Free Wicked at Heart by Danelle Harmon

weather.  The days had stretched into tedious regularity, and when the
great flagship, accompanied by Maeve's schooner, Kestrel , had finally
put into Portsmouth, Orla had decided that she simply could not bear to be
dragged from one place to the next, meeting Falconer relatives who meant
nothing to her and putting on a smile when she was miserable inside.  She would
stay aboard Kestrel while the family was away.  Portsmouth had to be
more interesting.
    And it was.
    She had been
quietly pacing the darkened deck the night the four escapees from the prison
hulk Surrey had come up over the side like boarding pirates.  Her
instincts were as sharp as they'd ever been, and as they'd burst onto the deck,
they'd found themselves staring into the mouth of her blunderbuss.  Even now
she smiled in amazement.  Who could've known that, of all people, the man at the
other end of her gun would be her old childhood friend Connor Merrick?
    Oh, her prayers
had been answered all right.  She'd wanted excitement, and mother of God, she
was going to get it.
    Orla looked out
to sea, sighing.  Maeve was going to be furious at finding her ship gone.  Her
husband, the admiral, would no doubt put to sea immediately in hopes of
retrieving the vessel before his wife saw to it herself.
    And Connor
Merrick, hot-blooded and passionate, would have no intention of giving that
vessel back.
    Orla
straightened up and headed for the hatch, the galley, and her own breakfast. 
Wise move or not, one thing was certain:  life with the Merricks would never be
boring.
     
    ~~~~
     
    Lady Gwyneth
Evans Simms had no shortage of ideas on just how to make Lord Morninghall's
life hell, and she wasted no time at all in putting those ideas into action.
    The day after
her confrontation with that prince of darkness, she rose at dawn and, with
Mattie slumbering at her feet and the sunlight streaming in over her writing desk,
went to work.  She spent the morning composing a letter to her brother-in-law,
the new Lord Simms, in the Transport Office, skillfully playing upon his own
inflated sense of importance in order to further her desires:  a second, more comprehensive
visit to the prison ship Surrey .  By noon she'd written to one of
William's friends in Parliament, sent a note off to another in the Admiralty,
and penned a third to Maeve, Lady Falconer, whom she had met and befriended two
years before when Maeve's husband, Sir Graham, had come to London on official
business.  Hopefully the American woman's seafaring past — and high-ranking
admiral of a husband — would be of help to Gwyneth in her efforts.  By teatime
she was describing the conditions she'd glimpsed aboard the hulk to a circle of
genteel and horrified acquaintances who promptly declared themselves the
Ladies' Committee on Prisoner Welfare, and by seven o'clock she was rewarding
herself for her hard work with a well-deserved immersion in her favorite hobby,
gardening, wishing that each head she chopped from the fading daffodils was
Lord Morninghall's own.
    I'll show
that scoundrel I mean business , she vowed, hurling the wilted blossoms into
a bucket.  By tomorrow, all hell was going to break loose.
    So involved was
she in her thoughts, her work, that she never realized twilight had fallen, and
Rhiannon, standing in the doorway holding a book, had to call her twice.
    Gwyneth's head
jerked up and she looked around, rubbing the small of her back.  Dear lord, it
had certainly grown late; the blackbirds were calling, as if to usher in the
coming night, and the sky was fading fast from mauve to indigo.  She looked at
her sister, silhouetted in the doorway, and smiled guiltily.  "Forgive me,
Rhia.  I didn't hear you."
    "Thinking
of Lord Lucifer again, sis?"
    She grinned. 
"I am plotting his destruction."
    "I still
want to know what it felt like when he kissed you.  Do you really see
fireworks when a devastatingly gorgeous man ravishes you?"
    "I knew I
should have kept that detail of our