40. Inherit the Wind (Jerome Lawrence, Robert E. Lee)

Al Hirschfeld's interpretation

Synopsis from Amazon:
One of the most moving and meaningful plays in American theatre -- based on the famed Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, in which a Tennessee teacher was tried for teaching evolution.

My rating: 5 stars

39. Claudius the God: And His Wife Messalina (Robert Graves)

Synopsis from Amazon:
Picking up where the extraordinarily interesting I, Claudius ends, Claudius the God tells the tale of Claudius' 13-year reign as Emperor of Rome. Naturally, it ends when Claudius is murdered -- believe me, it's not giving anything away to say this; the surprise is when someone doesn't get poisoned. While Claudius spends most of his time before becoming emperor tending to his books and his writings and trying to stay out of the general line of corruption and killings, his life on the throne puts him into the center of the political maelstrom.

My rating: 5 stars

38. The Archer's Tale (Bernard Cornwell)

Chicks dig the long bow.

Synopsis from Amazon:
Thomas of Hookton, the bastard son of the eccentric local priest, is the sole survivor of a horrific assault launched on his seaside village by Norman raiders. As his father lays dying, he reveals to Thomas the secret of his aristocratic heritage. Vowing revenge on the French nobleman who orchestrated the raid and subsequently stole a treasured relic, he joins a select group of archers prepared to wage war in France in the name of King Edward III. Battling his way through the French countryside, Thomas' quest takes on greater danger and significance as he makes a bitter enemy from within his own ranks, uncovers a dark family secret, and becomes embroiled in an idealistic scheme to reclaim the vanished Holy Grail.

My rating: 5 stars

37. Once and Always (Judith McNaught)

Synopsis from Amazon:
Across the vast ocean sailed Victoria Seaton, a free-spirited American beauty left suddenly orphaned and alone. Eager to claim her long-lost heritage, she was amazed at the formal elegance of Wakefield, the sumptuous English estate of her distant cousin ... the notorious Lord Jason Fielding. Sought after at plays, operas, and balls by London's most fashionable ladies, Jason remained a mystery to Victoria. Bewildered by his arrogant demeanor, yet drawn to his panther-like grace, she came to sense the searingly painful memories that smoldered in the depths of his jade-green eyes.Unable to resist her spitfire charm, Jason gathered her at last into his powerful arms, ravishing her lips with his kisses, arousing in her a sweet, insistent hunger. Wed in desire, they were enfolded in a fierce, consuming joy, free at last from the past's cruel grasp. Then, in a moment of blinding anguish, Victoria discovered the shocking treachery that lay at the heart of their love ... a love she had dreamed would triumph ....

My rating: 5 stars

Excerpt:

Chapter 1

ENGLAND

1815

“Oh, there you are, Jason,” the raven-haired beauty said to her husband’s reflection in the mirror above her dressing table. Her gaze slid warily over his tall, rugged frame as he came toward her; then she returned her attention to the open jewel cases spread out before her. A nervous tremor shook her hand and her smile was overly bright as she removed a spectacular diamond choker from a case and held it out to him. “Help me fasten this, will you?”

Her husband’s face tightened with distaste as he looked at the necklaces of glittering rubies and magnificent emeralds already spread across her swelling breasts above the daring bodice of her gown. “Isn’t your display of flesh and jewels a little vulgar for a woman who hopes to masquerade as a grand lady?”

“What would you know about vulgarity?” Melissa Fielding retorted contemptuously. “This gown is the height of fashion.” Haughtily she added, “Baron Lacroix likes it very well. He specifically asked me to wear it to the ball tonight.”

“No doubt he doesn’t want to be troubled with too many fasteners when he takes it off you,” her husband returned sarcastically.

“Exactly. He’s French—and terribly impetuous.”

“Unfortunately, he’s also penniless.”

“He thinks I’m beautiful,” Melissa taunted, her voice beginning to shake with pent-up loathing.

“He’s right.” Jason Fielding’s sardonic gaze swept over her lovely face with its alabaster skin, slightly tilted green eyes, and full red lips, then dropped to her voluptuous breasts trembling invitingly above the plunging neckline of her scarlet velvet gown. “You are a beautiful, amoral, greedy . .. bitch.”

Turning on his heel, he started from the room, then stopped. His icy voice was edged with implacable authority. “Before you leave, go in and say good night to our son. Jamie is too little to understand what a bitch you are, and he misses you when you’re gone. I’m leaving for Scotland within the hour.”

“Jamie!” she hissed wrathfully. “He’s all you care about—” Without bothering to deny it, her husband walked toward the door, and Melissa’s anger ignited. “When you come back from Scotland, I won’t be here!” she threatened.

“Good,” he said without stopping.

“You bastard!” she spat, her voice shaking with suppressed rage. “I’m going to tell the world who you really are, and then I’m going to leave you. I’ll never come back. Never!”

With his hand on the door handle, Jason turned, his features a hard, contemptuous mask. “You’ll come back,” he sneered. “You’ll come back, just as soon as you run out of money.”

The door closed behind him and Melissa’s exquisite face filled with triumph. “I’ll never come back, Jason,” she said aloud to the empty room, “because I’ll never run out of money. You’ll send me whatever I want...”

“Good evening, my lord,” the butler said in an odd, tense whisper.

“Happy Christmas, Northrup,” Jason answered automatically as he stamped the snow off his boots and handed his wet cloak to the servant. That last scene with Melissa, two weeks earlier, sprang to his mind, but he pushed the memory away. “The weather cost me an extra day of travel. Has my son already gone to bed?”

The butler froze.

“Jason—”A heavyset, middle-aged man with the tanned, weathered face of a seasoned seaman stood in the doorway of the salon off the marble entrance foyer, motioning to Jason to join him.

“What are you doing here, Mike?” Jason asked, watching with puzzlement as the older man carefully closed the salon door.

“Jason,” Mike Farrell said tautly, “Melissa is gone. She and Lacroix sailed for Barbados right after you left for Scotland.” He paused, waiting for some reaction, but there was none. He drew a long, ragged breath. “They took Jamie with them.”

Savage fury ignited in Jason’s eyes, turning them into furnaces of rage. “I’ll kill her for this!” he said, already starting toward the door. “I’ll find her, and I’ll kill her—”

“It’s too late for that.” Mike’s ragged voice stopped Jason in mid-stride. “Melissa is already dead. Their ship went down in a storm three days after it left England.” He tore his gaze from the awful agony already twisting Jason’s features and added tonelessly, “There were no survivors.”

Wordlessly, Jason strode to the side table and picked up a crystal decanter of whiskey. He poured some into a glass and tossed it down, then refilled it, staring blindly straight ahead.

“She left you these.” Mike Farrell held out two letters with broken seals. When Jason made no move to take them, Mike explained gently, “I’ve already read them. One is a ransom letter, addressed to you, which Melissa left in your bedchamber. She intended to ransom Jamie back to you. The second letter was meant to expose you, and she gave it to a footman with instructions to deliver it to the Times after she left. However, when Flossie Wilson discovered that Jamie was missing, she immediately questioned the servants about Melissa’s actions the night before, and the footman gave the letter to her instead of taking it to the Times as he was about to do. Flossie couldn’t reach you to tell you Melissa had taken Jamie, so she sent for me and gave me the letters. Jason,” Mike said hoarsely, “I know how much you loved the boy. I’m sorry. I’m so damned sorry.. . .”

Jason’s tortured gaze slowly lifted to the gilt-framed portrait hanging above the mantel. In agonized silence he stared at the painting of his son, a sturdy little boy with a cherubic smile on his face and a wooden soldier clutched lovingly in his fist.

The glass Jason was holding shattered in his clenched hand. But he did not cry. Jason Fielding’s childhood had long ago robbed him of all his tears.

PORTAGE, NEW YORK

1815

Snow crunched beneath her small, booted feet as Victoria Seaton turned off the lane and pushed open the white wooden gate that opened into the front yard of the modest little house where she had been born. Her cheeks were rosy and her eyes bright as she stopped to glance at the starlit sky, studying it with the unspoiled delight of a fifteen-year-old at Christmas. Smiling, she hummed the last bars of one of the Christmas carols she’d been singing all evening with the rest of the carolers, then turned and went up the walk toward the darkened house.

Hoping not to awaken her parents or her younger sister, she opened the front door softly and slipped inside. She took off her cloak, hanging it on a peg beside the door, then turned around and stopped in surprise. Moonlight poured through the window at the top of the stairway, illuminating her parents, who were standing just outside her mother’s bedroom. “No, Patrick!” Her mother was struggling in her father’s tight embrace. “I can’t! I just can’t!”

“Don’t deny me, Katherine,” Patrick Seaton said, his voice raw with pleading. “For God’s sake, don’t—”

“You promised!” Katherine burst out, trying frantically to pull free of his arms. He bent his head and kissed her, but she twisted her face away, her words jerking out like a sob.

“You promised me on the day Dorothy was born that you wouldn’t ask me to again. You gave me your word!”

Victoria, standing in stunned, bewildered horror, dimly realized that she had never seen her parents touch one another before—not in teasing, nor kindness—but she had no idea what it was her father was pleading with her mother not to deny him.

Patrick let go of his wife, his hands falling to his sides. “I’m sorry,” he said stonily. She fled into her room and closed the door, but instead of going to his own room, Patrick Seaton turned around and headed down the narrow stairs, passing within inches of Victoria when he reached the bottom.

Victoria flattened herself against the wall, feeling as if the security and peace of her world had been somehow threatened by what she had seen. Afraid that he would notice her if she tried to move toward the stairs, would know she had witnessed the humiliatingly intimate scene, she watched as he sat down on the sofa and stared into the dying embers of the fire. A bottle of liquor that had been on the kitchen shelf for years stood now on the table in front of him, beside a half-filled glass. When he leaned forward and reached for the glass, Victoria turned and cautiously placed her foot on the first step.

“I know you’re there, Victoria,” he said tonelessly, without looking behind him. “There’s little point in our pretending you didn’t witness what just took place between your mother and me. Why don’t you come over here and sit by the fire? I’m not the brute you must think me.”

Sympathy tightened Victoria’s throat and she quickly went to sit beside him. “I don’t think you’re a brute, Papa. I could never think that.”

He took a long swallow of the liquor in his glass. “Don’t blame your mother either,” he warned, his words slightly slurred as if he had been drinking since long before she arrived.

With the liquor impairing his judgment, he glanced at Victoria’s stricken face and assumed she had surmised more from the scene she’d witnessed than she actually had. Putting a comforting arm around her shoulders, he tried to ease her distress, but what he told her increased it a hundredfold: “It isn’t your mother’s fault and it isn’t mine. She can’t love me, and I can’t stop loving her. It’s as simple as that.”

Victoria plunged abruptly from the secure haven of childhood into cold, terrifying, adult reality. Her mouth dropped open and she stared at him while the world seemed to fall apart around her. She shook her head, trying to deny the horrible thing he had said. Of course her mother loved her wonderful father!

“Love can’t be forced into existence,” Patrick Seaton said, confirming the awful truth as he stared bitterly into his glass. “It won’t come simply because you will it to happen. Kit did, your mother would love me. She believed she would learn to love me when we were wed. I believed it, too. We wanted to believe it. Later, I tried to convince myself that it didn’t matter whether she loved me or not. I told myself that marriage could still be good without it.”

