The Bastard’s Passionate Prize
A Stanhope Challenge Story

By Cerise DeLand

Resplendence Publishing, LLC
http://www.resplendencepublishing.com

Resplendence Publishing, LLC
2665 S Atlantic Avenue, #349
Daytona Beach, FL 32118

The Bastard’s Passionate Prize
Copyright © 2011, Cerise DeLand
Edited by Jennifer Erwine and Roni Petroelje
Cover art by Les Byerley, www.les3photo8.com

Electronic format ISBN: 978-1-60735-270-9

Warning: All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

Electronic release: March 2011

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places or occurrences, is purely coincidental.

For Michele and Jennifer,
Terrific editors!

Chapter One

October 1811, London, England

Mark strode toward the flower girl’s stand in front of the seaside church in Dover, and the aroma of her wares hit him in the guts. Again.

Today, he had vowed he would not buy any posies from the child. The memories they brought of Sirena Maxwell were too roiling. Besides, his crewmen joked that he was getting soft, needing the frilly smell of flowers to rock him to sleep. Flowers. Ha! As if that’s all I need to recall her laugh, her sigh, the tilt of her nose and the fullness of her lips.

Cursing that the fragrance of a woman forbidden to him by outworn social codes did not leave his reverie, he smiled down at the charming little blonde-haired girl. She held two blooms toward him, but he refused to take them, pressing two pence into her hand anyway. Then he made his way toward the dock. The sight of his ship inspired him as he rounded the corner. His Baltimore clipper, his Water Witch, newly restored to him by his overly generous English father, rode high in the water. He swelled with pride at the contrast of the intricate chalk white rigging and the coal dark hull against the crisp azure sky.

But the Witch does not compare to your flesh and blood siren, Stanhope. Nor can it. The memory of the loveliest woman he’d ever known filled him with regret. Regret for what English society forbade him. Her. As wife. Regret for what he dare not ask her to give up. Her home. Her status as a duke’s daughter. Her friends and society. For he had been told—yes, warned, by his father, the earl of Stanhope, to stay far away from the luscious Lady Maxwell.

“She will soon be engaged formally, Mark,” his father had told him. “Do not pursue a relationship that will bring you only pain. Sirena is meant for another.” An Englishman. A nobleman. Rich and refined. A fop with more nerve than brains. A man who boasted when cloistered with men of his exploits with women. A braggart who had seen Mark’s interest in Sirena, had challenged him to a duel, but did not show on that fated morning.

No wonder Sirena did not care for Colin de Ros. How could the raven-haired beauty with such charm and vivacity find joy in the arms of a blow-hard and nitwit?

Mark paused at the foot of the ramp to the Water Witch’s deck. He turned to stare back at the flower girl and her sad, wilted little red roses. But how could Sirena possibly care for an American? A man who makes his way in the world—and whose freedom has been purchased by his father? The father whom he had never known. The father who had left his mother and made him a bastard.

Mark raked his hair. What good does this do, to go over what you lost? To remind yourself of all you cannot claim. Including the one woman, the only woman you have ever cared for? Once you are at sea, Stanhope, you will forget Sirena. Roses do not grow on the Atlantic!

He hurried up the gangplank. “Simpson?” he called to his steward. “What word on the dried beef supplies?”

The roly-poly man who had served with Mark since he’d purchased the Witch two years ago came bounding down the steps from the forward deck to peer up at him. “This afternoon, Captain.”

“And the barrel of whiskey?” He asked in hushed tone about the item he always carried for each man to have a tot if a storm came and tossed them all about.

“A few minutes ago. Tucked away, sir. Nice and tight.”

“Tonight’s tide then, we leave. Spread the word.”

“Three of the men are still not up to their old selves, sir.” Mark’s men, like he, had been impressed into British Navy service months ago. Boarded illegally on the high seas, his Water Witch had been towed to Portsmouth, impounded. His men had at first been forced to man British ships. But once he had arrived in an English jail, Mark had petitioned the man whom he had once vowed never to seek, never to meet. The man who had left his mother, pregnant and alone. The man who was his father in name only. The eighth earl of Stanhope. A man of great wealth, influence and many wives. A man with little regard for the numerous children he sired by numerous women, most of whom, it seems, he’d made his wife. Unlike his own mother.

“Captain?” his steward brought him back to the issue at hand. “What shall I tell the crew master?”

Mark took pity on his men weakened by months at sea with the merciless British and weeks more in filthy English jails. “Cut their shifts by half again. When they are better nourished by Cook’s soups, they can repay the men who doubled up.”

“Aye, sir. You must know before you go below, Captain, that your father is here.”

Mark stilled. John Stanhope had gone to his Cotswold estate the day Mark had left London for Dover. That the ailing earl should appear here now astonished him. Not only had they parted at his half-brother’s house in London, but they had parted knowing the older Stanhope might not survive the winter. Was his father’s condition worse? If so, how could he summon the stamina to come here? “I’ll receive him, Simpson. Bring us a pitcher from that whiskey barrel, will you?”

“Aye, Captain, I will.”

Hurrying below, Mark thrust open the door to his captain’s cabin and gazed upon the man whom he knew he resembled so accurately, only the slight stoop and the snow-white hair of the elder differentiating the two.

“Hello, sir,” Mark greeted John Stanhope with more cheer than he had ever shown his father. He was going home to the sea, to America, his own country, and this man had done him the service to free him to do so. Fatherly love or guilt might have driven the earl of Stanhope, but Mark had decided that last night in London to let bygones be bygones, and he’d vowed to try to honor the resolution more each passing day. “What a surprise you have come. I truly thought we had parted well in London two weeks ago.”

“We had, Mark,” his father acknowledged as he struggled to his feet. Gout afflicted the older man and according to Mark’s oldest half-brother, Jack, dropsy too. “I came because I had to wish you farewell alone.”

“That is kind of you, sir.” Still, this visit is odd.

“The ship is restored to its standard before the Navy captured her?”

“It is, sir. Thanks to your generosity.” Mark indicated the chair. “Please do sit. I have my steward bringing us a bit of refreshment.”

“Ha!” the old earl barked. “I do not know if my poor stomach can tolerate spirits, but I welcome it.”

“If you wish something other? Sarsaparilla, perhaps? Or lemon water?”

“Whiskey, my boy, will be fine.” The man’s dark blue gaze examined Mark’s with severity. “I came to have my full say to you.”

“Sir, you need say nothing more to me. Your actions speak in eloquent ways.”

“Thank you.” The elder man took a handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped his mouth. “But I have more to say now that we know each other better. I waited until you were restored in health and to your three brothers, your sister and their families. So too, I delayed until your ship and men were under your feet to reveal my true thoughts about you, your mother and your birth.”

“Sir, please. We need not speak of this.” And in fact, I wish we would not open a wound so recently beginning to heal.

“I must. I do not wish you to go without it. In fact, I planned this as I must impress upon you how deeply I regret my actions.” His father put up a hand to ward off any more objections. “Permit me, son, to say these things. I am only learning how to be a man of emotions here in my dotage. I wish to tell you more. Much more than we had time for in London.”

Mark nodded. “So be it. Do, go on.”

The old man sucked in air and rallied to his purpose. “First, you must know that I was a hellion as a young man. Position and money do that to a man here. I took advantage of both in business and pleasure. I won at cards, at dice and with women. Good for me, not terribly wonderful for the ladies of my acquaintance, but I loved many women and far too often. But those I loved, I loved well. Your mother included.”

Mark shifted at the mention of the woman he valued above all others. She had endured much sorrow and pain to rear him, educate him and place him as apprentice to a China clipper merchant out of Baltimore Harbor.

“She was a charming lass, a merchant’s daughter whom I met on a voyage to Baltimore. Suffice it to say, I loved her well, but indeed I treated her poorly, leaving without much thought to consequences. When I did return to Baltimore the year after she and I were together, I could not find her. The house where she lived with your grandparents was empty, and no one would tell me where they had gone. I suspected she was with child and I wanted to make amends, make things right. I had money. But your American war for independence from us was newly won, and no one in Baltimore could bear to look at an Englishman, much less help one.”

A rap came at the door and Mark called out to have Simpson enter. When the steward laid the flagon and glasses before them and left, Mark poured a draft for both. “Sir, thank you for that explanation. It goes far to helping me see the past in a different light.”

“I wish us to be more than friends, Mark. I will work to make that so.”

“You have already, sir.”

“To purchase your freedom from jail?”

“My men and my ship, too. No small price.”

“Small recompense, I say, my boy, for deserting you.”

“That was long ago, sir. For what you have done for me today, I am extremely grateful.”

“You are very welcome,” John said with satisfaction and a raised glass. “To your health, my boy. And your welfare.”

The two men drank.

Avoiding Mark’s gaze, the elder played with the hem of his frock coat for a moment, his expression tense . “I cannot leave before I share some final news with you. Sad news. Very sad.”

Mark, fearing to hear that his father foresaw his own demise soon, balked. “Sir, I do hope that you will take good care of yourself and—”

“This is not about me, my boy, but Sirena Maxwell.”

Mark froze. “What about her?”

“I know you cared for her. This is difficult for me to say.”

“I enjoyed talking with her when she came for dinners and readings at Adam’s and Felice’s. After I met her at their ball, I could not stop—” wanting her. “What has happened? If de Ros has hurt her--”

“No. Not that. Much different. You see, a week ago, she packed a reticule and left a note to say she was leaving home.”

“What?” Mark heard his own voice crack with shock. “Where did she go?”

“We do not know where she headed. But we do know why. She refused to marry de Ros.”

“Thank God.” She should be mine. In my arms, my bed, bearing my name. “He’s a prig. An idiot. Not worthy to kiss her slippers.”

“Yes.” John examined Mark’s expression as though he were carefully dissecting a butterfly. “I agree. So does most of Society. Your siblings included.”

At his father’s pregnant pause, Mark scowled. “What else are you telling me?”

The old man stared at Mark with sad eves. “No one can find her. Or could. Until….”

Mark laid a hand on his father’s arm. “Until what?”

“Two days ago, a young woman fitting her description was discovered floating along the Thames near Saint Katherine’s Wharf. She was young, delicately boned with dark brown hair. She had drowned.”

“No!” Mark rose to his feet, his mind a whirl of horror. “This is a mistake. That woman is someone else.”

John gazed up at him through distressed eyes. “She was in the river for days, they say, and yet she still bears a resemblance to Sirena. The height. The build. A doctor for the Bow Street Runners dissected the body and he found water in her lungs. She either fell into the river accidentally or she took her own life.”

“No, Father! That is not possible! Sirena would never—”

“Mark, please. The Duke recognized her coat and dress as Sirena’s.”

Mark stumbled backward, sinking to his chair. His mind awhirl of loss and outrage. “I cannot believe she would do such a thing! She was so full of life and— Are you certain it was Sirena?”

John had tears in his rheumy eyes. “She could not bear to marry de Ros. Everyone knew it. Just to look at her conversing with you these past few weeks told the tale. De Ros, of course, challenged you to pistols because he saw how she cared for you.”

“The man’s an idiot! A bully and a coward.” Mark put his head in his hand, incredulous still at the news Sirena was dead. “You must press Bow Street to make certain de Ros is innocent.”

“Of course!”

“There is no possibility that de Ros assaulted her?” Mark questioned his father, a fog of grief falling over him, darkening the room and the sky and his world. Sirena had seemed so alive, so competent, and confident. A survivor. How could she have even considered running away and he not know? Not recognize any telltale signs? There had to be another explanation. “I saw him try to manhandle her more than once. “De Ros is not suspected of hurting her. For the past week, De Ros was at his estate in Norfolk.”

“He might have hired a ruffian. He is as unprincipled as they come. You know it’s possible.”

John nodded. “Possible, but with de Ros, do you really think it probable? De Ros is too simple-minded to engineer a murder of his betrothed and get away with it. Besides, he wanted the enter to her father’s social circle and her money. He has not the nerve to kill her.”

Mark swallowed back tears at her loss. “She did care for me.”

“No one else could miss it, Mark. Would that you came to us under different circumstances. I can claim you, dear man, but I cannot undo the fact that I introduced you to Society as my bastard. Most accepted you as you were, without censure, thank God. And if I could have helped you woo her and win her, I would have. But that was beyond me. The ton would not permit such a breach. I mourn that deeply. Another loss I cannot repay, I despair to say.” He stood, swaying on his feet. “I can only affirm once more I did remove what barriers I could.”

“You did wonders, Father.” Mark jumped up to catch his father’s arm, attempting to comfort the man who had tried to make amends for past mistakes before his demise.

“I leave with the hope you will return to us at any time for any reason. If only to come enjoy our company.” John smiled with a quivering chin.

Mark knew it was their last moment to erase the past from both their hearts and he opened his arms to embrace his father. “Come, I will help you out. Simpson will hail a carriage for you back to London.”

* * * *

“Stop that pounding!” Mark’s head burst with the banging noise at his cabin door. He pushed up on one arm to his mattress, but the taste of the whiskey he’d downed for hours soured his stomach and tilted his view of the world. “What?” he barked. “What do you want?”

“Captain, open the door!”

“Told you to leave me alone!” Mark objected and put one leg to the cold wooden planks. The room reeled. Covering his eyes, he slumped back to the ticking. “Whoa.”

“Captain!”

“All right, God’s sakes, stop yelling.” Groping for the beams above his head and catching himself with the pitch of the ship, he stumbled toward the door. “Are we at sea?”

“Aye, aye, sir. Two nights ago.” His man murmured a hushed warning to someone else, then to him said, “You ordered it. Please, sir, open the door.”

“Okay, okay. Here I am,” he grumbled and undid the latch, then swung the heavy door wide. He frowned at the sight before him. Simpson had a grip on the bound hands of a young, thin sailor. “What do you want, Simpson? Tol’ you not to disshturb me. Who’s ’is?”

Simpson pushed his way past Mark, hauled the sailor in behind him and shut the cabin door. “Sir, I found this stowaway in the forward storage.”

Mark ran one hand over his mouth, another back through his hair. “Schtowaway, huh? Brave. Stupid. How’d you get here, boy? Hmm?”

“Tell him.” Simpson scowled down at the creature who cast his gaze to the floor. “Go on. I don’t have all day.”

Even through his drunken haze, Mark noticed the shrug of the youth’s slight shoulders. Rascals trying to steal aboard a ship were not novel. Especially since the American Revolution, many Englishmen wanted a new life in a new land and hid away on ships bound for the New World. But today, tonight—whatever the hell it was—Mark had no time for such aspirations. No energy. He felt drained, as if someone had emptied him of any desire to face another hour. As if someone had set a thousand-pound weight atop his chest, Sirena’s death had robbed him of the need to even breathe. How could he care for someone else’s trials and tribulations when hers had ended so needlessly, so quickly?

