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

‘Criminals,’ Chance said contemptuously. ‘They deserve to hang.’

Lucinda’s heart battered against her ribs. ‘I am sure you are correct,’ she said. ‘There was once an infamous privateer in these parts, was there not? I suppose he is long gone, though.’

‘You suppose incorrectly,’ Owen Chance said. His voice was cold. ‘He still smuggles with the worst of them, and spies for France. It will be my great pleasure to bring him to justice.’

The cold crept along Lucinda’s neck and slithered down her spine. Surely he must be speaking of Daniel? Could it be true? She could hardly condone smuggling, for it was against the law—even if half the gentry in the county turned a blind eye and Justin Kestrel himself cheerfully admitted to buying French brandy. But spying for the French was another matter. Had Daniel turned traitor during the long years of the war? Was it all a matter of money to him, and patriotism counted for nothing? She felt sick even to think of it.

‘I think I will go back, as you suggest, sir,’ she said, aware that her voice was not quite steady. ‘And I will warn them up at the house. Good wishes for your hunting.’

Chance touched his hat and cantered away up the path, and Lucinda stood for a moment alone beneath the pines. She did not wish to return yet to the stuffiness of the overheated house. Owen Chance’s words had disturbed her deeply. She could not believe that it was true. Yet what was it that Daniel had said the previous night?

‘We both made our choices…Mine to be wild and irresponsible…’

But a traitor? She did not want to believe it of him. And yet she did not know the man he had become. He might well consider that his country’s secrets were just commodities to sell, like brandy or French lace.

In her agitation she realised that she had left the main path and plunged off down a narrow track to the right. It forced its way through the trees, downwards towards the river. No doubt in summer it was completely impassable, but now the grasses and bracken underfoot had died back a little, and Lucinda thought that if she followed the path down to the water’s edge she could walk back to Kestrel Court that way. She knew there was a very pretty trail that followed the course of the stream until it reached the gardens.

Nettles brushed Lucinda’s skirts, and thorns clutched at her as she passed. Overhead the chatter of the birds had died away, and the pale winter light barely penetrated, but then she caught the flash of water ahead of her. The trees were thinning now, and suddenly she was on the edge of Kestrel Creek, with the water still and dark before her. She had come out further along the stream than she had intended, almost out in the bay—precisely where she had promised Owen Chance she would not walk. She had better turn for home at once.

The tide was ebbing. An oystercatcher pattered across the mud, leaving little footprints, then, as it saw her, it rose into the air, giving its piping call.

Lucinda smiled and wrapped her cloak more closely around her against the salty breeze. She could taste the tang of the sea here, but she knew she should not linger.

She went on, coming to a place where there was a sharp turn in the creek, and then she stopped, drawing back instinctively into the trees. The creek had widened into a deep pool and there, beneath the overhanging trees, hidden from the open river and the sea beyond, lay a ship at anchor. Lucinda’s breath caught painfully in her throat as she took in the snarling dragon figurehead on the prow and the name: Defiance.

All night she had lain awake, knowing that Daniel was nearby, imagining his ship riding at anchor out in the bay, perhaps, but never thinking that he was so close by, in this hidden mooring deep in Kestrel Creek. Suddenly the truth of his identity and his whole way of life hit her anew with the force of a blow. He was a criminal, a wanted man, very likely a traitor. The Daniel de Lancey she had known was gone for ever. There was nothing for her here.

She turned to go, stumbling over tree roots in her haste, and in the same moment a figure stepped out onto the path before her and a sack, thick and suffocating, was thrown over her head. She struggled, felt her arms pinioned to her sides, and then she was picked up as easily as though she were a sack of flour, thrown over the man’s shoulder, and carried off.

It was Daniel. Lucinda could tell from the feel and the scent of him, and from the disturbing familiarity of his hands on her body. He held her impersonally, and yet she burned with awareness. It made her angry to be at his mercy. She managed one well-placed and satisfying kick that landed somewhere soft and caused him to swear, and then his arms tightened about her so painfully that she could scarcely breathe, let alone move.

