. It will be my great pleasure to bring him to justice.’

The cold crept along Lucinda’s neck and slithered down her spine. Surely he must be speaking of Daniel? Could it be true? She could hardly condone smuggling, for it was against the law—even if half the gentry in the county turned a blind eye and Justin Kestrel himself cheerfully admitted to buying French brandy. But spying for the French was another matter. Had Daniel turned traitor during the long years of the war? Was it all a matter of money to him, and patriotism counted for nothing? She felt sick even to think of it.

‘I think I will go back, as you suggest, sir,’ she said, aware that her voice was not quite steady. ‘And I will warn them up at the house. Good wishes for your hunting.’

Chance touched his hat and cantered away up the path, and Lucinda stood for a moment alone beneath the pines. She did not wish to return yet to the stuffiness of the overheated house. Owen Chance’s words had disturbed her deeply. She could not believe that it was true. Yet what was it that Daniel had said the previous night?

‘We both made our choices…Mine to be wild and irresponsible…’

But a traitor? She did not want to believe it of him. And yet she did not know the man he had become. He might well consider that his country’s secrets were just commodities to sell, like brandy or French lace.

In her agitation she realised that she had left the main path and plunged off down a narrow track to the right. It forced its way through the trees, downwards towards the river. No doubt in summer it was completely impassable, but now the grasses and bracken underfoot had died back a little, and Lucinda thought that if she followed the path down to the water’s edge she could walk back to Kestrel Court that way. She knew there was a very pretty trail that followed the course of the stream until it reached the gardens.

Nettles brushed Lucinda’s skirts, and thorns clutched at her as she passed. Overhead the chatter of the birds had died away, and the pale winter light barely penetrated, but then she caught the flash of water ahead of her. The trees were thinning now, and suddenly she was on the edge of Kestrel Creek, with the water still and dark before her. She had come out further along the stream than she had intended, almost out in the bay—precisely where she had promised Owen Chance she would not walk. She had better turn for home at once.

The tide was ebbing. An oystercatcher pattered across the mud, leaving little footprints, then, as it saw her, it rose into the air, giving its piping call.

Lucinda smiled and wrapped her cloak more closely around her against the salty breeze. She could taste the tang of the sea here, but she knew she should not linger.

She went on, coming to a place where there was a sharp turn in the creek, and then she stopped, drawing back instinctively into the trees. The creek had widened into a deep pool and there, beneath the overhanging trees, hidden from the open river and the sea beyond, lay a ship at anchor. Lucinda’s breath caught painfully in her throat as she took in the snarling dragon figurehead on the prow and the name: Defiance.

All night she had lain awake, knowing that Daniel was nearby, imagining his ship riding at anchor out in the bay, perhaps, but never thinking that he was so close by, in this hidden mooring deep in Kestrel Creek. Suddenly the truth of his identity and his whole way of life hit her anew with the force of a blow. He was a criminal, a wanted man, very likely a traitor. The Daniel de Lancey she had known was gone for ever. There was nothing for her here.

She turned to go, stumbling over tree roots in her haste, and in the same moment a figure stepped out onto the path before her and a sack, thick and suffocating, was thrown over her head. She struggled, felt her arms pinioned to her sides, and then she was picked up as easily as though she were a sack of flour, thrown over the man’s shoulder, and carried off.

It was Daniel. Lucinda could tell from the feel and the scent of him, and from the disturbing familiarity of his hands on her body. He held her impersonally, and yet she burned with awareness. It made her angry to be at his mercy. She managed one well-placed and satisfying kick that landed somewhere soft and caused him to swear, and then his arms tightened about her so painfully that she could scarcely breathe, let alone move.

Being upside down completely disorientated her. There was the sound of voices, she was passed from hand to hand like a parcel, and then, finally, she was placed back on her feet and the sack pulled roughly from her head. She stood there, panting and glaring about her.

‘What were you doing spying on my ship?’

Daniel’s voice, measured and hard, snapped Lucinda’s attention straight back to him. She was standing in a well-appointed cabin that was lit by the rays of the sinking sun. The refection from the water outside made patterns on the wooden panelling and she could hear the gentle slap of the water against the stern of the ship. Daniel was sitting at a fine cherrywood desk and was toying with a quill between his fingers. A book lay open on the top of the desk, and a half-finished letter beside it. It was so peaceful, and so utterly removed from what Lucinda had expected, that for a moment she could not speak. The pristine cleanliness was a far cry from the smelly darkness she had anticipated, with a roaring drunk crew knocking back the rum and dallying with quayside whores.

‘Well?’ Daniel sounded slightly bored, as though he found stray women spying on the Defiance every day of the week. Lucinda felt prickles of resentment run along her skin that he should treat her with such disdain.

‘I was not spying,’ she retorted. ‘I was walking back from Kestrel Cove and took a wrong turn on the path.’

Daniel raised one dark, disbelieving brow. ‘You got lost? I see.’

Lucinda ran a hand over her hair and tried to smooth it down. There were stray pieces of straw—no doubt from the sacking—sticking to her cloak. She smelled faintly agricultural. Catching sight of herself in the small mirror on the bulkhead, she realised that she also looked a complete fright.

Daniel, in contrast, looked deplorably elegant, and she hated him for it. He had always been able to wear his clothes with careless aplomb, and now, with his dark well-cut jacket and snowy white linen, he looked hard and tough, with no soft edges. He was still watching her with cold impassivity, and she felt colour flood her cheeks as hot and embarrassing as though she had been a young girl. She knew he thought she had gone there deliberately to see him, and that the more she protested the less he would believe her.

‘You can believe what you like,’ she said, ‘but I did not seek you out.’

Daniel shrugged. His face was set in hard lines. ‘So you say.’

‘It’s true!’ Pride and embarrassment compounded Lucinda’s anger. ‘What, do you think yourself so dashing, so irresistible—the gallant pirate captain!—that every female in the neighbourhood must want to throw herself at you? Do you think I was so bowled over to meet you again last night that I could not keep away?’

Daniel’s firm mouth lifted in a slight smile that was not quite reassuring. He stood up. ‘I don’t know, Lucy. Were you?’

‘No, I was not. And stop calling me Lucy!’

‘I forgot. You are—you always were—Lucy to me.’ He had come to stand before her, and suddenly the spacious cabin seemed very small and very airless. Lucinda caught her breath. She tilted her head to glare up at him.

‘And you always were so arrogant! Believing that I came here solely to—’ Lucinda stopped abruptly.

He was so close to her now, perilously close, his body all but pinning her against the door. She found that she was watching his mouth, that tempting mouth, as he said softly, ‘Yes?’

Lucinda ran her tongue over her lips. ‘To…um…’

‘You are somewhat inarticulate for a governess. I noticed it last night.’

He put his hands flat against the door on either side of her head and leaned in. Their breath mingled for a moment and then his mouth captured hers. Only their lips touched, but that was more than enough.

The kiss was ruthless in its intensity. The swift current of desire raced between them, leaving Lucinda breathless and unable to think of anything other than the undeniable pleasure of his embrace. He lingered over her mouth as though he were learning her all over again, and when he stood back she could barely breathe, barely think. Her lips felt soft, and a little bruised, and she pressed one hand to them and saw that she was shaking.

‘This is not—’ She stopped, cleared her throat. ‘This is not what I want.’

‘No?’ Daniel had turned away, and she could not see his face, but she thought that his voice sounded strained. ‘Well, this isn’t a game, Lucinda. Do not come down to my ship looking for trouble, or you will surely find it.’

Lucinda’s anger—the anger he could always arouse in her, along with that uncomfortable attraction—jetted up.

‘I play no games,’ she said. ‘You are the one who hides out in the wood playing at pirates, abducting people, smuggling, spying for the French, so I hear! You are the one who never grew up!’

Daniel moved so quickly that she jumped back. But it was too late. He had caught her wrist in a grip that did not hurt, but which she could not break. His expression was grim, but just for a moment, and for the first time in her life, she saw a bleak unhappiness in his dark eyes before his face was impassive once again.

