Free The Pirate Next Door by Jennifer Ashley Page B

Grayson lower his head.
    Grayson glared at him. “Must you throttle me?”
    Jacobs shrugged in his bland, unoffended manner. “It’s a cravat, sir. Has to be done.”
    “The last time I felt this strangled, Ardmore was trying to hang me. Bloody useless piece of—”
    Jacobs—his first lieutenant, second in command on board the Majesty, and the man he trusted most, despite his relative youth—showed no sympathy. “Fashion, sir. You have to dress to go to a club. Didn’t you wear neck cloths when you were a lad?”
    “That was twenty-three years ago.”
    Jacobs gathered up the remaining linens and tossed them to Oliver, who had watched the whole proceedingwith enigmatic dark eyes. Grayson irritably settled the knot across his throat. Jacobs, who had grown up in a fashionable family, had been given the task of making Grayson look like a Mayfair gentleman. Thank God he would not have to do this very long.
    “St. Clair had better appreciate this,” he said darkly.
    The Duke of St. Clair had proposed they meet at White’s, his club, which would soon be Grayson’s. The duke had put Grayson’s name forward, and all that remained was the vote. The old viscount had been a member; the new would likely slide in without much trouble, or so St. Clair had said. What St. Clair really wanted tonight was to discuss the search for the French king. Letters of marque had been drawn up, he’d said, retroactively, to condone any and all piratical activity on Grayson’s part, but the Admiralty would only grant them when Grayson finished his assigned task. If he did not, Grayson would dangle from a rope, and that would be the end of the viscounts Stoke. St. Clair had never made clear whether Grayson must present the king on a platter or only point them in the right direction. Grayson cynically surmised that the Admiralty would decide what was enough only after he had done it.
    He had agreed to meet St. Clair, although he had not much to report. He’d spread a network over the river towns that marched toward the Channel: Greenwich, Blackwall, Gravesend. He had learned some interesting gossip; for instance, he knew that a dock master in Blackwall would take rum, tobacco, slaves, and strangely, pins, for bribes, and that the mistress of the Lord Chancellor was pregnant, probably not with his child. But nothing about the French king. If he were being transported down the Thames, Grayson had not yet found any evidence of it.
    But the monarch also had not turned up in France.
    St. Clair had spies there as well, and there had been no ransom demands for the corpulent king, nor any gleeful proclamations from the republic that another Bourbon king had been beheaded. Grayson understood from St. Clair that the English were more or less allowing Louis of France and his supporters to remain here in reserve for the day that Napoleon was toppled. But Napoleon had dug himself in pretty deep, and Grayson did not anticipate that date anytime soon.
    It was strange to view these political battles from the other side of the water. The war with Napoleon had made the English naval vessels in the Caribbean jittery, not to mention a bloody nuisance. They would fire on and board almost any ship they came across, and press-ganging had reached an astronomical level. He and Jacobs had twice been accosted in taverns by English sailors looking to fill more ranks. He and Jacobs had explained, firmly, that they were busy.
    American privateers strolling up and down the waters pounced on ships left alone by the British navy, making things even more dicey. Then there were the pirates. And then there was Ardmore.
    All in all, striding through glittering Mayfair searching for a missing king was a walk in the park compared to slipping through all those blockades and dodging the madman, James Ardmore. And, in the end, Grayson had not dodged fast enough. But escaping Ardmore would have entailed abandoning Maggie, and that Grayson knew he would never be able to do.
    He