The next words ripped from his chest with an anguish that seared Victoria’s heart: “I was a fool! Loving someone who doesn’t love you is hell! Don’t ever let anyone convince you that you can be happy with someone who doesn’t love you.”

“I—I won’t,” Victoria whispered, blinking back her tears.

“And don’t ever love anyone more than he loves you, Tory. Don’t let yourself do it.”

“I—I won’t,” Victoria whispered again. “I promise.” Unable to contain the pity and love exploding inside her, Victoria looked at him with tears spilling from her eyes and laid her small hand against his handsome cheek. “When I marry, Papa,” she choked, “I shall choose someone exactly like you.”

He smiled tenderly at that, but made no reply. Instead he said, “It hasn’t all been bad, you know. Your mother and I have Dorothy and you to love, and that is a love we share.”

Dawn had barely touched the sky when Victoria slipped out of the house, having spent a sleepless night staring at the ceiling above her bed. Clad in a red cloak and a dark blue woolen riding skirt, she led her Indian pony out of the barn and swung effortlessly onto his back.

A mile away, she came to the creek that ran alongside the main road leading to the village, and dismounted. She walked gingerly down the slippery, snow-covered bank and sat down on a flat boulder. With her elbows propped on her knees and her chin cupped in her palms, she stared at the gray water flowing slowly between the frozen chunks of ice near the bank.

The sky turned yellow and then pink while she sat there, trying to recover the joy she always felt in this place whenever she watched the dawning of a new day.

A rabbit scurried out from the trees beside her; behind her a horse blew softly and footsteps moved stealthily down the steep bank. A slight smile touched Victoria’s lips a split second before a snowball whizzed past her right shoulder, and she leaned neatly to the left. “Your aim is off, Andrew,” she called without turning.

A pair of shiny brown top boots appeared at her side. “You’re up early this morning,” Andrew said, grinning at the petite, youthful beauty seated upon the rock. Red hair shot with sparkling gold was pulled back from Victoria’s forehead and secured with a tortoiseshell comb at the crown, then left to spill over her shoulders like a rippling waterfall. Her eyes were the deep, vivid- blue of pansies, heavily lashed and slightly tilted at the corners. Her nose was small and perfect, her cheeks delicately boned and blooming with health, and at the center of her small chin there was a tiny but intriguing cleft.

The promise of beauty was already molded into every line and feature of Victoria’s face, but it was obvious to any onlooker that her beauty was destined to be more exotic than fragile, more vivid than pristine, just as it was obvious that there was stubbornness in her small chin and laughter in her sparkling eyes. This morning, however, her eyes lacked their customary luster.

Victoria leaned down and scooped up a pile of snow with her mittened hands. Automatically Andrew ducked, but instead of launching the snowball at him, as she would normally have done, she threw it into the creek. “What’s wrong, bright-eyes,” he teased. “Afraid you’ll miss?”

“Of course not,” Victoria said with a morose little sigh.

“Move over and let me sit down.”

Victoria did so, and he studied her sad expression with mild concern. “What has you looking so grim?”

Victoria was truly tempted to confide in him. At twenty, Andrew was five years her senior and wise beyond his age. He was the only child of the village’s wealthiest resident, a widow of seemingly delicate health who clung possessively to her only son at the same time that she relinquished to him all responsibility for the running of their huge mansion and the 1,000 acres of farmland surrounding it.

Putting his gloved finger beneath her chin, Andrew tipped her face up to his. “Tell me,” he said gently.

This second request was more than her heartsick emotions could withstand. Andrew was her friend. In the years they had known each other, he had taught her to fish, to swim, to shoot a pistol, and to cheat at cards—this last he claimed to be necessary so she would know if she was being cheated. Victoria had rewarded his efforts by learning to outswim, outshoot, and outcheat him. They were friends, and she knew she could confide almost anything to him. She could not, however, bring herself to discuss her parents’ marriage with him. Instead she brought up the other thing worrying her—her father’s warning.

“Andrew,” she said hesitantly, “how can you tell if someone loves you? Truly loves you, I mean?”

“Who are you worried about loving you?”

“The man I marry.”

Had she been a little older, a little more worldly, she would have been able to interpret the tenderness that flared in Andrew’s golden brown eyes before he swiftly looked away. “You’ll be loved by the man you marry,” he promised. “You can take my word for it.”

“But he must love me at least as much as I love him.”

“He will.”

“Perhaps, but how will I know if he does?”

Andrew cast a sharp, searching look at her exquisite features. “Has some local boy been pestering your papa for your hand?” he demanded almost angrily.

“Of course not!” she snorted. “I’m only fifteen, and Papa is very firm that I must wait until I’m eighteen, so I’ll know my own mind.”

He looked at her stubborn little chin and chuckled. “If ‘knowing your own mind’ is all Dr. Seaton is concerned about, he could let you wed tomorrow. You’ve known your own mind since you were ten years old.”

“You’re right,” she admitted with cheerful candor. After a minute of comfortable silence, she asked idly, “Andrew, do you ever wonder who you’ll marry?”

“No,” he said with an odd little smile as he stared out across the creek.

“Why not?”

“I already know who she is.”

Startled by this amazing revelation, Victoria snapped her head around. “You do? Truly? Tell me! Is it someone I know?”

When he remained silent, Victoria shot him a thoughtful, sidewise look and began deliberately packing snow into a hardball.

“Are you planning to try to dump that thing down my back?” he said, watching her with wary amusement.

“Certainly not,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “I was thinking more in the line of a wager. If I can come closer to that rock atop the farthest boulder over there, then you must tell me who she is.”

“And if I come closer than you do?” Andrew challenged.

“Then you may name your own forfeit,” she said magnanimously.

“I made a dire error when I taught you to gamble,” he chuckled, but he was not proof against her daring smile.

Andrew missed the far-off target by scant inches. Victoria stared at it in deep concentration; then she let fly, hitting it dead-on with enough force to send the rock tumbling off the boulder along with the snowball.

“I also made a dire error when I taught you to throw snowballs.”

“I always knew how to do that,” she reminded him audaciously, plunking her hands on her slim hips. “Now, who do you wish to marry?”

Shoving his hands into his pockets, Andrew grinned down at her enchanting face. “Who do you think I wish to marry, blue eyes?”

“I don’t know,” she said seriously, “but I hope she is very special, because you are.”

“She’s special,” he assured her with gentle gravity. “So special that I even thought about her when I was away at school during the winters. In fact, I’m glad to be home so I can see her more often.”

“She sounds quite nice,” Victoria allowed primly, feeling suddenly and unaccountably angry at the unoffending female.

“I’d say she’s closer to ‘wonderful’ than ‘quite nice.’ She’s sweet and spirited, beautiful and unaffected, gentle and stubborn. Everyone who knows her comes to love her.”

“Well then, for heaven’s sake, why don’t you marry her and have done with it!” Victoria said grimly.

His lips twitched, and in a rare gesture of intimacy, Andrew reached out and laid his hand against her heavy, silken hair. “Because,” he whispered tenderly, “she’s still too young. You see, her father wants her to wait until she’s eighteen, so she’ll know her own mind.”

Victoria’s enormous blue eyes widened as she searched his handsome face. “Do you mean me?” she whispered.

“You,” he confirmed with smiling solemnity. “Only you.”

Victoria’s world, threatened by what she had seen and heard last night, suddenly seemed safe again, secure and warm. “Thank you, Andrew,” she said, suddenly shy. Then, in one of her lightning-quick transformations from girl to charming, gently bred young woman, she added softly, “How lovely it will be to marry my dearest friend.”

“I shouldn’t have mentioned it to you without first speaking with your father, and I can’t do that for three more years.”

“He likes you immensely,” Victoria assured him. “He won’t object in the least when the time comes. How could he, when you are both so much alike?”

Victoria mounted her horse a little while later feeling quite gay and cheerful, but her spirits plummeted as soon as she opened the back door of the house and stepped into the cozy room that served the dual purpose of kitchen and family gathering place.

Her mother was bending over the hearth, busy with the waffle iron, her hair pulled back in a tidy chignon, her plain dress clean and pressed. Hanging from nails beside and above the fireplace was an orderly assortment of sifters, dippers, graters, chopping knives, and funnels. Everything was neat and clean and pleasant, just like her mother. Her father was already seated at the table, drinking a cup of coffee.

Looking at them, Victoria felt self-conscious, sick at heart, and thoroughly angry with her mother for denying her wonderful father the love he wanted and needed.

Since Victoria’s sunrise outings were fairly common, neither of her parents showed any surprise at her entrance. They both looked up at her, smiled, and said good morning. Victoria returned her father’s greeting and she smiled at her younger sister, Dorothy, but she could scarcely look at her mother. Instead, she went to the shelves and began to set the table with a full complement of flatware and dishes—a formality that her English mother firmly insisted was “necessary for civilized dining.”

Victoria moved back and forth between the shelves and the table, feeling ill at ease and sick to her stomach, but when she took her place at the table, the hostility she felt for her mother slowly began to give way to pity. She watched as Katherine Seaton tried in a half dozen ways to make amends to her husband, chatting cheerfully with him as she hovered solicitously at his elbow, filling his cup with steaming coffee, handing him the pitcher of cream, offering him more of her freshly baked rolls in between trips to the hearth, where she was preparing his favorite breakfast of waffles.

Victoria ate her meal in bewildered, helpless silence, her thoughts twisting and turning as she sought for some way to console her father for his loveless marriage.

The solution came to her the instant he stood up and announced his intention of riding over to the Jackson farm to see how little Annie’s broken arm was mending. Victoria jumped to her feet. “I’ll go with you, Papa. I’ve been meaning to ask you if you could teach me how to help you— in your work, I mean.” Both her parents looked at her in surprise, for Victoria had never before shown the slightest interest in the healing arts. In fact, until then, she had been a pretty, carefree child whose chief interests were in gay amusements and an occasional mischievous prank. Despite their surprise, neither parent voiced an objection.

Victoria and her father had always been close. From that day forward, they became inseparable. She accompanied him nearly everywhere he went and, although he flatly refused to permit her to assist him in his treatment of his male patients, he was more then happy to have her help at any other time.

Neither of them ever mentioned the sad things they had discussed on that fateful Christmas night. Instead they filled their time together with cozy conversations and lighthearted banter, for despite the sorrow in his heart, Patrick Seaton was a man who appreciated the value of laughter.

Victoria had already inherited her mother’s startling beauty and her father’s humor and courage. Now she learned compassion and idealism from him as well. As a little girl, she had easily won over the villagers with her beauty and bright, irresistible smile. They had liked her as a charming, carefree girl; they adored her as she matured into a spirited young lady who worried about their ailments and teased away their sullens.

Chapter 2

“Victoria, are you absolutely certain your mother never mentioned either the Duke of Atherton or the Duchess of Claremont to you?”

Victoria tore her thoughts from aching memories of her parents’ funeral and looked at the elderly, white-haired physician seated across from her at the kitchen table. As her father’s oldest friend, Dr. Morrison had taken on the responsibility of seeing the girls settled, as well as of trying to care for Dr. Seaton’s patients until the new physician arrived. “All Dorothy or I ever knew was that Mama was estranged from her family in England. She never spoke of them.”