‘What do you mean?’ He spoke very quietly, but there was an undertone to his words that made her shiver.

‘I met Mr Chance in the woods just now,’ Lucinda said. ‘He told me that the smugglers would be out tonight and he would be hunting them.’ Daniel’s fingers tightened a little and her voice faltered. ‘He said that you are a criminal, Daniel, and a spy and a traitor—’

Daniel dropped her wrist as though he had been burned. ‘Did he mention me by name?’

‘No,’ Lucinda said. She suddenly felt chilled. Could she have made a mistake? ‘But who else could he mean?’ she whispered.

For a long moment they stared into one another’s eyes, and then Daniel turned away in what felt like a gesture of repudiation.

‘Dearest Lucy, always thinking the worst of me!’

‘Well, it did not require a great leap of imagination!’ Lucinda said, stung by his accusing tone. ‘After all, you told me yourself that you were a pirate, and I thought…I assumed…’

‘You assumed that I was a traitor as well.’ He slammed his fist against the panels of the door. ‘You would have trusted me once. You loved me once.’

‘That is all in the past,’ Lucinda said. She felt bitter and sick at what had become of that love, what had become of him.

He turned back to her suddenly, almost violently. ‘You are telling me that you feel nothing for me now?’ He raised a hand and trailed the back of it down her cheek. His touch seemed to burn her. She could feel her blood heating beneath the skin. The same treacherous attraction he could always arouse in her flared up, but was quenched in bitterness.

‘I cannot deny that I respond to you,’ she said, unflinchingly honest. ‘But it is nothing more than physical attraction. I do not trust you, Daniel, and I cannot respect you.’

For a moment she thought he was going to pull her into his arms and kiss her senseless, as though in defiance of all the love that had been lost between them, and her perfidious heart leapt to think of it. But then his hand fell to his side and he stepped back, turned on his heel and walked out of the cabin.

Lucinda stood still for a moment, trembling a little with the intensity of the storm of emotion within, and then suddenly recollected where she was and hastened after him.

‘Daniel! Wait! I want to get off the ship—’

He was standing at the end of the companionway, but now he turned and looked at her. One long, unreadable look.

‘You cannot,’ he said. ‘You should have thought of that before, Lucy. The tide has turned and we have sailed.’

Daniel strode up on deck, his hands clenched in tight fists at his side.

‘I do not trust you…I cannot respect you…’

He had been within an ace of grabbing Lucinda, throwing her down on the floor and making love to her there and then—as though that would enable him to wipe out all the anger and bitterness between them and conjure the old love in its place. Devil take it, he must be going soft in the head. What did it matter what she thought of him? He could have explained it all to her if he had wanted her good opinion. But it was far too late for that. Lucinda was right. They could never go back.

The Defiance was slipping down Kestrel Creek very slowly, towards the open sea. He heard the patter of feet on the deck behind him, and then Lucinda had grabbed his sleeve and pulled him around to face her. Her blue eyes were blazing. She looked furious.

‘What do you think you are doing? Turn the ship around! Make it stop! I want to get off!’

Daniel was aware that all the crew were covertly watching, under cover of going about their tasks. He put his hands on his hips and smiled down into Lucinda’s infuriated face.

‘Can’t do that, Mrs Melville,’ he drawled. ‘We sail on the tide. It doesn’t wait.’

Lucinda’s eyes narrowed to angry slits of blue. ‘You mean that I am stuck here with you? For how long?’

Daniel had only been intending to take the ship out for a night, to hunt Norton along the coast and remove himself from the threat of Owen Chance’s men finding him, but now he shrugged lightly.

‘A week? Two? Who knows? You can share my cabin if you like,’ he added with a mocking smile. He took a step closer to her. ‘It might not be love between us any more, Lucy, but it could still be pleasurable…’

He thought for a moment that she was going to strike him, but then she turned on her heel and ran across to the side of the ship. They were still very close to the bank as the Defiance slid almost imperceptibly out of the creek, and Lucinda did not even hesitate. She grabbed the rigging, pulled herself up onto the rail, and stood there, poised to jump.

Daniel swore violently. Anger and fear collided within him, and he covered the deck faster than he had ever run before, grabbing her about the waist and dragging her backwards into his arms in the very second she was about to launch herself over the side.

‘Are you insane?’ he shouted. ‘You could kill yourself trying a trick like that!’

She struggled like a demon in his arms, kicking him, beating him with her fists, and calling him some colourful names that Daniel felt vaguely shocked she even knew. Her tomboyish behaviour reminded him of their childhood, when she would scramble through the fields, losing her bonnet and tearing her dress, an utter hoyden. Evidently she still had that same wild spirit. His crew were looking highly diverted, trying to smother their grins, and Daniel picked Lucinda up bodily and dragged her behind the mainmast for a little privacy. The man working there moved discreetly away.

Daniel held Lucinda tightly until she went soft and quiescent in his arms, then he gently pushed the tumbled hair away from her face.

‘Do you hate me so much, Luce, that you would risk your very life to get away from me?’

They stared at one another for what seemed like hours, and then Lucinda dropped her gaze. ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘but I wish I had never met you again, Daniel.’

Something wrenched Daniel deep inside.

‘I’ll take you back,’ he said shortly.

She looked annoyed. ‘There is no need for you to come. I can manage perfectly well on my own.’

Daniel smiled. ‘I know, Luce, but I insist.’

After a second she gave him a faint, hesitant smile in return. ‘Owen Chance might catch you.’

‘I doubt it.’

She smoothed her tattered gown ‘You are so reckless.’ She raised her gaze and gave him a proper smile this time, and it made his heart lurch. But there was sadness in her eyes as well, and it hurt him to see it.

‘I wish I did not feel I know you so well,’ she said, ‘when I do not really know you at all.’

For a moment Daniel was desperate to tell her the truth. The temptation was so strong that he could feel the words jostling to come out. He had never previously cared for any man’s good opinion, but now he found he wanted to regain Lucinda’s trust and respect. He wanted it more than anything else in the world. He drove his hands into his pockets in a gesture of repressed rage. He could tell her he was on the side of the angels, but in the end what good would it do? He could neither take her with him, nor make up for the damage he had done to her in the past. So it was better that he kept his peace and let her go.

The anchor was lowered and a rope ladder thrown over the side. Lucinda insisted on climbing down it herself, just as Daniel had known she would. He instructed Holroyd to take the ship out beyond the bay and stand by to pick him up at Harte Point whilst he walked back with her through the woods to Kestrel Court.

They walked in silence, though every so often he would hold back branches from her path, or pull aside brambles, and she would thank him politely. It was only as they were approaching the edge of the parkland that she spoke.

‘Does it suit you, Daniel, this business of being a pirate?’

‘Most of the time,’ Daniel said. He raised his brows. ‘Does it suit you to be a governess?’

She shot him a look from beneath the battered edge of her bonnet. ‘Most of the time,’ she said. There was an undertone of humour in her voice. ‘It is better than marriage, at any rate.’

‘That would surely depend on who you were married to?’

There was a pause. The wind sighed through the pines. ‘I suppose so,’ Lucinda said. ‘I made a bad mistake with Leopold. I was running away from my feelings for you, I suppose. And I was angry, so I took the first offer I received.’

The pain and guilt in Daniel tightened another notch.

‘We all make mistakes,’ he said, ‘and mine have been the greater.’

He saw her smile. ‘So what were your mistakes, Daniel?’

Daniel turned to look at her in the gathering dusk. ‘Leaving you,’ he said. ‘Arrogance, complacency, thoughtlessness…Oh, and cheating a Portuguese pirate at cards and almost paying for it with my life.’

Lucinda gave a peal of laughter.

‘And wishing,’ Daniel said softly, watching her face, ‘that I could change the past.’

The laughter died from her eyes. ‘That is a mistake, Daniel.’ She looked over her shoulder. ‘We are almost at the park wall. You may leave me here. I shall be quite safe.’

