A | B | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14A | 14B | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30A | 30B | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41A | 41B | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45A | 45B | 46A | 46B | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56A | 56B | 57 | 58A

PART II

MAY, 1780
THE DOVECOTE
LONDON, ENGLAND

“Their affaire lasted nine years. He put into Philadelphia twice a year for a fortnight, and she would go to him. Somehow. He had no knowledge of my existence until that day. She loves Papa dearly, but … she also loves Bancroft. I have been so angry with her for so long—”

“You don’t seem angry and you rub along together well.”

“I need my mother more than I need to heap my anger upon her head. She was taken from me once; I’ll not do anything to add to her burden of guilt. But now … Now I think I understand.”

“You only think?”

Her brow wrinkled. “My love for Rafael is long and rich with history, whereas I have spent very little time with you. No, he has not been true to me, but he never promised, either. And now he has.”

“And you believe him?” he asked bitterly.

She leaned toward him and spoke carefully. “He has never broken a promise he made to me, and he has never lied to me.”

Elliott sucked in a long, tortured breath and rubbed his mouth in thought.

“So you see,” Celia whispered, “I find myself somewhat like my mother, but without the curse of having to make such a choice. I am caught between a long love and loyalty to one man who has offered me what I have wanted from him for a dozen years, and a new, fresh love with a man who suits me much better but who is unavailable to me. Why shouldn’t I wed Rafael? I have no illusions about what my life with him will be. He will ever be my professor and—so my mother says—creator, and I will ever be his young, brilliant, and eccentric Galatea. And we will argue about it endlessly because that is what we do.

“’Twill not be a bad life, living in a city I love, one that is as close to a home as I have ever had, in the midst of a vibrant university where I and my history are still known. This time, instead of appearing like an orphaned cabin boy, though, I will be returning as both a countess and the rector’s wife.”

Elliott dropped her hand. “Rector?”

Celia looked at him warily, unable to decipher his odd tone, somewhere between desperation and disbelief.

“Aye,” she said slowly. “He has been appointed rector. It has been his dream, what he has worked for lo these many years. He is in Spain to rescue his tenants from his family and settle them before he takes up the office at the beginning of the year.”

“Then what of your promise to Solomon?”

“I have not informed Rafael of it, as he would insist on accompanying me, and I don’t—”

He waited for her to finish, but she looked past him. “You don’t trust him.”

Her mouth tightened. “’Tis not a matter of trust. ’Tis a matter of experience. He sails for commerce, armed for defense and only engages in naval battle when forced. His swordsmanship—his willingness and ability to duel to the death—is not an indicator of his ability as a battle captain anticipating and willing to engage under full sail.”

“And he will refuse to take commands from you.”

Her mouth tightened further.

“Celia,” he murmured solemnly, “tell me if you can: Did you expect to come out of Algiers successful and alive, without either me or Covarrubias to muddy the waters, what life would you want for yourself? What goal would you make?”

She cast him a suspicious glance. “I have no goals. I have never had goals. I float on the tide of whimsy.”

“Surely you have some … want … of your own?”

Celia’s mouth pressed together and she looked down at her plate, wondering whether she should tell him her deepest desire, the one she had kept close since Dunham had taken her to the Iron Maiden.

She took a deep breath. “When I was a girl,” she murmured, “when we lived in Philadelphia and Bancroft was my beloved papa and I was his princess, Christmas was magical. Snow. Garlands. Singing. Sleigh bells. The gatherings. The gifts, the lovely secrets, the fine clothes. Mama would make mounds and mounds of food we would take to feed the poor. We did that all year long, but I remember it most during Advent.” She gave a small, sad laugh. “I thought I was helping her, but I was mostly in the way. I never knew that until I was older because she was so indulgent.” Tears began to fall and she could barely catch her breath. “It was warm and light inside, and cold and dark outside. Bancroft would sit in a chair before the fire, I would be snuggled in his lap, and he would read to me. Mama would be in the other chair knitting while Lucien would be on the floor with his slate, working his sums.”

“You want that back.”

“Desperately,” she whispered. “Snow. I miss the snow. I miss … my family. My home.”

Elliott laughed bitterly. “Aye, I wanted that, too, once upon a time, and look how it has turned out. Celia, I tell you from experience, you can’t go home again.”