“Is it possible your father had relatives in Ireland?”

“Papa grew up in an orphans’ home there. He had no relatives.” She stood up restlessly. “May I fix you some coffee, Dr. Morrison?”

“Stop fussing over me and go sit outside in the sunshine with Dorothy,” Dr. Morrison chided gently. “You’re pale as a ghost.”

“Is there anything you need, before I go?” Victoria persisted.

“I need to be a few years younger,” he replied with a grim smile as he sharpened a quill. “I’m too old to carry the burden of your father’s patients. I belong back in Philadelphia with a hot brick beneath my feet and a good book on my lap. How I’m to carry on here for four more months until the new physician arrives, I can’t imagine.”

“I’m sorry,” Victoria said sincerely. “I know it’s been terrible for you.”

“It’s been a great deal worse for you and Dorothy,” the kindly old doctor said. “Now, run along outside and get some of this fine winter sunshine. It’s rare to see a day this warm in January. While you sit in the sun, I’ll write these letters to your relatives.”

A week had passed since Dr. Morrison had come to visit the Seatons, only to be summoned to the scene of the accident where the carriage bearing Patrick Seaton and his wife had plunged down a riverbank, overturning. Patrick Seaton had been killed instantly. Katherine had regained consciousness only long enough to try to answer Dr. Morrison’s desperate inquiry about her relatives in England. In a feeble whisper, she had said, “... Grandmother . . . Duchess of Claremont.”

And then, just before she died, she had whispered another name—Charles. Frantically Dr. Morrison had begged her for his complete name, and Katherine’s dazed eyes had opened briefly. “Fielding,” she had breathed. “... Duke ... of... Atherton.”

“Is he a relative?” he demanded urgently.

After a long pause, she’d nodded feebly. “Cousin—”

To Dr. Morrison now fell the difficult task of locating and contacting these heretofore unknown relatives to inquire whether either of them would be willing to offer Victoria and Dorothy a home—a task that was made even more difficult because, as far as Dr. Morrison could ascertain, neither the Duke of Atherton nor the Duchess of Claremont had any idea the girls existed.

With a determined look upon his brow, Dr. Morrison dipped the quill in the inkwell, wrote the date at the top of the first letter, and hesitated, his brow furrowed in thought. “How does one property address a duchess?” he asked the empty room. After considerable contemplation, he arrived at a decision and began writing.

Dear Madam Duchess,

It is my unpleasant task to advise you of the tragic death of your granddaughter, Katherine Seaton, and to further advise you that Mrs. Seaton’s two daughters, Victoria and Dorothy, are now temporarily in my care. However, I am an old man, and a bachelor besides. Therefore, Madam Duchess, I cannot properly continue to care for two orphaned young ladies.

Before she died, Mrs. Seaton mentioned only two names—yours and that of Charles Fielding. I am, therefore, writing to you and to Sir Fielding in the hope that one or both of you will welcome Mrs. Seaton’s daughters into your home. I must tell you that the girls have nowhere else to go. They are sadly short of funds and in dire need of a suitable home.

Dr. Morrison leaned back in his chair and scrutinized the letter while a frown of concern slowly formed on his forehead. If the duchess was unaware of the girls’ existence, he could already foresee the old lady’s possible unwillingness to house them without first knowing something about them. Trying to think how best to describe them, he turned his head and gazed out the window at the girls.

Dorothy was seated upon the swing, her slim shoulders drooping with despair. Victoria was determinedly applying herself to her sketching in an effort to hold her grief at bay.

Dr. Morrison decided to describe Dorothy first, for she was the easiest.

36. Thief of Hearts (Teresa Medeiros)

I heart pirates

Synopsis from Amazon:
Prim and pampered, Lucina Snow knew little of men and nothing of danger, until the fog-shrouded night she found herself abducted — and at the mercy of the legendary Captain Doom. Ruthless and mocking, tender and virile, the notorious pirate awakened all Lucy's passionate longings, then abandoned her with nothing but a kiss .... Now safely at home, the alluring waif is tormented by treacherous memories — and by the presence of Gerard Claremont, her mysterious new bodyguard. Everything about him, from his forbidding size to his impertinent manner, sparks her defiance. And even when Gerard's smile turns seductive, no one can make her forget Doom. Yet only when Lucy's path crosses the captain's once more, will she learn who is on a voyage of retribution, and who is out to steal her heart ....

My rating: 5 stars

Excerpt:

Prologue

London

1780

His mother's scream sliced through the fabric of the night.

Its agonized timbre went unheeded amidst the rattling cart wheels, bawling street vendors, cooing prostitutes, and clamor of voices outside the narrow crib. The boy crouched beside a pile of quilts and pressed a rusted dipper against his mother's lips. Brackish water trickled down her chin.

"There now, Ma. Try to drink a bit," he urged.

As she attempted a feeble swallow, the boy's nervous gaze flicked to her distended abdomen. Its bloated contours were an obscene contrast to her flaccid skin and prominent ribs.

She was too old to be having this baby, he thought frantically. Nearly a month past twenty-eight. Her fingernails dug into his knuckles as another bout of agony seized her. The dipper slid from his hand. He clenched his teeth against his own cry of pain and held fast to her hands, fighting the despairing litany that drowned out even her screams. Too old. Too thin. Too poor.

Her fingers slowly relaxed as she lapsed into exhausted stupor. Her silence frightened him more than her screams. It was as if she'd surrendered her last pathetic hope of relief. He was reaching to shake her awake when the door behind him burst open.

A man stumbled in, his rumpled uniform marking him as a sailor. "Molly!" he bellowed, his breath reeking of gin. "Where's my pretty girl?"

The boy leaped to his feet. "Out, damn y'! Y've no right to burst in here like y' own the bloody place!"

The boy was shocked by his own virulence. The man might even be the father of this child, he thought, before realizing bitterly that it could be any one of a dozen men.

The sailor blinked stupidly at him, more addled by gin than given to petty cruelty. "Damn your insolence, whelp! I been at sea for ten months without so much as a kiss from a comely chit." He lifted his fist to cuff the boy out of the way. "No need to be jealous, lad. There's ample room 'tween thighs as willin' as Molly's."

Futile rage tinged the boy's vision with scarlet. Without even realizing the gravity of what he was doing, he snatched up the paring knife his mother had laid out to cut the baby's cord. His ears roared with the remembered grunts and groans of all the men his mother had bedded to put bread in his mouth.

He brandished the knife like a sword. "Out of here, mate," he said softly, "before I carve y' a new gullet."

The sailor lowered his fist, sobered by the unflinching light in the boy's eyes. He'd sailed in the Royal Navy for over twenty years as an able seaman, thumbing his nose at the death-spewing cannons of both pirates and Frenchies, but now his nostrils twitched as if he could already scent his own spilled blood.

Before he could retreat, a hoarse whimper, more animal than human, arose from the shadows behind the boy. The lad spun around and dropped to his knees beside the tattered quilts. The sailor peered over his narrow shoulders, catching a glimpse of sunken cheeks, stark eyes, and the tortured contractions of a swollen abdomen.

His stomach rebelled. Most of his mates were eager to spill their seed, but only too happy to be at full sail when it took root. He clapped a hand over his mouth and stumbled out of the hovel, knowing with a sailor's instinct that he had witnessed not only impending birth, but impending death.

"The babe's comin', lad," Molly whispered through cracked lips.

The intruder forgotten, the boy fumbled with the things she had commanded he fetch. A basin of cloudy water. A nest of rags. A length of dirty twine. Swallowing his fear, he drew back the sheet that covered her legs.

She arched off the quilts and bit her bottom lip until it pearled with blood, but she did not make another sound until the tiny creature spilled into her son's waiting hands. A groan of pure relief broke from her throat.

The boy followed her whispered instructions, refusing to look at the cause of her pain, already hating it for what it would cost him. He swaddled it in the rags, then laid it in the crook of her arm.

As she gazed into her baby's face, the echo of a smile trembled on her lips, giving her son a heartbreaking glimpse of the beauty that must have once enchanted his father.

When he would have turned away from the sight, she clutched his arm, searching his fine features as avidly as she had searched the babe's. "Y're a good boy, son. Just like y'r pa. Don't ever forget it."

He closed his eyes against the bittersweet refrain. If his pa was so fine, why had he left them for the sea? Why had he chosen her salty grave over the adoration of a wife who would have waited forever for his return?

A wisp of a sigh rose from the quilt. He lifted his head to find his mother's eyes as barren as his hopes. A burning knot tightened in his throat. He leaned over and kissed her cool brow.

"Night, Ma," he whispered, gently closing her eyes.

The alien creature was beginning to squirm in her limp arm. The boy eyed it with distaste, then reluctantly reached for it as he knew his mother would have wished. It. He refused to think of it as anything else. As he drew it toward his chest, his trembling legs folded beneath the weight of responsibility.

He would have to find a girl to nurse it. He should have no trouble there. Births were as common as deaths in this twisting warren of alleys. His disgruntled gaze lingered on the thing's face. He supposed he should wash it. It was dirty, but when had anything clean ever come from this place? It would be coughing up soot like the rest of them soon enough.

He stroked a finger down the babe's cheek, marveling that anything so chubby had emerged from his mother's wasted flesh. Their gazes met, the baby's unfocused, his sullen. Curiosity overcame his disgust and he unwound the rags.

Amazed at the miniature perfection, he felt his lips twitch in bemusement. "Well, lad, it seems y've got all the right equipment."

Lad. Boy. Brother.

His brother. A wave of protectiveness crested in him as his arms tightened around the tiny bundle. The poor creature had no mother. Tears of grief welled in his eyes; he dashed them away. At least he'd had a pa to give him a name. This little bugger had no one. No one but him.

From outside the crib, a roar of drunken laughter mocked his fresh emotions. He couldn't bear another moment trapped with the empty shell that had been his mother. Cradling the baby awkwardly against his chest, he rose and ducked into the chaos of the night.

No one paid him any heed as he rushed down the cobbled alley, blindly seeking the one place where he might wash the stench of birth and death from his nostrils. The graceful spars of the docked ships soared into the night sky, drawing him like a beacon.

Was this what had drawn his father? he wondered, dropping to his knees on the rough planking. The siren song of the waves lapping gently at the pilings?

He knew what he had to do. He had to take his brother away from here. To a place where the scent of the sea wasn't befouled by the oily stench of the river.

He drew back the rags to gaze into the puckish face God had entrusted to his care. "I'll take y' away, lad," he whispered. "I swear I'll find a place where we both can breathe."

His little brother's flailing fist struck him square in the nose. The boy threw back his head and laughed, his misgivings tempered by a fierce surge of joy.

Chapter 1

The English Channel

1802

"Aye, there's some that says he's the ghost o' Captain Kidd come back from the dead to revenge hisself on those who betrayed him."

Lucy Snow peeked over the top of her book, finding the lure of such torrid gossip more irresistible than the modestly titled, self-published memoirs of Lord Howell: Nautical Genius of the Century her father had provided for her journey. The creeping shadows of twilight had made reading nearly impossible anyway.