Being upside down completely disorientated her. There was the sound of voices, she was passed from hand to hand like a parcel, and then, finally, she was placed back on her feet and the sack pulled roughly from her head. She stood there, panting and glaring about her.

‘What were you doing spying on my ship?’

Daniel’s voice, measured and hard, snapped Lucinda’s attention straight back to him. She was standing in a well-appointed cabin that was lit by the rays of the sinking sun. The refection from the water outside made patterns on the wooden panelling and she could hear the gentle slap of the water against the stern of the ship. Daniel was sitting at a fine cherrywood desk and was toying with a quill between his fingers. A book lay open on the top of the desk, and a half-finished letter beside it. It was so peaceful, and so utterly removed from what Lucinda had expected, that for a moment she could not speak. The pristine cleanliness was a far cry from the smelly darkness she had anticipated, with a roaring drunk crew knocking back the rum and dallying with quayside whores.

‘Well?’ Daniel sounded slightly bored, as though he found stray women spying on the Defiance every day of the week. Lucinda felt prickles of resentment run along her skin that he should treat her with such disdain.

‘I was not spying,’ she retorted. ‘I was walking back from Kestrel Cove and took a wrong turn on the path.’

Daniel raised one dark, disbelieving brow. ‘You got lost? I see.’

Lucinda ran a hand over her hair and tried to smooth it down. There were stray pieces of straw—no doubt from the sacking—sticking to her cloak. She smelled faintly agricultural. Catching sight of herself in the small mirror on the bulkhead, she realised that she also looked a complete fright.

Daniel, in contrast, looked deplorably elegant, and she hated him for it. He had always been able to wear his clothes with careless aplomb, and now, with his dark well-cut jacket and snowy white linen, he looked hard and tough, with no soft edges. He was still watching her with cold impassivity, and she felt colour flood her cheeks as hot and embarrassing as though she had been a young girl. She knew he thought she had gone there deliberately to see him, and that the more she protested the less he would believe her.

‘You can believe what you like,’ she said, ‘but I did not seek you out.’

Daniel shrugged. His face was set in hard lines. ‘So you say.’

‘It’s true!’ Pride and embarrassment compounded Lucinda’s anger. ‘What, do you think yourself so dashing, so irresistible—the gallant pirate captain!—that every female in the neighbourhood must want to throw herself at you? Do you think I was so bowled over to meet you again last night that I could not keep away?’

Daniel’s firm mouth lifted in a slight smile that was not quite reassuring. He stood up. ‘I don’t know, Lucy. Were you?’

‘No, I was not. And stop calling me Lucy!’

‘I forgot. You are—you always were—Lucy to me.’ He had come to stand before her, and suddenly the spacious cabin seemed very small and very airless. Lucinda caught her breath. She tilted her head to glare up at him.

‘And you always were so arrogant! Believing that I came here solely to—’ Lucinda stopped abruptly.

He was so close to her now, perilously close, his body all but pinning her against the door. She found that she was watching his mouth, that tempting mouth, as he said softly, ‘Yes?’

Lucinda ran her tongue over her lips. ‘To…um…’

‘You are somewhat inarticulate for a governess. I noticed it last night.’

He put his hands flat against the door on either side of her head and leaned in. Their breath mingled for a moment and then his mouth captured hers. Only their lips touched, but that was more than enough.

The kiss was ruthless in its intensity. The swift current of desire raced between them, leaving Lucinda breathless and unable to think of anything other than the undeniable pleasure of his embrace. He lingered over her mouth as though he were learning her all over again, and when he stood back she could barely breathe, barely think. Her lips felt soft, and a little bruised, and she pressed one hand to them and saw that she was shaking.

‘This is not—’ She stopped, cleared her throat. ‘This is not what I want.’

‘No?’ Daniel had turned away, and she could not see his face, but she thought that his voice sounded strained. ‘Well, this isn’t a game, Lucinda. Do not come down to my ship looking for trouble, or you will surely find it.’

Lucinda’s anger—the anger he could always arouse in her, along with that uncomfortable attraction—jetted up.

‘I play no games,’ she said. ‘You are the one who hides out in the wood playing at pirates, abducting people, smuggling, spying for the French, so I hear! You are the one who never grew up!’

