Rexanne Becnel Read Online Free Page A

kiss. But she’d turned away, flustered, and the moment had been lost. Afterwards she’d recalled the one time he had kissed her and berated herself for missing the chance to satisfy her curiosity with a second kiss. Today, of course, with her family here, he’d had to confine himself to kissing her brow. But that only increased her curiosity.
    She stared past her mother to where Michael stood watching her with a half-smile on his face. Despite the cold, hot color flooded her cheeks. Soon enough they would be married and then her curiosity about kissing—and other things—would be answered. Perhaps this trip would be good for them both, whetting their appetites for the coming ceremony.
    The goodbyes might have gone on endlessly had the captain of their vessel not implored his employer, her Uncle Lloyd, to intercede. “The tides do not wait for the Lady Haberton .”
    “Yes, yes,” Sir Lloyd conceded. He’d arranged for one of his regular vessels to stop over in Madeira. Now he looked none too pleased with the entire venture. “Come on,” he muttered. “Let’s be done with it.”
    A scared-looking Aubrey was carried up the gangplank by his servant Robert. Eliza’s maid Clothilde followed them, as did an army of baggage carriers and a perplexed sailor pushing Aubrey’s chair. Cousin Agnes was assisted aboard, grumbling about the rain, the stink, and the paltry size of the ship.
    When it was Eliza’s turn to mount the ridged gangplank, she steeled herself not to stumble or hesitate or
look in the least overwhelmed. Madeira would be good for Aubrey’s condition and very likely hers too. She must approach everything about their journey with a positive outlook. But once LeClere released her arm and returned to the dock, she was not quite certain she could succeed. Waving madly with her damp hankerchief, she stood at the rail as the gangplank was pulled up.
    But Agnes herded her away from the deck. “You’ll catch your death, child. Your lungs are weak enough as it is. Come along, come along.”
    The last view of her family that Eliza had was of her parents standing arm in arm, her mother dabbing at her eyes. LeClere and Perry and Michael had their collars turned up and their hats pulled down against the cold and the rain. But they were smiling and she gulped down a hard knot of emotions. Six months until she saw them all again. Six long months. Who knew how things might change by then?
     
    The Lady Haberton slid out of St. Catherine’s Dock and into the Thames at nine o’clock. A bare half hour later the Chameleon followed. Cyprian Dare stood at the forward bow, leaning out over the bow sprit, just above the weathered carving of a woman with a thick serpent twined about her.
    Not much longer. Not much longer at all. He would let them get well out to sea. Perhaps as far as the Channel Isles. Then he would pounce and Sir Lloyd Haberton’s child would be his.
    A sheet of rain gusted over him, stinging his face, then rippling across the deck. Another came, and then another, until the entire world was a cold wet blur of rain and deck and murky river. But the wind blew strong from the north and they made good progress. He shrugged off the hood of his rain slicker and turned his face up to the sky. The violent rain plastered his close-cropped
hair to his skull and icy fingers of water worked under the collar of his coat and shirt.
    But Cyprian didn’t care. If anything, the freezing rain helped cool the terrible fire that raged in him still. Finally, twenty-eight years would be avenged. He’d begun his search the day his mother had died—fifteen years it was now. But the memory of it was as fresh in Cyprian’s mind as ever. Up till then she’d never spoken of his father, not even when he’d asked. Only as she lay dying had she finally revealed his name—Sir Lloyd Haberton —and cursed him for abandoning both her and their child. Then she’d abandoned Cyprian as well. He knew now, of course, that she’d