Unaware of her scrutiny, the sailor leaned against a barrel, his ancient bones creaking in harmony with the deck of the HMS Tiberius. His audience consisted of a handful of sailors and a starry-eyed cabin boy. "None's ever seen him and lived to tell of it. Some say only a glance from his evil eye'll skewer you to the deck like a bolt o' lightning. Aye, bold and ruthless is Captain Doom."

Lucy sniffed back a derisive snort. Captain Doom indeed. This mythical pirate was beginning to sound like a character in one of the dreadful Gothic novels Lord Howell's flighty daughter Sylvie insisted on reading.

One young sailor was of like mind. Lucy wrinkled her nose as he spat a wad of tobacco on the freshly scrubbed deck of the modest frigate. "Balderdash! I heard the stories, too, but I says it's nothin' but rum talkin'. There ain't been true pirates in these waters for o'er seventy-five years." He tilted his hat to a cocky angle, underscoring the brashness of his youth. "We ain't livin' in lawless times like Captain Kidd. This bloke'd be more likely to get his timbers shivered by the Channel Fleet than not."

Knowing her father would not have approved either her eavesdropping or interrupting what was meant to be a private conversation, Lucy bit back an agreement. The war with France had lapsed into tentative truce with the Peace of Amiens, but the quieter the winds blew from Napoleon's burgeoning empire, the more nervous the Royal Navy became. This Captain Doom would have to be either foolhardy or foolish to put himself in their eager cannon sights.

"Not if he truly is a ghost," the cabin boy whispered, startling Lucy with his precise reply to her musings. "Then he'd have nothin' to lose. Nothin' at all."

Lucy shivered in spite of herself and huddled deeper into her shawl. Now, Luanda, the Admiral admonished from perfect memory, seafaring men are a superstitious lot, but you're not a girl given to fancy. For once, his chiding voice brought comfort instead of humiliation.

A sailor in a worn peacoat drew a whalebone pipe from his pocket. As he struck a match and touched it to the capped bowl, the flame cast wavering shadows over a face leathered by sun and salt spray. "I seen him," he announced curtly, earning all of their attentions, including Lucy's. "I was on lookout in the foretop on an eve much like this one. There weren't nothin' but sea and sky for miles, then suddenly the sea opened up and out she sailed like a demon ship cast from the bowels o' hell."

Lucy suspected her own eyes were now as round as the cabin boy's.

"I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. 'Twas as if the very sight o' her froze me blood. Before I could pry me mouth open to shout a warning, the sea swallowed her without so much as a billow. I never seen nothin' like it in all me born days." He shuddered. "Never hope to again."

A pall of silence enveloped the men, broken only by the eerie creaking of the spars and the lazy flapping of the sails against the wind. Full dusk had fallen as they spoke. Tendrils of mist came creeping out of the darkening sea like the tentacles of some mythical beast. Lucy saw one of the sailors glance over his shoulder and sign an unobtrusive cross on his breast. As if to banish the spell of foreboding, the men all began chattering at once.

"I heard he carves his mark on his victims just like the devil he is."

"Won't tolerate babblin', they says. The lass wouldn't stop screamin', so he up and sewed her lips together with sail twine."

"Cleaved the poor bloke in two, he did, with one mighty stroke of his cutlass."

The young sailor who had earlier dared to express scorn for the spectral captain wiggled his eyebrows in a mocking leer. "I'll wager that ain't nothin' compared to the cleavin' he does on his lady captives. One o' my mates swears this Captain Doom ravished ten virgins in one night."

"Ha!" scoffed a grizzled tar. "I done as much after seven months at sea and nary a glimpse o' stocking."

The young sailor elbowed him in the ribs. "Aye, but them weren't hardly virgins, was they?"

The men roared with laughter. Lucy reluctantly decided she'd best make her presence known before she learned more than she ever wanted to know about the romantic foibles of sailors. She extracted herself from her seat of coiled ropes and stepped into full view. The men snapped to flustered attention as if Admiral Sir Lucien Snow himself had marched onto the deck of the ship.

Lucy was not impressed. She'd been receiving such welcomes since she'd been old enough to toddle up the gangplank of a ship. Her father's reputation as one of the most revered admirals in His Majesty's Royal Navy had preceded her every step.

She favored them with a benevolent smile. "Good evening, gentlemen. I do hope I haven't interrupted your charming discourse on the merits of piracy." She nodded toward the young sailor, whose tanned skin had flushed a becoming peach. "Do go on, sir. I believe you were about to treat us to more of your speculations on Captain Doom's romantic exploits."

One of his mates cleared his throat meaningfully and the sailor snatched off his hat, crumpling it into a ball. "M-M-Miss Snow," he stammered. "Didn't know you were about. 'Twas hardly fit talk for a lady's ears."

"Then I suppose we'll have to string you up from the yardarm, won't we?"

The lad's Adam's apple bobbed with obvious distress and Lucy sighed. For some reason, no one could ever tell when she was joking. She knew that most of her acquaintances suspected she'd been born with no sense of humor at all. She was, however, blessed with a finely honed sense of the absurd.

The weathered sailor in the peacoat shoved his way forward as if fearing she might actually weave a noose of her delicate shawl. "Allow me to escort you to your cabin, Miss Snow. 'Tisn't safe for a young lady of quality to be roamin' 'bout the deck after dark."

He gallantly offered her his arm, but the patronizing note in his voice struck the wrong chord with Lucy.

"No, thank you," she said coolly. "I believe I shall take my chances with Captain Doom."

Tilting her nose to a regal angle, she sailed past them, ignoring the discordant murmur that rose behind her. Some perverse seed of rebellion drove her away from the narrow companionway leading to her cabin and toward the deserted stern.

She studied Lord Howell's memoirs for a moment, then tossed them over the aft rail into the churning froth of the ship's wake. The leather-bound book sank without a trace.

"Sorry, Sylvie," she whispered to her absent friend.

Since Lord Howell was an old friend of her father's, she suspected the Admiral had only recommended the book because of its flattering, if somewhat exaggerated, accounts of his own cunning exploits during the Americans' ill-mannered rebellion against England.

She wondered how her father was faring on his overland voyage. Since his untimely leg wound had forced him to retire from His Majesty's service six years ago, the Admiral had never missed a chance for a sea voyage, even one as tame as the journey from their summer home in Cornwall to their modest mansion in Chelsea on the bank of the Thames.

She drew her shawl close around her. True to its fickle nature, London society had spurned all things French except for their fashions. The brisk wind blowing off the North Atlantic Sea whipped up Lucy's skirt and bit through her thin petticoat. But she could bear that discomfort better than being trapped in the stifling confines of her cabin, her fate decided by the whims of others. If she stayed on deck long enough, perhaps the Captain's half-deaf mother would retire for the evening and Lucy would be spared bellowing at her over the galley dining table.

Lucy usually found a ship by night soothing to her senses, but the peace she sought drifted just out of her reach, her solitude tainted by restlessness. Even the low-pitched music of male voices working in perfect accord seemed muted and distant.

She frowned, licking away the sea salt that flecked her lips. In the rising mist, sound should carry with the clarity of a ringing bell, but the night was draped in silence as if the sea were holding its breath with her. She strained her eyes, seeing nothing but fog swirling up from the inky darkness and the rising moon flirting with tattered patches of clouds.

Chill ribbons of mist coaxed their way through the gauzy muslin of her gown, dampening her bare skin with their greedy touch. The sailors' tales of Captain Doom haunted her. On such a night it took little imagination to envision a phantom ship stalking the seas in search of prey. Lucy could almost hear the chant of its betrayed sailors vowing vengeance, the hollow bong of a bell that would seal their doom.

She shook off a delicious shiver. She could only imagine what the Admiral would say if he caught her indulging in such whimsy.

She was turning away from the rail to seek the more mundane comforts of her cabin when the veil of darkness parted and the ghost ship glided into view.

Lucy's heart slammed into her rib cage, then seemed to stop beating altogether. She clutched the rail, her shawl falling unheeded to the deck.

A glimmer of moonlight stole through the clouds as the sleek black bow of the phantom schooner crested the waves, its towering spars enshrouded by mist, its rigging glistening like the web of a deadly spider. Ebony sails billowed in the wind, whispering instead of flapping. The vessel sailed in eerie silence with no lanterns, no sign of life, no hint of mercy.

Lucy stood transfixed, mesmerized by a primitive thrill of fear. Although the wind whipped her hair across her face and fed the hungry sails of the phantom ship, she seemed to be standing in a vortex of airlessness. She couldn't think. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't scream.

It was then that she saw the ship's Jolly Roger rippling from the highest spar—a man's hand, ivory against a sable background, squeezing scarlet drops of blood from a captive heart. Her fist flew to her breast as she battled the absurd notion that it was her heart, no longer beating of its own will, but thundering in accord with the dark command of the ghost ship's master. If she was the only one to see the ship, then surely its grim message was meant for her.

The phantom ship came about with lethal grace. Remembering the sailor's story, Lucy pressed her eyes shut, knowing the ship would be gone when she opened them. A poignant sense of loss tightened her throat. There was no place in her neatly ordered life for such dark fantasy, yet the ship's unearthly beauty had touched some secret corner of her soul.

Cannonfire blazed against the night sky. Lucy's eyes flew open in shock as the ghost ship fired a very earthly warning shot over their bow in the universal demand for surrender.

Chapter 2

In that first dazzling burst of light, the name carved on the phantom ship's bow was forever emblazoned in Lucy's memory: Retribution.

Hoarse cries of alarm and the stampede of running feet shook the deck of the Tiberius as the panicked crew wavered between battle and surrender. Lucy was jerked from her openmouthed astonishment by a rough hand on her arm. The young sailor who had earlier jeered the mere existence of Captain Doom pulled her away from the rail with a familiarity he wouldn't have dared only moments before.

"You'd best take shelter in your cabin, miss. This looks to get ugly." His bold demeanor could not hide a complexion chalky with terror.

Lucy found herself dragged through the fray and shoved none too gently toward the main companion-way. Obeying without thought, she flew down the narrow passage, thankful for once to be unencumbered by heavy skirts and petticoats. She slammed the door of her cabin behind her and whirled around in the middle of the floor.

A fresh salvo of cannonfire shuddered the hold. Lucy dropped to her knees and clapped her hands over her ears, choking back a frantic scream. As a child, she had once scampered into the garden only to plunge through an enormous spiderweb strung across the path. She had beat at the sticky fibers with her small hands, screaming in terror. She felt again that same helpless fear. She couldn't bear being trapped like an animal with no control over her fate.

She could still remember the Admiral's contemptuous words as he had watched her sniffle into Smythe's crisp waistcoat while the servant patiently plucked the tattered web from her hair. Silly little chit. Given to hysteria just like her mother. French blood will tell every time.

Lucy's hands curled into fists and fell away from her ears. Her back straightened. She was Lucinda Snow, daughter of Admiral Sir Lucien Snow, and she'd be damned if she'd let some ridiculous ghost pirate frighten her into hysterics.

Spurred to practical action, she rifled through her tidy valise, searching for anything that might serve as a weapon. An ivory-handled letter opener was her only find. She slipped off her shoes so she could move silently if the need arose and tucked the letter opener into one of her stockings. Then she grabbed the low-burning lantern and crouched down beside her rumpled bunk to wait.

