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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.’

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