Reaching out, he caught the lad’s chin. “Look at me!”

Up into his own gaze, two golden eyes with shards of green stared back at him.

He blinked.

Cruel to think of her here now.

He bent toward the youth. His own eyes narrowed and examined the visage before him. The nose was straight, elegant. The lips full and pink. The skin pale and smooth. The hair? He ripped off the long cap of white cotton and watched rich sable curls spill out like a dark waterfall. No. He squeezed his eyes shut and shot them open again. Impossible. He would never touch another drop of Scots whiskey as long as he lived. “Simpson?”

“Aye, Captain?”

Mark caught up a handful of the waving hair and crushed it in his fingers. “You knew this about our guest?”

“I did, sir. One look tells the tale. The hair, the eyes, the…other parts. That’s why we’re here. I cannot leave her in the storage to starve and I cannot put her below to bunk with the crew. They’d never be right in the head for the rest of the journey.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Mark said with an articulation that surprised him, given his wooly brain. Never taking his gaze from the woman who still seemed like a mirage to him, he flicked his hand toward his steward. “Get us….a bowl of…what was for dinner tonight, Simpson?”

“Mutton stew, sir.”

Mark’s stomach flipped at the ugly suggestion of the greasy concoction. “Ugh. Yes, that. Water. Grog.”

“Now, sir?”

“Now, Simpson.” He reached toward his guest and flicked the shirt collar of the flowing crude cotton garment she wore. Beneath he caught a glimpse of a delicate collarbone, and he winced. “Soap. Towels. A pot or two of hot water from the kitchen. Set up the hip bath here.”

“Right you are, sir.” The man turned on his heel, but not before giving the creature he’d found a look that could boil water all by itself.

“And Simpson?” Mark crossed his arms, examining his new guest with an interest in her figure. A head shorter than he, more finely boned, with slender fingers and a curving derriere in the loose seamans’ trousers, she was more starkly revealed to him than in the silks and damasks she’d worn in London. In her current state, her femininity shining through the rough cotton, she could never survive among a crew of men. Not even his well-disciplined sailors would endure the temptation of her exquisite face and form for three weeks’ journey to Baltimore. “You told no one?”

“No, sir.”

“No one knows we have a woman aboard.” Mark strolled around his guest, walking carefully lest he fall down and still wondering if he was hallucinating at the perfection of this gorgeous curving body. “Well done, Simpson.”

His steward muttered a string of curses, then slammed the door shut.

Mark winced.

His guest jumped.

Mark ambled to the edge of his bunk, sat and stared at her. “You astonish me.”

She lifted her nose in the air. “I hoped no one would find me.”

His anger vied with his concern for her. “Did you think you could survive for three weeks in my hold without food or water?”

“I thought I could eat what was there. I had no idea how small a clipper ship was.” She clutched her arms, suppressing shivers running up and down her body. “I miscalculated much. Including how cold the North Atlantic could be in November.”

Handing her a wool blanket from his bunk, he fought the urge to wrap her in it. Instead, he tried to think logically, but a few flagons of scotch worked against his better intentions. “You’re foolish.”

Hurt darkened her gaze, but she graced him with an imperious look. “I had no other choices. A father who would not listen. A fiancé who was intolerable. No money to buy passage.”

“I find that last hard to believe.”

“You must because it’s true! These last few weeks, I was much restricted… I was watched night and day.”

“Women have few freedoms in this society.”

She snorted. “An understatement. Attracted to a man I should not even speak to, I was shunned by my own father. Under suspicion, given only enough money to pay my dressmaker. And that was for my trousseau. Garments to marry I man I cannot even respect, let alone love.”

The revelation had Mark rejoicing in her admission and curling his lip at the thought of her married to de Ros. In a transparent clinging gown. In de Ros’s bed.

She tipped her nose higher. “I had to pay her, lest my father learn and suspect how I planned to escape.”

His gaze ran over her. She was dishelved, dirty and she smelled as badly of neglect as he did of alcohol. No matter her state, she was regal, heart-breakingly lovely. Alive. He sat taller, fought to become sober and logical. “Why not come to me and ask for help?”

Now, she drew herself up to a greater hauteur. Even so deeply in his cups, he praised her for her fortitude—and her luscious beauty as she did so. “Because you would have refused me. You chose not to respond to me fully those weeks in London. You did not wish to show others that you cared for me.”

His hands flexed. His heart lurched. His desire swelled. “Nothing could come of that.”

Her eyes beseeched him for more succor. “Attraction knows no rules.”

He nodded, distraught at the remembrance of how he had yearned to be kinder to her and show her his desire for her. “Your truth is hard to bear.”

Her brilliant eyes flooded with tears. “Your honor was harder to bear.”

“Do not assume I would have stopped touching you if once I did.”

Her lips thinned. “The day you left, I could assume nothing else.”

Her despair flayed him, coward that he had been, noble that he wished to be. “How do you think this can save you?” He waved a hand about the cabin to illustrate her escape from her fate in London.

She stiffened her spine. “They will never know where I am, how I am. I will never tell them.”

His head ached, splitting with a logic he could not trace. “They will learn.”

“No. We are too far out to sea.” She took two steps toward him, her jewel-like eyes pleading with him for mercy, her face pale with fear. “You will not turn back. Please, do not.”

Weary with the scotch and the surprise and the joy of her here and very much alive, he cupped her face. Her skin was soft as eider down, pale from her days and nights in his hold. “Darling Sirena, your father must know you are alive and well. He fears you are dead.”

Shocked, she jerked from his reach. “Let him.”

“That would be needlessly cruel.” He told her quickly about the drowned girl. “They assume it is you, Sirena. She wears your clothes. Your father identified them as yours.”

Her brilliant eyes fired with sorrow even as she dug her nails into his forearms. “Oh, no. Jean is dead?”

He nodded.

“She is a scullery maid who helped me escape the house. I gave her a gown and coat of mine to wear to lead them to think she was me. For her service, I also gave her a pearl brooch to pawn as payment. Oh, Mark, this is truly awful.” She ran her hands through her hair. “How could she die?”

He could think of only one conclusion. “Perhaps she was set upon by thieves. My father did not tell me if the woman who drowned had a brooch in her possession when they took her from the Thames.”

Tears stood in Sirena’s eyes as she clamped a hand to her mouth and caught back sobs. “She died because of me.”

He took her in his arms, and the world suddenly felt warm, welcoming and right. His fingers sank into her hair. His lips buried in the silken wealth. His arm around her waist drew her sweet, lush body closer.. “Darling, we do not know that.”

She pulled back, her eyes filled with horror. “I left her alone in the city.”

His finger traced the rise of her cheek, the curve of her jaw. “You can make amends to her family.”

“She has none.” Sirena squeezed here eyes shut and yanked away. “There is no reason to go home.”

“Sirena—”

“No!” She fisted her hands at her sides and declared in anguish, “If you turn around, if you take me to London, I shall only run away again.”

“You cannot live without your family, darling.”

“You can! Why can’t I? Because I am a woman?”

“That’s not what I mean.” He hated arguing with her. She rattled his senses. “I want you safe!”

“Can you honestly say you think I am safe with de Ros?” she taunted him.

She had him there.

“Make no mistake, Mark Stanhope. You can tie me up and drag me back, deliver me, but one day I will escape them. My father. De Ros. I will be free. Even if you do not want me.”

He jerked her to him. “Who says I don’t want you?”

“You do! You’d take me back!”

He shook her, her thighs molded to his through the thin trousers, chafing his willpower, rubbing him raw with his passion to taste her, take her, make her his own. “Hush. I won’t take you back.” I’ll keep you. “I’ll take you wherever you wish to go.”

“Baltimore?”

Bed? He stepped back, defeated by her determination and by his own craving to show her how he loved her for it. She had not declared she came here to be with him. She was here because she knew he was leaving England, she knew his ship was here in Dover and she bet odds he’d not find her aboard. His heart was sore, but his mind was clear on her purpose. “I’ll give you the freedom you seek. Every man and woman deserves that. It will be up to you to make the most of it.”

She clutched his shirt, twisting it as she moved against him in an assault on all his reason. “What if I want simpler things?”

This close, though she was dressed in plain colorless cloth and lacked the fragrance of camellias to adorn her, she was the most desirable creature he’d ever seen. “Such as?”

“You. Now. Here.”

Chapter Two

He gripped her arms, crushed her close, her luscious body strong, svelte and dear. His own body was too damn primed to take her, here now and prove to her how he valued her. What could he do to stop this madness and keep her safe, even from himself?

The loud banging at the door saved him from answering.

“Simpson?”

“Aye, Captain! Your bath and dinner.”

“Come in, man.” Mark tamped down his urge to kiss her. From the corner of his eye, he saw his steward place the hip bath, then lug in the copper kettles and finally, place on the table a silver pot, two tin cups, spoons and two bowls of steaming stew.

“I brought you a pot of coffee, Captain. Knew you’d need it. The miss, too, if she’s a mind. Soap, toweling. Toothpowder. Lemons, too, for both of you because, to be honest, you stink.”

Mark noticed how her eyes flared at Simpson’s last word. She looked shocked at his steward’s boldness, but nodded, knowing how true it was. Mark himself toyed with a grin. “The lady will be removing her clothes, Simpson.”

Her gaze met Mark’s with satisfaction. She was determined to be naked? She would be! He glanced at his steward who hurried to finish his tasks. “When she’s done, Simpson, I’ll put them outside the door for you to carry away.” Mark flexed his shoulders and spun away from her, aware what challenges could await him if he took up her offer and gave her everything she wanted. From his bunk, he grabbed up a sheet and threw it over one of the rafters. “Burn them.”

“Aye, Captain. Anything else, sir?”

“What of our course? The sea seems rough.”

“Mister Morris says we are due south by a hundred nautical miles, sir. A big storm last night drove us south, south east.”

“Toward the Spanish coast?”

“Aye, sir.”

Mark frowned. His navigator Morris had eight years in the merchant fleets, and a better man could not be found in Baltimore to plot a course. “So the rough seas of last night were not my imagination?”

“Aye, Captain. Not the benefits from your scotch, no.”

“Tell Morris I will talk with him after I am more myself.” Mark thanked his crewman and sent him on his way before he turned to Sirena and pointed at the tub. “Get in there. The storage room for two days has done you no good.”

She sniffed, miffed at his tone and the truth.

“Use a lemon in the water if you like. Meanwhile, I,” he said and pointed to the chair and the pot of coffee, “will amuse myself.”

“Insufferable man,” she mumbled and grabbed the sheet to pull it taut between them.

But when he sat back in his wooden chair, poured a cup of the potent brew and looked at the big white sheet hanging like a veil between them, he knew he’d have no peace. The light from the porthole shown behind her as she stripped. In silhouette, his siren was a mythical beauty come to life.

She untied the sash around her waist and wiggled to let the trousers slide to the planks. Mark narrowed his eyes, the translucent sheet too thick to give him a clear view of her creamy skin, too thin to save him from the knowledge that her cunt was covered by a curly mound of dark hair.Grunting, he picked up his tin cup and took a swallow of the coffee. Agh. Bitter damn stuff. He felt the rush of the hot liquid run through his bloodstream, and he closed his eyes at the demand of his cock to twist up deep inside her. His eyes, of their own accord, opened to the sylph-like creature before him. Her arms were up in the air as she bent to pull off the shirt. Graceful as a swan, she tugged at the fabric. Her waist was tiny. Her ribs lean. Her breasts were…. Christ. Had she bound herself? Was she mad?

He downed another swig of the coffee. But he watched in open-mouthed satisfaction as she unwound a long stream of fabric from her chest. And her breasts…. He licked his lower lip . Her generous breasts spilled free, a sweet curve. Dear God. Her nipples beaded, pointing like fine diamonds.

He shifted, his cock tight and swollen against his breeches. He’d not had a woman in so long, he knew he was primed for a ready fuck. But he had never wanted this woman in a casual romp. He had imagined himself with her for hours, days in the sunlight exploring her body, stroking her skin, tasting her wet desire between her legs. He wanted her breasts in his hands, her nipples in his mouth and his cock buried tightly inside her sweet cunt.

“Jesus!” He slammed his cup on the table and saw her jump. “Get in the tub!”

“Lord, you are testy!” She threw down the binding and marched to the hip bath. Then she stuck her toe in—and yanked it out. Teetering, she wobbled on one foot, then caught her balance. “Oh, my God! That’s hot as hell!”

He was around the sheet in two strides, his arms full of naked lush woman before he could think.

Oh, but he could feel. She was soft skin on the outside. Firm muscle beneath. Warm all over. And as she let him hold her, she grinned up at him and wrinkled her nose. “I think your steward is correct. We do stink.”

Harrumphing, he set her securely to her feet and marched away to resume his wooden seat. “Bathe!”

“Aye, Captain,” she crooned as once more she inserted a toe into the water.

This time, she went so excruciatingly slowly Mark swore he wore his teeth away from the grinding he gave them. One hand to the rim of the hip bath, she bent so that her breasts swung out and hung like two ripe fruits. He shut his eyes, but in his mind, he fondled their fullness and teased them with his lips, laving them, nipping them, shaping them to red hot points. As if she knew his torment, she paused, tipped her head to one side, her hair falling about her shoulders in giant swirls. She reached out, grasped one of the lemons and dunked it in the water. And as he heard the drops plink into her bath, she took a bite of the lemon, seemed to shiver in delight, then extended her arm and squeezed the juice into the tub.

His cock swelled at the sound of the tinkling juice and the knowledge that once she sank into the water, her skin—aye, her mouth and her cunt—would taste like lemons. He drew a finger across the seam of his lips, his eyes on fire now as he saw her face him and sink like Venus to the sea into the tiny tub. She reclined. The water swished. She lolled about, murmuring helpless noises of sensuous satisfaction.

“Wash!” he commanded.

“Ogre! A woman cannot enjoy her bath?”

“No!” he bellowed, knowing he sounded like a beast. And a fool.

“Ba!” She sank lower in the water, sloshing it about and sending him into a panic until he realized like a ninny that she was bending to wash her hair.

On a ripple of water, she lifted her head from the surface, settled back, then shot out a hand to grasp one of the towelings. She inhaled and sighed, her hand submerged in the water.

Mark was left to imagine all that she did with that towel. Her hand skimmed the elegant length of her arm. Did she caress the delicate spot inside her elbow? Her trim calf lifted in the air. Did she stroke the inside of her thigh? Did she wash her ankle and each toe? Did she linger at her throat? The hollow where his lips must taste. The spot where her shoulder joined her fragile neck. Did she caress the fullness of her breasts? Did she rub her nipples with the nubby cloth? And did she lather her dark pussy hair? Did she touch her swollen labia? Massage her tight cunt? Was she slick with cream for him?