A masculine bellow of terror and the thunder of running footsteps sounded overhead. Lucy gritted her teeth to keep them from chattering. The wire handle of the lantern bit into her palm. She knew the lantern was useless as a weapon. The dangers of fire aboard ship had been too deeply ingrained in her since childhood.

She would die a gruesome death before hurling the lantern at an attacker.

She feared that noble notion was about to be tested when the door to her cabin crashed inward and a hulking shape appeared in its place. Lucy killed the lantern's flame and squeezed her eyes shut in the childish hope that if she couldn't see the intruder, he wouldn't be able to see her either.

But all of her hopes, present and future, were smothered by the gag thrust into her mouth and the dank length of burlap tossed over her head.

"Damn it to blasted hell!"

The oath rolled from Captain Doom's lips like the thunder of cannonfire. The deck listed beneath his long, furious strides, but he never stumbled, never faltered, his flawless balance as finely tuned as each of his other senses. Had any of his enemies seen him in that moment, they would have sworn lightning bolts actually could sizzle from his narrowed eyes.

"I can't believe you brought a woman on board." He swung past the dangling rigging with the natural swagger of a born sailor. "You know how superstitious Tam and Pudge are. They're liable to jump ship if they find out."

The ebony-skinned giant marching in his wake appeared unaffected by his captain's ire. Only someone who knew him well could have detected the sarcasm in his melodic bass voice. "Shall I fetch the cat-o'-nine-tails, sir, so you can flog me?"

"Don't tempt me," the Captain growled. "I should have left you to hang in Santo Domingo when I had the chance."

Doom ducked his head at the precise moment it would have struck the foreboom and folded his lean frame into the hold. His companion dropped after him, landing with a cat's lithe grace on the pads of his bare feet.

The Captain rubbed his beard in frustration. "Have you been at sea so long you didn't notice she was a bloody woman?"

"She squirmed more like a rat. She was soft in spots, but since the Admiral has retired, I thought he might have gone soft himself. Like a rotten peach."

"I do believe you've gone soft. In the head."

"The cabin was listed in the ship's log just as you said it would be—L-U-C-period-S-N-O-W."

Doom had never before been so tempted to curse his mate's gift of being both literate and literal. Steering his way through the shadowy hold, he shook his head in disgust. "If she's of any importance, we'll have the whole Channel Fleet down on our heads by dawn. Couldn't you even get a name out of her?"

"Sorry, sir. The iron maiden was occupied. Kevin was sleeping in it. Besides, you're the one with the reputation for terrorizing innocent maidens."

Doom shot him a dark look as they halted before a door bolted from the outside. "She's probably mute with terror already. You're enough to give any proper young English virgin nightmares."

As if in full agreement, his mate flashed his teeth in a dazzling smile, emphasizing the raven purity of his skin. His bald head had been polished to a sheen so bright the captain caught a glimpse of his own scowling reflection. There was no man Doom would rather have at his side during battle, but his composure in the face of such disaster made Doom want to choke him.

The Captain turned toward the door. With a gesture from another lifetime, long gone and best forgotten, he ran his fingers through his shaggy hair and smoothed his cambric shirt.

"Are you going to interrogate her or court her?" his companion rumbled.

"I haven't decided. Maybe neither. Maybe both." All traces of humor fled his face. The grim twist of his lips would have given even those most skeptical of his legend pause for reflection. "I'll do whatever it takes to find out why the morally upstanding Admiral Snow had a woman sequestered in his cabin."

With that vow, Doom lifted the makeshift bolt, unlocked the door, and slipped into the sumptuous confines of his own quarters.

A child, was Doom's first horrified thought. His mate had stolen a little girl.

A rapid blink proved his perception flawed. Oddly enough, it wasn't his captive's size, but her stern demeanor that made her look no more than twelve years of age. She sat rigidly straight in the spartan chair as if having her ankles bound to its legs and her hands tied behind her were mere inconveniences to be tolerated like a pair of too-tight boots.

He had been dreading her hysteria, but the pale cheeks below the sable silk of the blindfold were free of tearstains. Her lips were pursed in a faintly bored expression as if she wished someone would happen by and offer her tea. Her transparent determination to ignore his presence both irritated and amused him.

His gaze raked her in blunt appraisal. His mate had taken no chances. The only thing unbound about her was her hair. It streamed down her back in a fall of ash-blond silk, unmarred by a single frivolous curl.

Doom scowled. The silly garment she wore troubled him. Had his mate dragged her out of her bunk? Surely fashions hadn't changed that much in six years. He remembered only too well when he'd been intimately acquainted with every lace, hook, and button of a woman's elaborate toilette.

His captive's high-waisted gown was shamelessly devoid of such restraints. The skirt of the gossamer sheath clung to her parted legs, the sheer petticoat beneath more enticement than hindrance. Silk stockings, the delicate blue of a robin's egg, enveloped her slender feet. The angle of her bound arms thrust her small breasts upward to strain against the thin fabric of her bodice. Doom's gaze lingered there of its own volition. His mate had been wrong. Her softness was not that of rotten peaches, but of fresh peaches. Ripe, tender peaches.

His too-long-deprived body surged at the image with a violence that made him ache. His captive might have the deceptive appearance of a child, but his response to her was definitely that of a man. Alarmed by the rapacious slant of his thoughts, Doom strode to the teakwood sideboard bolted to the cabin wall and attempted to douse the passions she'd ignited with a slug of brandy.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, nursing the childish urge to punish her for his weakness. But the vulnerability of her posture gutted his anger, tinging it with contempt for what he was about to become.

He put the brandy glass aside, steering himself to be as dispassionate and remorseless as his task required. There was no room for passion or pity in the black heart of Captain Doom. Especially if he was dealing with Lucien Snow's whore.

He moved to stand directly in front of her, hands locked at the small of his back and feet splayed, his silence a blatant challenge. He watched, secretly amused, as a flush of pink crept into the hollows beneath her elegant cheekbones. He would have almost sworn it was caused not by fear, but anger.

Lucy had known she was in trouble the moment this man entered the cabin. She had recognized in the space of a skipping heartbeat that he was not the same man who had abducted her, the man whose hands had been almost gentle as he apologized for frightening her, his voice melodious and soothing.

There was nothing soothing about this man. The very air around him crackled with threat. Lucy feared she was in the presence of Captain Doom himself, no phantom but flesh and blood—solid, disturbing, and only inches from her face.

Being deprived of vision had heightened her other senses. Her ears were tuned to the harsh whisper of air from his lungs. Her nostrils flared at the scent of him—an alluring brew of salt spray, brandy, and the pure spice of male musk. He smelled like the predator he was and she knew instinctively that if she allowed him to scent her fear, she was done for.

She was thankful her initial panic had been swallowed by outrage at being trussed up like a Christmas goose. When he had first entered the cabin, she had refrained from speaking for fear she would gibber in terror. Now she was simply too obstinate to be the first to break the taut silence.

Back straight, Luanda, the Admiral snapped from memory. Feet together like a little lady.

But Lucy could not bring her feet together. They were bound to opposite chair legs, making her feel exposed, vulnerable, and in the wake of the Admiral's imaginary rebuke, deeply ashamed.

The stranger's gaze seared her cheeks, but she refused to avert her face from his scrutiny. Her jaw was beginning to ache from being clamped so hard. She could almost envision him standing arrogantly before her, his legs braced against the faint swell and dip of the cabin floor.

"Your name."

Lucy flinched as if he had struck her. His husky words were a demand, not a request. Had he claimed her soul with such merciless authority, she would have been equally as powerless to resist him.

"Lucinda Snow," she replied, her only defense the shards of ice dripping from her voice. "My friends call me Lucy, but I think under the circumstances, you'd do well to address me as Miss Snow."

Her captor was silent for several heartbeats, but his excitement was palpable. Gone was the barely repressed violence, replaced by a ferocious satisfaction she sensed might be even more dangerous to her.

"Miss Snow?" he finally said. "May I assume there's no Mr. Snow fretting over your untimely disappearance?"

His voice was both rough and smooth, like well-aged whiskey steeped in smoke. She suspected its raspy timbre was designed for disguise, but it still sent a shiver of raw reaction down her spine. She prayed he did not see it.

"Admiral Sir Snow is my father and I can assure you that when he finds out I've been abducted by brigands, he'll be a man given to action, not fretting."

"Ah, a worthy opponent." The contempt in his words chilled her.

His boot heels clicked in muted rhythm as he began to pace in a maddening circle around her chair. Not knowing exactly where he stood was even more disconcerting than having him glare at her. She couldn't shake the sensation that he was only biding his time, seeking her most vulnerable spot before he pounced for the kill.

Fear made her reckless. "I've heard enough about your cowardly tactics, Captain Doom, to know your favored opponents are innocent children afraid of ghosts and helpless women."

A loose plank creaked behind her, startling her. If he had touched her then, she feared she would have burst into tears.

But it was only the mocking whisper of his breath that stirred her hair. "And which are you, Miss Snow? Innocent? Helpless? Or both?" When his provocative question met with stony silence, he resumed his pacing. " 'Tis customary to scream and weep when one is abducted by brigands, yet you've done neither. Why is that?"

Lucy didn't care to admit that she was afraid he'd embroider a skull and crossbones on her lips. "If I might have gained anything by screaming, you'd have left me gagged, wouldn't you? It's obvious by the motion of the deck that the ship is at full sail, precluding immediate rescue. And I've never found tears to be of any practical use."

"How rare." The note in his voice might have been one of mockery or genuine admiration. "Logic and intelligence wrapped up in such a pretty package. Tell me, is your father in the habit of allowing you to journey alone on a navy frigate? Young ladies of quality do not travel such a distance unchaperoned. Does he care so little for your reputation?"

Lucy almost blurted out that her father cared for nothing but her reputation, but to reveal such a painful truth to this probing stranger would have been like laying an old wound bare.

"The Captain's mother was traveling with us." Fat lot of good that had done her, Lucy thought. The senile old woman had probably slept through the attack. "The Captain of the Tiberius is a dear friend of my father's. He's known me since I was a child. I can promise you that should any of the men under his command so much as smile at me in what might be deemed an improper manner, he'd have them flogged."

"Purely for your entertainment, I'm sure."

Lucy winced at the unfair cut. "I fear my tastes in amusement don't run to torture as yours are rumored to," she replied sweetly.

"Touché, Miss Snow. Perhaps you're not so helpless after all. If we could only ascertain your innocence with such flair…"

He let the unspoken threat dangle and Lucy swallowed a retort. She couldn't seem to stop her tart tongue from running rampant. She'd do well to remember that this man held both her life and her virtue captive in his fickle hands.

His brisk footsteps circled her, weaving a dizzying spell as she struggled to follow his voice. "Perhaps you'd care to explain why your noble papa deprived himself of your charming wit for the duration of your voyage."

"Father took ill before we could leave Cornwall. A stomach grippe. He saw no logic in my forfeiting my passage, but feared travel by sea would only worsen his condition."

"How perceptive of him. It might have even proved fatal." He circled her again. "What provoked this timely bout of indigestion? Too much tea? A bad bit of kipper?"

