Christmas Wedding Belles: The Pirate's Kiss / A Smuggler's Tale / The Sailor's Bride. Miranda Jarrett
his recklessness, and he had not thought then of Lucy, or home, or anything beyond the excitement of the moment. He had been a damnable fool. He had thought that one day he could go back for her and everything between them would be as it had been.
Eventually word had come to him that she was married, and the shock of it had brought him to his senses. He had realised what he had lost. But it was too late. Now he knew they could never go back.
The challenge came out of the darkness and he gave the password. One of the crew stepped onto the path in front of him. Even though the Defiance was a privateer, his men were drilled as on a regular Navy ship, disciplined and sound.
‘Welcome back, sir.’ Daniel’s deputy, Lieutenant Holroyd, sounded relieved. The crew were jumpy as cats when he was ashore. ‘There is someone to see you.’
The Defiance was berthed in a deep, wide tidal pool, close under the trees of Kestrel Creek. The tide was high and Daniel could step aboard from the bank. It was one of his favourite moorings, but it was a dangerous one given the length of time it took to sail out of the creek to the open sea. But then nowhere was safe for a pirate. That was one of the things that had attracted him to the life in the first place—The freedom and the sense of risk. He had been young then, and dangerously wild. These days he realised that he valued a cool head as much as reckless courage.
There was a lamp burning in his cabin, spilling warm golden light across the papers on his desk and illuminating the still figure of the man who sat waiting for him.
‘I heard that the Riding Officer was out,’ Justin, Duke of Kestrel said, rising to greet him. ‘I am glad to see you made it safely back.’
Daniel shook his hand. He had worked with Kestrel for the last five years, providing the Admiralty with intelligence on French shipping movements during the Wars, chasing the French from British shores, smuggling refugees from Napoleon’s regime. Daniel liked Justin; he was tough but fair. They were also linked by the marriage of Daniel’s sister Rebecca to Justin’s brother Lucas, but they seldom referred to their family connection. Their relationship was strictly professional.
‘Chance almost caught me,’ he said now. ‘He’s good, but I think someone tipped him off.’
Justin Kestrel’s brows snapped down. ‘Norton?’
‘It must be.’ Daniel threw his damp coat across the back of a chair and loosened his stock. Many people thought that John Norton, the infamous pirate and French spy, had died alongside his mistress in the wreck of his ship five years before, but Daniel knew better. He had seen the ravages of Norton’s piracy along the Suffolk coast of late, and knew that Norton was using Daniel’s own name to cover his tracks. He had sworn to bring Norton to justice once and for all.
‘We are trying to catch him,’ Justin said.
Daniel’s mouth set in a grim line. ‘So am I,’ he said. ‘Before he sullies my name for ever with his cruelty.’ He shot Justin Kestrel a look. ‘That might seem strange to you, Kestrel,’ he said, with a lop-sided smile. ‘Honour amongst thieves…’
Justin shifted in his chair. He was a big man, and the cabin seemed almost too confined for him. He looked at Daniel directly with his very blue eyes.
‘There was another matter that I wished to discuss with you, de Lancey. You may not have heard that your cousin, Gideon Pearce, has died.’
Daniel absorbed the news and found that he felt nothing at all. Years ago his cousin had denounced him as a traitor and a disgrace to the family name. The only family that mattered one whit to him was Rebecca.
‘As you know, he was childless,’ Justin Kestrel continued. ‘You are now Baron Allandale.’
Daniel’s mouth twisted derisively. ‘I am no such thing. He disinherited me.’
‘No, he did not. At the end, it seems, blood was thicker than water.’
Daniel raised his brows. That had surprised him. ‘Nevertheless,’ he said, ‘I cannot inherit as a wanted criminal.’
Justin Kestrel put the brandy glass down. The lamplight shone on the richness of the amber. ‘The government wishes you to take up your title. They think it is time you came in to port. They are willing to grant a public pardon. Should you wish to continue a career at sea they will offer you another commission in the Royal Navy, as a commodore.’
‘A promotion?’ Daniel said dryly. ‘Is the Home Secretary also willing to state that I have been working in secret for the government the whole time?’
Justin Kestrel shifted. ‘With some persuasion, perhaps. Spencer is a reasonable man, and he has served at the Admiralty so he understands your role.’
Daniel grimaced. The government was notoriously and understandably reluctant to reveal the names and activities of their spies. He knew they would far prefer that he disappear quietly to live in the country.
‘They must want me to turn respectable very much,’ he murmured. ‘I wonder why?’
Kestrel seemed to be choosing his words carefully. ‘You are a peer of the realm now, and you are seen to be flouting the King’s laws. If you were to carry on as a privateer after this you would be beyond pardon. Already some of your activities—the smuggling, for example—place you technically outside the law, no matter that you engage in it in order to obtain information.’
Daniel laughed. ‘I engage in it in order to obtain good French brandy,’ he said.
‘Precisely.’
There was a silence.
‘There is a very fine estate in Shropshire,’ Kestrel continued, ‘and another in Oxfordshire.’
‘It is a long way from the sea.’
‘Perhaps you might wish to settle down, though—marry, even…?’
Daniel’s thoughts flew instinctively to Lucinda. Where had that idea come from? Two hours before he would have said that marriage was the very last thing he would ever contemplate. Marriage and piracy were fundamentally opposed. Yet here was Justin Kestrel with the suggestion that he might be married off and settled in Shropshire with a wife and family—the 28th Baron Allandale, respectable at last. And he was getting into dangerous waters, for he was thinking of Lucinda in his life and in his bed, her warmth thawing the cold loneliness that had ambushed him of late, her love fending off the darkness that threatened his soul.
He shook his head sharply. He was mad even to think of it. Lucinda hated him for his callous disregard for her feelings all those years ago, and anyway, respectability bored him. It was deadly dull.
He thrust his hands into his pockets. ‘And if I refuse?’
Kestrel raised his brows. ‘Are you going to?’
‘Yes, I think I am. I like my way of life too much to give up now.’
Kestrel grimaced. ‘Think about it before you turn us down. It’s a good offer. If you refuse, then Spencer will cut you loose and in the end you will surely hang.’
‘Despite my service to the Crown over the years?’
‘Despite that.’ Kestrel nodded towards the brandy bottle. ‘Officially you are outside the law, de Lancey.’
‘You drink my brandy,’ Daniel said. ‘You order my brandy.’ All the same, he knew Justin was right. In his dealings with spies and smugglers and criminals he had, inevitably, blurred the line. If he refused to conform now, to come into port and accept his barony, he knew the government would deny he had ever worked for them—and he could not prove it. He would be cast adrift.
‘I do drink your brandy,’ Justin Kestrel agreed. ‘I am a hypocrite. I like your brandy. I like you, de Lancey. Too much to see you hang. Think of your sister if you won’t do it for any other reason.’
That, Daniel thought, was below the belt. If anything was likely to sway him it was the thought of all that Rebecca had suffered for