Free A Wedding by Dawn by Alison Delaine Page B

should have instead of standing there captivated by the womanly swells beneath her shirt. Putting his hands on her was a misjudgment of incalculable proportions. Yet he’d scarcely touched her at all—so much less than he’d wanted to do, and so much more than he should have.
    And she’d reacted. Bloody devil, he’d seen exactly the moment it had happened, had seen the way her lips had parted a little, had noticed how she stumbled over her words as he’d caressed her full, heavy curves.
    A strangled laugh pushed into his throat. Perhaps that was the way to tame her. Good God.
    The ship pitched now with a large wave, and he braced himself to keep from rolling.
    He’d thought her foolish and stupid. Had wanted— needed— to believe it was true. But that was just as much of a mistake as touching her. There’d been something else in those eyes tonight—something he’d been in too much of a hurry to notice in Malta, or perhaps just unwilling to acknowledge: a dark shadow.
    Evil?
    No. It was the dark shadow of desperation one saw in the eyes of street urchins. Except that Lady India was no urchin. She was the spoiled daughter of an earl.
    And she was a pirate. And according to his agreement with her father, his fiancée.
    If he were smart, he would let her put him off at Sicily and be grateful to see the last of her.
    But he wasn’t smart. He was nearly fifty thousand pounds in debt. And she may have been desperate, but she was forgetting one thing.
    So was he.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    T HEY MANAGED FOR a day, and then another, and another, until India began to wonder if they might succeed at this after all. They’d known William was all right when he’d begun pounding on the door and shouting before the first night was through.
    The carpenter had filed enough of a space beneath each door to slide plates of food and low-lipped trays filled with water, like one might give a cat.
    “I’m worried that there’s been no sound from William’s cabin since this morning,” India said to Millie, as the setting sun spilled into the captain’s great cabin at the end of the third day.
    “Did you expect him to pound at the door without ever giving up?”
    “I don’t know what to expect.” India rubbed her arms and paced by the windows.
    “We’ll make Sicily by tomorrow midday,” Millie said testily. Already the wind had softened, and they both knew they would be lucky to reach Sicily by nightfall tomorrow. “We’ll put them out, and they’ll be ashore in an hour or two. Nothing will happen to them.”
    “I only wish I could say the same of us,” India snapped.
    But by noon the next day, the wind had died completely overnight, and it showed no sign of returning.
    India licked her finger and anxiously held it up, but the only sensation was the warm Mediterranean sunshine. “Nothing.”
    “It will pick up,” Mille said, working her fingers absently around her wrist.
    “Is that optimism I hear?”
    “Pragmatism,” Millie snipped. “The wind has to blow sometime.”
    But above them the sails hung limp while the ship floated calmly on a sea disturbed by the barest ripples. Below, the crew lolled about on deck with nothing to do but watch her and Millie stand helplessly on the upper deck and wait for a breeze to catch the sails.
    India held William’s spyglass to her eye and studied the distant green ribbon that was Sicily.
    “The crew is getting restless,” Millie said under her breath.
    “I know that.” India cast a wary glance toward the bow, where fifty men controlled only by their desire to return to the Valletta taverns had stopped lolling and now milled about impatiently. She caught the boatswain’s eye and lifted her chin the way Katherine had always done, and was satisfied when the boatswain turned away.
    India studied Sicily once more. “How far do you suppose it is really?”
    “Too far. Putting them in the longboat here would be murder.”
    “You’re right—the wind will pick up. It’s got to.”