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

‘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.

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.