Regency Vows. Kasey Michaels

for a long moment—affronted, no doubt, by her lack of gratitude. “You have a flair for the melodramatic,” he finally said. “And a righteous view of naval warfare for one who has plundered so many ships.”

      “I only plunder those that have already plundered.”

      “That’s putting a rather fine point on it, don’t you think?”

      “If you’re implying there is no difference between making a prize of a pirate’s take and plundering a trading vessel sailing under legitimate colors, then no, I don’t think so. Besides, my marauding is greatly exaggerated. I’ve made most of my fortune running perfectly legal trade goods.” She kept her eyes on the sea but felt him watching her. Assessing. Judging. Wondering. Pearls of moonlight danced on the waves.

      From the corner of her eye she saw him reach out and capture a strand of her hair. Her breath caught. The fire that had torn her from sleep ignited instantly. Her gaze flew to his hand, and she watched him smooth the inky curl between his fingers. Then she met his eyes.

      He dropped the strand as though it had burned him. Common sense screamed at her to step back, but this was her deck, not his. Her ship. Her command.

      “Thanks to my failures,” he said roughly, “you were fed to the Barbary dogs.”

      Annoyance raced through her veins. “To call them dogs would be to say that Anne is half-dog,” she managed calmly, “and that I will not do.”

      “No.” A muscle tightened in his jaw. “Of course not.”

      “Have you spent any time in the Barbary states, Captain?”

      “A little.”

      “And how did you find the hospitality?”

      “The hospitality?” Something in him seemed to snap. “You’ve run mad. After everything that happened to you—not days, or weeks, or months, but years. Years, of living with al-Zayar, of being his—” He broke off and shoved his hands through his hair, then gripped the railing again. “I understand escape is a dangerous risk,” he said tightly. “Undertaken only by the most desperate.”

      He looked at her then, and she saw the questions in his eyes. The wild imaginings. But more than that, she saw in his eyes the reason why she had not returned home after her escape.

      In his eyes, her life was a tragedy. And he blamed himself.

      “People become desperate for many reasons,” she said sharply. “Do not presume to know something you cannot possibly understand.”

      “Explain it to me.”

      His thoughts were as easy to read as the stars on a clear night, and her heart swelled with bittersweet memories no Englishman could possibly understand.

      Explain it to him? As if he could possibly comprehend the terrible emptiness of knowing without a doubt that one will never go home again, that one’s life had been changed forever. The dreadful anticipation in that moment when the caravan had finally arrived at the gates of her new home—where the air had been thick with the delicious scent of orange blossoms and rang with the shrieks of delighted children somewhere inside the walls, along with deep male laughter she would soon learn belonged to Mejdan al-Zayar.

      The crushing relief of finding kindness where one had expected cruelty. And then, a few short years later, the terror of having it all torn away.

      Captain Warre thought she should hate Mejdan. But it would have been impossible for anyone to hate him. He was too full of smiles, of love for those around him. Yes, Anne was Mejdan’s daughter, along with all that implied. But Captain Warre would not appreciate how long Mejdan had waited when he hadn’t needed to. How much she had grown to adore Mejdan during that time, how much he was admired and respected by those both in and outside of the household.

      That going to Mejdan’s bed had been tolerable.

      Captain Warre would never believe any of that. All he would see—all any Englishman would see—was the fact of her captivity.

      “You need not grieve over my virtue, Captain.” She would explain nothing, to him or anyone else. “I need no one’s pity. As you pointed out yourself, I’ve built a successful enterprise.” The memories of Algiers were her memories—hers alone—and she would guard them the way a shipwreck guarded its treasure. Already she could feel her homeland trampling on them.

      “And yet now you are going home.”

      “This ship is my home,” she snapped.

      “To Dunscore, then.”

      “Which, were it not for your ineptitude, I would have done years ago.”

      But the fatigue and weariness he’d once spoken of colored his voice, and doubts about him began a subtle attempt to lure her away from her outrage. The breeze blew a strand of hair in his face, and she clenched her fist against the urge to reach for it. “I shall leave you to your watch, Captain,” she said tightly. “Good night.”

      * * *

      SOMETHING RAW AND alive and terrifying surged through James’s veins as he listened to her walk away. It burned through him, a hot and painful imposter of the life that had once animated him, reminding him that he’d once had a fire. A passion. That he’d once felt that glory of the sea she spoke of.

      He gripped the railing and inhaled the cold sea air, gaining a little relief when the sound of her footsteps finally disappeared.

      Where had that passion gone?

      Perhaps she was right, and all he’d ever had was the brutality that characterized life at sea. Ruthlessness masquerading as honor.

      The guilt of not having been able to save her gnawed at him like a lion tearing into fresh prey. Countless times he’d gone over it in his mind. If he’d only moved in a hundred yards closer, turned more sharply to starboard. Come around their bow a bit farther to cut them off and avoid the line of fire from their cannon. If he’d held off his own orders to fire by another minute or two. Judged the current differently.

      Something. There should have been something he could have done.

      He couldn’t even chalk it up to youth and inexperience. He’d already been on the sea ten years before it happened. He simply hadn’t known until weeks later that the Merry Sea had been anything but an ordinary merchant ship. Bloody hell, it was an ordinary merchant ship—one that just happened to be carrying Lady Katherine of Dunscore on a passage from Italy, where she’d been stranded after her chaperoning aunt had died, to Gibraltar, where family friends awaited.

      If she’d made it to Gibraltar, she would have returned to Britain, married and borne children like any other woman. She would have attended soirees and discussed the merits of French lace over Spanish or whatever it was ladies discussed. If he’d been successful in his attempt to save the Merry Sea, her life would have been normal.

      Instead, she had become one of the most adept sea captains on the Mediterranean. She would never have an ordinary life now. She would likely never marry—who would have her? She would never plan garden parties or fret with other ladies over the introduction of a daughter into society, because Anne would never be introduced into society.

      Anne. His chest tightened, and he fingered the beads around his neck. They were not mismatched, after all, but rather, symmetrically placed according to size and shape. She could not match them with her eyes, but she matched them with her fingers.

      A part of him wanted to yank the necklace away and toss it into the sea in defiance of the sweetness that was beginning to collar him as surely as the twine on which the beads were strung. Her trust in him made him feel when he didn’t want to feel. Care when he’d given up caring.

      And Captain Kinloch—

      God. He’d come so bloody close to pushing her against that railing and doing everything he’d been imagining, never mind who else was on deck. But his guilt for failing her stopped him.

      Even now