A Wedding By Dawn. Alison DeLaine

and threw a right, left, right. Blood spurted from the hollow-cheeked sailor’s nose. The commotion inside the tavern was deafening. Another man took a swing at Nicholas Warre, but he ducked and someone else took the hit. A new fight erupted, and the chaos grew. Hands closed sickeningly around her waist, an inch from the pistol’s grip.

      And then, suddenly, Nicholas Warre had her by the arm and wrenched her free.

      “This way!” he shouted in her ear.

      “Millie—”

      “Jaxbury’s got her. Run, damn you!” His hand clenched hers painfully as he dragged her out of the tavern. She stumbled on the cobblestones, trying to keep up with him as they raced down the street. Moments later, he yanked her into a pitch-dark alley and shoved her against the wall.

      “Don’t you ever,” he seethed at her, nose to nose and out of breath, “do anything that stupid again.”

      “Leave Malta this instant and I guarantee you I shan’t.” She tried to push him away, but he was solid stone.

      “Your recklessness could have gotten both me and Jaxbury killed—never mind the fate that would have befallen you.” He drew in a sharp, ragged breath. “Is that how you planned to bestow your virtue? In a tavern with thirty sailors taking turns between your legs?”

      She told herself she was trembling out of anger, not fear. “You’d best return to the safety of your London drawing room, Mr. Warre,” she taunted. “It’s clear you haven’t the constitution for Mediterranean life.” Except it was clear he had the constitution for any life he might choose. Faint light from the street caught the white flap of his torn shirt and a gleam of blood near his mouth. His wig was gone, and his dark hair stuck out everywhere.

      “Then what a blessing that you and I will be returning to London posthaste,” he drawled.

      No. They would not. But arguing that point would get her nowhere. “You are wasting your time here,” she told him flatly, and reminded herself that if not for him the danger never would have arisen in the first place. “I will not marry you. I’ll kill you first.”

      “Will you.” His eyes were nothing more than shadowed hollows.

      His hands burned through her sleeves. He smelled faintly of cologne—something spicy and aristocratic and much too expensive for someone in his financial condition. Faint light from the street brought his face into chiseled relief, and a renegade nerve flared to life in her belly.

      Betrothed. He fancied he had captured her as his prize. Perhaps he wasn’t so wrong after all.

      The weight of her pistol sat heavy in the band of her breeches. “Yes. And after what you did to Katherine Kinloch—” India began.

      “If bringing a bill of pains and penalties against her was a capital crime, I have little doubt my sister-in-law would have murdered me herself.”

      “I shall happily take on the responsibility.”

      “Bold words from one who actually has committed a capital crime against the lady in question. You do realize you could hang for stealing her ship?”

      Her pistol would put a quick end to this if only she could grab it and fire before he had time to react. There would be seconds, no more. There might be opportunity for nothing more than to gut-shoot him.

      A queasy spell dizzied her head.

      “We merely borrowed the Possession, Mr. Warre. Every moment you waste here with me is a moment you could be searching a way to satisfy your debts. You have greed and selfishness enough for ten men. I have every confidence that you will soon find an alternative method of relief.”

      “Praise, indeed. Fortunately for me, my search ended the moment I found you in that tavern.”

      “Your search, Mr. Warre, will end when your body lies cold at my feet.” She inched her hand toward her pistol. “I demand that you let me go. Now.”

      “Nothing in the world would please me more.”

      “Then—”

      “But I have a vested interest in keeping you.”

      “I’ll not give my consent to a marriage with you.” She raked him with disdain and gave a laugh that sounded more like choking. “Not ever.”

      “I don’t need your consent.”

      “Yes, you do. A marriage requires—”

      “The only thing our marriage will require, Lady India, is an officiant and a consummation. The first will be easy enough to find, and it’s clear you are desperately in need of the second. Once all that is complete, I assure you our marriage will not be put asunder—not by me, and certainly not by your father.” His port-laced breath feathered her lips. “Forgive me, but I cannot think who else might be interested in challenging it.”

      “I will challenge it.” Closer, closer...she nearly had the pistol now. “If you drag me back to England—which you will never succeed in doing—I shall file suit the moment we return.”

      “And may I wish you much success, waddling before the court with my babe rounding your belly.”

      Another strangled laugh escaped her. “You are just like all the rest that my father attempted to fob me off on these past months—going at me with their eyes before Father’s money landed in their greedy, fat hands.” Except he did not have fat hands, and he was as handsome as the devil. Perhaps Father imagined he was doing her a favor.

      “Spoken as if any of those hands would have been pleased with their catch once they realized what they had captured,” he said.

      “Are you disappointed, Mr. Warre? Surely my father did not fail to mention that I am a sailor.”

      “He did. And that you are spoiled, hoydenish and a—”

      Disgrace.

      “—disgrace. All of which can be easily corrected.”

      Oh, yes. Father had thought the same, and only look how he had succeeded.

      If she was going to be a disgrace, she would be one from the deck of her own ship. There would be no returning to England, no being locked away in isolation, no endless tirades about her shortcomings—and no unwanted marriage.

      Her fingers brushed the pistol grip. If Nicholas Warre succeeded in taking her, she may as well use the pistol on herself. The consequences of what she was about to do made her palms sweat. “Whatever my Father has offered you, I will pay you more to leave me be.”

      A shadowed brow rose. “If you have more, then I am a lucky man indeed, for once we are wed I shall have both.”

      “We are not going to be wed,” she said flatly, and closed her hand around the pistol’s grip. Her stomach rolled. Shooting him would make her a fugitive and guarantee she would never see England again.

      So be it. She never wanted to see England again, anyway.

      “Enough of this.” He stepped back, keeping hold of her arm. “We shall return to—” His eyes fixed on her hand.

      Now!

      “We shall return nowhere.” She tried to whip the pistol from her breeches but his hand was already there.

      “Give me that!”

      “No!” She fought with him to cock the hammer.

      “Let go, before you—”

      “No!” The pistol discharged into the alley with a deafening roar, and he wrenched it from her grasp. She tried to run, but he caught her easily and shoved her against the wall once again. Now his hands were on her everywhere—inside her waistcoat, searching, groping, skimming over her hips, her buttocks, even between her—

      “Stop!”

      “And allow you to murder me in cold blood?” he growled, drawing his hand across