"Had your sister known you were on it, I'm sure you would've been off it much sooner."

  "How could she know, being off in the Caribbean as she was with her admiral husband? I'm only glad that he's back here in England on leave. I was ever so fortunate to escape that damned hulk and find none other than our own little Kestrel sitting pretty-as-you-please in Portsmouth Harbor right next to his flagship!"

  "This little schooner holds fond memories for you."

  "Aye, she sure does, Orla." He gazed blissfully up at the taut mainsail which caught the wind above his head. "Remember when we were all tiny, and my father used to take us out on her, teaching us how to sail? I used to sit right there, on that very gun, when it was Maeve's turn at the tiller."

  "How could I forget?"

  He ran a hand affectionately along the gunwale. "Five and thirty years, is this old lady, yet she's still as sound as a spring filly, and just as frisky, God love her. You'd think she's bloody immortal!"

  "Sir Graham made sure she enjoyed every dockyard benefit that his own ships did," Orla explained. "New sails, new rigging, carpentry work, a fresh coat of paint — whatever she needed, the admiral saw that she got it."

  "Yes, but you can't overlook Grandpa Ephraim's influence on her, either. She was his masterpiece — and no one could build a ship the way he could."

  "No one," Orla agreed, a bit sadly.

  Waves broke and hissed along Kestrel's bow and hull.

  "Poor Grandpa is probably cackling with glee in his grave, knowing his life's masterpiece is pitted once again against the British . . ."

  They were both silent, only the sounds of wind and sea intruding upon their thoughts as they remembered old Ephraim Merrick. Blustery, eccentric, and cantankerous 'til the end, he had made light of the illness that steadily had been eating away at his insides, until one day he had gone missing — and so had the tiny sailboat he'd kept moored in the river's mouth. Maybe he hadn't known about the nor'easter that had howled in over the coast that night; in all likelihood, he had. Five days later, a few pieces of his little boat had washed up on a deserted Plum Island beach, and no one had ever seen the old man again.

  Orla looked down, her dark hair blowing about her face.

  Connor cleared his throat.

  "Well!" he finally said, mustering a note of cheer. "Are you ready for that rescue, then?"

  "Aye," she replied, her smile wan. "Child's play, Con. At midnight, I take it?"

  "Midnight. Though what we're supposed to do with ourselves in the interim, the devil only knows."

  "Are you bored?" she teased, with a little smile.

  "That, my dear Orla, is an understatement. A salmon trapped in a bucket couldn't be more bored."

  "I suppose that once the admiral learns who stole his wife's ship, you'll have excitement enough to keep you busy."

  "His wife's ship, you say! Never forget, Orla, that Maeve stole her from our father, and while the rest of us all love our sister, she was never granted exclusive rights to Kestrel. She had her turn with her; now it's mine. Besides, my father designed Kestrel as a warship, not a training vessel for Maeve's children." He slanted her an inquisitive look, and his teasing smile made her heart jump. "Surely, you're not having second doubts about leaving Maeve and coming along with me, are you?"

  "Be serious, Connor." She laughed and kicked idly at a deck seam, hoping he hadn't seen the desire in her eyes. "While I'm quite happy that your sister and Admiral Falconer have managed to sustain their newly wedded bliss, I must admit that my own life has not seen this much excitement since he forced us to give up piracy. I have not felt this — this alive, in years."

  "Doubtless, neither has our lovely Kestrel." Connor straightened up. "Well, I'm off," he said and, still swinging his coffee cup, headed below. "Holler if you need me."

  Orla watched his head disappear beneath the coaming and her smile faded, as weighty as her heart. Maybe if he hadn't known her for so long, things would be different. Maybe if she hadn't had such a notorious past, he might show some interest in her. Maybe if those tiny wrinkles weren't starting to frame her eyes, and those scattered strands of gray to thread her hair, he might find her lovely. But she was in her third decade now, and well past her first blush, and Orla knew in her heart of hearts that Connor Merrick was not apt to pay her any more notice than would any other decent, God-fearing man.

