Free By the Bay by Barbara Bartholomew

century in his experience.
    Funny. She half closed her eyes looking at him. How could she be at the same time conscious of such things and at the same time tingling with awareness of him. She’d never been silly about boys like some girls, but had tended to develop crushes on distant, unavailable figures like movie stars or high school teachers, men who never even knew she was alive and here she was going all romantic over somebody she hardly knew.
    She felt foolish and strangely happy at the same time as an itching of guilt for leaving her mother alone and sick twitched at her mind.
    “You’re going back to fight for the United States?” she blurted o u t the question.
    He sat up. “I go back to fight with my friends from Grande Terre and to fight against the British, who are the enemies of my country .”
    “You sound like those people who always vote against in any election. You know, I can’t stand Hoover or Roosevelt, not I’m for Hoover or Roosevelt.”
    He stared at her without comprehension.
    “Never mind,” she said. “You look exhausted. You need to sleep.”
    He stared at her, then, obedient as a little child, lay back down and fell almost instantly asleep.
    At first she was irked and sat and thought about how angry she was with him for some minutes. Finally though, she yawned, and knowing it was the middle of the night, went over to crawl on to the edge of the bed he didn’t occupy, and reminding herself that he had only married her to keep her safe from the pirates, was soon asleep and dreaming.

Chapter Eleven
    After several hours of much needed sleep, Philippe came fully and sharply awake. It was part of his lifestyle that he could sleep on demand and wake alert, qualities that contributed to his staying alive in his hazardous profession.
    Wondering what had awakened him, he listened to the sounds of the ship, felt the motion through the water, and assured himself that all was well and they were on course toward home. Though he’d been born and spent his first few years elsewhere, home for Philippe de Beauvois was the city of New Orleans.
    The girl at his side stirred in her sleep and complete awareness suddenly overcame him. Jillian, the sweet Texas girl whom he’d kidnapped as surely as any pirate had ever stolen maiden. In the world he normally inhabited, he did not have to steal women. He was a favorite among the women he knew, the women of the demi-mo de , beautiful and assured and accustomed to choosing the men they wanted and who would best serve their interest. Now this was something different.
    To Philippe, a man from a harsh world, who had few true friends, a woman was another being, not someone he could understand and love beyond even himself.
    In a few days, Jillian Blake had turned that around so that he had not been able to leave her behind to face a vague and terrible danger without him. And though it was true as he told her that marriage would stamp her as his property to be violated by any man at risk of his life, the very fact that she was presented to the crew as his woman would have done the same.
    The fact was that he wanted to make her his own and had done so with the shipboard wedding. It was beyond his imagining that she might consider the marriage as less binding than he did. For Philippe a wedding conducted by a ship’s captain in front of his crew was as firmly tied as it would have been by a priest in a church. He was a God-fearing man, but one who had little opportunity in his life to spend around priests or preachers or in churches.
    Now in that world that lies between night and day, he reached for her and pulled her into his arms. She was delicately built, long and slender, her curves fitting against his body with a perfect rightness. He moved one hand along her breast, then tickling downward even as she shivered. He closed his mouth against her and she straightened in surprise as she came awake. She didn’t struggle, but grew still as though coming to terms with