Kasey Michaels - Regency Vows

—Publishers Weekly

‘A fearless debut! Alison DeLaine pens a stand-out romance.’

—New York Times bestselling author Julia London

ALISON DELAINElives in rural Arizona, where she can often be found driving a dented old pickup truck out to her mining claim in the desert. When she’s not busy striking it rich, waiting on spoiled pets, or keeping her husband in line, she is happily putting characters through the wringer. Visit her online at her website, www.AlisonDeLaine.com.

For my husband, Tom.

I love you.

CHAPTER ONE

East of the Strait of Gibraltar

April 1767

A WAVE SWELLED and broke over his head, and for a moment Captain James Warre couldn’t breathe. His fingers dug into the wet wood beneath him, but there was nothing to grasp. The churning water choked him, nudged him, smothered him.

With a massive effort he shifted to his side, then let his head fall in a fit of coughing. The seawater left his mouth brackish and dry. Closing his eyes, he let himself slip away.

“Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly, lavender’s green.” Nap time, young Master Warre, and I’ll hear no more of your sorry excuses.

Nap time. The sun shone warm on his back as he pitched and bobbed with the chop.

Then suddenly, a shadow.

There was a bump, a scrape. Wood met wood, jarring him. His eyes flew open as he braced for a cannon’s roar. Fluttered closed again when it didn’t come.

A female voice drifted to his ears. “...alive, do you think?”

The soft, lilting sound wrapped around him like a melody.

Bump, bump, bump.

“...bloody well dead, or close enough.” A male voice now.

Bump, bump, scrape.

“...haul him up?” Female again.

Bump, bump— He opened his eyes and stared straight at the wet hull of a ship. Another wave engulfed him and left him gasping, straining to see the deck in a moment of clarity. He hadn’t the strength. His gaze swept the ragged length of the raft keeping him afloat— No, not raft. Broken decking. A memory threatened to pull him under, but he fought for lucidity and kept his gaze moving, turning, sweeping upward. She was a brig.

“...any manner of disease. We cannot afford the risk.” Through a haze he recognized the words as English. But then a string of shouted words, this time unintelligible—but not unrecognizable.

English and Moorish together, on a Mediterranean brig.

Renegades. They would not look kindly on the captain of a British ship of the line.

The muffled snap of cloth in the breeze kept him fighting to see the stern. If he could just see her colors... The curving hull blocked his view of all but a bright red corner wafting in the wind.

He fixed his eye on that corner, waiting, clawing against an invisible undertow.

Nap time, young Master Warre—

No! He had to see that flag.

A wave broke over him. His mouth filled with seawater and he gagged, choking and sputtering again as he re-fixed his gaze. Finally, a gust whipped the greater part of the flag into view.

A slender, yellow arm stretched out against the red background, its fist curled around a black cutlass.

Bloody living hell.

He didn’t need to see the rest of the flag to know that shapely arm was attached to a woman’s shoulder and breast. He let his head drop against the wet wood.

“Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly...”

Bump, bump, bump.

The next wave swept him from consciousness.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS A pathetic sight—every bit as pathetic as the day they’d fished Mr. Bogles out of the harbor at Malta, but Mr. Bogles was a cat. A man offered none of the same benefits, yet presented dozens of dangerous possibilities. Captain Katherine Kinloch forced herself away from the railing.

“He could have any manner of disease,” she said flatly. “We cannot afford the risk.”

“Aye, Captain.” Her Algerian boatswain headed toward the fore, shouting a reprimand to three deckhands gawking over the side. Even bathed in the Mediterranean sunshine, she shivered.

Lower the net! The order strained on her tongue, but she clenched her teeth and lifted her spyglass toward the strait. Nobody aboard would have survived if she’d let herself succumb to emotion each time the winds blew contrary.

“Terrible way to die,” her first mate commented, looking down at the water from where he lounged against the railing. His tone delivered reproof the way syrup carried a tincture.

“Every way to die is terrible, William.” The words were cold. Awful. She felt a little sick. “I doubt we could do anything but make his last moments an agony by dragging him up.”

“Suppose he’s perfectly healthy? Just dying of thirst?”

“Suppose he carries the plague?” she snapped. One deck below her feet, Anne was happily teaching Mr. Bogles to string beads. Some dangers to Anne were unavoidable, but this one wasn’t.

A tremble made the horizon dance in her field of view, and she steadied her grip. As soon as they passed through the strait, she would be in unfamiliar waters, sailing with a skeleton crew toward a homeland she hadn’t seen in over ten years. Doubts about that decision already kept her pacing the decks during others’ midnight watches—this was no time for more potential folly. Damn Cousin Holliswell and his greed, and double-bloody-damn Nicholas Warre for helping him. But then, Warre men could be counted on to be merciless.

An inky length of her hair flew over the spyglass, and she snatched it away. “For all we know,” she added, “he is a Tunisian corsair.”

“Or a subject of the king,” William countered conversationally. And then he added, “I don’t recall you having so many qualms when we took Phil and Indy aboard.”

“Of course not. And you know the reason.”

He leaned over the rail and called down to the near lifeless form below. “If you’ve got breasts, old boy, now’s the time to show ’em.”

“Enough!” She lowered the spyglass. William’s blond beard glinted pure gold in the sun, the exact shade of the hoops gleaming from both ears beneath his scarlet turban. His loose white tunic fluttered in the breeze above black linen trousers and bare feet. “I should have thrown you over years ago. Your sense of humor leaves much to be desired.”

He raised a brow. “As does yours. It has disappeared entirely, along with your compassion.”

The accusation struck hard. “That is entirely unfair. We know nothing of him,” she said. “Not his nationality, his occupation, his loyalties, his morality—”

“Irrelevant.”

“—nor his history. All of which is relevant with so few of us left on board.” She caught her boatswain’s eye from the lower deck. For God’s sake, she could barely trust her own men. She raised her chin at Rafik and stared him down until he looked away.

Familiar tension coiled in her gut, screaming that there was no room for error. No room for any but the most calculated risk. “I’ll not be made to feel guilty for mitigating danger,” she added. But guilt crept in anyhow, and not only about the unfortunate in the water. This voyage was the biggest risk yet. If it turned out to be a mistake, Anne would be the one to suffer most.

She felt William staring at her. “It’s not too late to turn back,” he said quietly.

“Bite your tongue.”

The sound of angry footsteps on the stairs warned of Millicent, who stepped onto the upper deck with her expression locked in the glower she had adopted the moment they’d sailed for Britain. With her slender body enshrouded in a shirt and breeches, her hair pulled severely beneath a misshapen hat and her conventional features, Millicent passed for a young man to those who weren’t looking closely. “Philomena is beside herself,” she announced, “and India is ready to go over the side. This isn’t sitting well with the crew.” She awaited Katherine’s reply with lips thinned.