The Pirate Hunter's Lady

by Jennifer Ashley

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll rest and be right as rain by dinner.”

  James’s countenance was blank, for all the world as though he believed every word he said. Diana gave him a hard look, and he gave her a neutral one back. She didn’t trust him any more than she trusted the island’s cat not to shed on the parlor cushions.

  But she didn’t dare stay behind with him while Lieutenant Jack, Isabeau, and her father sailed off. Much too dangerous. Not from what Diana feared from James, but what she feared from herself.

  Jessup was here. Jessup knew not to let Captain Ardmore pry into things he should not.

  “We will go, then,” she said. “Come along, Isabeau.”

  Isabeau kept hold of Diana’s hand and held her other out to Lieutenant Jack. As Isabeau pulled them along the beach to where the boat would be waiting, Diana looked back.

  James was watching them go, Diana’s sketch box under one arm, her easel under the other. She couldn’t read his face from this distance, but she knew he was up to something. It was in every line of the blasted man’s body.

  Isabeau grinned at Diana, showing her missing teeth, and Diana reluctantly turned away. She felt a headache coming on.

  *** *** ***

  James stood on the beach longer than he’d intended, watching Diana walk away. Her legs moved in harmony under her cotton skirt, making her hips sway in a delightful way. She was achingly beautiful.

  Lieutenant Jack walked easily beside her, Isabeau between them. Every once in a while, they’d both pull up on Isabeau’s hands, and the little girl would swing her feet and squeal happily.

  Jack was pure English, pale skin under sunburn, aristocratic tilt to his head, brown-blond hair cut fashionably short. Probably he was a lieutenant because his papa had obtained his midshipman’s post for him and hired lofty tutors to help him pass his exams. Everything about Jack shouted English gentility.

  The man that was James did not like Lieutenant Jack walking off with beautiful Diana Worthing. But Captain Ardmore the pirate hunter welcomed their departure. He’d not yet had the opportunity to learn this island he’d been seeking for a year, and he needed to bring its secrets to light.

  So far, James had seen only the house and the small tract of beach on which he stood. For verisimilitude, he walked back to the house with the easel, liking that the one side of the house could not be seen from the cove where Lockwood moored the boat.

  Admiral Lockwood’s boat was a gig with one sail, a fine small craft for sailing around the island and partway out into the sunny sea. James admired it as a seaman and blessed it now for taking his keepers out of the way so he could start searching.

  The house was quiet. Jessup was down in the kitchens, which were built back into the cliffs against which the house rested. Probably, the man had stolen away for a much-needed nap.

  James deposited Diana’s sketch box and easel in the airy ground-floor sitting room. The room had obviously been designed as a man’s retreat, the furnishings chosen for comfort, not show. Nothing matched, and styles were haphazardly mixed.

  The woman’s touch showed in Diana’s workbasket by the fire, the embroidered pillows on the faded divan, the wheeled tea table neatly in its place. Every afternoon, Mrs. Pringle filled the table with cakes and a tea tray, and Diana poured out tea in fine porcelain cups for all. A picture of domestic harmony.

  And yet.

  James felt the undercurrents here, the worry, the tension — in the way father and daughter broke off a conversation whenever he entered a room, or watched him sharply when he wandered about the house. Not because of who James was — they did the same to Lieutenant Jack.

  A glance out the window showed James the small craft heading out to sea, its sail taut. The weather was fine, the climate warmer than England’s, with the temperature hovering around seventy degrees even now in March. They’d be gone a few hours, enjoying the little voyage.

  A quiet investigation proved that Jessup had indeed stolen away to his room to sleep, and the cook snored on a settle near the hearth in the kitchen. Well, they deserved it.

  This household made their own beds and fended for themselves quite a lot, but there was still much to do to keep it up. Jessup spent a great amount of his time hauling wood and water to the house, and Mrs. Pringle kept the place clean while at the same time creating hearty and mouthwatering meals three times a day.