Daniel moved so quickly that she jumped back. But it was too late. He had caught her wrist in a grip that did not hurt, but which she could not break. His expression was grim, but just for a moment, and for the first time in her life, she saw a bleak unhappiness in his dark eyes before his face was impassive once again.

‘What do you mean?’ He spoke very quietly, but there was an undertone to his words that made her shiver.

‘I met Mr Chance in the woods just now,’ Lucinda said. ‘He told me that the smugglers would be out tonight and he would be hunting them.’ Daniel’s fingers tightened a little and her voice faltered. ‘He said that you are a criminal, Daniel, and a spy and a traitor—’

Daniel dropped her wrist as though he had been burned. ‘Did he mention me by name?’

‘No,’ Lucinda said. She suddenly felt chilled. Could she have made a mistake? ‘But who else could he mean?’ she whispered.

For a long moment they stared into one another’s eyes, and then Daniel turned away in what felt like a gesture of repudiation.

‘Dearest Lucy, always thinking the worst of me!’

‘Well, it did not require a great leap of imagination!’ Lucinda said, stung by his accusing tone. ‘After all, you told me yourself that you were a pirate, and I thought…I assumed…’

‘You assumed that I was a traitor as well.’ He slammed his fist against the panels of the door. ‘You would have trusted me once. You loved me once.’

‘That is all in the past,’ Lucinda said. She felt bitter and sick at what had become of that love, what had become of him.

He turned back to her suddenly, almost violently. ‘You are telling me that you feel nothing for me now?’ He raised a hand and trailed the back of it down her cheek. His touch seemed to burn her. She could feel her blood heating beneath the skin. The same treacherous attraction he could always arouse in her flared up, but was quenched in bitterness.

‘I cannot deny that I respond to you,’ she said, unflinchingly honest. ‘But it is nothing more than physical attraction. I do not trust you, Daniel, and I cannot respect you.’

For a moment she thought he was going to pull her into his arms and kiss her senseless, as though in defiance of all the love that had been lost between them, and her perfidious heart leapt to think of it. But then his hand fell to his side and he stepped back, turned on his heel and walked out of the cabin.

Lucinda stood still for a moment, trembling a little with the intensity of the storm of emotion within, and then suddenly recollected where she was and hastened after him.

‘Daniel! Wait! I want to get off the ship—’

He was standing at the end of the companionway, but now he turned and looked at her. One long, unreadable look.

‘You cannot,’ he said. ‘You should have thought of that before, Lucy. The tide has turned and we have sailed.’

Daniel strode up on deck, his hands clenched in tight fists at his side.

‘I do not trust you…I cannot respect you…’

He had been within an ace of grabbing Lucinda, throwing her down on the floor and making love to her there and then—as though that would enable him to wipe out all the anger and bitterness between them and conjure the old love in its place. Devil take it, he must be going soft in the head. What did it matter what she thought of him? He could have explained it all to her if he had wanted her good opinion. But it was far too late for that. Lucinda was right. They could never go back.

The Defiance was slipping down Kestrel Creek very slowly, towards the open sea. He heard the patter of feet on the deck behind him, and then Lucinda had grabbed his sleeve and pulled him around to face her. Her blue eyes were blazing. She looked furious.

‘What do you think you are doing? Turn the ship around! Make it stop! I want to get off!’

Daniel was aware that all the crew were covertly watching, under cover of going about their tasks. He put his hands on his hips and smiled down into Lucinda’s infuriated face.

‘Can’t do that, Mrs Melville,’ he drawled. ‘We sail on the tide. It doesn’t wait.’

Lucinda’s eyes narrowed to angry slits of blue. ‘You mean that I am stuck here with you? For how long?’

Daniel had only been intending to take the ship out for a night, to hunt Norton along the coast and remove himself from the threat of Owen Chance’s men finding him, but now he shrugged lightly.

‘A week? Two? Who knows? You can share my cabin if you like,’ he added with a mocking smile. He took a step closer to her. ‘It might not be love between us any more, Lucy, but it could still be pleasurable…’

He thought for a moment that she was going to strike him, but then she turned on her heel and ran across to the side of the ship. They were still very close to the bank as the Defiance slid almost imperceptibly out of the creek, and Lucinda did not even hesitate. She grabbed the rigging, pulled herself up onto the rail, and stood there, poised to jump.

