Free The Pirate Next Door by Jennifer Ashley

her skin. And every night since. She had learned to keep her dressing gown on the bed so that she might cover herself before Alice entered in the morning. Each night she’d chide herself for being so wicked, but then she would remember the heat in the viscount’s blue eyes when he’d made the request, the sinful smile he’d sent her way, and she’d be sliding the nightrail from her body before she could stop herself.
    Her nightly debate made it more difficult than ever to speak to him about Maggie. Finally she’d written a short note and had Jeffrey deliver it. She first apologized for her liberty of writing him and then for her audacity in suggesting she assist with Maggie. Then she stated that she would be happy to take Maggie shopping for new clothes and that she had a lady in mind who would suit as Maggie’s governess.
    It had taken her three hours and several drafts to compose the letter. At last as satisfied as she was going to be, she had signed and sealed it and Jeffrey had delivered it.Ten minutes later had come his reply, scrawled across the back of her painstaking letter: “Do what you like.”
    She’d stared at the scribbled words for a long time, wondering what they really meant. Was he angry and exasperated and resented her intrusion, or did he simply not care?
    She never saw him in the intervening week to ask. She no longer met him going out while she was coming in, but the Duke of St. Clair had been to visit him three times. The duke, she knew, worked closely with the Admiralty. She remembered the viscount’s explanation, heard through the window, that the Admiralty wanted his help in finding the missing Louis of France. Her curiosity chafed her, but she had no one to satisfy it.
    Maggie’s hair was not completely dark, Alexandra observed as she brushed it. Streaks of lighter brown mixed with the black, the legacy of a golden-haired man.
    Maggie watched her in the mirror. “My papa thinks you are stunningly beautiful,” she observed.
    Alexandra jumped slightly, but covered the movement by setting down the brush and picking up a ribbon. “That is very flattering, Maggie,” she said when she could control her voice, “but you cannot know that.”
    “He said, ‘Mrs. Alastair is stunningly beautiful.’ ” Maggie toyed with the brush. “He told me to ask you if you liked emeralds.”
    “Why on earth does he want to know that?”
    “He must want to give you some. He has boxes of jewels. He says they are my legacy, but I do not mind sharing them with you.”
    Alexandra remembered Mrs. Waters proclaiming that the viscount’s house was filled with jewels and silks and exotic things. Maggie and Mr. Oliver were the most exotic things she’d ever seen there, not to mention the viscount himself.
    She hastily began winding the ribbon through Maggie’s curls. “I do not need any emeralds.”
    Her eyes were ingenuous. “He wants to give them to you. He usually does what he wants.”
    “Yes, I’d noticed that.”
    Maggie was silent a moment, letting Alexandra work. The little girl much intrigued her and continued to the more Alexandra got to know her. She was like her father in many ways, possessing a casual and somewhat careless cheerfulness that was very charming. But Maggie was not a foolish child. She had wells of intelligence in her eyes that fixed with uncanny perception on her listener just before she proclaimed some piece of profound wisdom.
    “The missionaries in Jamaica did not want Papa to take me,” she said now. “But he did anyway.”
    Her voice was a monotone, and Alexandra wondered what story the flat words masked. “Did your mama want that too?” she asked, trying not to sound too curious.
    Maggie shrugged. “I do not think Mama cared. She often left me with missionaries in whatever place we were and then didn’t come back for a long time. She was from Tahiti, and she always tried to go back there, but she mostly just roamed about Jamaica and Martinique. I was happy when