  A despairing thought, when she considered that all she really wanted was a husband who loved her, fine children, and a home of her own.

  The same things that Maeve had.

  The same things that all of the ex-pirates of Kestrel's crew now had.

  There'd been that brief thing with Maeve's English cousin Captain Colin Lord, but the shipwreck had changed all that, and there had been no one since. And so, for the past eight years, Orla had made her home with the Falconers, remaining by her friend's side as one year led into another. Maybe she'd stayed because many had predicted that the fiery pirate queen wouldn't last a year with Sir Graham, and Orla had wanted to make sure that everything worked out all right between them. But Maeve had made a commendable, if not formidable, admiral's wife, obviously channeling her piratical ways to the bedroom — a fact evidenced by the admiral's excitable and precocious brood of three. The years had passed, but while Maeve had taken well to settling down, life had become meaningless and dull for Orla. She had begun to yearn for the days when she and Kestrel's crew of lady pirates had ruled the Caribbean. She had begun to ache inside whenever she saw a young couple in love, holding hands and gazing deeply into each other's eyes, and to ache even more if they had a child tagging along with them.

  Life had to contain more than it did.

  She began to pray, something she hadn't done in a long, long, time, for something.

  Anything.

  And then Sir Graham had announced he had business in London, and that it was time to leave the West Indies and go home for a while. The ocean crossing had been dull, as had the weather. The days had stretched into tedious regularity, and when the great flagship, accompanied by Maeve's schooner, Kestrel, had finally put into Portsmouth, Orla had decided that she simply could not bear to be dragged from one place to the next, meeting Falconer relatives who meant nothing to her and putting on a smile when she was miserable inside. She would stay aboard Kestrel while the family was away. Portsmouth had to be more interesting.

  And it was.

  She had been quietly pacing the darkened deck the night the four escapees from the prison hulk Surrey had come up over the side like boarding pirates. Her instincts were as sharp as they'd ever been, and as they'd burst onto the deck, they'd found themselves staring into the mouth of her blunderbuss. Even now she smiled in amazement. Who could've known that, of all people, the man at the other end of her gun would be her old childhood friend Connor Merrick?

  Oh, her prayers had been answered all right. She'd wanted excitement, and mother of God, she was going to get it.

  Orla looked out to sea, sighing. Maeve was going to be furious at finding her ship gone. Her husband, the admiral, would no doubt put to sea immediately in hopes of retrieving the vessel before his wife saw to it herself.

  And Connor Merrick, hot-blooded and passionate, would have no intention of giving that vessel back.