Daniel swore violently. Anger and fear collided within him, and he covered the deck faster than he had ever run before, grabbing her about the waist and dragging her backwards into his arms in the very second she was about to launch herself over the side.

‘Are you insane?’ he shouted. ‘You could kill yourself trying a trick like that!’

She struggled like a demon in his arms, kicking him, beating him with her fists, and calling him some colourful names that Daniel felt vaguely shocked she even knew. Her tomboyish behaviour reminded him of their childhood, when she would scramble through the fields, losing her bonnet and tearing her dress, an utter hoyden. Evidently she still had that same wild spirit. His crew were looking highly diverted, trying to smother their grins, and Daniel picked Lucinda up bodily and dragged her behind the mainmast for a little privacy. The man working there moved discreetly away.

Daniel held Lucinda tightly until she went soft and quiescent in his arms, then he gently pushed the tumbled hair away from her face.

‘Do you hate me so much, Luce, that you would risk your very life to get away from me?’

They stared at one another for what seemed like hours, and then Lucinda dropped her gaze. ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘but I wish I had never met you again, Daniel.’

Something wrenched Daniel deep inside.

‘I’ll take you back,’ he said shortly.

She looked annoyed. ‘There is no need for you to come. I can manage perfectly well on my own.’

Daniel smiled. ‘I know, Luce, but I insist.’

After a second she gave him a faint, hesitant smile in return. ‘Owen Chance might catch you.’

‘I doubt it.’

She smoothed her tattered gown ‘You are so reckless.’ She raised her gaze and gave him a proper smile this time, and it made his heart lurch. But there was sadness in her eyes as well, and it hurt him to see it.

‘I wish I did not feel I know you so well,’ she said, ‘when I do not really know you at all.’

For a moment Daniel was desperate to tell her the truth. The temptation was so strong that he could feel the words jostling to come out. He had never previously cared for any man’s good opinion, but now he found he wanted to regain Lucinda’s trust and respect. He wanted it more than anything else in the world. He drove his hands into his pockets in a gesture of repressed rage. He could tell her he was on the side of the angels, but in the end what good would it do? He could neither take her with him, nor make up for the damage he had done to her in the past. So it was better that he kept his peace and let her go.

The anchor was lowered and a rope ladder thrown over the side. Lucinda insisted on climbing down it herself, just as Daniel had known she would. He instructed Holroyd to take the ship out beyond the bay and stand by to pick him up at Harte Point whilst he walked back with her through the woods to Kestrel Court.

They walked in silence, though every so often he would hold back branches from her path, or pull aside brambles, and she would thank him politely. It was only as they were approaching the edge of the parkland that she spoke.

‘Does it suit you, Daniel, this business of being a pirate?’

‘Most of the time,’ Daniel said. He raised his brows. ‘Does it suit you to be a governess?’

She shot him a look from beneath the battered edge of her bonnet. ‘Most of the time,’ she said. There was an undertone of humour in her voice. ‘It is better than marriage, at any rate.’

‘That would surely depend on who you were married to?’

There was a pause. The wind sighed through the pines. ‘I suppose so,’ Lucinda said. ‘I made a bad mistake with Leopold. I was running away from my feelings for you, I suppose. And I was angry, so I took the first offer I received.’

The pain and guilt in Daniel tightened another notch.

‘We all make mistakes,’ he said, ‘and mine have been the greater.’

He saw her smile. ‘So what were your mistakes, Daniel?’

Daniel turned to look at her in the gathering dusk. ‘Leaving you,’ he said. ‘Arrogance, complacency, thoughtlessness…Oh, and cheating a Portuguese pirate at cards and almost paying for it with my life.’

Lucinda gave a peal of laughter.

‘And wishing,’ Daniel said softly, watching her face, ‘that I could change the past.’

The laughter died from her eyes. ‘That is a mistake, Daniel.’ She looked over her shoulder. ‘We are almost at the park wall. You may leave me here. I shall be quite safe.’