She put a hand against his chest and stood on tiptoe to kiss him. Her lips were cool and they clung to his, and he wanted to pick her up and carry her off to make love to her under the trees of the pine forest. But he knew that some things could never be, and already he had let matters go far too far.

‘Goodnight,’ she whispered, and he knew that she meant goodbye.

‘Tell them to lock the doors fast tonight,’ Daniel said.

She raised her chin. ‘Because you and your scoundrel crew will be out smuggling?’

The frustration, the wanting, poured through him and almost swept everything else aside. He caught her shoulders, pressing her back against the trunk of the nearest tree.

‘Ah, Lucy, what a shockingly poor opinion you have of me,’ he muttered, his mouth harsh against hers. He wanted to forget her anger and her scorn and find the sweetness beneath—the sweetness he was sure was still there for him. He plundered her mouth like the pirate he was—taking, demanding, asking no permission. He held her hard against the unyielding wood as he stole the response he wanted from her, his kiss fierce and insistent, until he was panting for breath and she was too, and he knew from the touch and the feel of her that she was his for the taking.

Her eyes were a hazy blue in the moonlight, dazed with sensual desire, and her mouth was soft and ripe and he ached for her. But he knew that if he made love to her now she would hate him in the morning. Because although he could wrench this response from her body she mistrusted him, and detested what he had become, and once she thought about what had happened she would despise herself and him too.

With an oath he set her away from him.

‘You had better go, Lucinda,’ he said, deliberately cruel. ‘Go before I forget what little honour I have left and treat you like the pirate I am.’

He saw her flinch at his harshness, and then she gathered her cloak to her and hurried away. He felt a cold desolation that had nothing to do with the winter night.

Chapter 4

THE middle of December brought the final Woodbridge Assembly before Christmas. The Assembly Rooms were icy cold that night. A wind was whistling in from the sea, finding all the gaps between the windows and setting the candle flames dancing in the draught. Lucinda drew her shawl more closely about her and shivered on her rout chair. Company was light that evening—a few local families, and some of the officers from the Woodbridge barracks—but amidst the small crowd Miss Stacey Saltire shone like a jewel.

Lucinda had observed that it was often the way when a young lady was engaged: all the gentlemen who had been wary of approaching her when she had been husband-hunting now felt free to pay attention to her, knowing she was promised to another. And none was more assiduous in his attentions than the Riding Officer, Mr Owen Chance, who was even now dancing with Stacey, the two dark heads bent close to one another as they indulged in intimate conversation.

Lucinda sighed. Not only was she concerned by what she saw—as was Mr Leytonstone, glowering from across the other side of the floor but too cowardly to intervene—but she felt for a moment a wave of envy so sharp that it that shocked her. Envy for Stacey, and for the way that Owen Chance was looking at her, and for her own lost youth and her lost love.

She had not seen Daniel since the night he had kissed her in the woods. She had run from him then—run from his harshness and the feelings he could still stir in her. More than anything she had run from the fact that he was not the man she wanted him to be, and her heart ached that she had loved him once and now he was a stranger to her.

She had kept away from the creek, just as Daniel had demanded, and had taken her walks in less dangerous places. Sometimes as dusk was falling she would stand by her bedroom window and scour the wide expanse of the bay for a scarlet and black ship with a snarling dragon on the prow, but the horizon was always empty, and she would draw the curtains together with a sigh and feel her heart plummet to her slippers. If only she had never met him again. But she had, and memory, reawakened, was difficult to dismiss. It taunted her at every turn with the restless passion and excitement of that distant summer when she and Daniel had been young. And the knowledge that he was a different man now, supposedly a criminal and a traitor, tortured her.

She had asked questions about him of Sally Kestrel, and had listened to Midwinter gossip with avidity. Although she knew she should forget Daniel, she found she could not help herself. His name was mentioned frequently, but the stories were as insubstantial as smoke, and at the end it was impossible to tell the truth from the myth. Intriguingly, many of the legends painted Daniel de Lancey as a hero—a man secretly in the pay of the government rather than the renegade he pretended to be. Lucinda found she ached for it to be true, but thought it probable that she would never know.

‘My dear Mrs Melville, you look blue-devilled!’ a warm female voice beside her commented, and Lucinda turned to see the Duchess of Kestrel smiling sympathetically at her. She followed Lucinda’s gaze to the couple on the dance floor.

‘Matter for concern, do you think?’

‘As a chaperon, I would say most definitely,’ Lucinda said. She hesitated. ‘As someone who would wish to see Miss Saltire happy, perhaps not.’

Sally Kestrel’s green eyes focused shrewdly on her face. ‘You think that Miss Saltire will be making a mistake in marrying Mr Leytonstone?’

Lucinda shrugged a little awkwardly. She was acutely aware that in her youth Sally Kestrel had chosen the rather more solid merits of Stephen Saltire above the dashing brilliance of Justin Kestrel, and that it had been twenty years before they were reunited. Their glowing love for one another now was plain for all to see, and was something else that made Lucinda feel even more cold and alone.

‘I think that Stacey should marry for love, not money,’ Lucinda admitted reluctantly. ‘Though it contradicts my duty to say so.’

Sally Kestrel smiled understandingly. ‘We do not wish to see others make the same mistakes that we did,’ she said. ‘I have already tried to speak to Cousin Letitia, but she is adamant. They have no money and Mr Leytonstone is very rich.’

‘And Mr Chance, I suppose, is not?’

Sally Kestrel shook her head. ‘He is better born, but he has no fortune. And I fear that Cousin Letitia values fortune above all things.’

Lucinda glanced towards the doorway, where the Master of Ceremonies was announcing a late arrival. The knot of people gathered by the doorway parted to allow the newcomer entrance.

‘Mr Jackson Raleigh!’

Lucinda’s breath caught in her throat. She dropped her fan and had to rummage under the rout chair to find it again. She felt hot and cold all at the same time, shaking as though she had a fever. Raleigh, she remembered, was the name that her good friend Rebecca de Lancey had used when she had lived in London before her marriage. It was the name of a famous sailor whom some might say had been a privateer…

She straightened up. Daniel De Lancey was coming directly across the room towards her. He looked spectacular, in evening dress of a stark severity that emphasised the breadth of his shoulders and the hard, strong lines of his body. His step was light, and his demeanour one of confident charm that, Lucinda sensed, drew the eye of every woman in the room.

She tried not to look at him, afraid that if she did it would in some way give him away. She was surely the only one present who knew his identity. A little flicker of anger heated her blood to think that Daniel was taking her silence for granted, that he believed that she would not betray him. He had the audacity of the devil himself, and a part of her thought he richly deserved a fall. Another part of her was terrified that he would be found out.

‘My dear Mrs Melville,’ the Duchess of Kestrel was saying. ‘You have gone very pale. Are you quite well?’

‘I am very well, thank you,’ Lucinda said, recovering. ‘I feel a little chilled. It is a cold night.’

‘You should dance, you know,’ Sally Kestrel said, smiling. ‘Just because one is a chaperon…’

‘Oh, I do not dance these days,’ Lucinda said.

‘Not even when the most handsome man in the room is intent on asking you?’ the Duchess enquired.

Lucinda looked up. Daniel was now cutting a very determined path through the small crowd towards her. He was looking straight at her, with a mocking challenge in his eyes. He was taunting her, daring her to denounce him. Lucinda drew herself up a little straighter in her chair.

‘Madam,’ he was bowing over her hand now. ‘Allow me to introduce myself to you—’

‘I remember you,’ Lucinda said, before he could finish. ‘We have met before.’

She savoured the first faint sign of wariness that she saw in his dark eyes and smiled. ‘How do you do, Mr Raleigh?’

He raised her hand to his lips in an old-fashioned gesture and pressed a kiss against it—a real kiss rather than a formal brush of the lips. Her skin tingled, and she tried to withdraw her hand, but he held her fast for a long moment.

‘I am flattered that you remember me, madam,’ he said.

‘Oh, I had all but forgotten you until you walked in,’ Lucinda said airily. ‘But then I thought that you seemed vaguely familiar. Pray permit me to introduce you to Her Grace the Duchess of Kestrel. Your Grace, may I introduce Mr Raleigh?’

