Free The Raider by Jude Deveraux Page B

paste. He longed to pull the thing off and scratch, but he kept his languid position of sprawling across the hard sofa in Abigail Wentworth’s parlor.
    â€œAnd he’s tall and very handsome,” Abby was saying as she sat dreamily looking out the window, her big brown eyes almost turning to liquid.
    â€œI thought he wore a mask.” Alex was playing with the plume from his hat. Yesterday morning he’d taken the opportunity, while Pitman was at breakfast, to search the man’s office. He’d found a letter from an admiral of His Majesty’s navy thanking Pitman for confiscating the Mermaid, Josiah Greene’s ship, and saying that Pitman’s share of the profits from the sale would be arriving on the Golden Hind. This morning Alex had heard that the Golden Hind had been sighted and would be in Warbrooke tonight.
    â€œWell, of course he wore a mask,” Abigail was saying. “But a woman knows these things. He was extraordinarily handsome.”
    â€œNot like anyone in Warbrooke?” Alex asked, looking at her over the feather. All he had to do was figure out how to hide on the ship, take the money away from the king’s representative and escape without shedding any blood—particularly his own.
    â€œOf course there’s no one in Warbrooke like the Raider. I’ve lived here all my life and there’s no one as graceful as the Raider, no one as tall, no one as brave. He’s the most—”
    Alex didn’t listen to the rest. In the week since the raid, Abigail had set herself up as the authority on the Raider—and her big mouth was making it more difficult for Alex to appear as the Raider again. Pitman didn’t like that he had lost a battle to a cocky masked man and no one in town dared remind him of his loss—except Abigail that is. It seemed all she was capable of talking about. For two days after the raid she was the town’s center of attention, since everyone wanted to hear her impressions of this man. But by the fourth day, people were thinking once again about putting food on the table and clothes on their backs. Everyone except Abigail, that is. She still talked of nothing except the Raider.
    Alex had decided to take Nick’s advice and spend some time with pretty little Abigail, but as far as he could tell, Abby hadn’t yet noticed him. The only man she thought of was the Raider.
    â€œBelieve me, I know what he looks like.”
    â€œJessica Taggert said he had a cruel-looking mouth.”
    Abigail stood, her plump bosom heaving in anger. “What does the likes of a Taggert know? You saw what the Raider thought of her, didn’t you? I’ve always thought she needed a bath.”
    Alex opened his mouth to say that maybe the Raider had been angered because he’d wanted so much to kiss Jessica and she’d refused him. But he wasn’t really interested in Abigail’s answer enough to bother to comment. What he most wanted to do was go to Ghost Island, shed his hot clothes and dive into the cold saltwater of the sea. And he needed to plan how he was going to relieve Pitman of his ill-gotten money.
    Politely, he excused himself from Mistress Abigail and went outside to the busy main street of Warbrooke. He felt drawn to the cool breezes from the ocean and started walking that way. A couple of strangers in town stopped to gawk at him. Today he was wearing his royal blue satin outfit, the waistcoat embroidered with green and yellow silk flowers. Nick had sent his entourage of servants to New Sussex to bring back more of his fat cousin’s clothes, so now Alex had several gaudily-colored garments as well as four enormous, and hated, wigs from which to choose.
    The first thing he saw was Jessica’s old tub, the Mary Catherine, tied at the wharf. Warbrooke had the deepest harbor on the American coast and even large ships could sail in quite close.
    â€œAhoy, Alex!” Jessica called down to him. She was