She put a hand against his chest and stood on tiptoe to kiss him. Her lips were cool and they clung to his, and he wanted to pick her up and carry her off to make love to her under the trees of the pine forest. But he knew that some things could never be, and already he had let matters go far too far.

‘Goodnight,’ she whispered, and he knew that she meant goodbye.

‘Tell them to lock the doors fast tonight,’ Daniel said.

She raised her chin. ‘Because you and your scoundrel crew will be out smuggling?’

The frustration, the wanting, poured through him and almost swept everything else aside. He caught her shoulders, pressing her back against the trunk of the nearest tree.

‘Ah, Lucy, what a shockingly poor opinion you have of me,’ he muttered, his mouth harsh against hers. He wanted to forget her anger and her scorn and find the sweetness beneath—the sweetness he was sure was still there for him. He plundered her mouth like the pirate he was—taking, demanding, asking no permission. He held her hard against the unyielding wood as he stole the response he wanted from her, his kiss fierce and insistent, until he was panting for breath and she was too, and he knew from the touch and the feel of her that she was his for the taking.

Her eyes were a hazy blue in the moonlight, dazed with sensual desire, and her mouth was soft and ripe and he ached for her. But he knew that if he made love to her now she would hate him in the morning. Because although he could wrench this response from her body she mistrusted him, and detested what he had become, and once she thought about what had happened she would despise herself and him too.

With an oath he set her away from him.

‘You had better go, Lucinda,’ he said, deliberately cruel. ‘Go before I forget what little honour I have left and treat you like the pirate I am.’

He saw her flinch at his harshness, and then she gathered her cloak to her and hurried away. He felt a cold desolation that had nothing to do with the winter night.

Chapter 4

THE middle of December brought the final Woodbridge Assembly before Christmas. The Assembly Rooms were icy cold that night. A wind was whistling in from the sea, finding all the gaps between the windows and setting the candle flames dancing in the draught. Lucinda drew her shawl more closely about her and shivered on her rout chair. Company was light that evening—a few local families, and some of the officers from the Woodbridge barracks—but amidst the small crowd Miss Stacey Saltire shone like a jewel.

Lucinda had observed that it was often the way when a young lady was engaged: all the gentlemen who had been wary of approaching her when she had been husband-hunting now felt free to pay attention to her, knowing she was promised to another. And none was more assiduous in his attentions than the Riding Officer, Mr Owen Chance, who was even now dancing with Stacey, the two dark heads bent close to one another as they indulged in intimate conversation.

Lucinda sighed. Not only was she concerned by what she saw—as was Mr Leytonstone, glowering from across the other side of the floor but too cowardly to intervene—but she felt for a moment a wave of envy so sharp that it that shocked her. Envy for Stacey, and for the way that Owen Chance was looking at her, and for her own lost youth and her lost love.

She had not seen Daniel since the night he had kissed her in the woods. She had run from him then—run from his harshness and the feelings he could still stir in her. More than anything she had run from the fact that he was not the man she wanted him to be, and her heart ached that she had loved him once and now he was a stranger to her.

She had kept away from the creek, just as Daniel had demanded, and had taken her walks in less dangerous places. Sometimes as dusk was falling she would stand by her bedroom window and scour the wide expanse of the bay for a scarlet and black ship with a snarling dragon on the prow, but the horizon was always empty, and she would draw the curtains together with a sigh and feel her heart plummet to her slippers. If only she had never met him again. But she had, and memory, reawakened, was difficult to dismiss. It taunted her at every turn with the restless passion and excitement of that distant summer when she and Daniel had been young. And the knowledge that he was a different man now, supposedly a criminal and a traitor, tortured her.

She had asked questions about him of Sally Kestrel, and had listened to Midwinter gossip with avidity. Although she knew she should forget Daniel, she found she could not help herself. His name was mentioned frequently, but the stories were as insubstantial as smoke, and at the end it was impossible to tell the truth from the myth. Intriguingly, many of the legends painted Daniel de Lancey as a hero—a man secretly in the pay of the government rather than the renegade he pretended to be. Lucinda found she ached for it to be true, but thought it probable that she would never know.