by Nancy Butler
“I expect you will need another person to help you sail her,” she remarked idly.
He hitched one shoulder. “As you said, I can always hire someone.”
“The devil you will,” she said with a grin as she set her hands on his chest. “If I’m to be your mate, sir, it will be in all your endeavors.”
He swung her around, so that she was bent back over the drafting table, and then he leaned into her, elbows propped on the wooden surface.
“Ah, no, it’s not going to be tame,” he said, his eyes bright with anticipation. “Not with you, Alexa. Promise me you won’t ever stop beating against those walls. It’s what I live for, watching you plunge in and take life by the throat.”
She slid her arms around his neck. “And I live for that look in your eyes.”
He cocked his head. “Which look is that?”
“The one that’s there now.” She nuzzled his cheek and sighed. “I love you, Simeon MacHeath Hastings … Broadbeam.”
“And I love you, Alexandra Prescott,” he said softly. “More than I ever thought possible.” He traced his thumb gently over her cheek. “Though, speaking of names, there is something I ought to tell you.”
He leaned down and whispered into her ear.
“No?” she said with a wide, delighted smile when he was finished. “You’d do that?”
“I already have,” he said with a grin. “Come and see.”
* * *
William and Henry stood under the iron archway, heads canted back as they watched the painter obscure the sign overhead with a new coat of blue enamel. Henry now carried his left arm in a sling, but his expression was merry. Out of gratitude for their devoted service, Prescott had relieved him and his uncle from their duties as coachmen and put them in charge of security at the shipyard. Not Bow Street, exactly, but close enough.
Prescott himself came out of the building and walked up beside them.
“Change is in the wind, my friends,” he said. He squinted back at the window of MacHeath’s new office, and hoped his eyes were not playing tricks on him. His wayward daughter and her champion appeared to be waving at him through the glass.
Sweet Lord, he hoped they’d make a match of it. Let MacHeath have the ordering of her for a change. She was a handful for any man, let alone one who was nearing seventy. But MacHeath had always been able to keep her distracted, and once there were babies on the way....
Prescott grinned to himself. Maybe he’d have better luck handling their children—provided they were all boys.
“So what is the new sign going to say?” Henry asked, interrupting his pleasant musings.
“Prescott, Prescott and Prescott,” he replied.
“Three of them?” William and Henry said in unison.
The sign painter looked down at the sheet of paper tacked to his ladder and read aloud, “Alexander Charles Prescott, Alexandra Prescott and Simeon MacHeath Prescott.”
“He’s taking your name, sir?” William exclaimed, puzzlement creasing his ruddy face. “I always thought MacHeath was too proud to take a groat from his granny.”
Prescott shrugged. “He says it’s an old Scots custom—that when a man marries into a more powerful clan than his own, he takes their name as a sign of respect. He told me that next to Alexa’s hand, my family name was the best gift I could bestow on him.”
William digested this, and then turned to Henry with a broad wink and whispered, “Guess no one ever told the lad about Smelly Ned the cockle monger.”
Dedicated to Lisa Purcell—
my dear friend, my first reader
And to the members of New Jersey Romance Writers—
a constant wellspring of support and inspiration
Copyright © 2000 by Nancy Hajeski w/a Nancy Butler
Originally published by Signet (ISBN 9780451201720)
Electronically published in 2018 by Belgrave House/Regency
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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.
