Free Royal Renegade by Alicia Rasley

knew she would never get back to sleep now. She rose and quietly felt about for her wool traveling gown, sparing a sympathetic glance at her cabin mate.
    The pale moonlight through the porthole glistened on Buntin's perspiring face. She lay like the dead under a half dozen blankets and Tatiana's heavy velvet cloak. Tatiana carefully removed the cloak from the pile and made her escape from the suffocatingly hot cabin.
    She'd been so busy nursing Buntin for the past week that she'd hardly seen the rest of the sailing vessel. So she found her way by instinct through a dark passageway and up the steep steps into the icy night air.
    The sloop Coronale was as dazzling as the moonlight itself. The snapping sails soared above the deck like angel wings, Tatiana thought poetically as she stood gazing up at the two masts. The Coronale was a small vessel with a crew of only twenty-two, but her average speed so far, Captain Dryden had boasted, approached seven knots. That seemed an impossible velocity, but as the lovely sloop skated through the night, Tatiana could almost see England and freedom rushing toward her.
    In the cool light of a nearly full moon, she glimpsed a sailor at the wheel. But he resolutely ignored her, as blind to her presence as if he were wearing blinkers. She suspected Devlyn had warned the crew to give her wide berth. In fact, expect for returning Captain Dryden's greeting each day, and the necessary exchanges with the boy assigned to be her cabin steward, she had not spoken to any of the sailors. As for Lord Devlyn—well, he inquired after Buntin's health the other day, and once asked her if she needed anything. But his cabin was in another area of the vessel, and they seldom encountered each other. So her project of coaxing a smile out of the cool viscount was stalled in its earliest stage, and her maiden voyage a tedious and lonely excursion.
    But tonight promised to be full of magic, with the crystalline spray of the sea, the mesmerizing rush of the wind, the enchanting dance of the moonlight on the water. And the wickedness of her foray into the darkness thrilled Tatiana. She let go of the rail and walked up the tilted deck, holding out her arms for balance, and made her reckless way to the stern, where a man leaned against the rail.
    In the milky light of the moon, she could distinguish the taut lines of Lord Devlyn's body under a dark blue cloak flung back from his shoulders. He turned as she approached, evincing no surprise at her presence. But she supposed that surprising him would prove as difficult as amusing him. His voice was almost disdainful in its evenness. "You will take a chill, Princess."
    She took a grateful hold of the oak rail, knowing that her sudden shiver owed nothing to the wind. "You forget I am Russian. The Mediterranean, even in autumn, seems a summer sail to me. Could you not sleep either?"
    He leaned against the rail, gazing out at the inky horizon. "I take a watch like all the men. Since they must be more active in the day, I requested a night watch. I am accustomed to little sleep."
    Now that she was standing only an arm's length from her audience, Tatiana was struck by stage fright. She could hardly breathe, much less be witty. Lord Devlyn was so unyielding, his fine shoulders tense under the dark cloak, his stance wary as if he were expecting an attack. Used to the wide brows and broad cheekbones of her Slavic compatriots, Tatiana thought the angular planes of his face rather harsh, the straight jawline almost cruel. But it was the abstract, impersonal glance from his cloudy eyes that made her challenge of befriending him seem so great.
    Some native stubbornness, however, made her essay a smile as soon as he turned his gaze toward her. For an instant, he was still, his right hand arrested an inch from the oak rail. Then he looked off into the darkness, his fingers lightly brushing the wood as if testing for splinters. "I'll call the steward to escort you back to your cabin. You