Nancy Whiskey. Laurel Ames

drinking, and at the moment, also suffused with anger.

      “Ah, Nancy dearie”, he said, changing his scowl to a smile as he rose to embrace her. “Ye’ve the look o’ yer dear mother. I would have known ye anywhere.”

      She looked to her uncle for confirmation that this was her father, and he nodded sadly.

      “I do not understand,” she said, stepping back. “You are going to America? But there is no war in America.”

      “No, but there’s land, Nancy, and opportunity fer an adventuresome man. I’ve left the army and I’ve a bit o’ money by me now. Tis my one chance fer a life. Ye mean ta say ye will nay come with me?” the Irishman pleaded in his lilting voice.

      Nancy hesitated, all eyes upon her. Oddly, she thought not of her papa, whom she had never known, nor of her aunt and uncle who had raised her, but of the somber Reverend Bently, whose imminent marriage proposal she could now escape. She pictured him fuming at her departure. “Yes…I will come.”

      “Wot did I tell ye? She’s a plucky lass, fer all ye’ve cosseted her like one o’ yer own. I’m not unmindful o’ that, and I thank ye heartily, but she’s my dotter when all’s said and done, and I’ve a right ta have her by me in me last years.”

      As this impassioned speech put an end to all argument, even from Nancy’s now-tearful aunt, Nancy fled upstairs to pack her trunks and fend off the questions of her younger cousins about her coming journey.

       Chapter One

      It was night, and Daniel Tallent was hanging over the heaving side of the Little Sarah, feeling rather unwell, when he noticed Nancy Riley come through the companionway door onto the rain-slicked deck. Though she was bundled in a cloak, he knew her, for she was the only woman on board the merchant ship. He was about to call a warning to her when she made her way to the opposite rail by the expedient of having the ship lurch and throw her there. He shouted to her, but the wind beat the words back at him. So he waited for the ship to wallow again before crabbing his way across the deck to grab her.

      “Let go of me!” Nancy shouted, slapping him. “What do you think you are doing?”

      “Why in God’s name have you come out in a squall like this?” Daniel demanded, keeping his tenacious hold on her arm. “You could be swept overboard.”

      “I wanted some air,” she shouted over the roar of the wind.

      “Air? Air? Are you mad? This isn’t Hyde Park, where you can take the air when you please. Now come below.”

      She opened her mouth to answer him, but was silenced by a cold wave that drenched them both and left her gasping.

      “The next time she rolls to port make a run for the hatch,” he ordered.

      Nancy nodded, but the ship pitched them so violently toward the rail it knocked the wind out of them, and it was all they could do to hang on. A huge man loomed over Nancy then, put an arm around her waist and whisked her across the deck to the companionway, thrusting open the door and holding it against the wind as Nancy made her way down the stairs. Trueblood turned to look for Daniel, but his brother collided with him and they more or less tumbled down the companionway in a heap, carrying Nancy to the bottom.

      “In here,” Trueblood ordered. Giving her no time to protest, he pushed Nancy into a cabin and onto a cot. Daniel crawled back up the steps to secure the door, then followed them in and fumbled with a light.

      “Well, Daniel,” Trueblood drawled in a deep voice, “are you going to light the lamp or not?”

      “I am trying, but are you sure it is a good idea? If we break it, we could roast alive in here.”

      “I am too wet to catch fire,” Nancy offered, ringing water out of her cloak, then looking apologetically at the puddle it made on the floor as the lamp cast a glow over her slim form. She noticed Daniel staring blatantly at the thin gown that clung to her, so she pulled the dripping cloak shut again.

      Then she stared with fascination at Trueblood’s large form crouched in the small cabin. They had been sitting at table together for weeks, but he looked immense in the small sleeping cabin the Tallent brothers shared. Also, his straight black hair, loosed from its normal neat queue, gave him a more sinister appearance. Trueblood must have sensed he was looming, for he sat on the other cot, and Daniel slid down onto the floor.

      Daniel looked more appealing than usual for being completely drenched. His shorter hair clung to his brow in wet strands or curled against his neck, and those thick eyelashes set off the blue of his eyes in a heart-stopping way. He was not a small man by any means, but he was dwarfed by Trueblood. Anyone else might have thought Trueblood the older, but Nancy knew the lines of care around Daniel’s eyes placed him at least a decade beyond her three and twenty years.

      “Well, Daniel, did you get rid of what was disagreeing with you?” Trueblood asked with his usual condescension.

      “No, for you are still here.”

      “I meant the salt pork.”

      “No, it is still lying in my stomach like a cold lump.”

      “I was being very foolish. You saved my life,” Nancy said to both of them.

      “I have had a lot of practice,” Trueblood said, stealing the compliment as he glanced at his brother.

      “I would have managed it, eventually,” Daniel said defensively. “And whatever made you go up on deck in weather like this?”

      “The same thing that drove you there,” she replied. “My cabin seems to be full of vile odors, I suppose from the bilgewater being stirred up. It was almost too much for me. And Papa’s cabin is worse, for he has been sick since the storm began.”

      “Are you sure it is not the rum rather than the weather?” Daniel asked as he stripped off his soaked coat in the confined space, revealing his hard-muscled frame through the wet cloth of his shirt.

      “No…” Nancy faltered, trying to regain control of herself. “That’s rather forward of you.”

      “Forgive my brother, child,” Trueblood said gently. “He was raised in the colonies and never had any pretensions to manners. Whereas I went to Oxford.”

      “They are not colonies anymore, but a country, as you well know,” Daniel countered.

      “Of course, Daniel. At least they pretend to be a country. But with all the petty bickering and. backbiting, not a country I hold out a great deal of hope for.”

      “Why did you fight beside me then?”

      “Hush, Daniel. I suppose we are not very alike for brothers, even half brothers.”

      “Ah, but you argue like brothers, so appearances make no matter. And it was not the rum, for Papa can, in the ordinary way, drink like a fish with no ill effects.” Nancy shivered a little, then clamped her pale lips shut so that the men would not notice. “I must go back to my cabin now or I will catch my death of cold.”

      “Let me escort you across the hall,” Trueblood said as he stood up to offer his arm, almost stepping on Daniel, who scrambled up and inhaled to let them past him. Her cabin was no more than two steps away, but Nancy took his arm anyway, with a nod gracious enough to match Trueblood’s manners. Somehow his playacting stole away the horror of almost having been washed overboard. But she had not been swept into the cold sea, so she decided not to dwell on it.

      “Well, Daniel, not a very propitious encounter,” Trueblood said on his return to the cabin, his dark eyes twinkling in amusement.

      “And Miss Nancy Riley is as much of an enigma as ever,” Daniel answered as he stripped off the rest of his wet clothes and managed to dry himself, though the tossing ship thrust him from bed to wall a dozen times.