Romancing the Pirate Read Online Free Page A

was in name only. Lewis had gained nothing from the death of his father nearly a year ago other than a larger allowance. The respect, the damn acknowledgment that he was worthy and capable, had died in Barbados with the man who’d never looked at him with anything but disappointment.
    It had never mattered to Oliver that his son had a head for figures or a deep desire to learn the operations of the plantation. All Oliver had seen was a son that hadn’t grown into the physical image his father had wanted. It wasn’t Lewis’s fault that his height had never surpassed his mother’s. Or that his bone structure was slight and far more suited to a woman than a man.
    But since Oliver himself had rarely dirtied his own hands with the disciplinary areas of the plantation workers, Lewis had never understood why his size was an issue to his father. Couldn’t Nathaniel continue to discipline the workers the way he always had? And couldn’t Lewis then do the rest? Unfortunately Oliver had refused to listen to logic.
    The rebuff, however, had only stopped Lewis for so long. On days like today, when Nathaniel—the bequeathed overseer—was busy in the fields, Lewis came to the office, studied the ledgers, and devoured everything he could find about his late father and the business he’d been denied. At twenty, he was more than capable of running the plantation. But the will had been ironclad.
    Still, these visits had offered more than a knowledge of the plantation. It was on one such visit, the night he’d learned of his father’s death, that he’d found the journals about Samantha. Every day since Oliver had found her on the beach had been precisely recorded. Her beauty, her spirit, her refusal of Oliver’s advances that had led to his father raping her. The fury he’d felt when he’d tried a second time, only to have her attack him, help his slaves escape, and take his ship had all but leapt off the pages. He’d dedicated nearly two journals to the quest to find her and his ship, only to fail in the end. The ship and Samantha were still missing.
    His father’s failure gave Lewis extreme pleasure. Oliver had never acknowledged his own son’s worth. He’d trusted hired men to act as his advisors and step into his shoes when he’d set off to search for Samantha, and he’d named those same men in the will.
    But Oliver had been wrong about his son. Lewis was smart and worthy. And he’d just heard something that would finally allow him the chance to prove it. He’d just heard that fat Fanny say something that had sharpened his attention.
    Sam.
    Samantha had escaped five years ago. Not long after, word began to spread. There was a new force in the Caribbean waters, a pirate so cunning nobody knew what he looked like. Sam Steele. Nobody had mentioned Sam in nearly a year, and Lewis couldn’t help but wonder if it was possible that Samantha and Sam were the same person. After all, she had managed to attack his father, free a dozen or more slaves, and steal his ship all in one night. Surely if she could manage that, it was conceivable she could be a pirate. And, he thought, Sam Steele was known to use a sloop as his flagship. The fact that the ship she’d stolen from his father was also a sloop seemed too tidy to Lewis.
    This was his chance. His opportunity to get the ship back, to show everyone that Lewis had accomplished the one thing Oliver had failed to do.
    But his aspirations didn’t end there. Surely the treasure and riches she had accumulated were extensive. A little jaunt through the Caribbean was worth the blackmail he could profit from if Samantha was indeed Steele. He’d not only come back with his father’s ship, but return with the respect he deserved.
    And judging from what that worthless Fanny was discussing, all he had to do was follow this Alicia girl.
    Charles dropped the sword he was working on. It clanged to the floor.
    “Are you mad?” he demanded.
    “I can do this,” Alicia tried again. In