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

‘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.