Daniel bowed, smiling, and Sally Kestrel looked delighted. ‘Mrs Melville! You did not vouchsafe the fact that you and Mr Raleigh were already acquainted. How do you do, sir? What brings you into this part of Suffolk?’

‘Business,’ Daniel said promptly. He smiled at Lucinda, a smile of cool confidence, and to her annoyance she could feel herself blushing like a schoolroom miss.

‘But when I saw Mrs Melville across the room,’ Daniel added, ‘I was tempted to renew our old acquaintance and mix business with pleasure.’

‘A capital idea,’ Sally Kestrel said promptly. ‘I was remarking to Mrs Melville only a moment ago that it is an evening for dancing…’

‘My sentiments precisely, Your Grace,’ Daniel said. He held out a hand to Lucinda. ‘If you would do me the honour, madam?’

‘I am here to chaperon Miss Saltire, not to dance myself,’ Lucinda began, but Sally gave her a gentle little push with her fan.

‘I will watch over my cousin, Mrs Melville. What could be more appropriate? You and Mr Raleigh must have a deal of news to catch up on.’

Daniel’s fingers were insistent against hers. ‘Come, Mrs Melville. It is the waltz, I believe, and I am sure that you were given permission to dance it many years ago.’

‘More than I care to remember,’ Lucinda said. She allowed him to draw her onto the floor and into his arms. ‘You are insufferable!’ she added in an undertone, as the music struck up. ‘Why not tell me I am at my last prayers and have done with it?’

Daniel smiled broadly. ‘Oh, I do not believe the case to be quite as bad as that.’ He sobered, though the smile was still in his eyes. ‘Truth to tell, you look very beautiful tonight, Lucinda.’

Lucinda stamped down hard on the little quiver of awareness that his words caused within her.

‘Truth, is it?’ she said coldly. ‘I thought the truth was that you had no desire ever to see me again? You certainly went to a great deal of trouble to make me believe so when last we met.’

The smile died from Daniel’s eyes. ‘Oh, I had the desire to see you,’ he said quietly.

Lucinda met his eyes very directly. ‘Then why try to drive me away?’

A rueful smile twisted his lips. ‘I was trying to do the right thing for once, Luce. Belatedly, cruelly and probably pointlessly, but for the right reasons all the same.’

His use of her old nickname tugged at her heart. ‘Because…?’ she whispered.

‘Because you know it is too late.’ Daniel’s eyes were very dark, his tone a little rough. ‘You said it yourself, Lucy. It was over a very long time ago.’

Lucinda swallowed hard. ‘So why are you here tonight?’

‘I came to say goodbye.’

Lucinda had almost been expecting it, but now that he had said the words she felt swamped by a loss and a loneliness that made her catch her breath.

‘You are insane to take such a risk,’ she whispered.

‘I know.’

‘Why did you do it?’

‘I had to.’ Daniel’s eyes were very dark. ‘I wanted to see you one last time.’

Lucinda’s heart was beating fiercely in her throat. ‘There is no point,’ she said harshly. ‘Ever since we met we have known that what was once between us cannot be rekindled. Why risk all for one last meeting?’

Daniel shrugged. ‘Because I like the danger? And because I…’ He hesitated, and for one mad moment Lucinda thought he was going to tell her that he loved her.

‘And for one last dance,’ he said, drawing her closer. His cheek brushed hers. She could feel the beginnings of his stubble and it sent a long, cool shiver through her.

‘The least you could do was shave if you were planning on attending a social gathering,’ she said sharply, to cover her feelings, and he laughed and rubbed his cheek against hers again.

Lucinda struggled with her emotions. The intimacy of their encounter, here in a ballroom with fifty other people, seemed extraordinary. She was aware of nothing other than the touch of Daniel’s hands as he steered her through the waltz, the brush of his body against hers, the smile that was for her alone.

‘For the duration of this one last dance, then, the least you can do is tell me the truth,’ she said, and felt him stiffen a little.

‘The truth?’

‘Yes.’ Lucinda looked up into his eyes. ‘Surely the truth is not so alien to you that you cannot recognise the concept? Since we are not to meet again—’ she threw down her challenge ‘—the least you owe me is to answer one question honestly.’

‘What is the question?’

She could feel the tension in him as he waited for her to speak.

‘Since I saw you last I have heard things,’ Lucinda said. She looked around, keeping her voice low. ‘I have heard that it is Sir John Norton who is the traitor and French spy whom Owen Chance currently seeks, not the notorious Daniel de Lancey—though de Lancey is still a wanted man. And some say—’ she lowered her voice still further ‘—that de Lancey is not even a pirate, but a privateer secretly in the pay of the government.’ She glanced up and caught the look of brilliant intensity in his eyes. ‘What do you say to that, sir?’

Daniel’s hands tightened on her waist for a moment and he bent his head close to hers. ‘I say that you should forget you heard those words,’ he said softly. ‘It might have been true once, but not now. Not any more. Now I am a wanted man.’

Their eyes met. His were restless and heated, and there was something there that stole her breath.

‘Don’t ask any more questions about me,’ he said. ‘It is too dangerous.’

Lucinda’s heart pounded. ‘But I have to know—’

He touched a finger to her lips in a fleeting gesture, and she felt the echo of that touch through her whole body.

‘You are too loyal,’ he said, ‘and too passionate, Lucy.’

Lucinda shook her head. ‘No! If I have misjudged you—’

He did not let her finish. ‘You did not,’ he said. ‘Not in any way that matters. I am sorry, Lucy, but I am not the man you would wish me to be.’

Lucinda understood at once what he meant. She had wanted to exonerate him, to think him true and good and honourable. But he was refusing to allow that, and she knew there was no going back for them—no matter what the truth was. Too much had changed.

‘But for tonight,’ Daniel said, ‘I wish it were not so. I never thought to say it, but I wish I could turn back the clock.’

His words silenced Lucinda for a moment, bringing a longing so potent that she could not speak. It was madness, yet instinct deeper than reason, deeper than sense, made her want this man with every bone in her body. She fought the primitive urge that beat in her blood. The touch of his hands burned her through the silk of her dress, the brush of his thighs against her skirt distracted her, making her want to press closer with a shameless, wanton longing. She almost missed her step, and his hands tightened for a second.

In this moment, she thought, in this one dance, she would forget all that had come between them and give herself up to the here and now. Soon, she knew, Daniel would be gone, and this brief time would be no more than a dream. She closed her eyes and allowed the music to sweep her up, and thought of nothing but the pleasure of being in his arms.

‘Why do you wear that foolish turban?’ he asked softly, his breath brushing her ear. ‘I want to see your hair, touch it like I did that night in the moonlight…’

Lucinda’s heart raced. She could feel herself shaking a little. ‘I wear it because, as you so rightly pointed out when we first met again, I am a respectable widow, not a flighty girl. You should remember that too.’

He laughed. ‘You are still the wild country girl I knew all those years ago, Luce. You may hide it well most of the time, but I saw you trying to jump ship. I know you are still a hoyden.’ He ran his fingers caressingly over her wrist where the pulse beat erratically. ‘I know you,’ he repeated softly.

‘You knew me,’ Lucinda corrected, against the fierce beating of her heart. ‘Like you, I have changed.’

‘Not so much as you pretend.’

Lucinda looked at him and felt swamped by the same hopeless rush of feeling she had felt upon first meeting him again. She knew that there was a wanton, sensual and reckless side to her character. Daniel was the only one who could arouse it in her. She had locked it away for so long, but now he had awakened those feelings again and they troubled her and gave her no peace. But soon he was to be gone again, vanishing from her life again like the spectre he was. So it was easier by far to be angry with him and keep those other treacherous, terrifying emotions out—for this Daniel was a man to the boy he had once been, and she knew he could demand a response from her that was every bit as fierce as the one she had given him all those years ago when they had been young.

‘De Lancey!’

