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

‘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—’