“I know that!” she snapped, dashing away tears. “All too well. But I can … dream of … an approximation.” She tried to catch her breath.

Elliott wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer to press his lips to the top of her head. He spoke low. “When you imagine this … approximation … do you see yourself alone?”

“No, but the others are shadows. My life has been lived on the deck of a ship, and most of that in the Mediterranean. My only home as an adult was in the middle of the desert and that only for five months. My family is scattered and at war with one another, my husband—who hated snow—is dead, and my lover is wed to his duty. Thus, I have nothing but my memory. And Rafael.”

Elliott’s gaze dropped to her wrap, where the front had gaped to reveal that she wore nothing underneath it. Yet his attention seemed to be riveted only by the cloth itself and its somewhat threadbare twenty-year-old embroidery. When his mouth tightened, she arose to rummage in her chest for her kaftan, quickly changing silk for wool.

“I’ll not wear it again in your presence,” she murmured.

The tension in his body eased. He gave a curt nod, then cleared his throat. “Tell me this, then: Other than engaging in a perpetual power struggle with Covarrubias, how do you plan to occupy yourself once you are Countess Covarrubias and Señora Rector?”

Celia retook her seat. “Ah … ” She had not thought that far ahead. “I am not certain. I can teach any number of subjects. Astronomy. Mathematics. Navigation.”

He looked at her plate with a wry smile. “I notice you said nothing of planning and presiding over soirées and receptions.”

“Well of course not, because that is not my—” The full implications of his observation were slow to trickle into her mind, but once there, they flooded her. “Oh … ”

God’s bones, he was right! Her rôle as Rafael’s wife would be as his hostess, the leader of university—if not the whole of Coimbra—society. She, who had beheaded a man to take his ship, who could teach master classes, who could construct naval battle plans—

—would be nothing more than … Condesa Covarrubias, judged solely by the table she set, the clothing she wore, the functions she attended, her deportment, and how well she complemented Rafael.

She blinked back tears and looked away, cupping her chin in her hand.

“During your marriage, how did you occupy yourself when your husband was not about? I assume he worked at something, else I doubt he would have held any attraction for you. Wealthy women who have an occupation and are accustomed to working would have little use for an idle mate.”

Oh, how astute Elliott could be—particularly about her. “I … read books and swam in the harem pool and … shopped.”

“No gatherings?”

“He was twice widowed and an outcast. He had few friends. No family. No other wives or concubines.”

Celia dared cast a peek at Elliott to watch him sift through that information. “What was his occupation?” he asked slowly.

“He was a moneylender.”

Elliott gaped at her. “A Jew?”

Celia snarled, but to her amazement, Elliott suddenly grinned. Her brow wrinkled in suspicion. “Why is that amusing to you?”

“You surprise me—pleasantly—at every turn, Madam.” He waved a hand. “Did you convert?”

“Nay,” she grumbled, still suspicious. “He was cast out of his synagogue. He was as observant as he could manage under the circumstances, secretly aided by a rabbi who had taken pity upon him.”

Now Elliott looked confused. “A wealthy Jew cast out of his community? Why?”

Celia’s mouth pressed together and she wondered if she should— “He was a eunuch.”

“God almighty,” Elliott whispered, staring at her. “That explains—”

“My chest of implements, aye. He … could pleasure me in ways I did not know were possible, but he could not himself … He was cut as one would expect a Jew to be, so his cock was sensitive and he could feel pleasure, but it would not rise. Not even the ring could help him, though I purchased it for him after I heard of such a thing and its use. In any case, he was not considered a man and thus, he could not enter into the Lord’s presence, that being temple.”

“Did you know he was … like that before you married him?”

“I knew it before I met him.”

Neither of them spoke for a long moment, but then Elliott coughed in a most polite manner.

“Say it,” Celia said flatly.

“Why?” he blurted.

“Why did I marry a Jew or a eunuch?” she snapped and jerked her hand out of his—or tried to.

“Eunuch.” He looked around the room blindly, as if he were dumbfounded. Mayhap he was. “Everything I know about you and your appetites—I cannot imagine … ”

“I made him happy,” she murmured.

