Patricia Potter Read Online Free

had never considered her value dependent on a husband.
    Now she had made a commitment, and she must follow through on it. It could all be for naught, anyway, she thought. While she’d had suitors, none of them had been mad with despair at her lack of interest. She knew she was not plain, but neither was she breathtakingly pretty.
    So why might the infamous captain pay her any mind?
    Lauren entered her room, taking one last look to see that she had everything together. She then stopped by the mirror, peering at herself critically.
    Mr. Phillips, if that really was his name, had said the captain was a womanizer. But Captain Taggert had intimated that he was a loner. Which was he? Or could he be both?
    Lauren reviewed her assets, and pitted them against her liabilities. Her eyes were probably her best feature. They were wide and expressive, a soft hazel that changed in color according to her clothes and her mood.
    Her hair was her curse. It was much too curly, and tendrils were always unraveling from whatever hairstyle she tried. Neither was she pleased about the color, which was something between blond and brown. Her mouth was too wide for beauty, and her chin too firm. It was a mismatched face, she judged critically for yet another time. Why Mr. Phillips believed she might appeal to an English lord, she could not determine.
    She wondered briefly why he had not told her more about Captain Cabot, that he was a member of the English nobility. Perhaps he thought that might intimidate her.
    Well, it did. She’d had doubts from the beginning about her ability to flirt, let alone enflame a man to where he would tell secrets, and now the notion seemed more ludicrous than ever.
    She felt the soft bang of the clipper against the wharf and wondered whether Jeremy Case would be waiting there for her, he and his wife, Corinne. Fear slowly invaded her, fear of what she was being asked to do, of what was expected of her.
    Lauren thought of the man who had smiled at her, then bowed. She had come to think of Captain Adrian Cabot as ruthless and evil. Yet he smiled like an angel—if indeed that had been Adrian Cabot on deck. She hoped with all her being it was not.
    Lauren found a bonnet, tied the bow under her chin, and went back up on deck. Captain Taggert had said he would see that her luggage was delivered later.
    The deck was bustling now, the other passengers all staring out at the busy wharf where crates of goods were stacked. She heard a man’s loud voice from where she stood; an auction of some kind was being held somewhere below her. She had been told to wear this particular bonnet, and now she saw that someone was staring at her, at the hat. He raised his arm in greeting, and she did the same. He was, after all, supposed to be her uncle.
    In her role, she would run down the gangplank to him. Her gaze moved toward the ship that had just docked on the other side of the long wooden pier. The blockade runner.
    Suddenly it was very important that she leave the ship before she saw the man she’d glimpsed minutes earlier, and she hurried toward the gangplank.
    As she moved down the shaky planks, she became conscious of a man in a blue coat and white trousers striding easily across the boards of the pier. She hesitated a fraction of a second, then moved again, stumbling slightly. Just as she was about to reach the pier herself, a furry animal streaked toward her, and she stepped back, one of her heels catching in an opening between planks as the animal seemed poised to attack. She tried to jerk her foot loose and move back another step, but the sudden freedom of her heel sent her lurching forward instead, and she was falling, her hands reaching out for a hold that wasn’t there.
    Fleetingly, she thought of the irony of her situation. She was supposed to make an impression. She would! Right into the water.
    And then there were arms around her, impossibly strong arms that righted her. Intuitively, she knew it was the man on the blockade