Miranda Jarrett - Christmas Wedding Belles - The Pirate's Kiss / A Smuggler's Tale / The Sailor's Bride

‘De Lancey!’

The shout cut through the web of emotion that had engulfed them, causing them both to jump violently. The music wavered and died. Lucinda saw Daniel swing round on instinct—but there was nothing surprising in that. Everyone in the Assembly Rooms had frozen at the sound of that name, then spun around to confront the person from whom it had come. Searching feverishly through the shocked faces of the crowd, Lucinda saw Owen Chance striding forward. He had what looked like a letter in his hand, and he was making directly for them.

‘You are Daniel de Lancey,’ he said.

Lucinda felt all the blood drain from her face. For a moment she thought that she was about to swoon for the first time in her life. It was purely emotional, purely instinctive. She felt terrified at the danger Daniel was now in. No one in the Assembly Rooms had ever seen him before, so she knew someone must have informed on him. She looked at the letter in Owen Chance’s hand, and then up into his face with a sort of despair.

Daniel was made of sterner stuff, she realised. Her face looked pale and stricken in the long mirrors that lined the ballroom, but he was standing there with the cool of the devil himself, one brow raised in polite enquiry, a look of amused tolerance on his face as he confronted Owen Chance.

‘I beg your pardon,’ Daniel said, ‘but I fear there is some mistake. I am Mr Jackson Raleigh, of Ludlow in Shropshire.’

The room had erupted into a torrent of whisper and speculation. Someone had moved to the door as though to guard it. Out of the corner of her eye Lucinda saw one of the redcoat captains draw his men closer. She saw the easy amusement in Daniel’s eyes turn to calculation as he looked around for an exit. Her heart swooped into her satin slippers as she realised that there was nowhere for him to go. There was no escape.

Their eyes met for a long second, and in that moment she knew exactly what he was going to do.

‘I am sure that Mrs Melville will vouch for me,’ he said. He held Lucinda’s gaze very directly. ‘She knows me well. We were children together.’ He looked around the circle of amazed faces. ‘In fact she is my betrothed.’

‘OF ALL the unpardonably dirty tricks!’

The door of the room was locked and the guard’s footsteps receded along the corridor. Lucinda grabbed Daniel by the lapels of his jacket and shook him hard, her weight carrying them both backwards onto the dirty pallet bed in the corner of the room.

He went down with a thud, banging his shoulder against the wall, all the breath knocked from his body. Lucinda was no lightweight. Now she was sitting on top of him, just as she had when they had fought as children, in the days before their youthful feelings had turned to something deeper. Daniel shifted beneath her. No. On second thoughts it was not quite as it had been when they were children. Now Lucinda’s silk-clad legs were pressing against the side of his body, the warm juncture of her thighs was brushing a rather delicate and responsive part of his anatomy, and as she leaned forward, her wrathful face only a few inches from his, he caught a tantalising glimpse of the curve of her breasts beneath the silk ballgown.

He did the first thing that came into his mind.

He seized the hateful turban from her head and threw it into a corner of the room. Lucinda’s hair tumbled down to her shoulders, sticking out from its pins in charming blonde disarray. Daniel smiled.

‘That’s better.’

Lucinda made a noise like an enraged kitten and beat her fists against his chest.

‘Beast! Hateful, lying, deceitful, manipulative, traitorous beast!’

Daniel laughed out loud. ‘Don’t hold back, Lucinda!’

‘I hate you! You ruined my life once before, and now you have ruined me! I detest you!’ Her voice broke. To his amazement, Daniel realised that she was on the very edge of tears, his indomitable Lucinda. He had never, ever seen her cry—not even when her pet slow-worm had died when she was thirteen.

His hands gentled on her shoulders. He felt a huge wave of remorse, sobering him, humbling him. He got into—and out of—situations like this every day of his life, but Lucinda did not. In his careless, selfish disdain for her feelings and her future he had indeed ruined her.

‘I am sorry,’ he said slowly.

Her eyes were very bright with unshed tears as she looked down at him.

‘Why did you do it?’

Daniel shrugged uncomfortably. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We weren’t supposed to be locked up. I thought that Chance would believe me. My plan was for him to back down and apologise, and for everyone to congratulate us, and then we would simply walk out of there—’

‘And you would walk out of my life. Again. Leaving me to explain—again—the disappearance of my fiancé.’

There was a silence.

‘Something like that,’ Daniel admitted.

Lucinda straightened, moving away from him. Daniel swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat next to her. They were in a hastily converted office on the first floor of Woodbridge Gaol, detained at His Majesty’s pleasure whilst Owen Chance sent to Shropshire for urgent confirmation of Mr Jackson Raleigh’s identity. The door was locked, and a soldier was on guard at the end of the corridor. The Riding Officer had been apologetic but firm. Clearly he had not thought he could consign to the filthy cells a couple who might just possibly be all that they seemed—outraged gentry caught up in a case of mistaken identity. Even so, their situation was not a comfortable one. The room had one pallet bed, a desk, a wooden chair, a bucket, and that was all.

Daniel could not see Lucinda’s face. The unruly strands of hair that he had released now masked her expression from him.

‘You have never cared about anyone else in your life,’ she said slowly. ‘It is all of a piece.’

When he did not reply she glanced sideways at him.

‘Why do you not answer?’

Daniel shook his head. He felt cold within. ‘I have no defence against your words. You are correct. I thought only of myself and how I might escape.’

‘You abandoned me without a word when I was seventeen,’ Lucinda continued. ‘Tonight I almost forgot all of that, and was nearly seduced into caring for you all over again. But you—you care for no one but yourself, Daniel. You always have and you always will.’

Daniel made an abrupt movement of pain and frustrated rage. Until recently he had been his own sternest critic. Sometimes in the dark hours he struggled with his guilt, but that fight was his alone and he never spoke of it. That had changed when Lucinda had burst into his life again. She had confronted him and made him face up to the hurt he had dealt her in the past. And now he had hurt her all over again.

‘Why did you not denounce me?’ he said now. ‘Why did you lie to save me? Why did you not tell them at once that I was using you?’

She shot him a look from her very blue eyes. A tinge of colour touched her cheek. She caught her lush lower lip between her teeth.

‘Because I find that I am not as ruthless as you.’ She knitted her fingers together. ‘I did not want to see you hang.’

‘Thank you.’

She glared at him. ‘Oh, I wanted to denounce you for ruining me. Don’t mistake me. It is simply that I do not have the necessary hardihood.’

Daniel winced. ‘Well, thank you anyway.’

Lucinda turned her head slightly towards him. ‘Is there someone in Ludlow who can vouch for you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Nor anyone else who will come to our aid?’

‘No.’

‘The Duchess of Kestrel might try, for my sake.’

‘She cannot do anything to help.’ Daniel rubbed his brow. ‘I dare say she realises that I am indeed de Lancey, but she will not intervene. I have worked with Justin Kestrel for the past five years, but he cannot save me now. He offered me a pardon only a few weeks ago and I turned him down. It is understood that if I am captured I am on my own.’