  Orla straightened up and headed for the hatch, the galley, and her own breakfast. Wise move or not, one thing was certain: life with the Merricks would never be boring.

  ~~~~

  Lady Gwyneth Evans Simms had no shortage of ideas on just how to make Lord Morninghall's life hell, and she wasted no time at all in putting those ideas into action.

  The day after her confrontation with that prince of darkness, she rose at dawn and, with Mattie slumbering at her feet and the sunlight streaming in over her writing desk, went to work. She spent the morning composing a letter to her brother-in-law, the new Lord Simms, in the Transport Office, skillfully playing upon his own inflated sense of importance in order to further her desires: a second, more comprehensive visit to the prison ship Surrey. By noon she'd written to one of William's friends in Parliament, sent a note off to another in the Admiralty, and penned a third to Maeve, Lady Falconer, whom she had met and befriended two years before when Maeve's husband, Sir Graham, had come to London on official business. Hopefully the American woman's seafaring past — and high-ranking admiral of a husband — would be of help to Gwyneth in her efforts. By teatime she was describing the conditions she'd glimpsed aboard the hulk to a circle of genteel and horrified acquaintances who promptly declared themselves the Ladies' Committee on Prisoner Welfare, and by seven o'clock she was rewarding herself for her hard work with a well-deserved immersion in her favorite hobby, gardening, wishing that each head she chopped from the fading daffodils was Lord Morninghall's own.

  I'll show that scoundrel I mean business, she vowed, hurling the wilted blossoms into a bucket. By tomorrow, all hell was going to break loose.

  So involved was she in her thoughts, her work, that she never realized twilight had fallen, and Rhiannon, standing in the doorway holding a book, had to call her twice.

  Gwyneth's head jerked up and she looked around, rubbing the small of her back. Dear lord, it had certainly grown late; the blackbirds were calling, as if to usher in the coming night, and the sky was fading fast from mauve to indigo. She looked at her sister, silhouetted in the doorway, and smiled guiltily. "Forgive me, Rhia. I didn't hear you."

  "Thinking of Lord Lucifer again, sis?"

  She grinned. "I am plotting his destruction."

  "I still want to know what it felt like when he kissed you. Do you really see fireworks when a devastatingly gorgeous man ravishes you?"

  "I knew I should have kept that detail of our encounter to myself! Besides, I told you, silly, he did not ravish me."

  "Well, what was his kiss like?"

  "Rhia . . ."

  Clutching the book, her sister folded her arms across her bosom and eyed her with high humor. A blackbird skimmed over Gwyneth's head and landed in a clipped conifer, causing the fringed branches to bounce and swing. How she loved their musical warbles, their bright-eyed stare —

  "Well?" Rhiannon repeated, her eyes mischievous.

  "You are ever the romantic, Rhiannon. Stop reading those frivolous novels and dreaming about knights in shining armor, would you?"

  "It is healthy to dream, Gwyn. You should try it yourself some time."

  "I am too busy to dream, and if I did, it would not be about knights in shining armor. And especially not Lord Morninghall."

  "Appearances can be deceiving, Gwyn. He may not be all bad."

  "For heaven's sake, Rhiannon, he's in charge of a prison hulk. You are most welcome to accompany me on the morrow, to see for yourself what hideous places that ship and others like her, are. A disgrace to Britain, if you ask me, a living hell for those whose only crime was to be caught fighting on the opposite side."

  As Gwyneth returned her attention to her daffodils, Rhiannon tapped a finger against the book's spine and watched her older sister shrewdly. Gwyneth did her best to present a militaristic and severe demeanor to the rest of the world, but she had never been able to fool Rhiannon. Be strong, Gwyn often advised; even if you don't feel strong, at least deceive the world into believing that you are, and it will be yours on a platter.

  Well, Gwyneth had sure learned her lessons well.

  If nothing else, their impoverished upbringing — not to mention old Lord Simms' tutelage — had made sure of it.

  Gwyneth was back to kneeling in the dirt, spade in hand, bucket at her elbow. "Another five minutes," she said, fussing with her daffodils. "Please, Rhia, don't wait for me, your tea will get cold."

  But Rhiannon stood unmoving, watching her sister quietly, her eyes thoughtful, her mind remembering . . . Remembering Gwyneth, the oldest of the three, taking a job in the local public house all those years ago after Mama and Papa died, so that Rhia and little Morganna would have food in their bellies. Gwyneth, never complaining about the slave-like conditions and never shying from the hard work. Gwyneth, always enduring the patrons' endless groping and lewd suggestions with a brave face, but retreating to her tiny room after closing time to suffer in silence. Even now, Rhiannon's heart filled with guilt as she thought of Gwyneth, dividing the food on her plate between her sisters as she blithely pled a sour stomach. They had taken her complaints at face value and wolfed the food, but how many nights had poor Gwyneth gone to bed without any supper so that her little sisters would not go hungry? Swallowing a sudden lump in her throat, Rhiannon watched the weeds thumping into the wooden bucket, the movements of Gwyn's delicate shoulders. No wonder Gwyneth felt the sufferings of the poor and the unfortunate so keenly. Their own hard beginnings were not so easily forgotten.

