Tides of Passion (Waves of Desire #3)

Prologue

Savannah, GA

A shout tore through the house, echoing up the stairs like a clap of thunder.

Abigail bolted upright, clutching the silk coverlet to her chin as the remnants of the sound vibrated through her head.

Her heart lurched into her throat as the fog of sleep dissipated, replaced by the cold terror that something was dreadfully wrong.

Darkness cloaked her bedchamber, save for the smallest sliver of moonlight filtering through her heavy velvet curtains.

She held her breath, pulse thudding in her ears.

For a dizzying moment, she told herself it was nothing, a trick of sleep.

A nightmare. Her fingers lost their grip on the blanket as another shout came, raw and urgent.

“Wake him and his daughter immediately.”

Her father’s door slammed open across the hall and heavy footsteps pounded past her room. She threw off the blankets and scrambled to the door, her fine lawn nightdress tangling around her knees.

“What the hell is going on? I’ll have you all arrested for this!” Her father’s words boomed through the house as he charged down the stairs.

A man’s voice, clipped yet frantic, came from the foyer. “No time to explain. You must leave immediately. Captain Thorne and his men are on their way here right now.”

Thorne? The pirate that had kidnapped Samantha? Here in Savannah? His name felt rather more like a ghost story than real. Yet, a cold prickle traced its way down her spine.

Her father’s harsh laugh floated up the stairs. “Why the hell should I care about a pirate?”

Abigail wrapped a dressing gown around her and crept from her room, peering down into the grand entryway where dark figures had gathered in the foyer. She stumbled to the banister. “What’s going on?”

Her father turned, his cheeks high with color. “Nothing to worry yourself over dear. Go back to bed.”

“Abigail!”

Her grip tightened on the rail at the shout. “Samantha?”

Why was she here, at this hour? Abigail hurried down the steps, her bare feet cold on the polished wood as the figures gathered downstairs came into focus. “Josephine? What are you doing here?”

Samantha ignored her and faced her father. “You must go to New Orleans. Find my uncle. He’ll be able to help.”

But her father shook his head. “This is preposterous. I’m not letting some blasted pirates scare me from my home.”

Lieutenant Caldwell emerged from the group. “Thorne is not any pirate, you fool.”

Her father laughed again, a dismissive sound he usually reserved for clerks and shopkeepers. “Are you incapable of fighting him off? Is the United States government not able to handle one pirate? This is absurd.”

The lieutenant lunged forward, grabbing her father’s night shirt.

“Listen to me. Thorne has a ship full of mercenary pirates. We’ll be outnumbered ten to one.

He’s minutes behind us, maybe fewer.” His piercing blue eyes glanced toward Abigail, and she shrank back.

“When he gets here, the first thing he’s going to do after overpowering us is slit your daughter’s throat in front of you. ”

His explicit words struck Abigail with crushing force, stealing the breath from her lungs. The room tilted, her knees threatening to give way beneath her. Josephine caught her hand as her father stood gaping at the lieutenant.

Samantha pushed past everyone and took Abigail’s other arm, glaring at her father. “If you won’t take her to safety, I will. Come Abigail, let’s quickly grab some things and be on our way.”

Her friend tugged her up the stairs, throwing her door open and rushing into her room. She found and tossed a traveling bag on the floor. “Jewelry, silver, anything you can use to trade.”

Samantha’s words came as if through a distant fog. Abigail’s breaths came shallow and uneven as a mounting pressure squeezed her chest. Surely, this was not happening. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. She fought for air, desperate to wake from the nightmare.

“Snap out of it!” Abigail let out a cry as Samantha’s fingers dug into her shoulders, giving her a rough shake.

Abigail turned woodenly, and stumbled toward her vanity. “My jewelry is here.”

Josephine appeared at her side, grabbing handfuls of necklaces, bracelets, and sparkling rings.

Abigail leaned forward, her hands clenching the top of the vanity, fingers trembling as she struggled to breathe.

The light from the lantern Josephine held dimmed as her friend hurried into her dressing room.

A moment later, she reemerged with a pile of silk and linen heaped in her arms. Her friends shoved everything into the bag, the rustle of fabric too loud in the strained quiet of the room.

Lola, Josephine’s parrot, gave a shrill squawk from her cage in the corner, startling Abigail from her stupor.

“Time’s up!” Lieutenant Caldwell’s clipped command rang through the house.

Stumbling into the hallway, she glanced toward her father’s room where the door hung open and frantic shadows played across the walls. Thank heaven he had relented.

Samantha gave Abigail a push toward the stairs. “Josephine, take her down.” A short blade flashed in her hands, wicked and gleaming, and she darted into the room. A moment later, a loud curse came from within and Abigail twisted back. She stumbled, her nightdress tangling around her ankles.

“Dammit, you she-devil!” Her father jumped into the hallway with two bags slung over his shoulders. Samantha stood behind him, the point of her blade pressed between his shoulders. As he took the first step down the stairs, glass shattered in the parlor.

Crash!

Again, the horrible sound came, her stomach lurching as realization hit her.

The windows. Shouts erupted from outside, coarse and close.

Too close. A scream ripped from Abigail’s throat as the lieutenant drew his sword with a heavy rasp and charged forward.

He shouted something, the words incoherent through the noise.

Josephine yanked Abigail the rest of the way downstairs and toward the back of the house.

Samantha followed, driving her father forward.

They darted through the servants’ hallway, the narrow space feeling like a tomb. Silence curled around them only to be broken by the smash of more breaking glass behind them.

“This way!” Samantha flung open a back door, and they rushed into the night.