Lucy shook her head. "I couldn't say. He was reading the Times over breakfast as he always does when he suddenly went white and excused himself. He told me later that he'd decided to travel by carriage."

Doom's clipped tones softened. His footsteps ceased just behind her. "So he sent you in his stead. Poor, sweet Lucy."

Lucy wasn't sure what jarred her most—the rueful note of empathy in his voice or hearing her Christian name caressed by his devilish tongue. "If you're going to murder me, do get on with it," she snapped. "You can eulogize me after I'm gone."

The chair vibrated as he closed his hands over its back. Lucy started as if he'd curled them around her bare throat. "Is that what they say about me, Miss Snow? That I'm a murderer?"

She pressed her eyes shut beneath the blindfold, beset by a curious mix of dread and anticipation. "Among other things."

"Such as?"

"A ghost," she whispered.

He leaned over her shoulder from behind and pressed his cheek to hers. The prickly softness of his beard chafed her tender skin. His masculine scent permeated her senses. "What say you, Lucy Snow? Am I spirit or man?"

There was nothing spectral about his touch. Its blatant virility set Lucy's raw nerves humming. She'd never been touched with such matter-of-fact intimacy by anyone. Smythe prided himself on maintaining the reserve of a servant and the Admiral found physical displays of fondness distasteful.

The odd little catch in her breath ruined her prim reply. "I sense very little of the spiritual about you, sir."

"And much of the carnal, no doubt."

His hand threaded through the fragile shield of her hair to find her neck. His warm fingers gently rubbed her nape as if to soothe away all of her fears and melt her defenses, leaving her totally vulnerable to him. Lucy shuddered, shaken by his tenderness, intrigued by his boldness, intoxicated by his brandy-heated breath against her ear.

"Tell me more of the nefarious doings of Captain Doom," he coaxed.

She drew in a shaky breath, fighting for any semblance of the steely poise she had always prided herself on. "They say you can skewer your enemies with a single glance."

"Quite flattering, but I fear I have to use more conventional means." His probing fingertips cut a tingling swath through the sensitive skin behind her ears. "Do go on."

Lucy's honesty betrayed her. "They say you've been known to ravish ten virgins in one night." As soon as the words were out, she cringed, wondering what had possessed her to confess such a shocking thing.

Instead of laughing as she expected, he framed her delicate jaw in his splayed fingers and tilted her head back.

His voice was both tender and solemn, mocking them both. "Ah, but then one scrawny virgin such as yourself would only whet my appetite."

"They also swear you won't abide babbling," Lucy blurted out, knowing she was doing just that. "That you'll sew up the lips of anyone who dares to defy you."

His breath grazed her lips. "What a waste that would be in your case. Especially when I can think of far more pleasurable ways to silence them."

Doom was treading dangerous waters. He'd known it from the moment he'd buried his fingers in the flaxen silk of the girl's hair, the moment he'd inhaled the lemon-scented purity of her skin. He'd clenched the chair back to keep from touching her, but his hands had acted with a stubborn will of their own. Now he could feel the warm waters of temptation closing over his head, making it impossible to breathe anything but her scent. Her mouth maddened him, its generous contours at odds with the chaste angles of her features.

It had been so long. Too long. He had sacrificed desire on the altar of his revenge as he had all other pleasures and emotions that might distract him from its consummation. How ironic that his first flush of victory should free that desire, render it more potent and enticing than the sweet assurance of vengeance trembling beneath his fingertips.

When the girl had confessed her identity, he'd been unable to believe his good fortune. His initial euphoria had been dampened by suspicion. It was simply too delicious to have the girl delivered so neatly into his hands. Did he run the risk of being ensnared by his own trap? he wondered. His intense scrutiny of Snow's past had failed to reveal information about a wife or a child. Was his captive truly Lucien Snow's daughter or only a clever decoy? Had Snow intended her as bait to flush him out of hiding or as some sort of sacrificial lamb? He knew of only one way to find out.

His thumbs caressed the fleecy velvet of her earlobes. Her skin was as soft as a lamb's, making him wonder if she would be that malleable everywhere he touched. She made him ache with need, tempted him to live up to his reputation for sensual ruthlessness. The teak and mahogany splendor of his stolen bed seemed to beckon him as he faced the dilemma of every man who has ever had a woman completely at his mercy.

He wouldn't have to hurt her, he assured himself. He could be gentle, persuasive. He would leave her with no bruises, no marks on her pretty skin, only haunting memories of a phantom lover who had possessed her in darkness and vanished at dawn.

"Please," she whispered as if she could divine the dangerous direction of his thoughts.

"Such charming manners," he murmured, thankful he could not see her eyes. He feared a sheen of tears in them might ruin all of his wicked intentions. "Tell me, Lucy, what do you plead so prettily for? Your life?" He wove his fingers through her hair, making her captivity absolute. "Or your soul?"

Her soft words surprised him. "Perhaps your soul, sir. It will be the one at stake if you commit some grievous sin."

His bitter laugh made her flinch and he immediately gentled his grip, stroking his fingertips across her brow. "Have you forgotten? I'm a dead man already, untroubled by qualms of conscience or soul."

"The soul is eternal, Captain. And I suspect yours isn't as black as you'd like me to believe. Yet."

Doom's gaze lingered on her lips. Generous, treacherous, tormenting him with the memory of a time when he had craved justice more than revenge. A time when he could still tell the difference.

If he bedded this girl against her will, he'd be no better than his father, who had won his mother's love, then sailed away forever, taking the light in her eyes with him. No better than the nameless man who had gotten her with child and left her to die in squalor.

Frustration made his voice crisp. "Your concern for my soul is touching, Miss Snow, but if I'd have wanted a sermon, I'd have abducted a priest. I should have skipped the blindfold and gagged you instead."

Doom suspected her eyes might prove to be as great a hazard to his dormant conscience as her lips. Those lips were parted now, gone slack beneath the probing ministrations of his fingertips. She was as responsive as a kitten to his practiced touch, making him wonder how she would respond if he pressed his suit, how she might move beneath him, what sort of soft, broken sounds she would make.

He swore under his breath. He might deny himself the bounty of her body, but he'd be damned if he was going to forfeit a taste of her luscious mouth. He leaned over and gently rubbed his lips against hers, feeling their sensitive contours ignite like dry tinder beneath an unquenchable flame. His tongue traced their tantalizing softness, priming them for his tender invasion.

A fist pounded the door. "Seventy-four-gunner approaching from the north, Captain." The imperturbable calmness of his mate's voice only underscored the terrible urgency of his message. "Channel Fleet, sir. Flagship Argonaut."

35. Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers (Louise Rennison)

Synopsis from Amazon Canada:
Georgia can't wait to visit Hamburger-a-gogo land with Jas in tow so she can finally track down Masimo, the Italian-American dreamboat. But after a long week in America, Georgia only succeeds in learning importantish things -- like how to ride a bucking bronco -- before she's dragged back to England by Mutti and Vati. Will Georgia be able to reel in the Italian dreamboat, or is she destined to live forever all aloney on her owney?

My rating: 5 stars

34. His Wicked Kiss (Gaelen Foley)

Synopsis from Amazon Canada:
In the seventh installment of the Knight Miscellany series, a high seas adventure, Foley is deft as ever. This Regency romance begins in the jungles of Venezuela, where British native Eden Farraday lives with her father, Dr. Victor Farraday, as he looks for medicinal plants—but she pines for London, the company of "normal people" and the chance to find a husband. When her father reneges on his promise to return to England, Eden finds her own way out of the jungle. Rakish Lord Jack Knight—the black sheep of the Knight family—is boating down the river, after a meeting with Bolivar's rebels, when he encounters Eden. He refuses to take her aboard his London-bound ship, but undaunted, Eden rows down the river after him and stows away. When Jack discovers Eden, he installs her in his cabin for his own amusement; contrary to his intention, he becomes infatuated, and their relationship begins to break down Jack's hardened facade.

My rating: 4 stars

Excerpt:

Chapter 1

February, 1818

She wanted to dance.

Her toes in silken slippers tapped beneath the hem of her white—no, blue—no, her green silk gown, in time with the elegant strains from the orchestra.

Innumerable twinkling candles on the crystal chandeliers cast a golden haze over the ballroom, where pairs of gliding dancers whirled through the steps of the new, daring waltz: ladies in rich, pale, luminous silks, gentlemen in stately black and white.

Suddenly, through the crowd, she sensed someone staring at her. Peeking over her painted fan, she caught only a glimpse of a tall, imposing figure before the swirling motion of the dancers hid him from her view again.

Her pulse leaped. A thrill rushed through her, for she could sense him, feel him coming to ask her to stand up with him for the next quadrille.

Wide-eyed, her heart pounding, she waited, yearning for a clearer look at the face of her mystery man, her destined hero—

At that moment, a prickle of instinctual warning on her nape summoned Eden Farraday back from her lovely reverie.

Her rapt gaze focused slowly as reality pressed back in on her reluctant senses, bringing with it all the ceaseless sounds and pungent smells of another black, humid night in the tropical forest.

Instead of crystal chandeliers, a lone, rusty lantern gleamed on the bamboo table beside her hammock, which was draped beneath a cloud of filmy white mosquito netting. In place of lords and ladies, pale moths danced and flittered against the lantern’s glass, and beyond the palm-thatched roof of the naturalists’ jungle stilt-house, the darkness throbbed with teeming life.

Insects sang in deafening cadence. Monkeys bickered for the most comfortable branches to sleep on in the trees, but at least the raucous parrots had quit their noisy squabbling. Far off in the distance, a jaguar roared to warn a rival off its territory, for the great stealthy beasts’ hunting hour had come.

Its fierce echo chased away her shining vision of London glamour, leaving nothing but the artifact that had inspired it—a yellowed, crinkled, year-old copy of a fashion magazine, La Belle Assemblée, sent by her dear cousin Amelia all the way from England.

The sense of danger, however, still remained.

She glanced around uneasily, her jungle-honed instincts on alert; her hand crept toward the pistol that was always by her side.

And then she heard it. A faint and subtle hiss from much too close overhead.

Lifting her gaze, she found herself eye to cold, beady eye with a monstrous eight-foot fer-de-lance. Fangs gleaming, the deadly serpent flicked its forked tongue in her direction. She shrank back slowly, not daring to move too fast.

Seeking warm-blooded prey, the big snake seemed to sense the vibrations of her pounding heart. The species invaded many a human dwelling in the torrid zone: humans left crumbs; crumbs brought mice; and the mice brought the fer-de-lance, a notoriously ill-tempered viper with a reputation for attacking with the slightest provocation.

Its bite spelled doom.

Slim and sinuous, it had slithered up into the weathered crossbeams of their shelter. It must have gone silently exploring then in search of a plump rodent entrée, for at present it was coiled around the post from which her hammock hung, and was studying her like it wondered how she’d taste.

To her amazement, it had sliced through the mosquito netting with those daggered fangs that dispensed a venom capable of killing a large man in under half an hour. Eden had seen it happen, and it was not a pleasant death.

When the fer-de-lance arched its scaly neck into that ominous S shape, she had a fleeting fraction of a second to see the attack coming, then it struck—angry reptile snapping out like a whip, a flash of fangs.

She flung herself onto her back on her hammock, brought up her pistol, and fired.