He winced, put a hand to his breeches, tempted to open the placket and set his cock free. But he shouldn’t. Once he touched himself, he would have to have satisfaction, and this woman had come here not so much for him as for her freedom from another man.

Remember that.

On a whoosh, she rose from the tub. She paused, staring straight ahead as if she could actually watch him, see his obsession through the cloth. What are you thinking, my pretty stowaway? Are you wondering if you can come tempt me now?

Wishful thinking, Stanhope.

On a little cry, she twisted to one side and grasped another towel from the edge of his bunk. Each brush of the rough Turkish cloth along her form whisked over his senses. He blindly reached for his coffee. Gulped the rest down. Poured another cup and drank as if he were dying of thirst.

I am. For one sip of this woman. One slaking night with her.

He shot to his feet. “My turn!”

She kicked her pile of clothes toward him. “For Simpson.”

“Yes.” He scooped them up into his arms. In two strides, he pulled open his door and threw her rags onto the planks. When he turned back, she stood before him, wrapped in one of the sheets from his bed.

“What shall I wear?” she asked without guile, her body shining with damp iridescence, her hair, down to her elbows, a midnight wet cloak.

“I have extra. Trousers. A shirt.” No bindings for your breasts. Thank God. He stiffened, his cock definitely intrigued by the idea that he might enjoy the sight of her nipples outlined beneath white cotton.

“Where are they?” she asked, her eyes traveling the room when he could not seem to take his eyes from her full, moist mouth.

He strode around her to his shelves, yanking down a loose shirt and a plain pair of yeoman’s pants he’d often don in warmer climes. As he dropped them in her arms, he frowned purposely trying to keep up the ruse of his irritation with her. “You’ll have to wear these until we dock in Baltimore. There is nothing else…and even if I thought my crew might have more, I would not ask for fear they’d guess we have a woman abroad.”

She took them from him with the look of a woman scolded. “I understand, and I’m most grateful.”

He turned on his heel. Best to stay away from her and any kindness he was tempted to show her beyond the norm. He cared for her. Too much. Too much to make love to her and never survive her rejection.

He wanted her. But he didn’t.

Dejected, Sirena spun away from him and sat in his chair. Clutching the sheet around her, she shoved back the urge to shed tears. They would not help her here. Not like she had used them to get her way with other men. She would not stoop so low, no matter the impulse.

With an angry pout, she poured herself coffee and downed half the cup. The taste thrilled her, warmed her and reminded her that she had not eaten in two days. Her gaze fell upon the bowl of stew. Potatoes, carrots and mutton studded the broth. She picked up the crude spoon and told herself to go slowly, not devour the meal. The first taste was soft, fragrant heaven and she tucked in for another bite.

“Don’t eat too quickly,” he warned, and she swiveled to see that he had not left her for his bath but had stood to one side of the sheet to watch her. “You’ll throw it up. Drink a bit more. That will help.”

She nodded at his kindness. “Thank you.”

This time he did turn away to disappear behind the sheet. But as he raised the cup to her mouth, she saw that he did not completely vanish from her sight. She arched a brow. My turn to enjoy you, Captain.

In relief, he stood facing the tub. Then, he turned his head toward where he knew she sat.

Challenging me to be as bold as you? She inhaled, oh so delighted that he understood she watched him. Her lips tipped upward in a wicked smile.

As he unbuttoned his shirt, she sipped her coffee. “This is very good,” she said without thinking and admired the flaring lines of his rippling arms.

She saw him freeze. Did he smile?

“My cook,” he told her, “was a gunner in your Navy until he joined us two years ago.”

“Then he is one of the sailors our Navy wants to impress again into our service?”

“He is,” Mark said as he stepped out his breeches.

“I’m surprised your father was able to buy his freedom.”

“The earl of Stanhope is a remarkable man. Able to grow, change and admit his faults. I will never say another word against him as long as I live,” he told her as she noted the interesting protrusion from Mark’s loins. His shaft was long and thick and standing very tall.

She sat forward, the sheet not showing her anything new this close, but her heart wishing it would. Want me, do you, Mark?

He lifted a long leg and put it in the tub. As he inserted the other, his body faced forward, and she mourned the loss of the sight that proved he desired her.

She fell back in the chair and gazed into the dark depths of her coffee. What good would it do to have him make love to you if his attraction is no more than affection?

Starving for sustenance of a kind she could not have, she picked up her spoon and took a bite of the stew. The warmth filled her with gratitude for Mark’s care, but made her all the more bereft. She took another bite, sad with longing. She had come so far, risked so much, hoping he might care for her as much as she did him. Was she deluded by the desire on his face when he looked at her? The rise of his brows when he thought she was funny and dear? The desperation in his stark blue eyes when he was close enough to kiss her? How had she imagined that he wanted more from her than a pleasant conversationalist?

She dropped the spoon, caught up the sheet to her chest. She would not cry. Not now. Not here.

She clamped a hand over her mouth, a sob wrenching her. Swiping at her tears, she doubled over in her chair. How could she have been so foolish?

“Oh, Christ, darling, don’t cry.” Strong arms drew her up, wrapped her into a warm, wet body. “Don’t please.”

She scarcely knew how she stood on her feet, but she nuzzled her face into the smooth warmth of his shoulder, shuddering. “Mark, I did not come here to make you do anything you do not wish to do.”

He pushed her hair back and lifted her face up to his. “I wish to make you happy, sweetheart.”

The endearment and the empathy were wonderful, but still she wanted him to understand her. “I am no harpy. No woman to bend a man to her will. That’s not why I’m here.”

“I know,” he enfolded her, his lips on her forehead. “I know you wish to be free. All men, all women should be. Must be. Your coming to me to gain that is not a problem for me, Sirena. This in you makes me proud of you, for you. Look at me. See in my face that this is true.”

As he brushed tears from her cheeks, she stared at him and tried to be bold. “I came here now not merely because I knew you were in Dover and leaving England. Your presence here was no convenience for me, Mark.”

He stilled, no breath escaping him. “Why then?”

“I came because I had to know, had to learn if you cared for me at all.”

“I tried to conceal my feelings. Clearly I failed.”

“Ah.” She slid up in his arms, her mouth an angel’s breath away from his. “You give me so many reasons to wonder.”

His blue eyes turned dark as stormy seas. “Do not question what I feel for you.”

“Let me not question,” she pleaded on a whisper. “Let me know.”

He cupped her chin, his gaze tormented. “If I do that now, there will be no turning back.”

“I do not wish to return to anything or anyone I knew before.”

“You know not what you ask. My desire for you is living, breathing thing.”

Bursting with joy, she hugged him.

He threaded his fingers through her hair and drew back to look at her. “I will not ruin you.”

“I fear I am already ruined for any other man.”

He trembled as he crushed her so close, she could have sworn her body became his. His mouth, that wide slashing handsome mouth of his, swooped down and claimed her own. Once. Twice. A breathless third time. Brushing, tasting, caressing hers, he made her cry out for what she had known was true from the first night she’d seen him across the ballroom.

“Mark,” she rose on her toes, the sheet around her dropping to the floorboards, the touch of his skin on hers a fire to her soul. “Darling Mark, this is what I came for.”

“These past weeks, this,” he growled as he inserted one strong thigh between her two, “is what I have lived for.”

Chapter Three

She squeezed his leg with her thighs, and inside her loins, she felt a gush of hot, wet desire. “I want you in no way that’s demure.”

His lips spoke on hers as one hand supported her beneath her nape. “I want you in all ways that are wicked.”

She smiled, kissed him fast and hard, then rubbed her breasts against his marvelous broad chest. “Teach me to be wicked.”

Growling, he bent her over his arm and put his open mouth to her throat. There, just beneath her chin, he nibbled and licked. “My fondest desire these past few weeks has been to see you naked.”

She swooned, in heaven at his words. “And here I thought you were indifferent.”

His tongue blazed a trail of liquid fire down her chest as he took one of her breasts into his hot, fierce mouth. There, he sucked on her with such swift force, she gasped. He pulled away, his sapphire blue eyes ferocious as he peered down at her and tweaked her nipple. “Does this feel like indifference?”

Fighting for breath, she hung on to him for sanity in a reeling world and shook her head. “More like—” Dare she name it? “Obsession.”

“I will show you its meaning,” he vowed and swirled a hand down her ribs to splay his fingers against her quivering stomach and into the wealth of her nether hair where he stopped. “I will leave none of you untasted, untouched. Look at me, Sirena.”

The sight of him impassioned and captivated melted her, as it always had.

“Stop me now, if you will not give me every piece of you.”

“Show me your obsession that I might show you mine.”

With a cry of triumph, he swept her into his arms and took two strides to his bunk. There, he gently laid her down and braced above her, took her mouth with his own demanding one. His lips met hers one way, then slanted another. She met him kiss for kiss, gasp for gasp. His tongue invaded and she made love to it, sucking it, stroking it with her own.

He pulled away, smiling down at her. “Christ, you’re eager.”

“I have waited weeks,” she teased, her hands tangled in his soft brown hair.

“Wait no more.” He grinned, straddled her, then let his gaze travel her naked body until his expression stilled, his eyes darkened and his hands lifted both her breasts. “Just feel.”

He thumbed her nipples gently, as his cock and balls nestled near her sex. His fingers pinched her, sending sparks of need to her breasts and her groin. His lips perched above a nipple, and his tongue licked her tip.

She bucked.

He laughed.

She squirmed. “The other one needs the same.”

“Of course it does. Here, let me soothe you,” he whispered as he graced her other nipple with the same ardor. One hand wended its way down her ribs and cupped her hip. He spread her thighs with a nudge of a leg, then sank his fingers into her damp hair. “I want to kiss you here. Brand you.”

“Mark me,” she told him. “I am aflame to have you there.”

He trailed kisses down her torso, stopping at one rib to nuzzle her, at her mound to bury his nose in her hair, and then at the seam of her opening to say, “Let me in, sweetheart.”

She spread her legs wide, and he groaned as he sank lower, putting his mouth to her labia.

With two fingers, he held her wide for his kiss, for the lave of his tongue, for the pinch of his fingers to some special spot that had her whimpering and rising, demanding that he give her more.

“Shh, I am here,” he crooned. “Here to love you. Love you well. God, your pussy is so swollen. Pink lips. So damn wet. Glistening with cream. All mine,” he told her as he traced a fingertip around her core and made her squirm and moan. “You feel like finest satin and you taste like lemon and desire. Want a taste?”

Delirious with pleasure, she stared at him as he offered her two wet, fragrant fingers. With fire in her gaze, she raised her head and licked him like a hungry cat.

“Oh, Christ,” he groaned, dropped his forehead to her chest and undulated so that she felt his cock probe between her thighs. “You are so wonderful.”

“Fuck me, then tell me that.”

He lifted his head, his blue eyes at first shocked, then amused and besotted with her words. “My lady, you have a saucy tongue.”

“You inspire me, Captain.” She caught him by the nape and rose up to kiss him deeply. “Show me by more examples how talented a tongue can be that I may reciprocate in kind.”

Fired by her words, he put one hand between her breasts, pushed her to the sheet and scooted down the bed. Two hands to her tender flesh, he spread her legs so wide they dangled over the edge of the bunk. Then he put his mouth to the top of her seam. “This pretty portal has a secret beneath.”

She wiggled in anticipation.

He rolled back her swollen tender flesh. “There is a pearl here of great value. One my lips can adore with kisses, like this.”

She undulated at his warm delicate sips of her tender flesh. Her body filled with fluid fire.

“One my tongue can tease, like this.” He rubbed her pearl with a rough lash of his tongue.

“Ahh, Mark.” Her fire sparked higher, hotter.

“Shh,” he stroked the skin of her pussy and made her wild with need. “This pearl is made for my mouth, my fingers and your joy, darling. I can suck on it,” he said and demonstrated so that she bit her lower lip in abject need. “It grows larger and needier.”

She whimpered, her derriere flexing on the bed.

“Your little pearl wants my cock inside you here,” he said on a ragged voice, then inserted a long finger inside her core. “This is your sweet, wet cunt, my pet. Swollen. Oh, Jesus. So tight, darling girl, I can not hope to get my cock inside.”

“Fill me up!” she gasped, and her hips rose off the bunk.

“Aye, I’ll take you. All of you. Past your maidenhead here into a world a pleasure.”

“Quickly,” she demanded and plucked at his massive shoulders while he stroked her cunt and made her mad with need. “No more delay!”

“Oh, my sweetheart,” he whispered as he rose above her, hooked her thighs over his hips and put the tip of his cock near her pulsing pussy. “Come away with me.”

She arched as his huge, thick shaft slid inside her, stretched her, consumed her and had her call out in joy that this is what she had waited for, wanted, needed for weeks and weeks and small eternities.

He cursed, deep roiling sounds as he drove into her and broke through the membrane that had kept her from him. He arched, paused, with shaking hand pushed hair from her cheek. “Are you hurt?”

“No, no,” she told him as she strained toward him. “Have me more, please do. I need all you have to give.”

He shuddered at her words, gripped her hips and delved into her with a tempered drive. “I want you to thrill to this.”

She undulated with him, his rhythm strong and smooth, a caress of his love inside her beyond her imagining. “How could I not?”

He growled then, sinking his fingers into the flesh of her hips and filling her even more. To the top of her womb, the core of her heart, he plunged over and over, smiling at her. “You like this.”

She drifted in a haze of pleasure. Her hands traced his chest, his hips. How much more joy could she get from loving this man? Each new moment brought a boundless delight.

He bent close to her, seized her lips with his own and sucked her tongue into his own mouth. His hips pistoned into her, building the flames of her desire into a tumult that had her pleading to be sated. With a hoarse cry, he caught up her hips, pulled her atop his own thighs and rammed her into an oblivion where her cunt pounded and pulsed. The stunning climax set her adrift, floating to the earth. He withdrew his cock from her, then groaned as he grabbed up a towel and sent his semen into it. With a moan, he shuddered and finally sank over her.

She hugged him close, drew patterns on his splendid back, and kissed his shoulder. “Darling. You still try to save me.”

He lifted his head, and with eyes filled with satisfaction, he admired her face and whispered, “I promised not to ruin you, my darling. I can and will make love to you all you wish, but you will not conceive out of wedlock. I wish that on no unmarried woman. I care for you and I will do it to your benefit.”

Tears of gratitude clogged her throat. She had met many men, most dandies or rakes with little care for any woman. Never had she known any man to show such thoughtfulness for her body or her reputation. She rolled to her side and gathered him to her. “You are more noble than even I imagined.”

