Page 13 of The Pirate's Stolen Bride
But a French smuggler was not the kind of man she had in mind. Her heroic ideal would be handsome—which, admittedly, he was—as well as kind, protective, and madly in love with her.
Nothing at all like her captor. Even if he had rescued her from drowning, that didn’t make him protective. Nor did bringing her to shore and caring for her during a fever prove his kindness.
He certainly wasn’t madly in love with her.
Harriet sighed and watched the sun set over the water down below. What was she going to do?
CHAPTER SEVEN
A FINE MESS
Rémy cooled his heels down in the empty taproom while Her Ladyship bathed and ate her dinner in their shared room. He had barely slept in three days. He was worn to the bone, and yet he couldn’t stop thinking about the woman he had stolen.
He was going to have to find a way to return her to the bosom of her family—without getting caught.
Whatever mad hope had driven his impulsive snatching of a refined lady had been nothing but another one of his countless follies. There was a reason he only slept with unhappily married women, widows, and whores. Innocents were trouble.
Harriet was the very definition of innocent—and trouble—yet something had possessed him to snatch her away from everything she knew.
You have been nothing but a curse ever since the day you were born.He could hear her words, overlaid with his mother’s exasperation as he got into one youthful scrape after another. Poverty had forced her into the oldest trade, whoring for soldiers during the Wars. She’d done what she had to in order to support them, and his antics hadn’t made her life any easier.
Miss Turner’s words had cut deeply, not that he would ever allow her to know she’d slid the knife between his ribs. He would finish his ale, rest tonight, and figure out a plan to return her to her uncle in the morning. That was what she wanted.
A stone sank in his gut. What had he expected? That he would abscond with her and she’d fall in love with him?
He didn’t want love, much less a wife. He wanted to sail and trade goods and not be caught evading the Excise Officers. Rémy wasn’t like his cousin. He didn’t need an adorable little daughter or a beautiful wife with a cheeky sense of humor.
Why, then, did he feel like returning Harriet to her family would hurt more than cutting out his own heart?
If he was honest with himself, a habit he assiduously avoided, he’d liked the way she curled against his body in his tiny captain’s bed. Yes, he’d spent the fitful hours fighting a cockstand until he realized she was burning up, but there had been an unexpected sweetness in the way her body fit against his. He couldn’t stop thinking about it.
He’d never cared for another person the way he’d spent every hour anxiously waiting for her fever to break and her coughing fits to lessen. The way she’d popped awake after three days of illness and promptly told him off, well, that stung more than he liked to admit.
He glanced at the clock hung above the gleaming wooden bar and judged that enough time had passed for Miss Turner to finish her bath. He had to face her ire eventually. Might as well get it over with.
Upstairs, Rémy knocked on the door and asked loudly, “Are you decent?” He grimaced. That wasn’t the right thing to say to a fine lady. He was too uncouth and, facing facts, piratical, for a woman like this. He’d taken one look at her and had to have her. Now, he didn’t know what to do with her.
“Come in,” she called out. Or that was what it sounded like. The syllables weren’t distinct coming through a solid oak door, and although he spoke it fluently, English was not his mother tongue.
Bracing himself, he entered and stopped short at the sight of her sitting naked in the hip bath, braiding her hair over one shoulder. The water covered everything up to the undersides of her full breasts, which she attempted to cover with both arms, abandoning her unfinished braid. Her glorious legs dangled out of the tub.
Even her feet were pretty.
“I said, could you wait?” she seethed. Her freckles were swallowed by the wave of red cresting over her cheeks.
“Then you should have spoken more clearly.” He enunciated each syllable. Her finished supper tray sat on the table near the window, so he grabbed it to take it down to the kitchen.
Turning, he discovered a maid peeking into the room. They were the inn’s only guests for the evening.
“Is your wife quite well?” she asked, puzzled.
Miss Turner’s furious gaze burned into his back.
“She is fine. Fully recovered from her ordeal.” A rough fit of coughing from behind him proved the lie, but he ignored it. “We depart in the morning.”
He thrust the tray into the startled maid’s hands and shut the door. Where would they go? He couldn’t take her back to theSpectre.He couldn’t take her to his cousin Thierry’s house in Cavalier Cove, either. Rémy couldn’t endanger Adeline and their newborn daughter, Lilou.
This time, Rémy had done something so risky that he couldn’t even turn to his closest friend for aid.