A disgusted yelp escaped her as the snake’s severed head plopped right onto the center of her treasured magazine.

“Bloody—!” she started, then stopped herself from uttering the rest, only mouthing the epithet, for refined London ladies did not curse aloud. Still!

That dashed magazine had taken a blasted year to reach her, coming via courier by way of Jamaica. Rolling nimbly out of her hammock, Eden scowled at the wide-mouthed snake head that now marred the elegant publication. She flipped her long plait of auburn hair over her shoulder, brushed the mosquito netting aside and stepped away, shaking off her latest brush with death.

“Everything all right, dear?” her father, Dr. Victor Farraday, called in a casual tone from his work tent across the naturalists’ camp, located deep in the heart of Venezuela’s green, steaming Orinoco Delta.

She shot a distracted glance in his direction. “Fine, Father!” she yelled back and, with shaking hands, put her gun away. Lord, I can’t wait to get out of here.

With a grimace, she picked up the magazine like a tray, balancing the dead snake’s head on it, and marched stoically to the rustic railing that overlooked the wide, onyx river. She flung the head into the current without ceremony, and heard it plop down into the Orinoco with a small splash.

Well, no doubt something would eat it in minutes, she thought. That was the law of the jungle: Eat or be eaten. Sending a wary glance out across the inky river, she saw a number of red eyes gleaming by the lantern’s glow, and then a large thing submerged with barely a ripple in the silver moonlight.

Eden shook her head. Man-eating crocodiles, poisonous snakes, bloodsucking bats—and Papa said London was dangerous. Patience, she told herself, doing her best to keep her hunger for civilization in check. It wouldn’t be much longer now. They would soon be going home to England whether Papa liked it or not.

Turning to gaze in the direction of her father’s work tent, her face filled with determination. She gave herself a small nod. Yes. The suspense was torture. She had to hear Papa’s decision—now. She tore off the pages of her magazine that could not be saved and put them aside as fuel for the cooking fires, then strode out of their native-style dwelling, known as a palafito. She fixed her sights on the naturalists’ main work tent across the camp.

A ring of torches burned around the perimeter of the clearing to keep the beasts at bay, but there was little help for the mosquitoes. She swatted one away as she passed the fire pit in the center of camp, where she greeted their three black servants with affection. Their bright grins flashed in the darkness. Now that the heat of day had passed, the servants, dressed in flowing, light, tropical garb, were cooking dinner for themselves.

Eden exchanged a few teasing remarks with them and forged on. The skirts of her cotton walking dress swirled around her legs and her thick leather boots sunk firmly into the soft turf with every stride. Her forward stare was confident, but in truth, her heart was pounding as she waited for the verdict.

Ahead, beneath the three-sided military-style tent, Dr. Victor Farraday and his brawny Australian assistant, Connor O’Keefe, bent their heads together in close discussion, poring over a weathered map. The field table was strewn with the latest specimens they had collected today on their trek, led by the local Waroa shaman to where the medicine plants grew. For now, however, their new finds were forgotten. Their faces were tense and serious by the dim orange glow of the lantern.

It was no wonder why. Her treasured magazine was not the only item the courier had brought today from the outer world, smuggling their mail and a few supplies in past the Spanish fleet trolling the coast.

There had also been a letter, equally out of date, from the solicitor representing Papa’s aristocratic patron back in England. The letter announced the sad tidings that the old, philanthropic fourth Earl of Pembrooke, alas, had gone on to his eternal reward some months ago.

His Lordship’s heir, the fifth earl, was young and dashing, rumored to be quite handsome and, if the Society pages of La Belle Assemblée could be believed, he was also known as a gambler and a bit of a rakehell. The new Lord Pembrooke was building himself a fine new country house, and as far as he was concerned, all the artists and scholars, musicians and sculptors and scientists that his grandfather had for so long commissioned could go hang. So he had instructed his solicitor to say.

In short, the famed Dr. Farraday had lost the funding for his research, and Eden had nearly cheered aloud to hear it.

She had bitten her tongue, however, and suppressed her joy, for Papa had turned pale at the news, committed as any obsessed genius to his work. Oh, but it wasn’t as though they would starve once they reached England, she reasoned with a hardheaded practicality that usually balanced out her dreamy side.

A trained physician and now a prestigious author as well, Dr. Farraday had a standing offer of a highly respectable teaching post at the Royal College of Medicine in London. When he accepted it, as he surely must, it wouldn’t be long before she and Cousin Amelia would be promenading in Hyde Park among the other élégantes, causing the young bucks to wreck their stylish phaetons for turning to stare at them.

Soon—who could say?—she might actually have a normal life.

Clasping her hands behind her back, Eden cleared her throat politely to get the gentlemen’s attention.

The two scientists had been so absorbed in their discussion they had not noticed her standing there. At once, they fell silent, halting their low-toned discussion.

“Well, boys,” she said with a jaunty smile, trying with a touch of humor to lighten some of the tension they all were feeling about the sudden change in their situation. “When are we finally going to leave?”

Alas, her jest fell flat. The pair exchanged a guarded glance. Belatedly, Connor stood in the presence of a lady, knowing how she loved these small gestures of civility.

Connor O’Keefe was a tanned, blond, towering Australian, over six feet tall and twice as broad as the tribal warriors of the Delta. He was a strong man of few words and a specialist in zoology; his sensitivity to the forest animals was endearing to Eden, but more and more frequently of late, his unbroken stares made her uneasy.

“Everything all right?” he asked, resting his hands on his waist with a concerned frown. “Why did you fire?”

“A fer-de-lance got into the house. Sorry, Con, It was either your snaky friend or me.”

“Good God, are you all right?” her father exclaimed, whipping off his spectacles and starting forward in his chair.

“I’m fine, Father,” she assured him. “I wondered if Connor would take the vile thing away. Most of it’s still stuck in the rafters,” she said with a wince.

The Australian nodded firmly, then glanced at her father. “I’ll be right back, sir.”

“Yes, er, give us a moment, my boy. I should like to have a word with my daughter.”

“Of course.” Connor paused to give Eden’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “You’re sure you’re all right?” he murmured.

She nodded and folded her arms across her middle, forcing a smile as she struggled to ignore the subtle possessiveness in his touch. Somehow, she could not bring herself to mention her uncomfortable feeling around him to Papa, who loved Connor like the son he’d never had.

Besides, it would not do to make a fuss when she knew perfectly well that they depended on Connor for their survival. He caught their food, he built their shelters, he warded off hostile Indians and the occasional stray jaguar alike.

But sometimes, when she looked into his eyes, as now, she got the feeling that, in Connor’s mind, he owned her.

Satisfied that she was safe, he nodded once and then prowled off into the darkness to do her bidding. Her gaze trailed after him warily.

“Sit down, dear,” her father ordered, gesturing toward his assistant’s empty field chair. She noted absently that his salt-and-pepper beard was in need of a trim. “We have much to discuss.”

“Indeed.” Taking the seat across from him, she launched cheerfully into her assumed role in coordinating their withdrawal from the jungle. She was her father’s nominal housekeeper, after all, in charge of the smooth running of their camp. “I figure with the servants’ help, it will take about a week to pack everything up properly. We’ll have to make special provisions to ensure that your botanical samples will stay fully preserved in the sea air, but if we can figure out some way to get across the straits to Trinidad, we shouldn’t have too long a wait before some British ship appears that can take us home—”

“Eden,” he interrupted gently, but with a tone of finality. “We’re staying.”

She stared at him for a long moment, then shut her eyes tightly and shuddered. “Oh, Father, no.”

“Now, Edie, I realize this may come as a bit of a shock, but we’re making such great strides—sweeting, you like it here! I know you do. Look at the adventures we’ve had! Rising up into the trees to explore the endless canopy! Finding birds and animals completely unknown to science!” He took her hand soothingly. “There, there, dear, don’t look at me that way,” he protested when she opened her eyes again with a crushed expression. “Think of the medicines we will bring back one day, the lives we’ll save! We can’t quit now. We simply can’t.”

She struggled to find her voice. “I thought we lost our funding. Lord Pembrooke—”

“Is a scoundrel!” he averred. “But no matter. That young cad will not impede our progress. True, we shall have to conserve on paper and other supplies, but we’ve learned perfectly well from the Indians how to live off the land. And, after all, we are British, by God! We must and shall press on.”

“Press… on.”

“Oh, yes, my dear! For, you see—” He leaned nearer, all middle-aged, boyish excitement. “I have a plan.”

Oh, no. “A plan?”

He nodded eagerly. “We’re going deeper, Edie. Into the interior.”

Her eyes widened. “You don’t mean… ?”

“Yes,” he whispered, barely able to contain his glee. “Into the Amazon!”

Her jaw dropped.

He mistook her horror for awe. “Think of it, daughter! Our grandest adventure yet—an even more complex habitat than these Orinoco jungles! The Delta has been our mother and our tutor, preparing us, it is true. Ah, but the Amazon, that is our destiny!” He squeezed her hand, trying to pass on his excitement, but she yanked her fingers out of his light hold and shot to her feet.

“You’re mad!”

“Oh, Edie—”

“I knew it! It’s finally happened, just as I always feared! Too much time in the wilderness has finally addled your wits, Papa! Good God, I’m probably next!” She clapped her hand to her forehead, but he merely laughed. “I’m not jesting—and I am not going there! Well, somebody has to put their foot down! Be sensible! There are headhunters there, cannibals, not peaceful natives like the Waroa—and God knows what all else!”

“Nonsense, Connor will protect us. I need you by my side in this, Edie. You know I cannot do without you. As long as we’re together, you will be perfectly safe. By Jove, once we’ve conquered the Amazon, we’ll return to England, I’ll give lectures on our journeys. I’ll write another book! A new narrative to rival von Humboldt’s. We’ll never need to rely on another rich patron again.”

She threw up her hands, exasperated beyond words.

He knitted his gray eyebrows together. “What?”

She had promised Mama on her deathbed that she would take care of him, but how was she to do it when the man had no care for his life?

“Father,” she said sternly, folding her arms across her chest, “you are fifty-five years old. Your hero von Humboldt was in his prime when he made that trip, and it nearly killed him.” This point earned her nothing but a snort and low mutter of offended male vanity, so she tried another tack and sat down again, staring earnestly at him. “Have you forgotten that outside these jungles, Venezuela is at war?”

“Of course I haven’t forgotten,” he grumbled, scowling at the reminder. “I’m not quite senile yet. What of it?”

“To reach the Amazon, we’d have to cross the plains. The llanos are the main battlefields between the forces of the Spanish Crown and the rebel colonists.”

“So? We still have time. There’s a lull in the hostilities now. The rebels up at Angostura have firm control of the interior, while the Spanish keep to their ships on the coast. What’s the problem?”

“The problem?” She nearly laughed, barely knowing where to start. “To begin with, each side thinks you’re a spy for the other! The Spanish suspect you’re in league with the revolutionaries, and the colonists think that you’re working for Spain.”

“If they really thought that, I would have been expelled from the country by now. Dash it, Edie, as I told those blasted bureaucrats from Caracas, science is neutral! I am here for the good of all mankind.”

“Ugh!” She buried her face in her hands for a second, which muffled her retort: “You’re here because you’re hiding from the world.”

