The Prize. Brenda Joyce

frenzy, with Devlin pounding deeply and forcefully inside her.

      Several hours later, Devlin tested the water in his hip bath and found it warm enough. Elizabeth was dressing; he climbed into the claw-footed tub and sank down into the tepid water. After months at sea, the temperature was very pleasant. He’d had enough climaxes so that now, finally, his mind remained a blessed blank and there were no monsters to defeat.

      “Darling?”

      Devlin jerked—he had dozed off in his bath. Elizabeth smiled at him, elegantly dressed in a sapphire-blue gown with black velvet trim. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have awoken you!” she exclaimed. “Devlin, you look so enticing in that bath, I could jump right in with you.”

      He raised a brow. “Isn’t Eastleigh expecting you?”

      She frowned. “We have supper plans, so yes, he is. I just wanted to tell you that I will be in town for another two weeks.”

      He understood. She wished to see him again before he shipped out, but that was perfectly fine with him. “I haven’t received my official orders yet,” he said carefully, “so I do not know when my next tour begins.”

      Her eyes brightened. “Tomorrow? Tomorrow afternoon?”

      He smiled a little at her. “That would be fine, Elizabeth. Will Eastleigh also remain in town?” he asked. The question would seem innocent enough to her. After all, any lover would ask such a question.

      “Fortunately, the answer to that is no, so perhaps we could even spend the night together.”

      He chose not to respond to that. He had never allowed any woman to spend a night in his bed and he never would.

      Her expression changed; she appeared annoyed. “I have been ordered to remain in London for a fortnight! It’s a miracle that you are here, too, so I should not be so put out, really.”

      “Why?” he asked mildly.

      “Eastleigh’s American niece is on her way to London. She is aboard the Americana and we expect her in the next ten days.”

      He was mildly surprised. He hadn’t even known that there was a niece, much less an American one. He was very thoughtful. “You have never mentioned a distant relation before,” he said calmly.

      Elizabeth shrugged. “I suppose there was no reason to do so, but now she is an orphan and she is coming here. Eastleigh intended for her to remain in a ladies’ school over there, but I imagine she thinks to latch on to our coattails. Oh, this is just what I do not need! Some uncouth colonial! And what if she is beautiful? She is eighteen, and Lydia is only sixteen! I have no interest in having an American orphan compete with my daughter for a husband, and by all rights, the colonial is the one who should be married off first!”

      Well, now he knew how old Elizabeth’s eldest daughter was. He smiled slightly, wry. “I doubt she will outshine your daughters, Elizabeth, not if they are as beautiful as you.” His reply was an automatic one, as he was thinking now, hard and fast.

      Eastleigh’s niece was on her way to Britain aboard an American ship. He was about to be given very specific orders to sail west to interfere with American trade there but not to harm any American ships. The niece was clearly unwanted and just as clearly she would soon be in his path.

      Could he use this bit of information? Could he use her?

      “Well, thank you for that!” Elizabeth said. “I am just annoyed at having to take her in. You know how pinched we’ve become these past few years. It has been one thing after another. We cannot afford to bring her out properly, Dev, and that is that!”

      Devlin nodded. There was no guilt. He remained very thoughtful and it became obvious what he must do.

      Eastleigh might not want the girl, but he wanted scandal even less. Oh, how he would enjoy pricking the fat earl one more time! He would seize the ship and take the girl and force Eastleigh to pay a ransom he could ill afford for a young woman he did not even want.

      Devlin began to smile. His heart raced with excitement. This was a stroke of fortune too good to be true—and too good to be ignored.

      CHAPTER THREE

      Late May, 1812

      The High Seas

      THEY WERE BEING ATTACKED!

      Virginia knelt upon her berth, her gaze glued to the cabin’s only porthole, gripping a strap for balance as the ship bucked wildly in response to the boom of more cannons than she could count. She was in shock.

      It had all begun several hours ago. Virginia had been told that they were but a day away from the British coastline, and that, at any time, she might soon see a gull wheeling in the cloudy blue skies overhead. Soon afterward, a ship had appeared upon the horizon, just a dark, inauspicious speck.

      That speck had grown larger. She was racing the wind—the Americana was tacking slowly across it—and it appeared that the two ships would soon cross paths.

      Virginia had been taking sun on the ship’s single deck and had quickly become aware of a new tension in the American crew. The ship’s commander, an older man once a naval captain, had trained his binoculars upon the approaching vessel. It hadn’t taken Virginia long to realize they were worried about the identity of the approaching ship.

      “Send up the blue-and-white signal flags,” Captain Horatio had said tersely.

      “Sir? She’s flying the Stars and Stripes,” the young first officer had said.

      “Good,” the captain had muttered. “She’s one of ours, then.”

      But she wasn’t. The frigate had sailed within fifty yards of them, maneuvering herself to the leeward side so she rode below the Americana, when the red, white and blue American flag had disappeared, replaced by nothing at all. Virginia had been ordered below. The crew had scrambled to the ship’s ten guns. But Virginia hadn’t even made it to the ladder when a cannon had boomed once, loudly but harmlessly, the ball falling off to the side of the stern.

      “Americana,” a voice boomed over the foghorn. “Close your gun ports and prepare to be boarded. This is the Defiance speaking.”

      Virginia froze, clinging to the dark hatch that would take her below, glancing back at the other ship, a huge, dark, multimasted affair. Her gaze instantly found the treacherous captain. He stood on a higher, smaller deck, holding the horn, his hair blindingly bright, as gold as the sun, a tall, strong figure clad in white britches, Hessian boots and a loose white shirt. She stared at him, briefly mesmerized, unable to tear her gaze away, and for one moment she had a very peculiar feeling, indeed.

      It was indescribable.

      As if nothing would ever be sane or right again.

      Time was suspended. She stared at the captain, a creature of the high seas, and then she blinked and there was only her wildly racing heart, filled with panic and fear.

      “Hold your fire,” Captain Horatio cried. “Do not close the gun ports!”

      “Captain!” the first officer cried with panic. “That’s O’Neill, the scourge of the seas. We can’t fight him!”

      “I intend to try,” Horatio snapped.

      Virginia realized there would be no surrender. She needed a gun.

      She glanced wildly around as the captain of the Defiance repeated his demands that they surrender to be boarded. An interminable moment followed as the crew of the Americana hastily prepared to fire. And suddenly the sea changed. A huge blast of too many cannons to count sounded, the Defiance firing upon them. The placid seas swelled violently as the ship bucked and heaved, hit once or many times—Virginia could not know—and as someone screamed, she heard a terrible groaning above her.

      She turned and glanced upward and cried out.

      Horatio was yelling, “Fire!” but Virginia watched one of the Americana’s