Elliott’s brows drew together. He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it. He seemed to be looking for something to say, some elusive question to ask. “You made him happy? That is the sum of it?”

“Aye.” She chucked up her chin, but would not look at him. “He wanted me exactly the way I was. He is the only man I have ever known who had no interest in changing something about me, who wanted me because of who I am and not in spite of it.” She sniffed. “Until you. Which is why I … ”

“Celia,” he purred, “look at me, love.”

She did.

In the candle- and firelight, he was breathtaking, his thick, silver-streaked black hair feathered over his shoulders and down to the middle of his upper arms, his hands large and strong.

Rafael was a golden angel descended from heaven.

Elliott was a dark devil ascended from hell.

“What are you thinking?”

She looked him in the face, into his extraordinary ice blue eyes, and smiled wryly. “Nothing worth even so much as a halfpenny.”

“Do you know how beautiful you are?” he asked abruptly.

Celia stiffened, immediately suspicious. “I thought you said you would no longer feed my vanity. You must want something.”

“When you smile at me the way you do,” he said, ignoring her, “I would reach into the sky and pull down all the stars for you.”

Tears pricked her eyes. “Stop,” she whispered. “I cannot bear such compliments.”

“Celia—”

“Cease,” she snapped. “I am all too aware of my deficiencies. I have only to look at my mother to precisely number them. And my skeletal remains only add to them by orders of magnitude.”

She stiffened when she felt his large hand on her back, his calluses catching on the wool of her kaftan. “’Tis your smile,” he repeated. “Your laugh. Your whimsy. Your joie de vivre. It makes you … radiant.”

Celia bowed her head, her finger under her nose to press back its stinging. “No beautiful woman ever turned out coin to get her pleasure.”

Elliott laughed. “Thus demonstrating how little you know of London society.” She sneaked a glance his way only to find him watching her, his mouth turned up at the corner. She reached out hesitantly to brush his bottom lip with her fingertips. His smile only deepened. “In Sint Eustatius,” he continued softly, “I saw you come through the door, laughing at something Smitty had said. I thought he was your customer, true, but— Celia—God, I love your name—I was entranced and found it fortuitous you were for hire so you would not likely refuse me. Whatever the price, I would have paid it. I kissed you because you were, to my eye at least, the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and I wanted to hold that beauty in my hand.”

Warmth of a sort she had not experienced since she had first kissed Talaat seeped right into her bones. Celia’s bottom lip trembled and she bit at it.

“Demon Judas,” she whispered. “Were you not so bound up in duty, I might just follow you into hell.”

He pressed a kiss to her fingertips. “Ah, my whimsical pirate queen, compared to the place I would ask you to follow me, hell is trivial.”

Celia blinked. “Where?”

“What if I asked you to become a farmer’s wife?”

She fell back in her chair, stunned.

“And to sweeten the proposition,” he continued wryly, “a farmer’s wife on the frontier, chopping down trees and breaking new sod, alone, surrounded by Indians. Hunting. Planting. Milking cows. Butchering pigs. Living off the land. You—well, both of us, I imagine—would have to learn how to cook.” He paused, but Celia could find no words, could not even move. He had left too many things unsaid. “Curb your enthusiasm, Madam. ’Tis irresistible, I know, but take some time to contemplate.”

Still she said nothing.

His smile faded. “Fury?”

After another moment, she finally said, “This was your ambition? Farming? The one you could not bear to speak of?”

“Aye,” he snapped, pulling away from her completely. “’Tis a mean means, and, I ken, cannot compare to living in a marble palace or as the wife of the highest officer of a revered university.”

Celia scowled. “Oh, do cease pouting like a spoilt catamite. I cannot ascertain your reason for informing me of this now when you wouldn’t then because you could not bear to speak of it, and you are no less bound now than you were then, but here you are smugly proposing a fantastical venture that appears to involve marriage. To me. Which you cannot do. You have made leaps and bounds of logic I cannot follow.”

His face cleared and he granted her a smile laden with joy.

“Quite right. Allow me to enlighten you, then. The fourteenth Earl Tavendish is about to die a martyr for Britain. And you are going to kill him.”

If you don’t want to wait 2 years to get to the end, you can buy it here.
Pirates!