The shout cut through the web of emotion that had engulfed them, causing them both to jump violently. The music wavered and died. Lucinda saw Daniel swing round on instinct—but there was nothing surprising in that. Everyone in the Assembly Rooms had frozen at the sound of that name, then spun around to confront the person from whom it had come. Searching feverishly through the shocked faces of the crowd, Lucinda saw Owen Chance striding forward. He had what looked like a letter in his hand, and he was making directly for them.

‘You are Daniel de Lancey,’ he said.

Lucinda felt all the blood drain from her face. For a moment she thought that she was about to swoon for the first time in her life. It was purely emotional, purely instinctive. She felt terrified at the danger Daniel was now in. No one in the Assembly Rooms had ever seen him before, so she knew someone must have informed on him. She looked at the letter in Owen Chance’s hand, and then up into his face with a sort of despair.

Daniel was made of sterner stuff, she realised. Her face looked pale and stricken in the long mirrors that lined the ballroom, but he was standing there with the cool of the devil himself, one brow raised in polite enquiry, a look of amused tolerance on his face as he confronted Owen Chance.

‘I beg your pardon,’ Daniel said, ‘but I fear there is some mistake. I am Mr Jackson Raleigh, of Ludlow in Shropshire.’

The room had erupted into a torrent of whisper and speculation. Someone had moved to the door as though to guard it. Out of the corner of her eye Lucinda saw one of the redcoat captains draw his men closer. She saw the easy amusement in Daniel’s eyes turn to calculation as he looked around for an exit. Her heart swooped into her satin slippers as she realised that there was nowhere for him to go. There was no escape.

Their eyes met for a long second, and in that moment she knew exactly what he was going to do.

‘I am sure that Mrs Melville will vouch for me,’ he said. He held Lucinda’s gaze very directly. ‘She knows me well. We were children together.’ He looked around the circle of amazed faces. ‘In fact she is my betrothed.’

Chapter 5

‘OF ALL the unpardonably dirty tricks!’

The door of the room was locked and the guard’s footsteps receded along the corridor. Lucinda grabbed Daniel by the lapels of his jacket and shook him hard, her weight carrying them both backwards onto the dirty pallet bed in the corner of the room.

He went down with a thud, banging his shoulder against the wall, all the breath knocked from his body. Lucinda was no lightweight. Now she was sitting on top of him, just as she had when they had fought as children, in the days before their youthful feelings had turned to something deeper. Daniel shifted beneath her. No. On second thoughts it was not quite as it had been when they were children. Now Lucinda’s silk-clad legs were pressing against the side of his body, the warm juncture of her thighs was brushing a rather delicate and responsive part of his anatomy, and as she leaned forward, her wrathful face only a few inches from his, he caught a tantalising glimpse of the curve of her breasts beneath the silk ballgown.

He did the first thing that came into his mind.

He seized the hateful turban from her head and threw it into a corner of the room. Lucinda’s hair tumbled down to her shoulders, sticking out from its pins in charming blonde disarray. Daniel smiled.

‘That’s better.’

Lucinda made a noise like an enraged kitten and beat her fists against his chest.

‘Beast! Hateful, lying, deceitful, manipulative, traitorous beast!’

Daniel laughed out loud. ‘Don’t hold back, Lucinda!’

‘I hate you! You ruined my life once before, and now you have ruined me! I detest you!’ Her voice broke. To his amazement, Daniel realised that she was on the very edge of tears, his indomitable Lucinda. He had never, ever seen her cry—not even when her pet slow-worm had died when she was thirteen.

His hands gentled on her shoulders. He felt a huge wave of remorse, sobering him, humbling him. He got into—and out of—situations like this every day of his life, but Lucinda did not. In his careless, selfish disdain for her feelings and her future he had indeed ruined her.

‘I am sorry,’ he said slowly.

Her eyes were very bright with unshed tears as she looked down at him.

‘Why did you do it?’

Daniel shrugged uncomfortably. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We weren’t supposed to be locked up. I thought that Chance would believe me. My plan was for him to back down and apologise, and for everyone to congratulate us, and then we would simply walk out of there—’

‘And you would walk out of my life. Again. Leaving me to explain—again—the disappearance of my fiancé.’

There was a silence.

‘Something like that,’ Daniel admitted.

Lucinda straightened, moving away from him. Daniel swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat next to her. They were in a hastily converted office on the first floor of Woodbridge Gaol, detained at His Majesty’s pleasure whilst Owen Chance sent to Shropshire for urgent confirmation of Mr Jackson Raleigh’s identity. The door was locked, and a soldier was on guard at the end of the corridor. The Riding Officer had been apologetic but firm. Clearly he had not thought he could consign to the filthy cells a couple who might just possibly be all that they seemed—outraged gentry caught up in a case of mistaken identity. Even so, their situation was not a comfortable one. The room had one pallet bed, a desk, a wooden chair, a bucket, and that was all.

Daniel could not see Lucinda’s face. The unruly strands of hair that he had released now masked her expression from him.

‘You have never cared about anyone else in your life,’ she said slowly. ‘It is all of a piece.’

When he did not reply she glanced sideways at him.

‘Why do you not answer?’

Daniel shook his head. He felt cold within. ‘I have no defence against your words. You are correct. I thought only of myself and how I might escape.’

‘You abandoned me without a word when I was seventeen,’ Lucinda continued. ‘Tonight I almost forgot all of that, and was nearly seduced into caring for you all over again. But you—you care for no one but yourself, Daniel. You always have and you always will.’

Daniel made an abrupt movement of pain and frustrated rage. Until recently he had been his own sternest critic. Sometimes in the dark hours he struggled with his guilt, but that fight was his alone and he never spoke of it. That had changed when Lucinda had burst into his life again. She had confronted him and made him face up to the hurt he had dealt her in the past. And now he had hurt her all over again.

‘Why did you not denounce me?’ he said now. ‘Why did you lie to save me? Why did you not tell them at once that I was using you?’

She shot him a look from her very blue eyes. A tinge of colour touched her cheek. She caught her lush lower lip between her teeth.

‘Because I find that I am not as ruthless as you.’ She knitted her fingers together. ‘I did not want to see you hang.’

‘Thank you.’

She glared at him. ‘Oh, I wanted to denounce you for ruining me. Don’t mistake me. It is simply that I do not have the necessary hardihood.’

Daniel winced. ‘Well, thank you anyway.’

Lucinda turned her head slightly towards him. ‘Is there someone in Ludlow who can vouch for you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Nor anyone else who will come to our aid?’

‘No.’

‘The Duchess of Kestrel might try, for my sake.’

‘She cannot do anything to help.’ Daniel rubbed his brow. ‘I dare say she realises that I am indeed de Lancey, but she will not intervene. I have worked with Justin Kestrel for the past five years, but he cannot save me now. He offered me a pardon only a few weeks ago and I turned him down. It is understood that if I am captured I am on my own.’

Lucinda was staring. ‘You have worked with Justin Kestrel?’

‘Yes.’ Daniel paused for a moment, but he knew that this was hardly the time to keep any further secrets from Lucinda. ‘You mentioned tonight that you had heard I worked for the Admiralty. Well, it is true. I am no traitor, Luce. I have worked for this government throughout the war.’

‘Then you are no spy?’

‘I spy for the British, not the French.’

‘And the piracy?’

‘I certainly harry the French fleet as much as I can.’

‘And the smuggling?’

‘I have helped smuggle fugitives from Napoleon’s regime.’ Daniel shrugged. ‘And I also smuggle good French brandy, so it is absolutely true that I am a criminal.’

‘Oh, Daniel!’

For a moment he thought Lucinda was going to throw herself into his arms, but being the woman she was she swallowed hard and glared at him instead.

‘Why did you not tell me the truth before? Why did you want me to think the worst of you?’

Daniel shifted a little. He took her hand. ‘Because I had to drive you away, Luce. It is not as simple as you think. I may have worked for the Admiralty, but I have crossed the line many times. By any definition I am a criminal now. That was what I meant when I said that you had not misjudged me.’ His grip tightened on her hand. ‘All the things of which you accuse me—the selfishness and the recklessness and the love of danger—they are all true.’

