Free Captive of My Desires by Johanna Lindsey

asking him.”
    “I’m rather curious myself,” Georgina admitted, glancing at her husband. Just what is this debt you owe? That letter didn’t say.”
    “How do you put a price on a life? Brooks saved mine. I didn’t ask him to.”
    “When was this?” Georgina asked.
    “Long before I met you. I’d picked a fight in the wrong place at the wrong time, had about twenty drunken sailors trying to tear me apart.”
    “Only twenty?” She snorted. “And you consider that life-threatening? To you?”
    James chuckled. “Appreciate the vote of confidence, m’dear. But they’d already stabbed me, shot me, and pronounced me dead.”
    A frown of concern immediately appeared on her face. “Were you really almost dead?”
    “No, but one of the sailors had also cracked my head open, so I was no longer paying attention, and they were too drunk to notice I was still breathing.”
    “You were unconscious?”
    “Quite. But since they were convinced I was dead, they were determined to get rid of the evidence. They tossed me off the wharf there in St. Kitts. It was a deep dock. And the water didn’t revive me. Apparently I had no trouble sinking to the bottom.”
    “So Nathan Brooks fished you out?”
    “To hear him tell it, he nearly drowned himself trying,” he said.
    “But he obviously succeeded.”
    “It was luck all the way around, m’dear. His ship was docked there. I’d happened to be tossed in the water right next to it. But it was late at night. No one was around, and he wouldn’t have been there either to hear the commotion if he hadn’t come back to his ship to fetch some map he’d forgotten. Nor would he have bothered to fish out a dead body, but he happened to hear one of the crowd ask if they were sure I was dead. So he dove in to check. I woke up soaking wet, lying under the dock where he’d left me.”
    “Then how do you know—”
    “Let me finish. He’d been unable to carry me farther. He’s a tall man, but I’m rather heavy at a deadweight. He’d left to get one of his men to help, the Oriental you met today. Then he took me to his house to mend. And there you have it.”
    “A very simple favor he’s asked in return,” Georgina said with a smile. “I would have paid him a fortune if he’d asked for it, for saving your life.”
    James gave his wife a very tender look, which appeared rather odd to Gabrielle, on the countenance of such an intimidating man. “That’s because you love me, George, so I’m bloody well glad he didn’t ask for it.”

Chapter 9
    H AVING TURNED THEIR UNEXPECTED GUEST OVER to the housekeeper to get her settled, Georgina promptly dragged her husband into the parlor to find out what he really thought about this turn of events. But she’d forgotten Boyd was still sleeping on the sofa in there. And Judith, Anthony’s daughter, had spent the night. Both she and Jacqueline had sneaked into the parlor and were amusing themselves in a corner of the room.
    The girls had been quiet enough not to wake Boyd, and he’d also slept through the noise in the hall. He had stumbled in that morning right after she and James had come down for breakfast, had given her a sloppy kiss and hug, then promptly passed out on the sofa in the parlor. She hadn’t bothered to wake him to tell him to go find a bed. He’d still been quite foxed from a full night of revelry.
    Two years older than she was, Boyd was the youngest of her five brothers. He was also the prankster in the family. He’d pulled some good ones over the years, some that were really funny, some quite embarrassing, even a few that she, at least, had considered dangerous, though her brothers hadn’t thought so. But she’d only for the briefest moment wondered if Gabrielle Brooks might be one of his pranks gone awry, because he wasn’t awake to put a stop to it before it got out of hand. Unless he’d been so drunk when he’d set it up that he hadn’t thought to add contingencies to assure that the joke was revealed