  James, used to fending for himself most of his seafaring life, had no objection to helping out. Jack, a naval man, knew how to live neatly in a small space without complaint. They were a most congenial group.

  And yet.

  James let himself out the front door and strode through the sparse garden, around the side of the house hidden from the cove. Succulents clung to the rocks beside the brick path. Pansies in pots struggled to find the sun, brilliant dots of purple against the greens and yellows of the succulents.

  At the end of the garden, a gate and a path led to the rockier side of the island. James had never seen anyone from the household pass through that gate.

  James opened the gate now and went through, latching it carefully behind him. The path on the other side led down a sharp slope, over black rocks thick with green succulents.

  At first glance, everything looked wild and overgrown; the second glance showed that the path was kept cleared. Tendrils that might naturally have grown over had been pushed back and in some places, cut.

  James started down the path, which wound through high rocks and boulders. Not long later, the path grew steep, then steeper, becoming as vertical as a ladder. James placed his hands on the black rocks to either side of him and eased himself downward.

  Pain bit into his side, reminding him he was still far from whole. While he’d lain chained and helpless on the deck of the frigate, the English captain had, in a fit of pique, sliced James’s side open with his sword. James’s blood had gushed over the deck, and the captain had laughed. James had called him a bastard, then the captain had backhanded him across the mouth. Fine specimen of a man.

  The oh-so-honorable captain was at the bottom of the sea now. Admiral Lockwood and Jack had gone out to look for other survivors a couple of times while James lay unconscious in his bedchamber, so they’d told him. They’d found none. The bodies, the admiral suspected, had drifted far, and only small pieces of the wreckage remained near Haven.

  The path narrowed at the bottom of the hill to skirt a wall of limestone and black rock. This portion too had been cleared. On James’s left, the land dropped sharply down to the sea. Waves boomed high, the windward side of the island.

  James slowed. He did not want to round a sudden corner and catch sight of the boat with his hosts and Jack; he’d be in plain sight on the rocks.

  When he peered around the next corner, however, he saw that enough vegetation grew up the sides of the hills to screen him from the sea.

  James supposed he must have walked about a mile by now, and he was tiring. The wound and the shipwreck had sapped his strength, and three weeks lying flat on his back had not helped.

  But the path went somewhere, and James was determined to discover where, even if it only wound back to the leeward side of the island. Perhaps the secret of this island was that it had no secrets.

  But he knew better.

  The path dipped sharply again, disappearing through a niche in the rock. At first James thought the path simply ended at the cliff edge, but he found, as he scrambled on, that it led down through the tiny niche to a strip of sand below.

  James climbed down, his breath hitching, pain making him slow.

  At the bottom of the niche, he found the caves.

  They were dry caves, the ground leading to them covered with silky white sand. James paused to catch his breath then trudged across the sand toward them.

  Rock clicked on rock behind him. James swung around to see a stream of pebbles cascading down the path he’d just descended. He dipped his hand into his pocket, finding the cold hilt of his knife.

 
Slim hands gripped the rock, then down the last curve came Diana, her skirt lifting to reveal her shapely legs in breeches and boots. She was alone, no Jessup or Isabeau behind her.

  James walked to meet her, letting go of the knife. “Tired of fishing?” he asked, keeping his voice light.

  Diana was flushed from the climb, perspiration curling tendrils of her hair. “I thought you stayed behind to rest.”

  “I did. Then I wanted a walk. I wondered what was down this path.” It was the truth, and a lie.

  “Nothing much. As you can see.” Diana lied too. They lied together.

  “I found the caves,” James said. “Why don’t you show them to me?”

  “They have only sand and rock inside. They’re dangerous, my father says.”

  The top two buttons of her bodice had come undone. Her agitated breathing made that fact delightful.

  “I like caves,” James said. “I always have a hankering to explore them.” He turned and continued on.

