Pleasures of a Tempted Lady

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Confessions of an Improper Bride

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Secrets of an Accidental Duchess

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For Lawrence, as always.

Acknowledgments

To Kate McKinley, who helps me keep my head screwed on straight. To Cindy Benser, who reads my books and catches all the mistakes I don’t think anyone else in the world would ever find. And to my dad, Kelly Haymore, who suffered through all the “spice” and “touchy-feely emotional stuff” to spend hours talking to me about ships and sea warfare of the nineteenth century. Thanks especially to my agent, Barbara Poelle, and my editor, Selina McLemore, two amazing, brilliant, and talented women who’ve supported me through thick and thin. I’m blessed to be able to work with both of them.

Chapter One

W
illiam Langley gazed over the bow of his ship, the
Freedom
, at the rippling gray surface of the ocean. Though the seas had finally calmed, a slick of seawater coated everything, and half of his crew were still snoring in their bunks, exhausted from the exertion of keeping the ship afloat through last night’s storm.

Will ran his fingers through the cold beads of water along the top edge of the gunwale. It’d probably be a month before they dried out, but they were no worse for wear. Now they could go back to the task at hand—seeking out smugglers along the Western Approaches.

In the nearly windless morning, the
Freedom
crept along in an easterly direction. They were about halfway between Penzance and the Irish coast, though the storm had certainly blown them off course, and they wouldn’t get an accurate reading on their position until the skies cleared. God knew when that would be. In the interim, he’d keep them moving east toward England so they could patrol the waters closer to the shore.

“She did well, didn’t she?”

Will glanced over his shoulder to see his first mate, David Briggs, approaching from the starboard deck, freshly shaved and calm, a far cry from his harried demeanor last night.

Will smiled. “Indeed she did.” The
Freedom
was a newly built American schooner rigged with triangular sails in the Bermuda style, a sight rarely seen among the square-rigged brigs and cutters common on this side of the Atlantic. But Will’s schooner was fast and sleek—perfect for the job she had been assigned to perform. And sturdy, as proven by her stalwart response to last night’s storm.

She was, above all, his. Will owned a fleet of ships captained by various men involved in his import business, but since before the first planks were riveted together the
Freedom
had been his. Three years ago, he’d sent his carefully rendered plans to Massachusetts with detailed instructions on how she should be built. And now, with every step along her shiny planked deck, the satisfying twin prides of creation and ownership resonated through him.

The only area in which Will had relinquished control in the building of the
Freedom
was in the naming of the ship. The name he’d wanted for her would be too obvious. It would raise too many smirking eyebrows in London society. Even his best friends in the world—the Earl of Stratford and his wife, Meg—would frown and question his sanity if he’d given the ship the name his heart and soul had demanded.

So instead of
Lady Meg
, he’d agreed to the name suggested by the American shipbuilder—likely as a joke,
since they knew well that he was a consummate Englishman.
Freedom
. It seemed everything the Americans created involved their notions of freedom or liberty or national pride. Yet, surprising himself, Will had found he wasn’t opposed to the name. For him, this ship did represent freedom.

Being out here again, on the open sea, on this beauty of a vessel and surrounded by his hardy crew—all of it was freeing. The bonds that had twisted around his heart for the past two years, growing tighter and tighter, stifling him until he was sure he’d burst, were slowly unraveling.

Out here, at least he could breathe.

He glanced over at Briggs, who was scrubbing a hand over his eyes. “Sleep well?”

“Like the dead.”

“You should have slept longer.”

Briggs raised a brow at him, causing the angry red scar that ran across his forehead to pucker. “I could say the same to you, Captain.”

Will chuckled. “Touché.” Briggs was right. Will had achieved no more than two hours of sleep in the predawn hours. He could have slept in later, but he’d been anxious to survey the
Freedom
in the light of day. He was glad he had. The anxiety and energy that had compelled him into action since the beginning of the storm were gone now, and he felt… not exactly happy, but peaceful. For the first time in a long while.

“No sightings this morning,” Briggs said.

“No surprise there,” Will answered.

Briggs scanned the horizon with narrowed eyes. “Aye, well, it’s bloody foggy.”

“And we’re too far offshore.” Will had a theory that the
particular ship they pursued—a brig smuggling rum from the West Indies—remained close to the shore for several weeks at a time. Instead of using one cove as a drop for its cargo, it used several—depositing a few barrels of rum here and another few there so as to throw the authorities off its scent. The captain of this ship was wily, and he had proved elusive to the coast guard as well as the revenue cutters. They had a vague description of the man, but nobody knew his name—or, perhaps more accurately, no one was willing to reveal his name.

