Christmas Wedding Belles: The Pirate's Kiss / A Smuggler's Tale / The Sailor's Bride. Miranda Jarrett
He grinned. ‘Good to see you again. Transport compliments of the Duchess of Kestrel. What kept you, sir?’
Chapter 6
IN THE sleigh, beneath the fur-lined rugs that Sally Kestrel had so thoughtfully provided, Lucinda sat shivering and shivering in her torn evening gown and petticoats. The sleigh was a splendid affair—a little coach on runners, with a hood lashed down on all sides so that it was very snug inside. Sally Kestrel could not have sent anything better suited to their purpose, and the fact that she had sent it led Lucinda to hope that matters might be all right, for if ever she needed help it was now.
Despite the thick furs and the cloaks that Holroyd had passed to them, Lucinda was trembling as though she would never be warm again. She knew that it was reaction to her situation, rather than cold, that was making her shake like this. She had escaped from Woodbridge Gaol with Daniel—no, she had engineered their escape—and she was ruined, a fugitive and a criminal. No doubt her face would be appearing on the ‘wanted’ posters soon. And the shocking, inexcusable and truly extraordinary thing about the whole experience was that she felt stirred up, alive, free for once from the stifling restrictions and endless petty rules that had governed her existence as a governess and chaperon. Oh, she was half appalled at her own behaviour, but she was excited as well.
She must be mad.
She must be in love.
She closed her eyes in denial of the thought. It could not be true. But she knew it was. She thought back to that terrible moment in the ballroom when she had known with blinding certainty that she could not have borne them carrying Daniel off to gaol and seeing his lifeless body swinging on the end of a rope. She knew he was all of the things she had said he was. He was unreliable and reckless and dangerous. But it made not one whit of difference because she had loved him when she was seventeen and she loved him still, after all these years.
Which still did not mean, of course, that she would agree to marry him. Daniel had said that they must be married to save her reputation—as though marrying an outlawed pirate would not be the most monstrous scandal in itself. She imagined her parents, the good vicar and his wife, positively spinning in their graves. And it simply would not serve. Daniel did not want a wife. His way of life was completely opposed to it. Besides, were not women supposed to be bad luck at sea? Lucinda had the conviction that if she went to sea it would be very bad luck for all concerned. If she felt sick sitting in a rowing boat, then once a ship began to move she would probably be horribly unwell the entire time.
So there was no possibility of her becoming Daniel’s wife. And it was not simply a practical matter of seasickness. She could, as Daniel had suggested, go to live at Allandale. But she had no wish to sit at home wondering where Daniel was and what he was doing. That was not her idea of marriage.
The truth was that she knew if she were to marry Daniel she would be an encumbrance to him rather than the person he had chosen to share the rest of his life. It would be a marriage borne of necessity rather than desire. For how could he want a wife when his way of life was so unsuited to marriage? And she was old enough and proud enough not to want to be second-best to a ship. Time and again Daniel had proved that the lure of the sea and the wild life he lived outside the law were more important to him than all else. She loved him, but she could not trust him not to hurt her again.
The smooth running of the sledge over the snow slowed a little, and then they came to an abrupt halt. Lucinda heard Daniel jump down, and then his voice, speaking low. There was a chink of harness and then the creak of the sleigh as he lifted the hood and slid in beside her, shaking the snow off him like a dog.
‘The snow is too deep to continue,’ he said. ‘Holroyd has set off back to the ship on foot.’
Lucinda scrambled up. ‘We should do the same—’
Daniel put a hand on her shoulder, pressing her back into the furs. ‘Lucinda, the snow is already two foot deep and drifting, and you are clad in nothing but your petticoats and evening slippers. We stay here until the snow stops.’
Lucinda hastily slipped her stockinged legs back under the covers. ‘But we cannot simply sit here! They will be looking for us.’
‘What is bad for us is also bad for our pursuers,’ Daniel said. He shrugged out of his jacket, then started to pull off his boots. ‘No one will be out whilst the snow falls like this. I have found an empty byre where the horse will be safe, and we shall be snug in here until we can make the last few miles down to the creek. We are near Midwinter Mallow, so there is not far to go.’
He raised the edge of the fur covers as though to slip underneath.
‘What are you doing?’ Lucinda asked, scooting across to the other side of the sleigh.
Daniel paused. ‘I am coming in there with you. What do you expect me to do? Shiver all night in a snowdrift?’
‘But…’ Lucinda grabbed the rugs up to her chin. ‘Surely you should go with Holroyd back to the ship? I will be quite safe here.’ She took a deep breath. This might be her best opportunity to explain to Daniel the half-formed plan that she had made concerning the future.
‘I have been thinking,’ she said. ‘I have a plan, Daniel, which means that neither you nor I need be trapped into anything we do not wish. I thought that if you were to return to the Defiance now, without me, someone would be bound to find me before too long. And when they do I will simply pretend that you coerced me at the ball and that I am blameless of all crime…’
Her voice trailed away as she sensed the rather ominous silence that greeted her words. She could not see Daniel clearly in the near-darkness, but she could feel his outrage.
‘Let me understand you,’ he said, after a long moment. ‘Having taken me to task for abandoning you in the past, you are now suggesting that I should behave like a complete scoundrel, leave you here at the mercy of whoever should stumble out of the storm and find you, and that I should run back to my ship, make my escape, and leave you to take all the consequences?’
Lucinda had seldom heard him so angry. Not since she had been in her teens, when an irate farmer had shouted at her for trying to free his exhausted ploughing team and Daniel had practically threatened to run the man through.
‘Well,’ Lucinda said, through suddenly chattering teeth, ‘I thought it was a good plan.’
‘It is the stupidest plan that I have heard in an age,’ Daniel said, in the same hard, insulted voice. ‘For once in my life, Lucy, permit me to do the right thing.’
These last words were hissed through his teeth.
‘But—’
‘I will stay with you,’ Daniel continued, as though she had not spoken. ‘When the snow ceases we will finish the journey back to the ship, and there I will marry you.’
Lucinda sat bolt upright. ‘Now, just a minute! That will not be necessary, Daniel. I have already said that I will not marry you.’
‘You will marry me. As ship’s captain I have the right to conduct marriage services, and the first one I shall perform is my own.’
‘That is definitely illegal,’ Lucinda said, hoping she was right.
Daniel ignored her. He slid beneath the blankets and his body grazed against hers. Lucinda felt the long, hard length of him, felt his legs entangle with hers beneath the petticoats, and tried to shift away as far as she could. Her throat was dry, and her heart was thundering in her ears, a counterpoint to the soft swish of the snow against the roof of the sleigh. A moment later he had put out a negligent hand and pulled her into his arms. Her hands came up against the hard, warm barrier of his chest.
‘You are cold and you are suffering from shock,’ he said against her hair. ‘You need to stop worrying about what is going to happen and allow me to warm you.’
Lucinda was shivering violently, but not with either cold or shock now. ‘I do not need you to warm me,’ she argued. ‘I certainly do not need you to marry me, and I cannot