  “You’re sagging.”

  “What?” James snapped around to her again.

  She closed the space between them. “You look exhausted, and you’re not quite healed. We should go back to the house. The others will return soon, in any case.” She was babbling, definitely not wanting him to explore those caves.

  James touched her cheek. “I’ll go back to the house only if we can do something interesting there,” he said in a low voice.

  “Whatever you like.”

  James studied her gray-blue eyes that glittered in the bright afternoon light, regarding him steadily and without fear. Liar, liar.

  He brushed her cheek again then turned away. He’d gone three steps when he heard her run up behind him. “James!”

  James swung around to find Diana against him. She lifted her arms and wrapped them around his neck. “James,” she said hoarsely. “Kiss me.”

  She rose on her tiptoes and crushed her lips to his before James could stop her.

  Chapter Seven

  Not that James had any intention of stopping her.

  He skimmed his arms around her waist and scraped her to him. She smelled like sunshine and sand, and her lips were wet, her breath hot.

  James remembered the hard kiss he’d forced on her in the inn on the English coast, and then the still, stunned moment when Diana had kissed him back.

  This kiss was no less frenzied. Oh, yes, this is what you are made of, my girl. Fire and desire, and you pretend to be so genteel.

  She was not genteel. Diana Worthing was a demon in his arms, and James loved it. As an attempt to keep him from the caves, it was obvious and clumsy. He’d thought her smarter than that.

  But what did he care? They were alone, she was savagely beautiful, and James wanted her.

  He explored her mouth, enjoying the sweet velvet of her tongue. Her lips opened his, almost bruising, making James take what she was giving. Darlin’, I’ll take it all day and all night.

  Diana gripped his shoulders as though she couldn’t bear to let him go. The little sound she made in her throat had him wanting to take her down to the sand and let her warm him all the way through. His cock was nice and hard, to hell with his injury.

  Her teeth scraped his lips, a little bite of pain. James slowed the frantic kiss and finally eased her away.

  He was breathing hard. “Let’s do this right, darlin’.”

  Diana looked up at him, panicked and flushed, her loosened hair snaking around her shoulders. “What are you talking about?”

  “Gently, for once. I want to savor this.”

  “Why?” Her eyes held fear, which he didn’t understand. “Why not have me and be done?”

  Is that what she thought he wanted? James brushed her hot cheek. “Sweetheart, I’ve lain awake nights since I met you, remembering you reclining in my cabin, all insolent and taunting me. I like that memory. I want more like that.”

  “I wasn’t taunting you. I had no where else to sit.”

  “You commandeered my cabin, going through my belongings like you wanted to own me. Sometimes I think about me going ahead and taking you on that bunk like I wanted to, instead of being so polite.”

  “Polite? You call holding me against a wall and questioning me polite?”

  “It was a hell of a lot more polite than what I wanted to do.” James smiled at her outrage. “But I wonder, love, why you’ve decided to become a sacrificial lamb.”

  She looked confused. “Sacrificial . . .”

  “Beguiling me with your charms.” He pushed a lock of wind-torn hair from her cheek. “So I won’t find the secrets in your caves.”

  “There is nothing in the caves, I told you.”

  “I don’t believe you.” He stroked his finger from her temple to her jaw. “But I thank you for letting me sample you. You taste like vanilla sugar, did you know that?”

  Her face went scarlet. “No.”

  “Hasn’t anyone ever told you? All those men chasing you around that admiral’s house and they never once talked about your charms?”

  “They wrote poetry,” she said in a stiff voice.

  “I bet it was awful.” With great reluctance, James at last made himself let her go and turn away. His leather breeches had never felt this tight before.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, frantic.

  “Where do you think? To explore the caves.”

  The sand grew thinner as James walked, packed into a crust under the shade of the dry caves. The sea roared and rushed on his left, the waves on the windward side showing their late winter might.