The
Freedom
was, in essence, a spy ship—with only four guns and a crew of twenty, they wouldn’t stand in a fight against a fully armed brig with a crew of a hundred. Their task, instead of capturing the pirates, was to log the brig’s activities and hand over the information to the revenue officers, who in turn would seize the ship and its illegal cargo, then prosecute the smugglers.

Will glanced over at Briggs and saw the muscle working in his jaw. He clapped a hand over the man’s shoulder. “Patience,” he said in a low voice.

Briggs was a few years younger than him, and patience had never been his strong suit. He was anxious to find the culprits, whereas Will preferred to take things slowly, as if they had all the time in the world. The best plan of action was probably somewhere in between the two men’s methods. If they waited too long, the brig would be on its way back to the West Indies for its next illegal mission, not to be seen in these waters for at least another year.

Briggs turned to Will and nodded, the edges of his blue eyes crinkling against the glare of the morning sun’s attempt to burn through the fog. “We’ve been out here a fortnight and haven’t seen a hint of them.”

The wind had picked up, and it ruffled through the other man’s thick, tawny hair and sent wisps of fog swirling through the rigging behind him.

“We’ll find them.” Will squeezed Briggs’s shoulder. Neither man said any more; instead both turned back to gaze out over the ocean. The sea and wind were slowly gathering strength after their rest from the gale, and the schooner sliced through the small waves at a faster pace now. Will took a deep breath of the salt air. So much cleaner than the stale, rank air full of sewage and coal smoke in London.

“What’s that?” Briggs asked.

Will glanced at the man to see him squinting out over the open ocean.

“What’s what?”

His first mate pointed straight ahead. “That.”

Will scanned the sea. Could he have been wrong all this time? Might they encounter the smugglers way out here? Even as he thought it, he realized how unlikely it was. More likely they’d come across another legal English or Irish vessel.

Seeing nothing, he methodically scanned the blurred horizon once again, and then he saw it: the prow of a boat emerging like a specter from the fog.

Will frowned. The vessel was too small to be this far out at sea on its own.

After half a minute in which they both stared at the emerging shape, Briggs murmured, “Holy hell. Is it a jolly boat?”

“With a broken mast,” Will said, nodding. “I don’t see anyone in it. Can you?”

Briggs leaned forward, squinting hard. He shook his
head, but then frowned. “Possibly. Lying on the center bench?”

The mast looked like it had snapped off to about a third of its height, and half the sail draped off the side of the little boat, dragging in the water. No one was attempting to row.

The boat was adrift. And the
Freedom
was headed straight for it.

Will could see at least one figure now—or at least a mound of pinkish fabric piled on one of the benches. And then he saw the movement. Just the smallest shudder, like the twitch of a frightened animal, beneath one of the bench seats.

He spun around and shouted to Ellis, the helmsman, ordering the man to turn into the wind on his command. If they timed it properly, rather than barreling right over the little boat and reducing it to splinters, they could pass it on the larboard side without getting its floating sail tangled in their keel or rudder.

“Aye, Captain!” Ellis answered.

Will heard a shout. He turned to take stock of the other seamen on deck. There were six additional men, four of them clustered near Ellis, speaking in excited tones and pointing at the boat emerging from the fog. The other two had been at work swabbing the deck but were now gazing at the emerging vessel in fascination.

“Fetch the hook,” someone shouted, and a pair of seamen hurried down the starboard deck where the telescoping hook was lashed.

Everyone else was still asleep, but Will could easily make do with the nine of them. The
Freedom
was sixty feet of sleek power, and one of the most impressive of her
attributes was that her sails were controlled by a series of winches, making a large crew unnecessary. In fact, Ellis and three others could easily control the ship while Briggs, Will, and the other seamen secured the vessel.

“We’ll draw alongside it on our larboard side,” Will murmured to Briggs. Even after such a short time aboard his new ship, Will had impeccable timing when it came to the
Freedom
. Briggs and the crew often joked that the ship was such a part of him he could command it to do anything he wanted with a mere thought. The truth was, Will knew the
Freedom
intrinsically. He could predict with great accuracy how it would react to any manipulation of its sails and rudder—certainly a product of controlling everything about its design since its earliest conceptualization.