Free Seacrets by Adrianna Wingate Page B

she did not know why.
    Daniel began to devour the scrumptious breakfast set before him. "So ya can cook, too? Tell me, woman, what is it that ya can not do?" He conceded a wink and a smile in her direction.
    She blushed with his obvious flirtation.
    As if he read her mind he said playfully, "Aye, Darlin' I'd love ta be teachin' ya that." She began to wriggle in her seat and a warm feeling washed over her breasts all the way down to the pit of her belly. It had suddenly become difficult for her to breathe. Her chest began to heave with the intense beating of her heart. She was so completely confounded by the feelings she had whenever she was around Daniel. Maura looked directly into his eyes, now, not backing down from his intent stare.
    Daniel t ipped his chair back on the rear cane posts and rocked back and forth, while sipping his coffee. Looking up over the top of his mug he continued to stare into Maura's deep emerald eyes. Daniel devilishly conceded, in his mind, he wanted to play this game with her a while longer. At any rate it kept her quiet, he'd figured that out quickly.
    The tense quiet between them also gave him time to think. This was something new to him. He'd never even courted any woman. Not even his betrothed, Mallory. Daniel had always considered himself much too busy in his business affairs to engage in such nonsense.
    As for Mallory, she was already bedded and experienced many times over, by the time he'd gotten to her. No, this one was a real challenge to him. He sincerely wanted to know more about her than just how good she would taste when he finally bedded her.
    "Tell me some things about yourse lf, woman." He said in a low, seductive voice.
    "Well , I am the only daughter of a longshoreman. My mother died when I was two summers. My aunts raised me when my father was away at sea, but when he was home he raised me like the son he never had." She laughed, as she talked of her father.
    Daniel liked seeing her relaxed and off guard.
    "He taught me to hunt, shoot, ride a horse, cook, he was the cook on the ships he sailed with. In the last few years he has become more ill and unable to work. He managed to send me to one of the finest schools in all of Ireland, once I was of age. But as you may know King George III, hath carried over King Henry the VIII’s ruling. You see during his tyrannical reign, King Henry VIII made it a crime for any woman of Ireland to seek to educate herself.” Maura continued on her with historical dissertation. “This would put women at the mercy of the English lords and soldiers, to force us ta marry and forge together our cultures and to obtain our lands as part of our dowry brought ta any union between the English and the Irish.” Maura shuddered a bit at that notion, and then continued. “So ya see if an Irish woman refuses, well, then she must take her chances on the streets or in the brothels ta support herself because, as I said, she would not be allowed ta work ta support herself.”
    Daniel sat quietly sipping his coffee and intently watching her mouth as she formed each word and was daydreaming about taking that mouth and…He shook himself back to the conversation to avoid ceasing her right then and there in midsentence.
    “My father knew Mr. Godsey from their sailin’ days together. He begged him ta take me to America, so that I might meet up with another friend of his, Mary Turlington and her son Thomas, in Boston. My father has sent my dowry monies on ahead, in the hopes they will take me in when I get there and provide me with work until I can support myself. And that's the whole of it Captain.” Maura paused briefly then she continued on.
    “My father is dying, Captain Hargendon, and he did not want me ta be at the mer cy o’ the English, for fear they would abuse me or that I would be in a loveless marriage o’ convenience just to survive. I cried and begged him not ta send me away. I wanted ta be the one tendin’ ta him in his last days.” Maura rubbed