“You will never suffer for what we do together, Sirena.” He smiled, one corner of his mouth tipping up in a boyish smile. “Sleep now, you need your rest.”

Her brows danced. “Because you will show me more ways to make love?”

He shoved a hand beneath her nape and kissed her like a possessed madman. “Aye, you wench. I’ll show you so much more, you won’t be out of bed for three weeks across the ocean.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed as she wiggled in the sheets like a pampered girl in her victory to have Mark Stanhope as her lover. She snapped her eyes shut. “I am asleep already if it means you make love to me sooner.”

And what if I love you now?

Mark leaned close to his sleeping beauty and inhaled the fragrances of lemons, Sirena and torrid sex. He glanced down at his cock, dark with the stains of her maidenhead. Once inside her, he could not stop himself from enjoying her and losing a piece of himself.

You knew it would be like that with her. Irresistible. Unforgiveable.

Thank God, he had pulled out and spilled his seed to the towel. He would not allow anyone to malign her for his transgression. Never give anyone a reason to. Yes, he would marry her. Not simply because he had fucked her beautiful body. No, he would make her his wife for the infinitely better reason that he did love her. Her bravery. Her charm. In Baltimore, the day they docked, he would take her to a minister and make her his. Then, he would have all rights to lose himself in her day and night. Her juicy lips. Her fiery cunt. He’d teach her all the delights he knew. He’d let her try them on him.

At the idea, his cock grew longer. He pushed her gently to her back. In her sleep, she moaned. He smiled, wicked thoughts racing through his brain. Ones he had to obey. To taste her creamy little pussy again was a hunger he had dreamt of for hours now. And he had to renew his memory of her.

He settled between her legs and combed her soft, dark nether hair. Mine, all mine.

He rolled open her cunny lips. Her bud still glistened with her juices. He rose from the bed, doused a clean towel in a bowl of fresh water, then silently returned to her.

She had shifted to her back. He grinned, climbing on to the bunk and adoring her abandoned pose. Hair spread beneath her like a contrasting silken black curtain, her skin glowed rosy with exhaustion and exertion from satisfying sex. He bathed her nipples, large areolas that drew his careful tending. His mouth watered to devour her silken flesh. But he restrained himself, focusing on giving her breasts the rub of the nubby towel. Pebbling from the attention, they deepened their color from a subtle pink to darker rose, even as they puckered. Resisting once more the lightning urge to take her in his mouth, he moved to wash her ribs, her tiny navel and swirl around her mons. With a nudge, she spread her thighs. His cock swelled with pride. Even in her sleep, she did as he commanded. He pressed the cloth to her seam. She opened wider. Now he viewed her labia. Dusted with her midnight hair, her lips were ivory portals, plush and inviting. He drew patterns on his lower lip with his tongue. He was going to eat her until she begged him to take her again. With fingers of one hand, he spread her labia. Her seam exposed more delicate inner folds, peaking out, inviting him in to taste and delight her. Of a sudden, she stretched wider.

His gaze flew to hers. “You tease me.”

Her eyelids quivered, her mouth pursed and tempted him. “I wish to satisfy you. As you have me.” She nestled her hips into the bedding and tilted up her pussy in a blatant offering.

“I cannot deny either of us,” he declared, swirling the cloth over the curves of her enchanting cunt, delighting them both with her little cries as he stroked her soft folds and made her ball the bedding in her fist. Nigh unto bursting, his cock twitched with need. Eager to make her delirious, he carefully washed each tiny crevice of her sex. Unable to bear the wait any longer, he threw his cloth to the floor. Grunting, savage, he parted her once more and drove his tongue deep inside her. She undulated, muttering lavish words of praise. He found her nub and sucked her into his mouth. He growled as the aromas of their mating filled his nostrils. The heavy musk fired his blood, and his cock swelled painfully against her thigh.

She put her feet to the mattress, his mouth buried in her succulent beauty. “Have more of me, darling. I adore the way you dine.”

He choked on laughter, but spread her thick labia wide to lick deeply once more into the hot core of her sex. Christ, she was sopping wet, creamy and sweet.

Shouting her rapture, she bucked up off the bed. “God! Mark! How can this be better each time you touch me?”

“Because,” he told her on a whisper as he levered up and his cock slid like molten lead into her luscious melting core, “your body knows we belong together.”

She tipped up her hips, the better to take more of him. Her arms reached for him, her fingers plucking at his upper arms.

His mind went blank. All feeling coursed to his shaft. The first time he had fucked her had been precious, but this warmth, this welcome caressed his need for her. Fired his long dead hope to have a woman to love. Family.

What would it matter to anyone if she were with child as they said their vows?

Their marriage would be soon. No one would cast aspersions on her. If there were a child from this, he would love the babe, treasure him or her, and claim him as a Stanhope from his first breath.

He growled now, feeling the pressure build in his groin, knowing his balls grew tight with his cum. This time, he would fuck her, truly make her his.

“Captain!”

Mark scowled. And paused, his loins aflame to finish this and take her to him completely once and for all.

“Captain!”

This was not Simpson. But his navigator. “Morris?”

“Aye, Captain. We must speak!”

Mark put a finger to his lips to urge Sirena to silence. He straightened, put a foot to the floor. “Yes, Morris, what is it?”

“Captain, I need you to come on deck.”

Mark reached for his breeches, shoved one leg in and then the other. Striding to the door, he held it open a crack. “What’s wrong?”

“Four ships. South ten degrees. Came up on us in a fog this morning.”

Who in hell? The French? The British? If the French tried to board, he would declare his impartiality as an American merchant ship. If these vessels were British and tried to fire their cannons and come abroad again to impress them all, Mark would show them his letters of freedom from the Admiralty. Sirena, foremost, he would save from any man’s rough hands. “What types?”

“Galleons. Sixty, maybe eighty cannon, each.”

Warships. “What colors do they fly, Morris?”

“Red with white hammers, blue stars.”

“The Salle Corsairs,” Mark declared with hatred for the notorious marauders who had sacked so many towns along the Spanish and Portuguese coasts and herded thousands onto their galleons and into slavery. Was his arch enemy of years ago among them? “What of their flagship?”

“One golden star in the red field, Captain. Al Hassan of Bou Regreg.”

Four ships. To my one. Eighty cannon to my two. Sixty or more men on each galleon.

How can I counter that?

“Dress. Now,” he told Sirena and had a passing fear for her future in the greedy grasp of Al Hassan. “Do not, under any circumstances come up to the deck.”

She clutched the sheet to her breasts, her face stark as she nodded.

He shut the door behind him and ran up to the main deck. His men hurried about, each man to his station. “Break out the rifles,” he ordered a young sailor. To Simpson, he yelled, “See that the cannon are manned, and where the hell is Morris?”

His navigator came round the leeward side. “Here, sir.”

Hands on his hips, Mark surveyed the distance between the four pirates’ galleons and the Water Witch. “Your thoughts on the wind?”

“Too calm to carry us far, sir.”

“Yes, dammit.” And they will lash their slaves to death to row like hell, catch us and take us prisoner. “To fight them is to invite slaughter.”

“Our decks’ll run red,” Morris said like a dirge.

Mark heard his crew below barking out instructions to each other, piling up cannon balls, sliding up the hinges on the gunports. “They do not know what cargo we carry.”

“Does it matter?”

“It might.”

“Meaning what, sir?”

“We could gamble that they search for richer booty than the spices and fabrics we carry back to Baltimore.” I could gamble that they wish for gold or horses or cannon headed for the Peninsula and the war against the French. “I could hope they do not need slaves as much as they crave goods we do not have.”

“How could you convince them that it is not in their best interest to risk their own deaths by fighting us?”

“Yes, Morris. How can I convince them that it is not in their best interest to kill us?”

Morris snorted. “Do these blaggards believe in talking to their quarry?”

“I hope today they do.”

“You mean to let them board?” Morris shot back, incredulous.

“Only their captain. Spread the word.”

“That’s madness!”

Mark whirled to face his navigator. “I know it would be the manly thing to do to have us draw our swords and—“

“And die like men!”

“I’d rather see us live.”

“As slaves?” Morris’s craggy face grew livid. “I’ll not go!”

“If we fight them, outnumbered as we are, we are sure to die here or at the very least to be wounded and die in agony of neglect.” Sirena will be taken with no one to speak for her or champion her cause. “If I haul up a white flag, I show my willingness to talk.”

“These scoundrels talk?” he scoffed.

“They do, Morris.” I remember it well. And how it was done. If I can have the chance…

“What can you say that will persuade them?” his navigator taunted him.

“I’ll use the same words our emissary used years ago.” Neutrality. Trade. Or invasion. War.

Morris removed his dagger from his boot and ran a finger down the silver blade. “This is my word.”

“I see it, Morris. It says only one thing.”

“Honor.”

“Death. Certain death.” Mark watched the four galleons ride the waves toward them with the speed of hundreds of men at the oars. “I’ll opt for the chance of survival.”

“You know their language?”

“I do. You’ll get me a guard of ten men, daggers in their belts, rapiers to hand. Do it now!” Mark heard the bellowing of the Barbers’ captain to his men as their flagship came alongside the Water Witch. He watched the corsairs hauling planks on deck, scurrying to come aboard. His eyes scanned the forward deck where their captain should be, but he saw no one who resembled Al Hassan. Was he here? He prayed he was. The sooner he saw the pirate leader, the sooner he’d have them free. And safe.

His men surrounded him, muttering their distaste for this approach to the action.

“Quiet! Listen to me,” he told them in subdued tones as he surveyed the pirates’ approach. “You will appear protective. But no one is to wield his sword or dagger unless you see them strike first. Hear me on this and obey. They will want our cargo. I happily give them that if in return they let us free.”

“Hell, what chance of that, Captain?” growled a man behind him, and a few others voiced their agreement.

“One chance. One. And I am willing to take it. Now, here they come. Steady. Meet them as their betters. That, they understand.”

His men quieted, standing like huge sentries as the flagship pulled to one side and a half dozen pirates balanced along the planks to jump to the Witch’s deck. Al Hassan had sent an advance party of his burliest men, olive-skinned and muscular, filthy and surly. They strode around Mark and his ten men with a snarl of superiority on their faces.

“Al Hassan,” Mark said to the man who strode right up to him and stopped. “I wished to speak with him,” he continued in the mottled Arabic he remembered from his captivity years ago.

The man before him startled, shocked at Mark’s skills with the language. His expression of contempt fell to one more civil and, to Mark’s relief, one definitely more respectful. “How do you know our leader?”

None of your business. “That is his flagship. I am the captain of this ship, and I demand to meet my equal.”

The pirate sneered. “His is not your equal.”

How true. “Al Hassan will wish to speak with me.”

“Why?”

“Because I bring him news from my country. News he will wish to hear, especially if you dare to lay hands on us—any of us—and hurt us.”

The pirate’s black eyes narrowed. “You may tell me.”

“I tell you nothing.”

The Barber motioned to his own guard. “Take them! Take them all!”

Chapter Four

Mark jerked up at the touch of rough hands to his shoulders. Hauled to his feet, he fought to stand tall though he had not been permitted to do anything but lie on the floor of Al Hassan’s flagship for two days. Or he thought it was two days. With little light permeating to the lowest, coldest hold of the galleon, Mark could only measure the drift of scant rays across the dank walls of his cell.

“Stand!” ordered one of his guards in the bastardized Arabic Mark knew well. “Walk! We will not carry you.”

Mark thrust out his hands toward the guard, clanking the chains on his wrists to encourage their removal.

The man’s wide nostrils flared in disgust at Mark’s audacity, muttering something that Mark bet was a florid curse.

“A blight on your family, as well,” he murmured, as the guard dragged him forward by the chains.

“Quiet!” seethed the guard behind him. This one spoke English.

Ah. How much?

“Where is the woman?” Mark demanded and swiveled his body to get a glimpse of the burly man a pace behind him. “My woman, what did you do with her?”

The guard snarled a few words to the one in front. If he understood what Mark asked, he was not inclined to jeopardize his own health by talking to the new captive.

Still Mark had to try for more news. “If you idiots have hurt her,” he poured out his worst thoughts, “or raped her, I will kill you. Someday, somehow.”

“Quiet!” bellowed the one behind him as he pushed Mark under a beam and up the ladder to the deck above and another above that, where he swayed in the blinding sun. Callous to his condition, his two guards hoisted him by the armpits and pushed him toward the side. He stumbled, his feet and legs still mush from days of inactivity, but he caught himself upright, fearing to lose face if he fell like a sack of wheat.

“Over! You go down,” barked his guard.

Mark slit open his eyes and saw they wanted him to climb over the rim and down the rope ladder to the slip boat. Just in front of this galleon, the three others in this flotilla navigated the close inlet toward a whitewashed city whose luster assaulted Mark’s sight. Grimacing, he scanned the decks of the other vessels. His crew of twelve clustered on one deck, hands chained like his. But among them, he detected no sign of Sirena. Heart dropping, he spun to examine this deck once more. What had they done with her?

From the moment Morris had told him the pirates were upon them, Mark knew these brigands would want her. For themselves, yes. But for their master, most definitely. To be certain, this meant they must not touch her, but treat her as if she were, quite literally, gold. The corsairs of the Bou Regreg had murdered hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men in their endless raids upon Iberian towns. They had done that to more easily plunder gold, silver, jewels, anything they fancied. But in those towns, these fiends had carried off any able-bodied young men who would surrender or children who appeared fit to work. Women, especially youthful, comely ones, these robbers saved for their leaders. Choosing among the female captives, the corsairs would take those they liked themselves to serve as houris. The most beautiful of them these bastards, who were a mix of Spanish, French and Turkish, would sell to Ottoman viziers.

Sirena Maxwell was one the pirates would save for a rich Ottoman lord or for their own self-proclaimed pasha of the Bou Regreg. If they have not taken her for themselves and thrown her overboard to hide their perfidy.

The possibility enraged him, churning his empty stomach and forcing him to crane his neck about in an attempt to find her.

But here among these men attired in the berber blues and blood red robes of the mercenaries of the Bou Regreg, Mark found no sign of her. He blamed himself that he had not ordered Morris to turn the ship about, back to Dover, the moment he recognized the identity of the beautiful stowaway on his ship. Instead he had done the dastardly but most natural thing. He had made love to her, so absorbed in her that he ignored his duty, his men and his honor. He sat on makeshift bench in the middle of the row boat and castigated himself for his failure to save them all. His hope remained to find a means to bargain with these heathens by negotiating with Al Hassan. If there was one thing the berber leader feared, it was war. War declared by a country larger and better equipped than this lawless breed. Al Hassan knew his power prevailed only in a vacuum. The preoccupation of France and Britain with each other these past few decades had opened a hole in the Atlantic. Mark knew Al Hassan wished it to continue. And the threat that the Americans might come and subdue the pirates was a horror to these men who had survived by hook and crook.

