A Wedding By Dawn. Alison DeLaine

everything they stood for.

      With just enough moonlight to see, he slid the pot aside with his foot, gripped the wall for balance, and retrieved the pistol he’d hidden there. Loaded a ball, and replaced the pistol behind the pot with his reserve of shot and powder. Under these circumstances, having an extra pistol hidden away could become very useful.

      He returned to the bed, sinking into the mattress and staring at the ceiling while his stomach threatened another rebellion.

      In the space of—what, half an hour? Longer?—he’d gone from stroking her breasts, God damn it, to being imprisoned in his cabin with Jaxbury possibly dead. They couldn’t actually have killed him. Could they?

      Whatever they’d done, Lady India would have had the opportunity for none of it if he had alerted Jaxbury and returned her to her cabin like he should have instead of standing there captivated by the womanly swells beneath her shirt. Putting his hands on her was a misjudgment of incalculable proportions. Yet he’d scarcely touched her at all—so much less than he’d wanted to do, and so much more than he should have.

      And she’d reacted. Bloody devil, he’d seen exactly the moment it had happened, had seen the way her lips had parted a little, had noticed how she stumbled over her words as he’d caressed her full, heavy curves.

      A strangled laugh pushed into his throat. Perhaps that was the way to tame her. Good God.

      The ship pitched now with a large wave, and he braced himself to keep from rolling.

      He’d thought her foolish and stupid. Had wanted—needed—to believe it was true. But that was just as much of a mistake as touching her. There’d been something else in those eyes tonight—something he’d been in too much of a hurry to notice in Malta, or perhaps just unwilling to acknowledge: a dark shadow.

      Evil?

      No. It was the dark shadow of desperation one saw in the eyes of street urchins. Except that Lady India was no urchin. She was the spoiled daughter of an earl.

      And she was a pirate. And according to his agreement with her father, his fiancée.

      If he were smart, he would let her put him off at Sicily and be grateful to see the last of her.

      But he wasn’t smart. He was nearly fifty thousand pounds in debt. And she may have been desperate, but she was forgetting one thing.

      So was he.