Never Trust a Pirate Read Online Free

place was when you were walking on the streets, rather than viewing life from a carriage or the back of a horse. After their fall from grace six months ago, walking rather than riding in the poorer parts of London had come as quite a shock to her system, cushioned as she’d been.
    Actually walking through the streets had been overwhelming and invigorating. In the past, while Bryony stayed secluded in the countryside and Sophie rollicked through the season, playing one beau against the other, Maddy had always had an unfortunate fascination with the real world, with the workings of her father’s business, with politics, with investments. Unfeminine interests that she kept to herself, though her father had understood and even encouraged her. It was always accepted that she was destined for a great marriage—the value of her face and her dowry were indisputable, and her dead mother had been the daughter of a baronet, almost wiping out her father’s less than stellar pedigree.
    But everything had ended with her father’s disgrace and death. At least, the easy part had ended, as well as her relationship with Jasper Tarkington, who was now as far away from her as he could manage, somewhere in the depths of South America. She hoped a jaguar ate him.
    She was still planning on a great marriage, dowry or no. She was up to any challenge, and her goal was clear. A title and a fortune. Clearing her father’s name was simply the first step toward achieving that goal. If, in the end she failed, Lord Eastham was always an option. But she didn’t intend to fail.
    She felt curious eyes on her, and she suddenly realized she’d been striding along, head up, shoulders back, her valise swinging in her hand. She resisted the impulse to look around her as she slowed her pace, almost imperceptibly. She should be nearing the quay by now, but instead she seemed to have wandered into a less prosperous area of town. The stink of garbage, horse dung, and dead fish was high on the midday air, and she wished she dared fumble in her reticule for a handkerchief to hold to her nose. Maids didn’t hold their noses—they emptied slop jars and scrubbed the most disgusting things. Nanny Gruen had warned her there was no place for her so-called airs.
    The streets had become darker, narrower, and she’d somehow lost her way. Up ahead she could see the brightness of sunlight, and she sped up, trying to force herself not to break into a run. She’d been careless while she’d been busy thinking. She couldn’t afford to make mistakes like this.
    She moved around the corner, into the sunlight, and froze. Despite the patch of light she now stood in, the rest of the alleyway was shrouded in shadows. The stench was even worse, and she realized with a sinking feeling that a new smell had joined the others. That of unwashed human flesh.
    There were three of them blocking the other end of the narrow alley, and she blinked, staring at them. Nothing to be afraid of, she told herself. They were just sailors home on shore leave, out for a bit of fun. They’d leave her alone if she told them to.
    “Look at ’er, will ya?” one of them said. “What a pretty little bit of fluff to come our way. What should we do with her, boys?”
    They were an odd group, one of them huge and bear-like, his hands like hams as they hung loosely beside him. Another was small and wiry, with grizzled gray hair and beard and far too much interest in his faded eyes. But the third, the one who was doing the talking, was the worst. At some point in his life he’d suffered a cruel accident, and half his face was burned and scarred. He was barrel-chested, and his open, grinning mouth showed a handful of blackened, rotting teeth, the odor of decay so strong she could smell it from several feet away.
    She had only a moment to react. The street she’d come from had been deserted—there would be no safety if she turned and ran back that way. It was the middle of the day in a solid British