Free Dreaming by Jill Barnett

duel. He waited a moment. She still wouldn’t look at him. “ Letty ?”
    “What?” she said in a rasp of a whisper, still staring at her hands.
    “Next time . . . try to aim for the smuggler.”
    Her head shot up and she stared at him for a dumbfounded second. He knew the instant she realized she’d been forgiven. She glowed, and he thought for a moment she might begin to cry.
    He gave a quick nod toward his arm. “Is the ball still inside?”
    She shook her head. “It went out the other side.” She paused and held a breath, her expression not unlike that of an executioner who’d just killed the wrong man.
    He was fast becoming familiar with that look. “And?”
    She glanced past him. He started to look that way but paused, the niggling voice of experience demanding he ask himself if he really wanted to look.
    He did. One whole corner of the hold was charred black. Burned timbers lay at fallen angles as if some giant hand had tossed them like pickup sticks. Pieces of weathered canvas had been nailed to a huge hole in the ship’s side, but sea water still leaked in streams through the sides. The lowermost part of the hole must have been at just about sea level, for he could hear the slosh of waves slapping the canvas.
    “No single gunshot could have caused that,” he said, staring in amazement at the size of the hole and its makeshift repair. He was surprised the ship wasn’t listing.
    “It wasn’t the shot . . . well, it was, in a way, but not truly.”
    “This ought to be interesting.”
    “It was the gunpowder.”
    “What gunpowder?”
    She pointed at the hole, then said, “There was a tin of gunpowder over there. It was destroyed in the fire.”
    “The fire?”
    She nodded. “From the oil.”
    He waited.
    “Remember your cloak?”
    “I assure you, the incident is seared into my memory.”
    She flinched slightly, then admitted in a quiet voice, “It happened again.”
    “You knocked over the other lantern,” he stated flatly, finally understanding.
    “I didn’t. The pistol ball did.”
    Richard glanced down at his arm and tried to string her story into some logical sequence. “Let me see if I understand you. You tripped and shot me.”
    She nodded.
    “The ball went into my arm and out.”
    She nodded again.
    “Then it hit the lantern? And . . . ”
    “Knocked it over and the oil caught fire and burned a path to a tin that held gunpowder and then . . . Bam !” She threw her hands up in the air. “There was all this smoke and water and shouting. It was quite chaotic.”
    He just stared, suddenly understanding the smudges on her face.
    “The men moved very quickly.”
    “I’ll wager they did,” he said, picturing the scene in his mind.
    Neither said a word for long seconds that stretched into minutes. The ship creaked and waves slapped like clapping hands against the canvas.
    Richard began to laugh. The hellion had struck again. Perhaps the foreign ministry should send her to France as Britain ’s own secret weapon, guaranteed to destroy the entire French army in a single gunshot. He laughed harder. Better yet, they could make her Napoleon’s gaoler .
    She stared at him through puzzled eyes, and that only made him laugh all the more.
    “You’re not angry that I shot you?”
    He shook his head. “No, although I’d appreciate it if you’d avoid doing so in the future. I’m not certain how much torture my body can endure.”
    She gave him a tentative smile and relaxed. “I’m so relieved. I thought you’d be especially angry, considering you weren’t too pleased with me before.”
    There was a long pause, which should have warned him that she was thinking again.
    “Forget it.”
    “Thank you, Richard.”
    Gus growled.
    Richard turned and looked at the beast. No luck there: Gus was unscathed. He lay stretched out on his side, his eyes closed; he looked to be asleep.
    Richard examined him more closely. He wouldn’t put it past the devious Gus to feign sleep. But