Lucinda’s eyes flashed. ‘But it is iniquitous for the Admiralty to treat you so when you have worked for them! Justin Kestrel should be ashamed if he leaves you to hang!’

Daniel’s lips twitched. ‘Your sense of fair play is admirable, Lucy,’ he said quietly. ‘But in your haste to acquit me do not forget that I have ruined you. I am as bad as you have painted me.’

‘That’s true,’ Lucinda agreed. ‘You are still a lying, deceitful and manipulative beast, even if you are not a traitor.’

Daniel smiled at her. ‘Thank you.’

Lucinda fidgeted and looked away, though she allowed her hand to remain in his. ‘So, if Justin Kestrel will not come to our aid, we have a couple of days of this…this purgatory…until they get word that you are not Mr Jackson Raleigh and then we are both hanged.’

‘That’s about the size of it.’ Daniel’s squeezed her fingers. ‘But we shall escape before that.’

Her eyes flew to his. ‘Shall we?’

‘Of course. In fact we are about to do so. It is always best to escape early on, with the element of surprise.’

Lucinda raised her brows. ‘I see. And I admire your confidence. So how is this cunning plan to be achieved?’

‘I am not sure yet,’ Daniel admitted. ‘But I know I will think of something.’

Her shoulders slumped slightly. ‘How reassuring.’

He put his arm about her. ‘Whatever happens, Lucy, you are coming with me. You have to now.’

She looked down her nose at him. ‘I have to do no such thing. Why should I?’

‘Because, as you so succinctly pointed out a few moments ago, I have ruined you,’ Daniel said calmly. He had had no time to think anything through beyond an absolute certainty that he had to put matters right for Lucinda. It was the one good thing that he could do—even if it would be the last. ‘You will come with me and you will marry me.’

‘What makes you think that I will have you?’ Lucinda said, with a flash of hauteur. ‘You are no great catch.’

Daniel grinned. ‘Being married to me will be better than trying to marry off the brats of the nobility for a living. Trust me on that.’

‘You always had an inflated opinion of your own charms,’ Lucinda commented. ‘I cannot believe that you are using the opportunity of us being locked up together to press your suit. I will not marry you, Daniel, and that is final. You are the least reliable man on earth, and I would have to be mad or desperate or both to accept you.’

Daniel was thinking quickly. He was sure that if the worse came to the worst he could barter information for Lucinda’s freedom. Justin and Sally Kestrel could help her, if not him. She could go to Allandale, do the work that he had been too weak and too wild to do. At least she would be safe…

‘Marry me,’ he said again. ‘Please, Lucy. It is the only way in which I can put matters right.’

‘I have no wish to be a pirate’s wife,’ Lucinda said. ‘If we escape I would be obliged to sail with you, and I am the world’s worst sailor. Merely sitting in a rowing boat makes me sick. It is a miracle I was not ill aboard the Defiance.’

‘You were too busy quarrelling with me to notice,’ Daniel said ruefully. He spread his hands. ‘You need not sail with me. I inherited Allandale from my cousin just a month ago. You could live there—’

‘You are Lord Allandale now?’ Lucinda’s eyes widened.

‘Yes. Which is why I need to know there is someone I can trust to take care of the estate.’

Lucinda’s gaze snapped onto him. ‘You need an estate manager, not a wife!’ She hesitated for a moment, and then looked at him very directly. Her tone changed, turned sad. ‘I cannot wed you, Daniel. Do not press me to it. Oh, I care for you.’ She laced her fingers together a little awkwardly. ‘And ’ tis true that I respond to you—’ Here she blushed, and he wanted to kiss her very much. ‘But I do not trust you. You will always put yourself first. You always have and you always will. And I could not bear for you to break my heart again.’

She stood up, smoothing her skirts, and crossed to the window. She stood with her back turned to him, her arms folded tight about her as though she was cold, and though Daniel wanted to take her in his arms, to hold her and comfort her, he knew she would not let him touch her. What could he say? That it would be different this time? That he cared for her and would never hurt her? He knew it was true, but trust had to be earned and he had forfeited the right to hers.

‘Look!’ Lucinda said suddenly. A note of excitement had crept into her voice. ‘It is snowing outside!’ She paused. ‘You will have observed that there are no bars at the window, Daniel?’

Daniel had already noticed. ‘Given that there is a drop to the ground of about twelve feet,’ he pointed out, ‘I cannot see that it benefits us.’

Lucinda ignored this. ‘We are at the back of the building, and all it faces is a wall,’ she continued. ‘And this door is solid, so the guards cannot see what we are doing in here—and anyway, they are away down the corridor…’

Daniel smiled. ‘An intriguing thought, Lucy. You are putting ideas into my head.’

‘Try thinking of escape rather than seduction,’ Lucinda snapped. ‘Mr Chance has been lamentably lax in leaving us so ill-guarded.’

‘I think he was rather trusting to the fact that you are a respectable widow,’ Daniel murmured dryly, ‘and that I might actually have been telling the truth when I said you could vouch for me.’

Lucinda cast him a look. She was ripping a length of material from her skirt, wincing at the tearing noise it made, and then another, which she knotted to the first. This left her with her gown bodice still intact, but nothing but petticoats below. Daniel stared at her shapely garter-clad legs, feeling his throat dry.

‘What the devil are you doing?’ he managed.

Lucinda edged the sash window up.

‘If the guard comes in, hit him over the head with the chair,’ she instructed. ‘Only try not to hurt him too much. I do not wish to be accused of murder as well as conspiracy!’

Daniel raised his brows. ‘Lucinda—’

She gave him a fierce frown. ‘Hush!’

She tied the end of the makeshift rope to the desk and gave it an experimental tug. Then, before Daniel could protest, she had thrown the other end of the rope out of the window and climbed out. Forgetting his duty with the chair, Daniel rushed to the window and looked down. Lucinda was standing in the snow, her breast heaving slightly with the exertion of her climb down the rope, her face upturned to his. Flakes of snow were settling on her eyelashes and she brushed them away. Her impatient whisper floated up to him.

‘Do you intend to join me, or do you prefer to wait at His Majesty’s pleasure?’

The silk gave way when he was halfway to the ground, depositing Daniel in the snow with a rather sharp bump. Before he knew what was happening, Lucinda had grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet, dusting him down with brisk, impersonal hands. Daniel flinched.

‘Ouch! There is no need to be so rough.’ He looked her over. With snowflakes in her blonde hair she looked entirely charming. ‘Clearly I have underestimated you, Luce,’ he said. ‘You have a natural bent for criminality. I should have invited you to join my crew years ago.’

She gave him a glare from those glorious blue eyes. ‘Are we going to stand here chatting whilst we await discovery? Or are we going to hire some horses at the Bell around the corner?’

‘Surely you mean steal some horses?’ Daniel said mildly.

She gave him another glare, holding her wrist up to show her reticule, still dangling there. ‘I have some money. There is no need to make matters worse by adding theft to our list of crimes.’

‘Absolutely,’ Daniel said. He grabbed her, gave her a brief, fierce kiss. ‘Lucy, you are a wonderful girl.’

For a moment she stood still in his embrace, and he thought he felt her lips soften beneath his.

‘It astounds me that you have been at liberty as long as you have, Daniel, given your lack of resourcefulness and your penchant for wasting time,’ she said, a little breathlessly.

She was shivering. Daniel shrugged out of his jacket and placed it about her shoulders, watching as she drew it close with shaking fingers. For all her bravado he knew that she was half-shocked, half-elated by what they had done.

‘Wait in shelter whilst I get the horses,’ he began—but even as he spoke Lucinda recoiled with a gasp and, looking past her, Daniel saw a figure rear up out of the tumbling snow at the corner of the alleyway.

He had already moved to place himself between her and this latest threat when he recognised the man and saw that behind him was a carriage drawn up in the snow. No, it was not a carriage—it was a covered horse-drawn sleigh.

