This Perfect Kiss Read Online Free Page A

into the adjoining chamber. In the drowsy predawn, he had to be satisfied with a ship’s brass lanthorn to supply illumination. No one had come into the cabin to light the stove, and the room was cold even to him, and he was as cold-blooded as a man came in these climes.
    He dropped his gloves and hat on a chair. Like the rest of the room’s furnishings, it was bolted down.
    A rustle sounded near the gallery window, followed by a low growl from a dog. The unwelcome canine interloper stood next to the cabin’s other inhabitant behind his desk, as if his entrance had only just roused her from the window bench.
    She raised a pistol and pointed it directly at him. ’Twas his own pistol from his desk. “Do not come any closer, sir. Not until I first have your word that you will not have me removed from this ship.” She spoke in a familiar voice, commanding and cultured, with a slight hint of Scots in the drawl.
    Whatever he had been expecting to see at that moment, it had not been some mangy hound and Christel Douglas threatening him.
    He could not see her face in the shadows. She wore a thin cloak over a pair of woolen breeches tightened at the waist with rope, a loose shirt and ragged, turned-out boots. Her hair beneath a floppy felt hat curled around her chin and shoulders. He knew from memory that her hair was the color of freshly churned butter.
    They had been on the opposite sides of a war. That she might have actually come to England to shoot him flitted through his brain. Walking forward, he said, “Do you always threaten to kill people you do not like? Or do you intend to hold a gun on me all the way to Scotland?”
    She gasped. “Lord Carrick . . .”
    He strode past her and, raising his arms like Moses parting the Red Sea, he yanked open the gallery curtains, letting light into the room.
    He turned, and he was suddenly looking into eyes that were still the deep blue of the warm Aegean Sea. For a moment, neither spoke. He reached around her for the pistol. He did not have to trust Christel Douglas to respect her. “I do not take threats lightly, Christel. Especially from you.”
    Her chin lifted. “ ’Tis only that I was not sure ’twould be you or that you would remember me. I would not have fatally shot you.”
    â€œThen your aim has improved since the last time you attempted to shoot me?” He emptied the powder from the gun.
    â€œThat was a long time ago. I was target practicing. Besides”—she straightened—“if you had been a better rider, you would not have been tossed from your horse and knocked silly.”
    â€œAye.” He lobbed the empty pistol on a chair. “Then where would our lives be today? Hmm?”
    â€œExactly as we are, my lord. You would still have married my cousin and I would still have gone to Virginia.”
    She suddenly gave her attention to her tattered sleeve. He had never known her to be compliant or meek. Perhaps she was remembering that he had briefly awakened from her onerous target practice flat on his back with his head in her lap, looking up into those same blue-colored eyes. She had been wearing very little when he had come upon her after she had been swimming in the sea. It was the first time he had realized that the little urchin who had been following him around all that August had been no skinny child, and that she had been the one he had kissed at the ball.
    â€œYou vanished without ever explaining a bloody thing to me, Christel. Then you left Scotland and sailed across the world.”
    â€œWhat was to explain? You were already betrothed to Saundra.”
    â€œI was always curious how you found that out,” he said quietly, “since the news had yet to be announced to anyone, including her.”
    His hand moved to lift her chin into the light. The dog growled. She abruptly bent and gently soothed it with a touch. The display of unconditional affection reminded him of