Aboard the skiff, ten men rowed him to shore. The tide came in so that their landing was swift and easy. Two guards lifted him once more under his armpits, and nigh unto dragged his tired feet through the sucking sand. As they reached the top step to the quays, Mark saw the teaming populace of the pirates’ city. Black men in brown African kaftans, Moors in jewel toned brocaded shirts and trousers and Greeks in belted knee-length white robes mixed with the Arabs in their multi-colored jebellas. Like bees crammed into a small hive, the populace swarmed through the town eating, arguing or selling their wares. Mark’s guard poked him onward through the chattering crowds in the souk, the smoky air so ripe with the fog and fragrance of ambergris and patchouli his eyes watered. So hungry from lack of food these past days of captivity, his stomach clenched at the rich aromas of roasting lamb, mint and garlic. He gagged.

Faster, they pushed him through the winding medina until they passed through an iron gate three stories high. Tugging at his chains, they hastened him up a wide pebbled road curling up the cliff toward the fortress of their leader. At every pace stood sentries, their eyes cast straight ahead, no notice given of the captive’s arrival.

Remembering the same reception years ago, Mark knew less fear than satisfaction. Predictable, these lawless men had not changed the way they treated their ferenghi prisoners whom they wished to use to their own ends. That they valued him so much as to present him to their pirate pasha meant he had a card or two to play to free himself, his men and Sirena.

Inside the massive pink stone walls of their leader’s palace, Mark easily donned the only demeanor that might thwart the will of Al Hassan and set free Sirena. He strode the length of the ornate courtyard, the countless azure fountains spraying water to the sky. His thirst for revenge fresh in his mouth, Mark straightened and forced himself to become more sure-footed. Strength was the first element these outlaws understood. Courage closely followed.

They passed through a domed alabaster room, all of them breathing deeply of the cooler air. Swiftly, they entered another room, awash in mosaics in a spectrum of palest pinks to swarthy reds. From the delicate arches high above their heads, the harsh sunlight of North Africa diffused through pink stained windows to cast the room in the rosy glow that gave the palace its name among the English and the French. The Rouge, all in all two hundred or more rooms, was said to have been built over a century ago for the first corsair who rebelled against the local Ottoman vizier and took that man’s daughter to wife. The girl, it was claimed, had lush lips the passionate color of pomegranate seeds. The Rouge celebrated her mouth and her labia, both reputed to have been so talented at amusing her lord husband that he brought her to him nightly, his houris hating her for her skills.

Each succeeding corsair of Bou Regreb sought to find a similar woman who could excite him beyond all others. Al Hassan himself claimed more than a hundred wives. His seraglio housed three times that. If he thought had found a beauty to rival that of the first corsair, Mark knew no woman was lovelier than Sirena. If Al Hassan ventured one look at Sirena, clothed, the pirate would keep her. If Al Hassan stripped her, the man would never let her go.

A filigreed golden door opened inward. Mark steadied himself for the audience. Play this right, he might be out of here today. His men and Sirena with him.

Twenty or more men in multicolored robes stood to either side of a massive white throne upon a dais. And there, atop red and pink silken pillows, sat the leader of this pack of thieves. Al Hassan had aged considerably since Mark had last stood before him six years ago. Once muscular, the self-styled pasha had a belly that hung over his embroidered belt, chubby legs both swathed in white bandages, one foot to the floor clad in a golden slipper, the other naked, oozing pus from the toes and propped upon a mound of cushions. His beard was long, pointed and gray. His fleshy jowls wiggling against his bull-like neck. His onyx eyes, large and ponderous, now rimmed by dark circles that gave evidence to some gluttonous disease.

Mark’s guards lifted him under the armpits once more.

“No!” he growled and shook them off. “I walk by myself.”

A chorus of many men’s voices permeated the throne room. It was a sound of surprise and approval. They might not understand his words, but they knew the tone of them. Certainly, praise was what he wanted, but admiration was what he needed more. He marched forward, each step a mighty declaration of his rage.

At the edge of the first step to the dais, he stopped. His gaze had never parted from Al Hassan’s. He would not show him deference. The man was a criminal, ignoring the rules of the sea and of men.

“Stan. Hope.” Al Hassan said with halting pronunciation, then tried more English only to shake his head and crook a finger at a tall man in a red fez. Mark saw the servant raise his dark head, and Mark blinked, shocked when he recognized him.

Ramon Catalon was a Spaniard, a capitan of a Spanish man of war taken by Al Hassan a month before Mark had been captured last time. He had suffered horribly at the hands of Al Hassan’s torturer. Everyone then in the corsair’s prison had watched him return from a daily bout with the pasha’s sadistic master of the whip. Each day they had watched him bleed, unable to walk for the lashes on the soles of his feet. Each day they assumed would be Ramon’s last. One day, he did not return to the dungeons. All concluded he was dead. His crew along with him. Yet here he stood. Regal, self-possessed and commanding as he ever was, he obviously had earned a new role in Al Hassan’s retinue. And though Ramon gave no sign of the friendship that had sprung up between him and Mark in their youth plying Caribbean waters, Catalon had a glint in his eyes that sparked in Mark new hope. Whether hope for escape or hope to live one more day, Mark would have been a fool to wager.

“Why did you come to the waters of the English and French?” Ramon asked him in better English than his master’s.

“I return to America, but went off course in a storm,” he told him, then shot a look at Hassan to determine if he understood.

Evidently no clarification was necessary. Al Hassan bent forward to peer into Mark’s eyes more deeply. “You have only tea and spices on your ships. Why?”

“I was taken prisoner by the British. My men, too.”

Al Hassan looked at Ramon, who interpreted.

“You are American. The British keep you rebel sailors for their slaves. How are you free?” came Hassan’s next query, this time through Ramon.

Mark summarized his father’s ransom of his ship, his men and him.

Al Hassan’s long gray brows darted about as he listened. Then he smiled salaciously as he waved a finger and asked another question.

The Spaniard met Mark’s gaze with a smile that held a hint of a sneer for the words he uttered. “Your father must be rich to free so many.”

“No,” Mark lied. He would not burden his father pay for him again. He would get out of here by his own actions. “He paid all he had to buy our freedom. There is nothing left.”

He waited while ruler and servant exchanged words. Finally, the Ramon faced him and with blank expression told him Hassan’s words. “We took your cargo. Your men, too.”

“And the woman with me?” Mark broached the subject Hassan did not. “Where is she?”

Ramon’s blue gaze turned sympathetic for a chilling moment. “Al Hassan has given her to his maids.”

Mark became paralyzed. She lives. But in the hands of Hassan’s female servants, she was being prepared for only one thing. Service to Hassan. As his slave.

Mark stepped forward. “She is mine.”

Two guards blocked him with scimitars to his throat.

Hassan needed no interpretation for his words. He threw out a question to Mark.

When Hassan had fallen back to his chair, Ramon uttered the question Mark had expected. “Is she?”

Mark would have spoken, but Ramon cautioned him with stern blue eyes, then he interpreted the flood of words from Hassan. “She wears sailors’ rags. The Koran decrees it is haraam for women to wear men’s clothes. Is she corrupt? Does she prefer women to men?”

“No. She is mine.”

“Yet she wears no jewelry, no gold, nothing to show she is a valued female in your custom. Is she your concubine?”

If Mark said yes, Hassan could take her if he wished and do anything with her. If he thought Sirena was his whore, Hassan would use her without regard for her person, her health or her life. If on the other hand Mark said no, Hassan would ask if she were his wife.

Hassan’s string of invective intruded upon Mark’s thoughts.

“Al Hassan wishes to know if she is pure?” Ramon inquired.

Is she a virgin? Here was the way to save her. “I have taken her to my bed. To touch her is forbidden. In my culture, you may not have her. By your law, you should not even look upon her face.”

“Ahh,” a sound of satisfaction oozed from Hassan’s fleshy lips.

“But I have seen her face,” Ramon translated with regret to his words. “Your woman is very lovely. Different from our women. The white skin. The plump breasts. The pink nipples. Is she not the color of pomegranates when you love her?”

Mark ground his teeth at the comparison. Of course, she was.

“I would like to see her prepared in our fashion,” Ramon continued Hassan’s words. “So would my captains.”

“I forbid it.” Mark’s stomach turned over. Hassan meant to oil her, perfume her and denude her of all hair save that on her head. He would have her without any hair on her legs or under her arms, even in her nostrils. Most especially, he would order his women to massage her labia with special creams to perfume her swollen cunt and shave off all her pubic hair. The better to inspect her. The faster to spread her out for himself or any he deemed worthy to partake of her. He saw only one way now to save her from Hassan’s possession. “She is mine. I will prove it to you.”

Hassan leaned forward in his chair and spread his mouth wide in anticipation. “How will you do that?” Ramon restated in English.

“Bring her here.” Prove to me she still lives. Untouched.

“Why do I not simply ask her?” Ramon pressed.

Mark arched a brow and smirked. “You know a woman does not speak of her experience with men. Is it not better to see the proof before your eyes?”

Hassan licked his lower lip, savoring the very idea. Then he spoke.

“This proof,” Ramon translated, “will be more than words.”

“Yes.”

“More than kisses.”

Mark swallowed against the outrage of what he had to do to save Sirena.

“This will be not merely for me but also for my captains to enjoy.”

Mark nodded in agreement, the urge to strangle Hassan a violent beast inside him. Why had he expected any less of Hassan? To save her from him was worth the price.

Hassan narrowed his gaze, analyzing his captive. “You were a wily man six years ago. I looked forward to enslaving you then, but your American diplomat had other ideas. Why should I trust you to tell me the truth now? I do not reign here with an idiot’s brain! So I must ask: Can this woman be worth the cost of your honor to display her for so many other men?”

“You will enjoy it,” Mark shot back with confidence.

Hassan threw back his head to chuckle. “I will! Such entertainments are rare for the English.”

“I am American. We do what we will to be free.” He prayed Sirena could say the same after what they would do here.

Ramon answered, “You are either mad or a fool, American.”

Mark ignored the jibe. “She will do as I say. You will enjoy it as you have no other woman in years. But I have my price.”

Hassan roared in laughter, clapped his hands in delight and uttered a few words. “You have no power to bargain.”

“If you wish to see the finest display of my woman’s fiery nature, you will honor my price.”

“Name it,” Ramon parroted his master.

“We will entertain you, my woman and I, for three nights. On the first night, you will outfit my ship for a journey of three weeks. Whatever you seized, you will compensate me for in gold and silver. Coin or like, I do not care.”

“You dream,” Ramon dared on his own, then told his master Mark’s demand.

Hassan stared at him, incredulous, but attentive.

“On the second morning, you will take me and my men to inspect the ship and allow my men to remain.”

“And on the final morning, what then?” Ramon asked for his master.

“You escort my woman and me to my ship and let us sail.”

“And if I do not?” Hassan challenged him. “What can you hope to do?”

“Never underestimate me.” I will do as I must to save us all from your hands. Even take our own lives, if it comes to that. “Inshallah,” Mark said the phrase that Muslims used to call on God’s will.

“Ba!” Hassan swept out a hand as if sweeping out the dirt. “Go, go!”

His two guards grabbed him up and hustled him from the presence of their leader.

Hassan’s fury rising to the stone buttresses, the pasha yelled at Mark as he was taken away.

Had he won or lost?

He could not tell as the corsairs shoved the butts of spears into his ribs, hurried down into the bowels of the palace and into a damp, dark cell to be thrown to the barren floor like so much refuse.

Shaking with cold, thirsty and hungry, then fevered in a delirium, he knew no one even suspected what had befallen the Water Witch, its captain, crew and siren.

Chapter Five

Sirena had spent, by last count, six days in a world predominated by women. Lithe, young, lovely women. Guarded by giant, fleshy black men whose eyes slid to each other in some secret code of conduct that she suspected did include their sexual interest in the women. Sirena suspected her purpose here, though she longed to learn otherwise.

Reality killed her hopes. As a child in her nursery, Sirena had listened to stories read by her governess of a land filled with godless men who ruled the East with no regard for human life. As a young woman, she heard rumors of dissolute Ottoman pashas and their penchant for deflowering female sex slaves and keeping them behind locked walls. Those had always seemed like fables meant to embolden men to travel to exotic lands and to keep English women safely tucked away at home. While Sirena’s desire to see China or sail to Bombay had seemed more dream than possibility, she had never wished to become part of any man’s harem. And this gaggle of females imprisoned was most definitely that. What with the women who did little but eat, drink, bathe and admire themselves in numerous mirrors, Sirena assumed they were the mates of the ruler here. The presence of the men who served as guards confirmed it. And on the third day of her imprisonment, Sirena met a young Spanish woman, Valentina, who told her in broken English that the men were their jailers and to ensure the women’s purity and safety, each man had been castrated.

Sirena shuddered at the idea of such brutality done to one man by another. Yet, you will soon learn what atrocity these pirates have in store for you.

The manner of her days, however, did not presage any harm might come to her. Though she got no inkling of Mark or his men’s condition or whereabouts, she was treated like a precious gem. True, after the Barbaries had climbed aboard Mark’s Water Witch, they had seized her by the wrists, chained her and separated her from Mark and any of his sailors. None had manhandled her, although many had made snide suggestions she could not mistake in any language. But once off the corsairs’ galleon, she was put atop a camel and led through the teaming city up into a gleaming alabaster palace. Though she had asked in vain for the whereabouts of the Americans, she learned nothing in the high-walled sumptuously adorned seraglio except how to be pampered.

Each morning, Sirena was roused by an elderly maid, gnarled and wrinkled like a prune, but kindly. She’d follow her maid to a cool reception room. There, a tall, imperious older woman appeared who directed her to turn about, a doll on display. She complied. What else could she do but fume? At once, the woman led her to a large room, humid with fragrance of jasmine rising from a huge azure pool. Stripped naked by two young women, Sirena quivered in modesty and indignation. But once she was directed to step down into the soothing water, her body melted in the forgiving heat. Ordered up and out of the pool, she’d be led to yet another room, this time filled with oblong copper baths three times the size of any hipbath she’d ever seen at home. Commanded to submerge in one of those tubs, she sank, grateful once more for coverage of her person, until two different women appeared armed with soaps, towels and pumices. Scrubbed, rubbed and submerged time and again in this tub, finally she was told to rise, and without a stitch of clothes, she was told to follow her maids to yet one more room. Here, with other women on tables, stark naked as Sirena, she would lie down. For God knew how long, her body was examined, then massaged, oiled, her eyebrows plucked, her hair bathed and scented. Surrounded by dedicated servants who neither spoke nor looked her in the eye, she could not deter them from their goals, nor did she have the strength. In fact, she found herself astonished to submit to their gentle ministrations, primping her for a dreaded exhibition of the most lurid kind. Each morning, as the servants bathed her and refined her looks, she feared how she would be exposed. To whom? When? How? But as they probed into every crevice of her body, denuding her of hair, even to her most private parts which no one, save she, and Mark, had ever touched, she feared to know the answer.