“What did you say?” he asked sharply.

With a sigh, she checked her vexation and lowered her hands to her lap. “Nothing, Father.”

“I daresay. You had better mind your tongue, my girl,” he advised, settling back onto his rough wooden stool and giving his waistcoat a dignified tug. “I grant you a long leash, it’s true, but I am still your father.”

“Yes, sir,” she answered, head down. “But…”

“But what, child?”

She held him in a searching stare for a moment. “You promised me last year that we’d be going back to England.”

This was, it seemed, precisely what he did not want to hear.

He immediately scowled and looked away, busying himself with his botanical finds. “England, England, why are you always on about that wretched place? You really think the world out there is all so wonderful? How would you know? I’ve kept you sheltered from it here. If you remembered it better, you’d thank me. It’s not all fine carriages and fancy balls, my girl. That world out there has a dark side, too.” He sent her a glance from over the rim of his spectacles. “Disease, crime, filth, poverty, corruption. There’s none of that here.”

“There’s no one to talk to!” she cried with a sudden threat of tears leaping into her eyes.

With a compassionate wince, Papa plopped down onto his stool again. “Nonsense, there’s me! I am exceedingly good company—and there’s Connor, too. Well, he doesn’t say much, I’ll give you that, but when he does, it is worth listening to. There, there, my pretty child,” he said, patting her hand with a worried look. “I assure you, we are far more intelligent conversation than you will ever find in the drawing rooms of London.”

“Just once, I’d like to know what normal people talk about,” she said barely audibly.

“Normal? ‘Tis but another word for mediocrity!” he scoffed. “Oh, Edie, for heaven’s sake, those London chits you so admire are the silliest, most trivial creatures on God’s earth, not a thought in their heads beyond ribbons and bonnets and shoes. Why the devil should you want to be like them, anyway?”

She stifled a groan. Here comes the lecture.

“Look at the advantages you enjoy here! You dress how you want, say what you want, do as you please. You have no idea how those Society girls are forever dogged by chaperones whose sole purpose in life is to regulate their every movement. You’d go mad if you had to endure it for a day. Look at the freedoms I’ve given you—the education, for heaven’s sake!”

Freedom? she wondered. Then why do I feel like a prisoner?

“I trained you up more like a son than a daughter,” he went on, traveling well-worn paths. She nearly had it by heart. “By Jove, do you think your fine London ladies can recite every known genus in the Aracaceae family? Make a bush tea to cure yellow fever? Set a broken bone? I think not,” he declared proudly. “You, my dearest Eden, are utterly unique!”

“I don’t want to be unique, Papa,” she said wearily. “I just want to be a part of the world again. I want to belong.”

“You do belong, darling. With me!”

She looked away, suddenly feeling trapped. He understood perfectly well; he just pretended not to. “Have I not been a dutiful daughter? Have I not stuck by your side through thick and thin, and looked after you, and aided in your work, and done everything you asked of me?”

“Yes,” he admitted uncomfortably.

“Papa, they say in England that a lady is a spinster by the age of twenty-five. I know you have no head for such things, but just last month, I turned twenty-three.” He started to scoff, but she lowered her head. “Please, don’t laugh at me for once. It’s not just the ballrooms and fancy carriages that interest me. I admit, I like those things—what girl would not?—but that’s only a small part of it, and I should hope that you know me better than that by now.”

“Well, what then, Edie, my dearest?” he asked kindly. “What is eating at you so?”

She looked into his eyes, feeling so hesitantly vulnerable. “Can’t you understand? I… I want to find someone, Papa.”

“Who?” he cried impatiently.

“I don’t know yet who! Someone—someone to love.”

He sat back and looked at her in pure astonishment. “So, that’s what all of this is about!”

She lowered her head again, her cheeks aflame. Having admitted her heart’s loneliness, she now rather wished the earth would open up and swallow her.

Papa slapped his thighs with both hands in sudden enthusiasm. “Well, I daresay the perfect solution has been right under our noses all along!”

When she looked at him hopefully, he jerked a not-so-subtle nod in the direction Connor had gone.

Eden turned scarlet. “Oh, Papa, please don’t start with that again!” she whispered fiercely.

“Well, why not? If all this fuss boils down to your hankering for a husband, you needn’t look far. If it’s time for you to take a man, have Connor.”

“Father!” she cried, scandalized.

“The man worships you, if you haven’t noticed.” A smile of mingled pride and amusement tugged at his lips, as if she were still a four-year-old learning the Greek alphabet. “He has my blessing and then we could all remain together just as we are, continuing on with our work. It is the most convenient situation. Well, why not, what’s wrong with him?”

Clearly, Papa had forgotten the incident in the forest when she was sixteen.

She lowered her head, not bothering to remind him, for she was loath to speak of it herself.

“Connor cares for you, Eden. There’s no arguing that. He’s proved himself a hundred times over. Well, he’s a fine, strapping specimen for you, ain’t he? Fearless, capable, as the male of the species should be. Strong, robust bloodlines. Good instincts. Sharp mind,” Papa said, ticking off his protégé's many virtues as Eden lifted her head again, folded her arms across her chest, and held her father in a quelling stare. “Of course, there’s no vicar in residence, but what’s a bit of paper in a place like this? You could be married by the local shaman—or have a hand-fasting like the Scots. Don’t fuss, girl. There’s no shame in it. It is but Nature’s course, my dear. All creatures take a mate upon reaching reproductive age.”

“Really, Father!” she exclaimed, finally mortified past bearing by his blunt scientist’s speech. “Is there not one atom of romance in your soul? The propagation of the species might very well serve for a frog or a monkey or a-a fish, but I, Father, am an intelligent, beautiful—well, reasonably attractive—young lady. I want roses a-and poetry before I’m past my prime, and boxes of candy, and drives in the park! Is that so much to ask? I want to be wooed by Town Corinthians in coats from Savile Row! I want courtship, Papa, and suitors—even one will do. Maybe I can recite every genus name in the Aracaceae family, but that only goes to show what sort of oddball I’ve become in this place!”

“Well, so’s Connor! A perfect match.”

“Will you please be serious?” She sat down again with a huff. “It won’t do, Father. I mean to rejoin the world someday, but Connor cares for civilization even less than you do. It’s torture for him when we visit your friends in Kingston Society. He won’t talk to anyone. He sits in a corner brooding and doesn’t even try to fit in.”

“Well, Eden, he’s shy.”

“I know. And I feel sorry for him—but I don’t want to marry someone just because I feel sorry for them,” she whispered so Connor, with his sharp senses, would not hear and be hurt.

“Well, suit yourself,” Papa concluded with a sigh. “But I’m afraid there is nothing to be done for it, in any case. We cannot afford passage now that our grant’s been cut. The voyage is too expensive.”

“Couldn’t you buy it on credit?”

“Put myself in debt for something I don’t even want? You would have me as profligate as Lord Pembrooke!”

“We can pay it back once you’re settled in your post at the college.”

“No! I am not taking the post, Eden. Ever.” He stood abruptly, turned away, and avoided her gaze as she stared at him in shock. “I’ve given the matter a great deal of thought,” he said brusquely. “I probably should have told you sooner, but I shall not be able to fulfill the promise that you wrenched out of me last year. We’re not going back to England, and as for London Town, I’d sooner visit Hell.”

“What?” she breathed, paling.

“I’m sorry to break my oath to you, daughter, but you’re all I have left, and I’ll be damned before I’ll ever expose you again to that vile, stinking cesspool of a city that killed your mother,” he finished with a bitter vehemence that stunned her almost as much as his shocking revelation.

Dr. Farraday threw down his pen with an air of weariness, looking slightly haggard in the lantern’s glow.

Her mind reeling with disbelief, Eden told herself he didn’t really mean it. He was just so shattered, still, from Mama’s death. Tears filled her eyes for the pain that still haunted him and had set both their lives on this strange course. She rose and moved closer, laying her head on his shoulder. “Papa,” she whispered, “it wasn’t your fault you couldn’t save her.”

“I was her husband and her doctor, Edie. Who else am I to blame? God?” He sounded calmer now. Defeated. He put his hand atop hers on his shoulder, but did not look at her. “There, there, child. I shall be fine in a moment.”

No, you won’t. It had already been twelve years. She hugged him for a long moment around his trim middle with an ache in her heart. “Papa, we can’t stay out here forever.”

He said nothing.

“I know you’re only trying to protect me, but do you really think Mama would have wanted this—for either of us?”

“Your mother, lest you forget, is the reason we are here.” He took a deep breath to steady himself. “Every cure we find exists in honor of her memory—”

“Stop punishing yourself,” she whispered, hugging him again about his shoulders. “She wouldn’t have wanted you to cut yourself off from the world this way.” She didn’t bother mentioning that he was cutting her off from the world, too. She leaned her head against the side of his, feeling so helpless to heal his hurt. “I know you seek to honor her with your work, Papa, but if you ask me, what she really would’ve wanted… was grandchildren.”

She shouldn’t have said it, she realized a second too late. Papa stiffened, shook his head, and then simply closed down as emotion threatened to overwhelm his logical brain.

He withdrew before her eyes, turned his back on her, and peered into his microscope, escaping the pain and dreadful loss inside the orderly circumference of that tiny world, just as he had for years.

“The expedition to the Amazon goes forward,” he said in a monotone. “I am sorry you are unhappy, but we must all make sacrifices, and the desires of one individual are of no consequence beside the greater good. You will accompany me just as you always have; I am your father and that is my answer. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

His bristling posture made it clear she was dismissed.

Eden studied his tense profile, at a loss. She did not know what else to say, what to do. There was no reasoning with him when he fell into this black and distant mood. Any significant talk of her mother was always the catalyst for his stony withdrawal, most of all the future together that he and his wife would never have.

Eden blinked back tears and turned around without another word, walking back numbly to the palafito.

Connor looked at her in silence when she came in. He was leaning against the post from which he had removed the dead viper. Eden glanced in his direction, but could not meet his probing stare, wondering if he’d overheard Papa’s mortifying suggestion that they mate.

The Australian folded his brawny arms across his chest, watching her with a hunter’s patient, somber gaze.

Shaking her head, she went past him. “He’s mad. He’s going to kill himself and both of us in his quest to save mankind. The Amazon!”

But of course Connor was already aware of her father’s plans. For all she knew, it might have been his idea. “Whatever your father might have said, you know he’d never mean to hurt you.”

“I know.” Feeling trapped, Eden went to the railing and stood for a long moment gazing at the night-black river.

She heard Connor’s heavy footfalls approaching behind her. He came and leaned beside her at the railing. From the corner of her eye, she saw him staring at her. “It’s going to be all right, Eden. I’m not going to let anything happen to the two of you.”

“I want to go home.”

“This is your home.”

“No, Connor, it’s not. You belong here—I don’t!” she exclaimed angrily, turning to him.

His broad, strong face darkened. Did he understand at last what she was trying to tell him? He lowered his gaze and turned away in stony anger, swiftly stalking off to leave her alone again. Eden closed her eyes for a second and let out a measured exhalation. When she flicked them open again, her desperate gaze tracked the Orinoco’s inky course that led for many miles down to the sea. The great and deadly river. It was the only way into these impenetrable jungles. And the only way out.