Abigail’s vision began to go dark around the edges. The familiar, manicured shapes of her yard blurred into a twisted nightmare landscape as she stumbled after Josephine toward a waiting wagon.

Samantha yanked down the rear gate, the heavy wood groaning as the horses tossed their heads, jerking against their harnesses. “Get in. Now.”

“I—I can’t.” Abigail’s father turned back to the house.

“You will.” With a strength that belied her size, Samantha shoved him toward the wagon. “Get your daughter to safety before it’s too late.”

For the first time, Abigail noticed what her friends wore. Her mind spun. Breeches, blouses, swords hanging at their sides… what was happening? She struggled to catch her thoughts. “I don’t understand—”

“Lay flat. Stay out of sight.” Josephine handed Abigail into the wagon before she could finish, her silk nightdress snagging on a splintered board.

“I’m scared.” Abigail choked the words out against a backdrop of shouting men and clashing steel.

“I know.” Josephine pushed a blonde curl back from Abigail’s face, her dark eyes steady and determined. “But you have to do this, it’s the only way.”

Her father climbed in behind her as the sounds of violence drew near. Samantha turned to the waiting driver. “Make haste. Don’t stop until you reach Augusta.”

The wagon jolted into motion with a crack of the whip, sending a shudder through the boards.

Abigail stayed upright, her fingers white-knuckled as she gripped the rough-hewn sideboard, staring as her home disappeared into the humid night mist. Just before they rounded a bend, Samantha yanked a rapier free from her side, the blade catching the moonlight as she turned and sprinted toward the house.

“Get down!” the driver barked. Before Abigail could protest, he threw a heavy wool blanket over her and her father.

Beneath the shroud, the world narrowed to the suffocating scent of damp wood and stale tobacco.

The boards rocked hard against her hip, every rut in the road came like a personal assault on her body.

They traveled in a thick silence, Abigail holding her breath—half expecting the thunder of hooves or the guttural shouts of pirates to follow them.

After several agonizing minutes—or was it hours—the wagon finally slowed from its breakneck speed.

Her father pushed the blanket back, his face pale in the moonlight, jaw set in a familiar, stubborn line.

“The nerve of them, sending us off in a… a turnip cart.” He shook out his nightshirt.

“Why didn’t they set up our carriage instead? We look like common vagrants!”

The driver didn’t look back, but his voice cut through the night. “And be easily recognized and pursued? Be glad you’re breathing.”

Abigail swallowed hard, her throat thick. “We have to stop and send help.”

“No.” The driver snapped the reins.

Her heart began to hammer against her ribs. “You can’t just say no! My friends are in danger! There must be something we can do, some authority we can rouse!”

“I’m following orders, Miss.” The man’s voice came flat and matter-of-fact. “To go back into town would be too risky. Thorne likely has men at every street corner looking for you. We keep moving as planned.”

Abigail’s teeth began to chatter despite the humid air, her body shaking like a leaf. “What are we going to do?”

Her father stared into the night, his eyes narrowing as he calculated. “We will go to New Orleans and see what Warstein can do for us.” He leaned forward, tapping the driver’s seat. “Turn north. Take us to Charleston instead. We can catch a ship there—something fast and well-armed.”

The driver shook his head. “Going on the water would be a death wish with Thorne out there. He owns the coast for the foreseeable future. You travel by land, or you don’t travel at all.”

A tiny spark of relief sparked in Abigail’s chest. She hated the water—the endless, shifting waves that made her head spin and her stomach churn.

Her father refused to accept the man’s answer. “Through the wilderness?” He gestured wildly at the dark trees pressing in on the road. “It would take weeks! We have hardly any supplies, no money, nothing”

No money? Abigail couldn’t help her frown. “What did you pack in your bags?”

“I—I didn’t believe them. I grabbed my ledger, my favorite banyan, a few things to wear… and my bloody silver snuffbox. I thought this was some… some theatrical extortion attempt!”

The silence that followed her father’s admission draped over them heavier than the rough wool blanket had.

Abigail’s hand closed around the side of her traveling bag, hugging it close to her, the weight of her jewelry a small, secret comfort against the chaos.

Still, it underscored how woefully unprepared they were for whatever lay ahead.

She swallowed hard, grasping for a thought to anchor herself.

Mr. Ainsley.

The memory rose in her mind like sunlight breaking through storm clouds.

Only hours ago, before the night turned upside down, the air had been thick with the scent of jasmine at the Crompton ball.

She could still feel the light warmth of Mr. Ainsley’s hand on her waist during the minuet, the way he had leaned in—close enough to test the bounds of decorum—and whispered that he found her “utterly indispensable to his future happiness.”

In that moment he had made her feel as if the future might be theirs to share. That perhaps she had finally found the one who would love her for who she was, the one she’d dared hope for. He was a man of standing. A handsome man of order and quiet ambition.

A man who would be calling at her home tomorrow at noon.

Her eyes widened. When he found the house empty and destroyed, what would he think? Would he think the worst, that she had been taken and was ruined? The thought twisted like a knife in her gut.

Panic clawed at her chest, raw and wild, threatening to tear loose any semblance of composure she had left.

If Mr. Ainsley turned away, if society painted her as fallen…

She pressed her eyes closed against the sting of hot tears.

Everything she had been raised for, every careful step toward a secure and respectable future, was already crumbling into dust along this forsaken road.

The cart creaked onward into the dark, the wheels turning like the inexorable march of fate itself. Each jarring revolution of the wooden spokes took her further from her cherished life, each mile hammering her carefully planned future to pieces.