Chapter One #2
Not that she really had much experience, either.
She had only made her debut last year at the age of twenty, and it was not successful at all.
In truth, men did fawn over her, but they all sounded false and not one of them had ever asked for her thoughts or feelings on any matters of importance.
Not even on matters of little importance.
It was all about her dowry.
She had refused to return to London at the start of this year’s Season. Why agonize over another round of balls, musicales, and dreary conversation with people who cared nothing for her?
He must have sensed her thoughts, for in the next moment he asked what she was doing here and not in London placing herself on the Marriage Mart.
“I have no desire to be trotted out for auction.” For the past five years, she and her father had been happily residing with Draco and his wife, Imogen, at Woodley Lodge.
The manor house was one of several fine homes on the outskirts of Moonstone Landing, the most charming of all seacoast villages in Cornwall.
Why should she endure the grime, crowds, fortune hunters, and schemers of London when she had all the natural beauty and genuinely good friends one could ever desire right here?
She even had several suitors, although none of them had made her heart flutter as wildly as it was fluttering now.
“Well, ’tis their loss,” Captain McTavish remarked. “I would have courted ye with all sincerity had I met ye at one of those Society affairs.”
She laughed and shook her head. “I think you would have been arrested on sight had you attempted to attend.”
“Ye would have been worth the risk.” He then cast her an odd look that felt surprisingly heartfelt. “Can ye believe it? I’ve never said that to any woman before.”
“It must be easy to forget what you tell the ladies you are pursuing while drunk,” she replied, dismissing his words.
“I am never drunk. Nor would I ever forget ye had I met ye before.”
Nor had she forgotten him, although she had last seen him five years ago when she and Imogen had both been peeking through those binoculars from the safety of Deandra’s bedchamber when Draco had met this pirate captain on this very beach.
He had arrived on a massive schooner known as the Drogheda and looked even more magnificent now than he had back then.
Of course, it would be disastrous to ever admit such a thing to this arrogant man.
Nor would she ever consider involving herself with him beyond patching him up, giving him a solid meal because he must be hungry, fresh clothes because his were damaged beyond repair, and then sending him on his way.
That he had kissed her was not important.
That it had been her secret dream to kiss him ever since spying him through her binoculars five years ago and thinking him quite dashing was a mere girlish fantasy fulfilled.
There.
Done.
Perhaps now her heart would stop fluttering.
He arched an eyebrow. “I’m told I clean up very nicely. Ye’d be surprised the places I am admitted.”
A lady’s boudoir, no doubt. Any smuggler’s cove. Indeed, any disreputable place a pirate would be welcomed.
“I have no intention of asking, nor do I have any desire to hear you brag about your notorious assignations in a lady’s bedchamber or other impermissible places you have been.
You are a pirate and would never be given admission into a respectable home,” she said with a haughtiness she truly did not feel.
“Yet ye’re taking me into yer home,” he pointed out.
“It belongs to my cousin. My father and I are only here because of Draco’s kindness.
I have heard him speak of you a time or two.
I know he considers you a friend.” In truth, she had been eavesdropping more than a time or two and heard Draco mention Captain McTavish.
Her cousin had never spoken directly to her about this pirate, for the dealings between these two men were confidential.
But she knew Draco trusted and respected him despite their questionable undertakings.
“Ye disapprove of me.”
“I am not in the habit of telling my cousin what to do. He has been very kind to me and my father, so I would never repay him with discourtesy. Consider yourself under his hospitality. As for myself, I do not make it a habit to befriend scandalous rogues.”
“Ye’re a prickly thing, aren’t ye?” he muttered, casting her a boyish smile that seemed to pierce the barriers around her heart.
“No, I’m really not,” she said more gently, knowing she was not acting herself because he unsettled her. “But I have never been this close to a pirate before.”
She hoped to send him on his way, for he was too forward for her liking and not at all a good prospect for marriage. Certainly not as respectable as Lord George Wimple, the viscount who happened to be courting her at the moment.
Although she could not see herself ever becoming Lady Wimple.
“I am a privateer, not a pirate. There is an important difference,” McTavish said with surprising conviction for a man who spent so much time on the wrong side of the law.
“Is that so?”
“Aye, lass. If I were a pirate, I would have been hanged by now. But as a privateer, I am protected and generously rewarded by my powerful clientele.”
“Well, your current client must not be too pleased with you now that you have ended up on my beach without your ship or your crew.” She put a hand to her throat, for she had not meant to sound glib about the loss of lives.
“Oh! How stupid of me! I did not… Forgive me, Captain McTavish,” she said with genuine distress. “Where are your men?”
“My ship and crew are in Portsmouth harbor unloading merchandise legitimately acquired.” He took hold of her hand when she thought to race up to the house to send a footman into town for a search party.
“They are all safe, Deandra. Nowhere near here and not in any danger. But thank ye for giving a care about them.”
“Thank goodness,” she said, sincerely relieved, but then pursed her lips. “Why are you not with them?”
He cleared his throat. “I left them in order to complete a piece of personal business. It could also be said it is a matter relating to the Crown.”
Should she believe him? The English and the Irish were never on good terms.
“Ah, ye think I am making it up? That no Irishman would ever work on behalf of an English monarch. Well, any man would if the cause were right, lass.”