‘Evening, sir—ma’am,’ Lieutenant Holroyd said, coming forward to shake his hand. He grinned. ‘Good to see you again. Transport compliments of the Duchess of Kestrel. What kept you, sir?’

Chapter 6

IN THE sleigh, beneath the fur-lined rugs that Sally Kestrel had so thoughtfully provided, Lucinda sat shivering and shivering in her torn evening gown and petticoats. The sleigh was a splendid affair—a little coach on runners, with a hood lashed down on all sides so that it was very snug inside. Sally Kestrel could not have sent anything better suited to their purpose, and the fact that she had sent it led Lucinda to hope that matters might be all right, for if ever she needed help it was now.

Despite the thick furs and the cloaks that Holroyd had passed to them, Lucinda was trembling as though she would never be warm again. She knew that it was reaction to her situation, rather than cold, that was making her shake like this. She had escaped from Woodbridge Gaol with Daniel—no, she had engineered their escape—and she was ruined, a fugitive and a criminal. No doubt her face would be appearing on the ‘wanted’ posters soon. And the shocking, inexcusable and truly extraordinary thing about the whole experience was that she felt stirred up, alive, free for once from the stifling restrictions and endless petty rules that had governed her existence as a governess and chaperon. Oh, she was half appalled at her own behaviour, but she was excited as well.

She must be mad.

She must be in love.

She closed her eyes in denial of the thought. It could not be true. But she knew it was. She thought back to that terrible moment in the ballroom when she had known with blinding certainty that she could not have borne them carrying Daniel off to gaol and seeing his lifeless body swinging on the end of a rope. She knew he was all of the things she had said he was. He was unreliable and reckless and dangerous. But it made not one whit of difference because she had loved him when she was seventeen and she loved him still, after all these years.

Which still did not mean, of course, that she would agree to marry him. Daniel had said that they must be married to save her reputation—as though marrying an outlawed pirate would not be the most monstrous scandal in itself. She imagined her parents, the good vicar and his wife, positively spinning in their graves. And it simply would not serve. Daniel did not want a wife. His way of life was completely opposed to it. Besides, were not women supposed to be bad luck at sea? Lucinda had the conviction that if she went to sea it would be very bad luck for all concerned. If she felt sick sitting in a rowing boat, then once a ship began to move she would probably be horribly unwell the entire time.

So there was no possibility of her becoming Daniel’s wife. And it was not simply a practical matter of seasickness. She could, as Daniel had suggested, go to live at Allandale. But she had no wish to sit at home wondering where Daniel was and what he was doing. That was not her idea of marriage.

The truth was that she knew if she were to marry Daniel she would be an encumbrance to him rather than the person he had chosen to share the rest of his life. It would be a marriage borne of necessity rather than desire. For how could he want a wife when his way of life was so unsuited to marriage? And she was old enough and proud enough not to want to be second-best to a ship. Time and again Daniel had proved that the lure of the sea and the wild life he lived outside the law were more important to him than all else. She loved him, but she could not trust him not to hurt her again.

The smooth running of the sledge over the snow slowed a little, and then they came to an abrupt halt. Lucinda heard Daniel jump down, and then his voice, speaking low. There was a chink of harness and then the creak of the sleigh as he lifted the hood and slid in beside her, shaking the snow off him like a dog.

‘The snow is too deep to continue,’ he said. ‘Holroyd has set off back to the ship on foot.’

Lucinda scrambled up. ‘We should do the same—’

Daniel put a hand on her shoulder, pressing her back into the furs. ‘Lucinda, the snow is already two foot deep and drifting, and you are clad in nothing but your petticoats and evening slippers. We stay here until the snow stops.’

Lucinda hastily slipped her stockinged legs back under the covers. ‘But we cannot simply sit here! They will be looking for us.’

‘What is bad for us is also bad for our pursuers,’ Daniel said. He shrugged out of his jacket, then started to pull off his boots. ‘No one will be out whilst the snow falls like this. I have found an empty byre where the horse will be safe, and we shall be snug in here until we can make the last few miles down to the creek. We are near Midwinter Mallow, so there is not far to go.’

He raised the edge of the fur covers as though to slip underneath.

‘What are you doing?’ Lucinda asked, scooting across to the other side of the sleigh.

Daniel paused. ‘I am coming in there with you. What do you expect me to do? Shiver all night in a snowdrift?’

‘But…’ Lucinda grabbed the rugs up to her chin. ‘Surely you should go with Holroyd back to the ship? I will be quite safe here.’ She took a deep breath. This might be her best opportunity to explain to Daniel the half-formed plan that she had made concerning the future.

‘I have been thinking,’ she said. ‘I have a plan, Daniel, which means that neither you nor I need be trapped into anything we do not wish. I thought that if you were to return to the Defiance now, without me, someone would be bound to find me before too long. And when they do I will simply pretend that you coerced me at the ball and that I am blameless of all crime…’

Her voice trailed away as she sensed the rather ominous silence that greeted her words. She could not see Daniel clearly in the near-darkness, but she could feel his outrage.

‘Let me understand you,’ he said, after a long moment. ‘Having taken me to task for abandoning you in the past, you are now suggesting that I should behave like a complete scoundrel, leave you here at the mercy of whoever should stumble out of the storm and find you, and that I should run back to my ship, make my escape, and leave you to take all the consequences?’

Lucinda had seldom heard him so angry. Not since she had been in her teens, when an irate farmer had shouted at her for trying to free his exhausted ploughing team and Daniel had practically threatened to run the man through.

‘Well,’ Lucinda said, through suddenly chattering teeth, ‘I thought it was a good plan.’

‘It is the stupidest plan that I have heard in an age,’ Daniel said, in the same hard, insulted voice. ‘For once in my life, Lucy, permit me to do the right thing.’

These last words were hissed through his teeth.

‘But—’

‘I will stay with you,’ Daniel continued, as though she had not spoken. ‘When the snow ceases we will finish the journey back to the ship, and there I will marry you.’

Lucinda sat bolt upright. ‘Now, just a minute! That will not be necessary, Daniel. I have already said that I will not marry you.’

‘You will marry me. As ship’s captain I have the right to conduct marriage services, and the first one I shall perform is my own.’

‘That is definitely illegal,’ Lucinda said, hoping she was right.

Daniel ignored her. He slid beneath the blankets and his body grazed against hers. Lucinda felt the long, hard length of him, felt his legs entangle with hers beneath the petticoats, and tried to shift away as far as she could. Her throat was dry, and her heart was thundering in her ears, a counterpoint to the soft swish of the snow against the roof of the sleigh. A moment later he had put out a negligent hand and pulled her into his arms. Her hands came up against the hard, warm barrier of his chest.

‘You are cold and you are suffering from shock,’ he said against her hair. ‘You need to stop worrying about what is going to happen and allow me to warm you.’

Lucinda was shivering violently, but not with either cold or shock now. ‘I do not need you to warm me,’ she argued. ‘I certainly do not need you to marry me, and I cannot permit you to do the right thing.’

She felt him smile. His cheek was pressed to hers, his lips resting in the little, sensitive hollow beneath her ear. He reached with his free hand and pulled his jacket towards them, delving in the pocket.

‘Take some of this brandy, Lucy, and please stop arguing with me. You know I can be at least as stubborn as you, if not more so.’

Their fingers touched as Lucinda took the small flask of brandy from him. ‘Is this the brandy that you smuggle?’ She enquired.

‘It is. Drink it up.’

‘I hate brandy.’ Even so she tilted it to her lips, more out of curiosity than anything else.

Daniel smiled. ‘I might have known you wouldn’t care for it.’

But a rosy glow was spreading from Lucy’s stomach down to her toes and up to her face. She felt curiously warm, and suddenly a great deal more relaxed. ‘Actually,’ she admitted, ‘it is rather pleasant.’

‘Good.’

‘But I still won’t marry you, so don’t think to try and get me drunk in order to persuade me.’

Daniel did not reply. Very deliberately he took the empty flask from her hand, placed it back in his pocket, and threw his coat into a corner of the sleigh. Then he turned back to her.

‘Is there anything else you wish to say on the subject?’ he enquired.