  He heard Diana hurrying after him. She reached him just as James stepped into the shade of the wind- and water-carved cave.

  The two caves ran together not ten feet back, and held only sand, rock, and a tiny crab that had crawled too far and died.

  “You see,” Diana said triumphantly. “Nothing.”

  Nothing visible anyway. But then why had Diana not wanted him here? What did James not see?

  The wind was less fierce inside the caves, and his voice echoed hollowly under the rock. “You kissed me for some reason, Diana. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  “I kissed you to discover whether you would behave as a gentleman.”

  She kept on lying. Diana already knew exactly what he was like.

  “There are easier ways of finding that out,” he said. “Like watching if I quirk my finger when I drink tea.”

  Diana gave him an unreadable look. “I’ve known plenty of men who have perfect manners but are no gentlemen once they are out of company.”

  “You mean once they are with you.” James turned back to her and planted his hands on her waist. “And then all manners go to hell, am I right? Men did fight duels over you in London, didn’t they? I can see why. A man might do anything to possess you.”

  She flinched and tried to pull away.

  “What is it?” he asked. “You’re done seducing me because I already found the caves?”

  Her momentary confusion dissolved, but she didn’t try to pull away again. She lifted her chin. “I believe I know the answer to whether you are a gentleman.”

  “I was raised a gentleman. I come from a very fine Southern family. My sister is a pillar of Charleston society.”

  “She would not like me, then.”

  “I think she would.”

  Diana gave a sudden laugh. “She would not. Have I not proved how wicked I am?”

  James watched her, half-puzzled. She was angry, but not really at James. Everything she said about herself held a trace of mockery. As though someone, probably her useless husband, had told her over and over how horrible she was.

  “I think you don’t know what you are,” he said. “You started a game with me, Diana. Why don’t we finish it?”

  She wanted him. James knew that. Her nipples behind the thin bodice were hard little points, but it was more than that. When Diana had flung herself at him and kissed him, she’d not expected to want him — she’d planned to use her w
iles to lure him away from the caves. She never thought she’d light a fire that could swallow the island.

  Not his fire. Not her fire. Their fire together.

  James sought the buttons of her bodice. “When I first saw you facing down Ian O’Malley in that garden, I told myself you were dangerous. And I was right.” Diana’s buttons were made of bone, smooth white and chipped about the edges. He unbuttoned one, two, three. She stood still and let him, her breath coming fast.

  “How many lovers have you burned up, Diana?” James asked, continuing his slow undoing of the buttons. Five, six, seven.

  He parted the placket. Diana was bare beneath the gown. James’s heart slammed against his chest, his desires banging at him just as hard.

  Diana’s breasts were round and firm, the breasts of a woman who’d borne a child. The tips were hard and dark, begging for his fingers. Lovely, lovely. James could stand here for hours gazing upon her.

  “How many?” he repeated.

  Diana looked up at him, her lips wet, her eyes half closed. God, she could melt stone. “None. I mean . . . only my husband.”

  “What about all those men who chased you? You just teased them? Played with them.”

  “Yes.” Her eyes flashed.

  “I’ll bet you held court over them like a little queen. No wonder you’re hiding here so far from England. Once your husband was dead, they might have had thoughts of revenge.”

  Her jaw hardened. “It was not like that.”

  “Then they were a pack of fools. You should have had a lover who could tame you, who could fan your fires and then damp them down so you’d not burn up your husband. Did he like your fires, Diana?”

  Her chest rose with a sharp intake of breath. “No.”

  “If your husband couldn’t quench you, and you didn’t have a lover to do it for him, you must have been a wildfire.” James bent to her. “You burned every man you touched, didn’t you? I’m sorry I wasn’t there to catch you.” He smoothed back a lock of her silken hair. “We could have lit up the sky.”

  Her moist breath touched his lips. James’s blood was pumping, his cock as hard as it had ever been. Diana had started something with him, and he was going to finish it.