Pampered more like a princess than a slave, she pondered her future each night in her own cozy private room, filled with fat feather pillows for her bed. She received pitchers of cool water, oranges, limes and lemons. Each day, she was fed a milky concoction, the consistency of pudding but tart, tasty with nuts and fat sultanas. Each morning, her nightshift of plain linen was taken away for the laundresses. Then she’d be given a garment that made her blush and gasp. Translucent pearl silk, the kaftan had a clasp of two jeweled frogs at the neck, huge sleeves flowing to her wrists, and a flowing drape to her toes.

Aghast at its suggestiveness, she knew at once its intention was to arouse and to titillate. Without any other item to cover her nakedness, she donned it, assuring herself that her appearance did not diminish her inner character. Nor did it represent her person. Only her condition.

Enslavement, she contemplated in those first few hours in the harem, was an astonishing condition for the daughter of a duke of the British Realm. She laughed bitterly at that first thought. Then sobered. She had left her rights and privileges as an aristocrat the minute she had left her home in London. Going to Dover, intent on building a new life for herself, perhaps even learning how Mark Stanhope cared for her, was a liberating stroke. That she was here, imprisoned, seemed a bitter irony.

Where was Mark? Dead? Tortured?

She caught back cries of outrage that that might be true. She had to learn where he was, how he was.

Her resolve bore fruit on the fourth day when her friend Valentina arrived in her room to share news.

“I hear the matron, there,” Valentina nodded to the older woman who was the mistress of the seraglio, “tell our Nubian eunuchs you will go before our pasha, Al Hassan.”

“When?” Her throat went dry as dust. Her stomach rolled in fear.

“After he decides what to do with your man.” Valentina’s cobalt blue eyes snapped as she spoke low to avoid detection. “Your body has been prepared for Hassan but—”

Sirena’s heart stopped. She grabbed Valentina’s hand. “What?”

“You may be given to any man he wishes.”

“As his concubine?” Sirena tried not to let her terror overcome her.

“Of course. It is why we all are here.” Her eyes circumscribed the room filled with lounging, laughing women who, it seemed, had come to terms with their servitude.

“How do you live with that?” Sirena asked, in indignation at such bondage.

“I have been taken up once to Hassan. He is impotent.”

“Thank God.”

“Do not think thus. He has other ways to make you arouse his flaccid member.”

“How so?”

“Have you ever put your mouth to a man’s tool?” Valentina put her hand to her own mons.

Sirena shook her head, her thoughts drifting to Mark and how she might gladly take him with her lips and tongue that way.

“Hassan likes that.” She waited until the masseuses passed them by with large bowls of steaming honey and creamy depilatories. “He also likes to see men take women from behind. Like animals.”

Serena’s eyes widened. “That’s appealing to men?”

The blue-eyed woman nodded. “It is forbidden, haraam, to take a woman in the ass. These pirates may say they follow the teachings of Mohammed, but they are part-Spanish and French, ex-patriots, criminals who know no law. They follow neither God nor man’s rules. Therefore, remember only one thing.”

“Yes?”

“Whatever you are asked to do? Do it and live another day.”

Sirena turned away, filled with desperation to see Mark, know he was safe and to escape this hideous existence. All the sumptuous foibles in the world could not fill the void of heartless existences without law or love.

The next morning, two bare-chested Nubians in multi-colored loin cloths came to her alcove and led her through the winding corridors of the seraglio, out into a huge, brilliantly white courtyard, alive with the sounds of water tinkling in hundreds of fountains. Passing those, Sirena squinted in the sunlight as her two guards escorted her up a flight of broad tiled stairs and into a room bare of all furnishings, save for two wide beds in the center of the lushly carpeted floor. One bed was slightly smaller than the other, but nonetheless as richly appointed.

She paused to consider them.

Both beds were like no other Sirena had ever seen. A foot off the floor, each bed was covered in a vibrant silk. The smaller of the two sported a purple gauze covering. The larger was dressed in cherry silk and here, there and everywhere about that bed, stood pillows in all the colors of the rainbow. The pillows were covered in the same shimmering silks, adorned with contrasting tassels, beads and gewgaws. She knew what both beds were meant for.

Me. Making love to whom? Two men?

Her heart fluttered. Would she, could she, survive such an encounter? The shame? The torment? The betrayal of Mark, whom she loved more than life?

It was one thing to mate with the man she craved. Another to submit to a barbarian she did not know, could never care for.

The sounds of men’s voices grew in her ear. To her horror, side doors opened and in flowed white-robed men of all ages and sizes. Staring at them with growing panic, she watched them assemble in two rows on either side of the room. One hundred men, perhaps more.

Dear God.

Am I to service them all?

She flinched. Her Nubian guards seized her by the upper arms and walked her forward to the first bed.

Sirena’s mind blanked. Her mouth opened in a silent plea. Let me leave now or let me die. I can not do this. Not even to live.

A harsh injunctive in Arabic had Sirena blinking into the face of the mistress warden of the seraglio. In some set of orders, the old woman instructed her to perform some act on the bed. When compliance and understanding were not forthcoming, the woman scoffed at Sirena and clapped her hands.

Behind her, Sirena felt gentle hands work at the frog closure to her garment. As if these voyeurs had not seen enough of her body through the diaphanous fabric, now they would view every inch of her nakedness without obstruction or illusion. Mortified beyond bearing, Sirena shivered.

“Stand tall. Watch,” came the words from Valentina who suddenly stood to one side. “Learn. You may need these lessons. At the very least, you will need the enticement of them. If you do as you are meant to do here, you may live another day.”

Enticement? What was she implying? “I doubt—”

The older woman bellowed at her.

Terrified, Sirena snapped her mouth shut.

“Be quiet,” came Valentina’s interpretation. “And submit.”

Sirena locked eyes with her friend, thanking the young woman for the assistance, even though she would never be able to follow her orders. Valentina bowed her head and stepped backwards, leaving Sirena to her fate. Spinning toward the female warden, Sirena met her forbidding gaze with a shrewish challenge of her own. If I am to die here, it will be with some semblance of dignity you and your men seek to deny all women.

A group of young men strolled in from the far portal, their robes not white but palest blue. Each one carried an instrument. Two with drums. Three with stringed instruments similar to violins. Two with horns. One with bells.

Music to accompany the English woman’s debasement?

Sirena clenched her fists.

Suddenly, two doors directly in front of her banged against their frames as they were flung wide. Into the room now walked an obese creature so misshapen Sirena could not tell at first if it were male or female. He had breasts that swayed inside his robes and hips that wobbled when he walked. He led a procession of dwarfs and jugglers, warriors with spears six feet tall, and at the end, a man upon a porter chair, heaped atop a mountain of cushions. His sagging, pockmarked face was yellow with illness, lax with gluttony and indolent with years of excess. His porters placed him upon a dais, directly facing Sirena. He examined her at his leisure, motioned for her to turn in a circle for his inspection. Then he nodded and raised a forefinger in the air. At once, the musicians began an airy tune that, were Sirena of a mind to absorb it, might have called it delicate and fine. As it was, she knew it marked the beginning of the end for her.

Her knees wobbled. She locked them. Locked up her heart, as well.

Another procession now came through the far door. This time, two caretakers, aged maids from the seraglio, led in two younger women. These last were clothed in kaftans of red and gold brocade. In the center of the room, they paused, bowed to the pasha and gave him a salaam, then held out their arms. Their elderly maids rushed forward, unclasped the hooks on their garments, and viola!

The men gasped in pleasure.

The two young women were completely naked.

Sirena sucked in air. Save for rings on their fingers and toes and strands of pearls threaded into their waist-length raven hair, these girls were nude. Polished, their dark olive skin glowed in the brilliant refractions of the sunlight on the alabaster tiles. Gracefully, aware of their power to enflame to lust, they strolled the perimeter of the room, dangerously close to the men who watched them with covetous eyes.

Sirena was left now to wonder if she was to perform the same promenade. Yet, no one spoke to her. All eyes, all attention went to the two women who strolled now to the center of the room, stood upon the smaller couch and pillows, then sank down gracefully to the silken bed.

Close enough to see the two women’s expressions, Sirena gasped at the smiles they gave each other. One rose on her hands and knees, the other rolled to her back. Like a beast of prey, the first woman crawled over the second, a feral grin of domination spreading her plush red lips. The one on her back spread wide her legs, her mound cleanly shaven, smooth, glistening with moisture that could have come only from inside her.

Sirena reared back. They were to make love to each other. How could that be?

Yet it was true. The woman on her back, Sirena could well see from this angle, bore a tattoo on one inner thigh. Her mate, the dominant one, reached down to her cunny to stroke her seam with one long index finger. The men in the crowd shuffled. One moaned.

The dominant woman arched, her firm buttocks in the air, then she bent and put her mouth to the woman beneath her. The two of them gave themselves up to the pleasures, the one licking and sucking. The other, grabbing up handfuls of purple silk, twisting in her euphoria.

Sirena felt her own body gush in appreciation of the two. She shifted, pushing her thighs together to stop the throb that had begun and made her wish for Mark to ease the hurt. But the two women had no inclination to cease their pleasure, nor did the men on the sidelines. Some of them stood as the dominant woman bit the dark pebbling nipples of her partner. Some men slumped in their chairs, their hands to their groins, or leaned toward the women for a better view. Meanwhile, from beneath the shallow bedding, the dominant woman produced an ivory rod. Perhaps six inches in length, the implement made some in the audience laugh, a few applaud, other gasp, but most flared their nostrils and growled. The houri held it aloft for all to view like a prize, a promise. This ivory rod, Sirena could now see, was shaped like a penis. A marvelous stiff, thick cock.

Sirena licked her lips. It was just like Mark’s.

Sirena moaned. Her outburst was lost amid the sounds of the men’s lust. Transfixed, she watched in amazement as one hundred or more men seemed to lean in unison toward the two women. The dominant woman who took the part of the male actor, pressed open her partner’s swollen cunt lips with two fingers as she teased her with the tip of the ivory. Sirena felt her own nipples harden painfully and her pussy pulse as one female slowly inserted the ivory rod into the other woman’s cunt. She did not object, but rolled up and with a snarl of sexual satisfaction on her face, urged her mate to fuck her. Sirena needed no interpretation. She knew it by the way the woman thrust her hips and wiggled closer to her partner. She knew it by the way the woman cupped her own breasts, pinched her own nipples, then lifted one to suck it herself. With a pop, she released it and gave herself up to the twisting, driving sensations of her partner’s rhythmic pumping.

Sirena gave a cry of need. Shocked at herself, she glanced about. No one was watching her. No one cared. Every eye was fastened to the two female lovers, the one gasping as she fucked her partner with the inflexible ivory cock, the other, teeth bared, roaring her climax on the purple bed.

At once, another door opened, and a well-sculpted man strode into the room. Dressed in a kaftan of gold satin, he came to stand before the purple couch. He shrugged, his robe drifted over his massive shoulders to the carpet, and there in totally nude glory he stood every muscle rippling with raw power. His cock at full height. Erect and red.

Both women rose to their knees. The dominant one removed the ivory rod from the other’s cunt with such a swift pull, she had the first one keening in objection. Had she finished her climax? Sirena could feel the denial of pleasure ripple though her own body. Angry and rejected, Sirena grit her teeth with the young slave, both deprived of glorious completion. But the dominant woman could not care. She swirled on her knees toward the man and with a savage look of feminine possession, she cradled his cock in her hand and sank her mouth over him.

Sirena swayed in the erotic impact of the sight.

This is what Valentina had spoken of. This is what Sirena would have to do to the pasha.

She pushed her legs together, outraged at her own lust, yearning to scream out her need to perform this kind of service to the man she loved.

But where was he?

She caught a hand to her mouth in a sob.

Strong arms curled around her, pressed her back to a warm sculpted body, then turned her about.

Unknowing, uncaring who this person was, Sirena gave her self up to the need for sexual union. She knew it was useless, childish to think her comforter might be her lover. Still, all she could say as she looked into the sensual blue eyes of the man who held her so tenderly was his name.

Chapter Six

“Mark!”

“Yes,” he whispered as he dropped his face into the crook of her shoulder. “Steel yourself, my sweet. Let me make love to you.”

She mouthed his name, aware at once she was ordered not to speak, not to object. She wouldn’t now. Not now that he was here with her! She gripped him tightly, let the violent urging of her muscles tell him the words she was forbidden to say. For this moment in time, he was hers. For this ecstasy, she would live. A minute. An hour. To know he was alive and safe was all she cared for in this world.

He held her, his body afire with fierce protection and was it also passion? Had he seen what she had?

Was he as entranced? Why would he not be by that display? He was a red-blooded man.

And she? She was as sexual as an animal. Her reaction to this scene, her reaction to Mark’s loving had taught her that. If this mating here with him was to be her last act, let it be true and wild, and let her be his.

She felt his lips on her shoulder, his hands on her back, her buttocks, one skimming up to cup a breast. Squeeze her fullness. She let him hold her, relaxing into his care and abandoned herself to him.

“Yes,” she heard him praise her as he tongued her nipple and sucked her into the warm stormy cavern of his mouth. She gasped, reeling in delight. He was seducing her for these brigands. Letting them view what had been private between them. Gentle, ribald, and rare.

She would let him. Let him because she loved him. Allow him because she lived to be loved by him. Now. Here. What difference did it make that they had a voracious audience? She was his. Had been since that first night in his brother’s ballroom. Now she would show anyone, even these renegades, that she belonged to this man. Body and soul.

He put one leg between her two, bracing himself as he lifted one of her thighs and hooked it up around his hip. Could anyone see her cunny? She was certain of it. Swelling, soaked with need of his cock, her pussy felt liquid as hot glass. She gasped as a rush of cream filled her cunny and cascaded down her thighs.

A low growl of men’s desire met her ears.

Mark halted. The hall grew silent as stone. Suddenly, Mark sank before her and pushed her legs wide. There, as she stood astride, looking down at him, he examined her smoothly polished mons. She moaned, eager for his touch, his tongue. She inched her legs wider for him. He shot her a look of praise, then with gentle thumbs to her tender swollen lips, he parted her. She tilted up her hips, the better to have him, let him use his marvelous skilled lips on her cunt. He smiled, then growled as he fastened his mouth on her sleek, enflamed labia.

Her knees buckled.