  And then Lord Simms had come into their lives.

  The elderly but kind-hearted widower had been en route to visit a friend in Cardiff when he and his small entourage had stopped at the public house for the midday meal. It had been only natural that he should notice the lovely, fair-haired Gwyneth, only natural that he, as most males who'd set foot in the tavern, would become immediately fascinated with such a model of sophistication and beauty in the midst of such country commonness. The earl had remained in the area, and then the offers of marriage had come — repeatedly — until the day the pub burned down after a chimney fire, and Gwyneth, as head of the family, had had no recourse but to accept his hand in order to keep her sisters fed and clothed.

  Rhiannon alone knew the sacrifice that Gwyneth had made.

  Rhiannon alone knew the tears that Gwyneth had cried behind her closed door the night she had finally decided to marry the old man.

  And she alone knew that old Lord Simms had never laid a finger on his wife, who was still as pure as she was the day she'd married him.

  Now Rhiannon watched as her sister bent down to her flowers once more, her simple frock pooling in the dirt around her knees. Even with her hands stained with earth, her hair falling down about her neck, Gwyneth still managed to appear regal. Lord Simms might not have made a woman out of her, but he had managed to turn a clever country girl into a lady. And Gwyneth, who had loved the old man in her own way, had done him proud.

  The last blackbird called out a farewell, and the dimming garden was quiet save for the rhythmic scraping of Gwyneth's spade. Leaving her sister to her flowers, Rhiannon quietly went back inside.

  Chapter 5

  Deep in another part of the prison hulk Surrey, one that did not receive the morning sunlight, fresh breezes off the harbor, or even the cry of gulls, two people sat together in the foul and wretched gloom.

  Nathan Ashton and his little brother Toby were Americans whose only mistake had been to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. As a lieutenant and midshipman, respectively, aboard Captain Connor Merrick's Newburyport, Massachusetts-built, forty-four-gun frigate Merrimack, the two had enjoyed a salty, swashbuckling adventure at sea until finally falling prey to the British. Outmanned and outgunned, Merrimack had fought bravely, sinking before the British could take her into their own navy, but her people had not fared so well. Given the choice of joining the Royal Navy or being incarcerated in one of the prison hulks, what remained of the American crew had patriotically chosen the latter.

  Patriotic, they had been. And, naive.

  Now, three months later, their patriotism was stronger than ever, but naivete had died the day they'd set foot on the prison hulk.

  And a hellish three months it had been, too, thirty-year-old Nathan thought, as he sat in near darkness and, by the light of a cotton wick set in an oyster shell and propped in fat saved from their rationed meat, worked steadily on the hole he was boring in the ship's hull. It was impossible to hear the desperate grinding of his tiny knife, due to the loud, incessant racket made by the prisoners on the deck above as they scraped and rubbed it with sand, but then, he had planned it that way. Nine inches deep the hole was, but Nathan had just managed to saw through to the other side, and now a shaft of daylight rewarded him for his efforts.

  He put his nose to the coin-size airhole and then motioned for his little brother to do the same.

  Frail and suffering badly from malnutrition and cold, Toby scrambled to the hole, put his face against it, and sucked in huge gulps of the chilly air. His eyes closed and tears began to course down his freckled face, pooling in the lower corners of his cracked spectacles and tracing paths through the grime on his hollow cheeks.

  "Oh, Nathan, I've not felt anything this sweet since before the Merrimack went down." He pulled back, his brown eyes full of emotion in his gaunt and sickly face.

  Nathan swallowed hard. The youngest of the Ashton brothers and born very late in their mother's childbearing years, little Toby had never been strong and hearty like the rest of them. He had wanted to become a lawyer or physician, and had signed on to their cousin Connor's ship only because he was a New Englander and their father had been a patriot in the first war, and he had considered sea service to be his prescribed duty. But seafaring life had taken its toll on the thirteen-year-old, and life aboard this wretched prison ship was wasting him away to nothing.

  Nathan reached out and put his hand on Toby's bony shoulder. "Don't you worry none, little brother. We'll get out of here soon enough and back home."

  "I'm cold, Nathan."

  "I know. I am, too."

  "And hungry."

  Pressing his face against the hole and digging sawdust out of the edges, Nathan jerked his elbow at the tin plate behind them. "Then eat, Toby. I know it ain't fit for a dog, but they ain't going to feed us anything better, and if you don't eat, you're gonna come down sick."