Lucinda was starting to feel strangely light-headed. She knew there were lots of good reasons she wanted to give him for refusing his proposal of marriage, but they kept slipping out of her mind, and all she seemed capable of thinking about was how her body burned at every point of contact with his.

‘You don’t want a wife,’ she said, a little forlornly.

‘I want you,’ Daniel said. His lips grazed hers. ‘I want you very much, and I am determined to persuade you to my point of view.’

His hands stroked up from her waist, caressing the tender skin on the side of her breasts beneath the shreds of her silk gown. Lucinda gave a little involuntary moan and was shocked to hear it. What had happened to her? Her head was spinning and her body was aching with a fierce desire. Suddenly the atmosphere in the sleigh felt as hot as a summer day—the sort of long, sultry day she remembered from her girlhood.

‘You put something in the brandy,’ she said, trying to sound accusatory but instead sounding breathless and tempted. She heard Daniel laugh.

‘I hardly need brandy to seduce a woman.’

‘Why, you arrogant—’

The words were lost in his kiss. There was no warning, no gentle seduction. It was a deep kiss, and the sweep of his tongue against hers made her tremble. He tasted her, branded her, knew her, and she was helpless beneath his touch as the same wild, wanton, wicked feelings he could always arouse in her stormed through her blood and set her entire body alight. She gasped against his lips and he plundered her mouth again, the kiss at once ruthless, demanding, insistent on a response.

Once more his hand came up to brush away the shreds of silk that covered her bodice. She felt his fingers at the laces. One tug and they were undone. Her bodice parted and she relaxed gratefully, remembering how tightly it had been laced beneath her ballgown. That seemed centuries ago—the respectable chaperon in her tasteful blue silk dress, preparing for an evening’s entertainment. This was hardly the entertainment she had anticipated, and yet now that she was lying here with Daniel she wanted nothing more than to feel his body upon and within her; the strength of him, the hardness of him, the sheer, smooth masculine power. Her gown was completely gone now, ripped apart in their escape, and then the scraps that had been left brushed aside by his impatient hands. Lucinda felt as though her own fears and inhibitions had been cast away with them.

It was so dark in the sleigh that she could see nothing of Daniel’s face, nor her own shocking state of undress. He had pushed back the fur-lined rugs now, and laid her on top of them, and she could feel the cold breath of the night air against her skin. Her bodice was unlaced, parted, pushed back from her bare breasts. Her nipples peaked tightly as she waited in an agony of desire and anticipation for him to touch her.

Lucinda gave another moan of desperation, and then he swooped down, his mouth warm at her breast at last, and she actually screamed as he took her nipple between his lips and bit down gently on it before soothing away the delicious hurt with his tongue. He kissed the underside of her breast, and her sensitive skin puckered into tiny goosebumps as she writhed on the covers.

‘Daniel…’

She rolled over and raised a hand to Daniel’s cheek, felt his stubble rough beneath her palm, then pressed her fingers against the nape of his neck to bring his head down to hers so that she could kiss him again. She tangled her fingers into his hair and kissed him with all the pent-up wildness of those lost years. She slid her hands under his shirt and ran them over the hard planes of his chest and upper arms, exulting in the solid muscle and smooth, warm skin. Her whole body was a mass of sensation as she tore the shirt from his back and pressed her nakedness against him, wanting to bind him closer than ever before.

‘Lucinda…Sweetheart, slow down.’ Daniel’s voice was scarcely recognisable, so slurred with emotion that she had to strain to hear his words. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘You won’t,’ Lucinda said. Her body hummed, waiting, demanding. ‘I’m not a virgin,’ she said. ‘Leopold was an old man but he…we….’ She stopped. A pang of nervousness took her by surprise, threatening all the excited arousal that had built up within her. She bit her lip. How stupid of her to think of Leopold now, of those demeaning fumbles that had left her humiliated in mind and body. She could feel all the pleasure draining from her like water down a drain.

She felt Daniel shift a little beside her. ‘What is it, Lucinda?’

‘It was horrible,’ Lucinda said in a rush. ‘I hated it when he touched me. I had to try to endure it, but I felt repulsed. He told me I was cold.’

‘The man was a fool.’ Daniel sounded angry, but his hand at her breast still stroked with seductive gentleness, his palm a little rough against her skin. ‘You are not cold by nature. You are very, very passionate, Luce…’

He punctuated the words with little kisses scattered across the soft skin of her belly and Lucinda shivered. ‘We must make sure that you don’t feel repulsed now,’ he whispered. ‘You must tell me what you want.’

His hands moved caressingly across her bare stomach and she felt the muscles there jump and tighten.

‘Do you like that?’ Daniel asked softly.

Lucinda gulped. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. Tiny quivers were running along her nerves as his lips followed his fingers, teasing, stroking.

‘And that?’ His voice was a low murmur.

‘It is tolerable,’ Lucinda managed. The hot excitement was building within her again, but she sensed that Daniel would not let her hurry. He had reached for the ruined skirts of her petticoat, deftly rolling them up so that his hand could skim the top of her stocking and settle in sly caress on the soft skin of her inner thigh.

‘I protest,’ Lucinda said weakly. ‘You are a practised seducer.’

She heard him laugh in the darkness. ‘Acquit me. I never had the time to practise. This is all for you, Luce. Only for you.’

Lucinda caught her breath as his fingers grazed the secret place at the juncture of her thighs. Pleasure, tantalising and sublime, swept through her. He paused just long enough for her to worry that he had stopped altogether, and then his fingers resumed their gentle slide back and forth, a teasing motion that would soon, she knew, have her begging aloud.

‘Daniel—’

‘Yes?’

She could tell he was enjoying tormenting her, damn him.

‘Please…’

He did not reply, but she could almost feel his smile, there in the hot darkness. He shifted, and she sensed him moving lower, and then she felt his hand on her bare stomach again, this time below the petticoats, and the tip of his tongue instead of his fingers at the very core of her.

She shrieked, arched upwards, and felt his free hand on her hip, warm through the petticoats, holding her down so that his mouth could plunder her at will. It was blissful, agonising. Her legs were quivering now, the muscles of her stomach tight beneath his palm, her fingers clenched in the fur-lined blanket. The rub of the material against the back of her thighs was blissful torment. Never, ever had she felt like this. The incandescent sensations grew and exploded irresistibly in a cluster of light, and she felt as though her whole body had shattered too.

But only for a moment. He did not give her time to think about what had happened. He slid back up her body and took her mouth again, and she moved beneath him and gave a little moan. The sensations he had aroused had not gone away. They thrummed through her like the vibration of an instrument. Her skin felt hot with a passion she had never experienced before.

‘Please,’ she said again, and hardly recognised her own voice.

There was a brief moment of cold as he withdrew from her, but then he was back, the whole of his long, hard body matching and fitting perfectly against her. But when he eased himself inside her at last it was so slow and gentle that she almost screamed with frustration.

‘Damn you, Daniel.’ Temper flared in her. ‘Don’t tease me so…’

He laughed. ‘My impatient Lucinda.’

The controlled, smooth friction was driving her to near madness, and suddenly she wanted to know her own power, to show him he could not always dictate to her. She dug her fingers into his back and bit his shoulder, and she felt his body jolt as his restraint broke at last and he plunged into her, hard and fast, all gentleness fled, and in its place a driving masculine possession that almost consumed her.

His kiss had a savage urgency; she heard him cry out her name and then the exquisite shudders racked her body again, primitive and intense. She felt the force of his climax sweep them both away and held on to him desperately as the only sure thing in a tumultuous world. Gradually her senses started to settle, and she shifted into the circle of his arms. They held one another close as the bitterness of lost love was finally wiped out by all the bright promise of the future.

Later on Lucinda lost the petticoats, and with them the very last shreds of her modesty and inhibitions. The snow had stopped falling and they had run out into it, naked in the moonlight, Lucinda squealing as Daniel tumbled her into a snowdrift and kissed her until she forgot the cold and clung to him with the blood racing hot again through her veins.

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