He caught her as if she were a ragdoll and lifted her backward to the large couch. Stuffing a large pillow beneath her hips, he grinned into her eyes, his gaze branding her with his lust. She ran her palms over his sculpted heaving chest, and in her ravenous hunger to have him, she noted that he was not hurt, but whole and healthy. How these monsters might have mistreated him had been a nightmare to her these past days. Now, she saw they had saved him. For her. For this.

She arched up, cupping both her breasts and kneading them, pleasuring herself with her nipples as he consumed her needy pussy. With one swoop, he laved a juicy hot lip, then nibbled the other in a delicate feast. She whimpered. More! She grabbed for his torso, clawed him to come nearer.

He grasped her wrists, drove them to the downy softness of the couch, then kissed his way down her body. She cried out as he tasted her ribs, her hipbones, then raised a leg to kiss the back of her knee and her ankle. Bucking, furious, he had bypassed her pulsing cunt, where she loved his devotion, needed his mouth and tongue and teeth. She batted her hands at him. He rolled her over, hauled her up in the air, his cock, his glorious long thick shaft, sliding along her slit.

She shuddered, rejoicing at the fierce girth of him. Still, he was not inside her, and she snarled at him, shook her ass in demand.

As if she were an animal he tamed, he kissed her back, caressed her hips, stroked her wet core with one hand and with two blunt fingers, stroked a special spot high inside her. She jerked in his arms, aware now that some men in the room drew closer.

She couldn’t care. She needed to be fucked, dammit. Now and by Mark. She reared back, a torrent of need afire in her blood.

He caught a handful of her hair and twisted it, yanking back her head.

She stilled.

But oh, she was rewarded for her rebellion. Mark had inserted his cock deep into her pounding core. She moaned, and he pulled out.

She groaned at him.

He pulled her around to face him, rose up on his knees and grinned at her, a conqueror over his concubine, as he stroked his long shaft. His cock had been beautiful, a thick instrument of love when first she’d seen it. Now in this brilliant room awash in sunlight, his rod was a blue-veined vessel bigger than the ivory penis she’d seen the woman use to fuck the other. Mark’s was more glorious because it dripped a milky fluid as he stroked himself so artfully, his eyes glued to hers.

Take him in her mouth? Oh. She licked her lips. Of course, she would. She tossed back her hair and in a graceful dive, moved to kiss the tip of his cock. He tasted salty and sweet. Her tongue reached out for another drop and another. Yes. She let his flavors settle on her lower lip as she licked it and considered how best to love his marvelous body. Should she lick him again?

She did.

The men murmured their delight.

Should she kiss his slit?

Oh, she did. The men ground out their approval.

Should she sink her lips around his crown?

She could. She did. And did it again. And again.

The crowd groaned their approval of her adoration of her lover.

She wanted more. All of his cock. She took him, once, twice, each time lower to the base of his hairless loins. Had they demanded he be clean-shaven, too? Oh, she loved that idea and began to service him with smooth, elegant strokes, savoring his taste and her power.

His hand sank in her hair. She could move less, but stroked him inside with her tongue.

He growled, cursed, and she inched closer to him. Needier, hungrier for his seed, she grew wild to milk him, have him come in her mouth, drink him in, drink him up, have him all. Always hers.

He shouted out, holding her head to his body as he fucked her mouth. Taking him, helping him, she let him come.

His rhythmic strokes set off inside her a roaring orgasm of her own as he poured himself into her. His seed was warm and her delight a scrumptious triumph. Swallowing over and over again, she concentrated on making him happy as her own pounding cunt throbbed and yearned for fulfillment.

“Oh, wonderful,” she cried out when Mark was done, her hands to her soft, hairless, swollen pussy. Her fingers rammed up inside her, mad for some kind of friction inside her raging body.

Mark pushed her to her back, raised her legs in the air, draped them over his arms and drove inside her with one heavenly, devilish drive.

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” she mouthed, tears rushing to her eyes, streaming down the sides of her face as Mark did as she asked and filled her with his incomparable cock.

She came, her hips rocking with his. Her words, nonsense, madness, as she grabbed to bring him closer, deeper inside her.

She spun in his electrifying touch, needing just one more moment, and another, as her cunt ached and throbbed with decadent ecstasy. Yet before she was done, he was gone.

Gone!

She screamed her objection!

He jammed another pillow under her hips, spread her legs wide, and as countless male faces drifted in and out of her view, he held her open to their speculation.

Their faces seemed all the same. Fierce black eyes afire with lust. Mouths open, tongues lashing their lips in longing. Nostrils flared in need.

But there was only Mark’s face above her now. Loving, proud, apologetic, his dear features spoke of all he might have said, if he were permitted. Instead, he expressed what he wished with his body. With his gaze, he praised her mouth, her nipples and her pussy. With his reverent hands, he stroked her and extolled the virtues of her heart and her cunt. And with his cock, he rewarded her once more with his hot, throbbing, driving fucking.

In two strokes, they both came with shouts that she could swear shook the rafters.

They ground together, his cock buried so deeply inside her core that she was certain he had reached her heart. He’d certainly taken her mind. And if these heathens now wished to take her soul in this ribald exhibition, then they must learn they could not. For the only one to have her here was the man she loved.

She heard scuffling.

Mark was lifted from her arms. Seized and forced to stand before her, he grimaced in pain. Her gaze ran down his body. His cock was still erect, glistening with her fluids and his. She clamped her thighs shut, unable to bear his loss. Telltale throbbing of her pussy told her she was not yet finished loving him.

Yet, she heard Al Hassan make some order and Mark was taken away by his captors. She rose to her elbows, a growl of utter despair escaping her. Hustled to the farthest door, Mark disappeared.

She shot to her feet.

The men in the room gasped.

She whirled to face the pasha.

A feral grin of decadent delight spread across his fleshy lips. When he spoke, she knew the words were begrudging praise. She advanced on him, hands clenched. What could she say that he might know her abject hatred? How could she show him her fury and thus ensure he rotted in hell?

Valentina came to her side..

A man in a red fez stepped to her other side, but addressed his master.

After a brief exchange between the men, Valentina nodded at some instructions from the man in the fez, and spoke to her softly. “My friend, you have done so well, do not advance further, lest you ruin this day’s joy.”

Gulping back new despair, Sirena forced the anger to drain from her. Determined to display her revulsion and her courage, she shook back her hair and held her head high, glaring at Al Hassan.

Two eunuchs came to stand before her. Their meaty hands seized her arms. She gasped, scared beyond her wits that now they meant to throw her to the unruly crowd.

But they took her from the hall, through the courtyard, out into the sunshine and to the secluded enclave of the seraglio. There, they took her to her tiny room where she cried herself to sleep that night. At dawn, she was awakened by the female warden to repeat the hours’ long ritual of cleansing and scrubbing, scenting and shaving, until she was weak as a mewling babe and desperate as only a woman enslaved by men can be.

At sunset, the two Nubian giants appeared at her room, accompanied by the female warden. Wordlessly, they took her out of the seraglio and into Al Hassan’s audience room.

Here, Sirena was placed upon a tall table, and once more, countless men filled the room. Tonight am I to be given to them? She panicked, made to rise from the table, but was pushed backward by one of her Nubian guards. Heart in her throat, she watched as much the same scene recurred before her. The appearance of the musicians and jugglers. The return of the male slave of last night who came to stand before her.

Him?

Dear God. Am I to mate with him?

But he smiled lop-sided and whirled to welcome with open arms one young woman from the seraglio whom Sirena knew. This girl was no more than eighteen, but buxom and wily. A beauty with waist length midnight silken hair, she had large red nipples, painted bright cherry, as was her mouth. The musicians began a trilling tune moments after her appearance and naked head to toe, she danced for the male slave and her eager audience.

Within moments, the muscular slave had a virile erection that he stroked audaciously for the dancing girl. As she twirled about him, she batted lust-starved eyes at him. To entice him more, she laid hands on his broad shoulders, his waist and throat. Mesmerized, he followed her every move with his eyes. But never did he touch her.

Sirena knitted her brows at that.

Enchanted by the artistry of the girl’s dancing though, Sirena left that thought aside when she saw two more men enter the room. As naked, as fit and as comely as the first male slave, these two new men came to stand on display as the female houri seduced them as she had the first. Their cocks stood tall to have her and dripped to enter her.

Abruptly, the music came to a halt. Moving like the wind, the first man took her in his arms, turned her toward the other two and held her while they each licked one of her breasts. She writhed, the look on her face blind ecstasy. At once, her male captor lifted her up so that now she wrapped her legs around one man’s hips. And there, without prelude, he entered her and fucked her.

Sirena startled. The scene was ribald but utterly fascinating. Her own cunny swelled, and she shifted, cream coating her thighs in rapturous delight. Was she meant to have these men after this girl? Where was Mark? What had Hassan done with him?

Moans from the crowd redirected Sirena’s attention to the foursome. One man had sprawled on his back, his shaft a glorious tall erection. The first man who still held the houri in his arms took her and placed her astride him on the couch. She sank over his cock with closed eyes, a swirl of her hips and a cry of success. The other man crawled on to the bed behind her and this time, he bent her over, kissed her on her rosy hole and then sank his cock inside her.

She roared with rapture.

Sirena jumped. One hand to the nipple of one breast, she sank her other hand to her pussy. She was creamy and rich, flowing with such fierce need that her folds were smooth and soft and oh, God, did she need to be filled by Mark.

Stroking herself, finding that special small pearl that Mark had discovered for her, she swooned in her own lurid satisfaction. Her gaze locked on the sight of the two men alternately rocking into the pussy and ass of the harem girl, Sirena titillated her nub until she bit her own lip to suppress a scream.

Pausing when she saw the houri reach forward to take the first man’s shaft in her mouth, Sirena closed her eyes at the erotic sight before her.

At once, she felt strong fingers shove aside her own and invade her cunt.

Her eyes flew wide. Mark smiled at her, his face tight with need, his gaze alight with pride once more.

Sweeping her into his arms, he laid her down to the table. Standing at one end, he bent, his mouth to her juicy lips, his tongue afire with decadent flicks to her nub. He kissed her, laved her, then bit her gently on the hood of her labia. She yelped, but he caressed her folds with a strong gentle hand. At once, he reared back.

Her hope aflame, she stared at him. Fuck me now.

He grinned like a marauder and pulled her ass to the edge of the table. There he sank inside her welcoming cunny, a long loud groan rising from both their throats. He held for one precious silent moment as his cock expanded and her core gripped him. Oh, she lolled her head upon the table, this is what it means to make glorious, passionate love.

Like fire, Mark fucked her. Consumed her. Set her off on a wail of fulfillment as her cunt throbbed and milked him dry, drifting down to an exhausted calm that thrilled her and demanded she have more.

She rubbed her breasts against him. His powerful chest, smooth as her own body, was so dear. She teased his nipple with her tongue. Kissed him and bit him.

He bucked.

Keeping his cock inside her, she massaged him with her inner muscles.

He flinched, grabbed her hair and took her lips in a wild assault.

She loved him more, curling her arms around his massive shoulders and bringing his cock inside her to stay.

He was jerked from her embrace. A look of rage and torture flashed across his face.

Her arms were appallingly empty.

What was happening?

She jerked up on her arm to watch in horror two black guards haul him away.

No! She beat the table. No!

Her own Nubians descended upon her in a flash. Hands to her upper arms, they dragged her before Al Hassan.

The tyrant had a few words to say to her again tonight. She could tell by their tone, he was pleased. Immensely so.

Valentina came to stand beside her as she was lead back to her room in the seraglio. “Our master is delighted with you. He wonders if your own master is worthy of you.”

She sank to her bed that night in hideous confusion. She was entertainment for these brigands. Her own desires, her body used for their delights, even as she showed her love for Mark. The unfairness and the irony splinterred her hope into shards of despair. How could she do this night after night? When would the lurid absurdity of what they did kill what love she and Mark had for each other?

Could a man and woman, trained in a culture where one man mated with one woman, live long when the intimacy of their relationship was a lustful morsel for others to consume?

Chapter Seven

“Wake up!” Someone shook her. “Sirena!”

Groggy, she blinked into the shadows of the night. “Valentina?”

“Come, put these on.” She shoved trousers and a shirt of flowing linen into Sirena's hands. “Hurry!”

“But where?” She lowered her voice at Valentina’s finger across her lips. “What are we doing?”

“We go to your master’s ship.”

“What?” Impossible. “How?” She was throwing her arms into the long sleeved shirt, swimming in the huge proportions.

“No time to talk. Come.”

Sirena hung back, clutching the woman’s arm. “How do I know you are helping?”

“You don’t. You have to trust me. And if you don’t, you can take your chances of surviving here. Which is it?”

She had but one choice. To go. Once more, she would act rashly. Quickly. Freedom her only goal.

In the soft silences of the seraglio, nothing moved but the breezes through the palm trees. Sirena followed Valentina, both in slippers that made small padding noises as they rushed along. They wove through corridors Sirena had never even guessed existed. They darted through doors Sirena marveled at for their height and filigreed décor.

Approaching a huge wooden gate, two sentries to the lock, Sirena doubted Valentina’s wisdom to continue. But taking her only chance at escape, Sirena came to a halt before the surly looking Arabs. Valentina whispered some hurried words, and at once, the gates swung wide.

Sirena could do nothing but stare.

“Come! Quickly!”

She ran behind Valentina, and to her shock, the two sentries from the gate ran too.

Darting from one wall to another to avoid light of the moon, the four of them raced through the centre of town. At a small L in the path, Valentina grabbed her hand and pulled her into an open shop. The aromas of cinnamon and cardamom hit Sirena’s nostrils.

“Here,” murmured a man in accented English, “put this over you.” Sirena glanced up, stunned to recognize the man from Hassan’s court. The man in the fez.

Grabbing his hand, she began to ask him who he was and why he was here, but he would have none of her questions. “Do not ask, receive.” He jerked on the robe that covered her head to foot. Then wrapped a scarf over her hair. “Cover your mouth. Now, run.”

Like deer, the five of them ran through the town. Skipping over rocks, darting over baskets and garbage, pots and discarded items, they left the confines of the city and charged along the grassy dunes toward the sandy shore. There on a dark horizon, dancing on star-kissed waters sailed the Water Witch.

“How can this be?” she asked herself more than her companions.

“We tell you once we are aboard,” the man told her and grabbed their hands to run forward to a dock and one waiting rowboat.

Scrambling up the rope ladder, over the sides and to the deck, Sirena panted from her exertions. Frantic, she scanned the deck for Mark, but could not find him. Had he not escaped? Oh, that could not be! She ran a shaking hand through her hair and spun. There, atop the wheel deck, Mark thrust his spyglass into the hands of a crewman who Sirena remembered had brought her to him from the hold. Mark rushed down the steps and took her in his arms.

