Christmas Wedding Belles: The Pirate's Kiss / A Smuggler's Tale / The Sailor's Bride. Miranda Jarrett

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