The solid touch of his hands to her back, to her nape and her cheeks as he gazed down into her eyes told her that her escape was no dream.

“How I worried,” he murmured, his voice a wreck as he kissed her eyes, then claimed her lips with tender sorrow. “Forgive me, darling, for all that happened there. Al Hassan is a brute. I knew it. I had to do what we did.” He paused a moment to lift a dark brow and ensure she understood his implication of their erotic coupling. “It was the only way to free us. My only choice to save you.”

“I concluded as much then. You need explain nothing of your motives. I knew them instinctively.” She caressed his cheek and reached up to kiss him in thanks.

He steadied her on her feet, gave a quick nod to Valentina, then hugged the man who had accompanied them. “Thank you, Ramon, for this. I can never repay you.”

“You have already, Marco. Valentina and I are free of him as well as your woman.”

“Let’s make certain of it, Ramon.” Mark beamed at the man who, clearly, was his friend. “Come up to the wheel with me. I need your guidance to sneak out of this inlet before dawn.”

The two men ran toward the stairs.

“Who is that man, Valentina?”

Her friend’s lovely face filled with pride, her bearing suddenly regal. “Don Ramon Catalon, Duke of Toledo, capitan of the northern fleet of His Royal Majesty, the King of Spain. His ships were captured by Al Hassan more than six years ago.”

Sirena stared at her in shock. Ramon was not a pirate, not a slave, but a nobleman wrongly imprisoned. “And you?”

Valentina’s oval face glowed with a radiance Sirena had never seen from her. “His wife. Taken in the same siege.”

“Come along, ladies,” the crewman Simpson slid to a halt before them. “I’ve orders to show you below.”

“Can we not stay,” Sirena asked, enjoying the fresh air of freedom, “and see us leave this horrid place?”

“No, ma’am. You can not. Captain’s orders.”

“But—”

“Ma’am.” Simpson glared at her. “’Ems my captain’s orders. He wants you below if them buggers discover us gone and come out with their guns blazing to sink us. Now, you want to be atop to see us get blown to smithereens, or you want to be a polite lady and come below while we leave this hell?”

“Of course.” She hooked her arm in Valentina’s. “Forgive me, Simpson. I go below along with my friend.”

Hours later, well out to sea, exhausted and asleep in Mark’s bunk, Sirena rolled over to be enveloped by a warm, delicious masculine scent of salt and sea. Rough arms seized her close. Gentle lips blessed her eyelids and called her lovely endearments. She stirred, coiled one leg over his, knowing exactly this delight was delicious, decadent reality.

“Sweetheart,” Mark’s deep voice invaded her dreams of him as he brushed her hair from her cheeks, “I cannot believe you are here. I worried. Dear God. I was in agony with fear for your safety.”

Drifting in the euphoria of his arms, she smiled against his lips. Her arms wrapped him to her in a joyous embrace as she arched her hips against his powerful frame. “No other man ever touched me. None but you.”

“I told Hassan you were mine.” Mark pulled back, the apology on his face a torment. “I was taken before him. Knew his tastes, his needs. When he asked me if you were a virgin, I knew he intended to take you to his bed. I told him the truth and claimed you as mine. He was enough of a libertine to demand I prove it. And so, those nights in front of—”

She pressed her fingers to his mouth to quiet him. “Do not torture yourself over this.”

“But that exposure was nothing a lady should endure.”

“It saved us for another day,” she said, recalling Valentina’s injunction. “It saved us for this.”

A hand to her cheek, he kissed her sweetly. “The sexual display was beyond any experience I imagined. You were exquisite, so naturally erotic.”

A sensual joy made her grin. “You must have known we could present quite an entertainment.”

He laughed wryly. “I hoped you might flower for me. Think only of me and what we did together, what we might create together.”

She cupped his jaw. “Darling, to join with you again was thrilling. Though I cannot say I ever wish to be the object of such voyeurs again, I adored what we did. I always do.”

His sapphire blue eyes took on the stormy look of desperation. “You will never be on display for anyone again. You are mine, Sirena. Only mine.”

He made love to her then slowly, sweetly, as if now he had all the time in the world. He removed her tattered shirt and trousers, kissing every portion of her skin as he sank down her body and covered her with kisses. “I loved the way you looked at me. As if I were the only man in the world for you.”

“It’s true,” she whispered as she untied the loop of his makeshift linen trousers. “You are.”

“I could not bear the hours in my cell, wondering if they took you up to Hassan.”

“No, forget all that, my darling,” she declared as she licked his nipples and made him moan. “Only the women touched me.”

“You were lovely before they did,” he growled as he threw her clothing to the floor and pushed his trousers down so that his rigid shaft sprang out. “But in the sunlight of The Rouge, your body was even more irresistible, my sweet. Your nipples,” he said and favored each one with tiny kisses, “looked like budding roses. And your skin,” he said as he dropped his tongue inside her navel and licked her skin over her pubic bone, “shone like ivory. Your cunny, bare of all hair, was a luscious sight. So plump and pink.”

“Tight with need of you.”

“Yes, creamy, too,” he told her as he parted her with two fingers and put his mouth to her in a torrid, open-mouthed kiss. “Christ, you are so giving, I can never match you in generosity, though, God knows, I do love trying.” He grinned rakishly. “I marveled at your beauty as you stood there watching the display of the slaves. You caressed yourself, and I wanted to be the one who did that for you. Like this.” He reached inside her with two blunt fingers and stroked her most sensitive spots until she keened like she had before the pasha and his retinue.

“I wanted only you,” she cried out as he reared up and took her deeply with his cock. “Oh have me. All of me.”

He did as she asked, grasping her ankles and draping them about his shoulders. Then he sank his rod more securely inside her. She groaned, filled to the limits of her being with the man she loved. Their mating, their climax took moments, their freedom the aphrodisiac that had them pounding into each other, teeth bared, cries of delight echoing around the small cabin, grinding into each other with the joy of life saved for each other, by each other.

He gave her his seed fully, with ragged sounds of need, joy realized. “Sleep,” he told her and brushed her wild hair from her eyes and cheeks. “When I return, we love again.”

“And again,” she promised him with a satisfied smile.

He returned that day, much later, to sink to the bunk, curl her close into his arms and fall instantly asleep.

What he had endured, he had not shared. Not yet. But tomorrow, she would ask him to explain. How he had managed this escape. Why Ramon Catalon and his wife Valentina helped them both to outwit the barbaries. What she might do to help or at the very least, say to express her gratitude to the two Spaniards.

As Mark slept, she grew pensive. Pondering her recent past, she decided she truly cared not one whit about the erotic display in front of Al Hassan. She had no regrets. No shame. Though no women of the ton could ever imagine what she had done or why, Sirena knew that because of it, she had become a different person. Yes, she loved Mark. Had since the night she had met him. She admired his stamina to survive the British impressment. She had been drawn to him by curiosity and found him to be more extraordinary than even her imaginings of how brave he must have been. Each time she spoke with him, she discovered him to be considerate, kind and witty. More, she’d seen he was taken with her. That gratified her, fed her pride, made her see that marrying Colin de Ros was not the path to any happiness for her. How could an arranged, loveless marriage be for any woman? Yet most women did bind themselves to men found for them, secured for them by others for reasons as simple as affinity, as complex as financial benefit or a smug maintenance of bloodline.

She snorted. Fearing to wake Mark, she rose from the bunk gingerly, silently fretting at her enduring weakness after all their travails. Gathering up a sheet, she walked toward the porthole and squinted out where the dying sun streamed through in hot red rays of day’s end upon the brilliant dancing waters of the Atlantic.

Were they headed to Baltimore?

So thrilled with their escape and with Mark in her arms, she had failed to ask. Yet, she had no idea what the condition was of the ship, nor its crew. Dear heavens, she had not even thought of them, what they had suffered. Was she shallow?

She thrust her hair back from her face. What must Mark think of her, that she would never ask after the welfare of the men who were his loyal crew?

And what must he think that she had not even inquired about Ramon and his wife, if they too came with them to America?

Or did they take them to a port in Spain?

She turned, aghast at her naïveté. She would no longer be that woman. Superficial, self-centered. She would be a woman worthy of the man who had risked all to save her. She would be worthy of her own commendation.

And worthy of Mark Stanhope’s love.

Because, she realized with a shock as she sat there staring at him abandoned to his dreams, that he had not told her he loved her.

Never had he told her that.

She would not ask him for the words. That would debase their value. But fear fell over her like a shroud that he had not declared his love because she had not given him reason to love her. Yes, she was brave. Brave, perhaps, to the point of fool-hardy. But what else commended her to him? Aside from his physical attraction to her, what else did he see in her? What else did he value? If he could not name any qualities, how could he love her?

And if she could not earn a declaration from him, she would never marry him. Certainly leave him. Make her own way in the world. As a governess. A tutor. Anything to be able to gather her pride and her dignity.

Chapter Eight

Eleven days later, Sirena sat in the Grosvenor Square home of Jack Stanhope and his wife Emma. The entire family had assembled within an hour of Mark’s and her arrival from Dover. After their initial shock at Mark’s appearance, Jack and Emma had fussed over Sirena, having heard she had died on the East End docks. She’d explained how she’d run away to Mark and begun an adventure which turned sour with capture. Neither she nor Mark offered up any of her experiences in the seraglio or as lovers in Hassan’s presence, keeping all of that as eternal secrets none would ever know. Then, Emma and Jack had ushered Mark and Sirena into their main salon and sent messages round to Adam and Felice and Wes and Lacy to attend them at once. Their father, the earl, they summoned as well. In each note, Emma wrote that Sirena was alive and as well as could be expected.

“I do not want them walking in here only to stand in the doorway speechless,” Emma explained. “We have many problems to solve this morning.”

“You’re right,” Mark agreed with a small smile toward Sirena.

She had nodded, understanding that many would soon know of her survival, whether she wished it or not. She relented, giving in to her worst fears that her father would come and forcibly try to remove her from the house. But frazzled from days on a cold ship with poor supplies and food severely rationed, Sirena took the first comfort she could and snuggled into the warm wool blanket Emma had thrown around her shoulders. She had drunk a hot cup of tea with such ease that her stomach, unused to such delights, growled loudly.

“Have another cup, my dear.” Emma poured rich picot tea into the pale blue Wedgewood cup in Sirena’s shaking hands. “The footman comes with cakes in a few minutes.”

“Thank you.” Sirena had never been so undone by need of food and warmth as she was these past eleven days tossed about in the wintry Atlantic Ocean north to Dover.

She sipped this cup of tea, the heat stirring a sense of normality within her at their shocking fate at the hands of Al Hassan. She contemplated that she was indeed in Jack Stanhope’s drawing room, still as stunned as the morning Mark had revealed to her that he had decided to return to England instead of sailing west to America. Yes, she did understand his reasoning, though she loathed the necessity of going home. Running from Al Hassan had been a harebrained scheme, true, Mark had told her the first morning of their freedom. Yet it was one inspired by laxity among the pasha’s guards—and smart calculation by Ramon Catalon that they might succeed. Ramon had learned of a change in the guard numbers and had bribed a few to turn the other way as Mark and his men rushed from the dungeon and out to the shore. Though the Water Witch stood anchored in the shore, the prospect of overtaking it and any of Hassan’s men on it was a big task. Yet, once Mark’s twelve men and he climbed aboard, they found only two pirates. Dispatching them to their doom had been easy. Still, the clipper ship had been stripped of its cargo of tea and spices. Worse, the pirates of Bou Regreg had stolen their foodstuffs. Without food or water, Mark and Ramon had decided to sail into the British held port of Gibraltar to tell their tale to the British admiral in command and ask for assistance. The commander readily aided them, but citing his need to conserve his own resources in wartime, gave them such small rations, they were nigh unto starving as they sailed into Dover yesterday.

But hunger and cold were the least of Sirena’s concerns at the moment. Her independence was the bigger challenge. And she feared its loss here in England. She’d never shared this with Mark. He had so many other problems, she felt petty focusing on her own. Mark had men to feed, a ship to sail safely, if he could, into a friendly port. Still, she pondered what returning to England might mean for her. Going back to England meant not only notifying her father of her survival, but perhaps even tempting Colin de Ros to keep her here and renew his attentions to her. Women had so few rights in England. Few financial ones, no legal ones to decide her own future. Only married did a woman have any standing, and Sirena was not. She would not marry de Ros, and as for marrying Mark, well, that possibility had not crossed his lips. If it crossed his mind, he did not say. If flight had seemed the only solution for her weeks ago, it seemed just as viable a solution now.

Sirena folded her hands, frowning in unease, out of place in this formal silk and satin draped salon. Odd. I always felt at home in such rooms. Now it feels sumptuous. Alien to my nature.

Glancing down at her attire of North African linen shirt and trousers and thin silk slippers, Sirena smiled with poignant reflection. On her person was not a ribbon or pearl to be found. Nor did she want them. Sighing, resolute for what she might soon have to do to save herself from her father and de Ros, she listened to Mark recount the tale of their capture to his three half-brothers as they awaited the arrival of their father from his home two city blocks away.

“Forgive me for intruding on you again and in this sorry condition,” Mark apologized to Jack and Emma, indicating his attire. “I am quite without funds and the means to send a runner to announce us.”

Emma refilled his teacup, then gave a comforting smile to Sirena. “Of course, you would come to us. We are your family. And you are quite in need of more than money. Drink up. I have the footmen drawing two baths upstairs and Cook preparing a nourishing breakfast for you both. And Sirena, my maid goes with Felice’s to gather warmer clothes for you. You and she are about the same size.”

“I thank you both,” Sirena replied to both women, grateful for their care and telling herself for the hundredth time that this return to England was the most prudent course of action for Mark after their escape. But she hated the whole idea nonetheless. She shivered, laying odds the servants were already out and about the town, gossiping with others, spreading the word that Sirena Maxwell had appeared on their doorstep this morning, back from the dead.

“And I think we can find a complete wardrobe for you, Mark,” declared Wes, “from among the three of us.”

Certainly, looking at the four brothers standing close together near the fireplace, it was indeed noticeable that the Stanhope men were of the same build and the same bone structure. Big and bold, muscular to a fault. Only Wes differed from his three raven-haired siblings, with his auburn hair and of course, the black leather eye patch.

Mark chuckled. “I doubt I’ll have call for evening clothes in Baltimore.”

“After all the trouble with those pirates,” Adam scowled at him, “you still want to cross the ocean again?”

“Why not let us put them down first?” Wes asked, his position among military advisers to the Crown senior and respected.

“In Parliament,” Adam said, quick to discuss what he knew was discussed there each day, “we talk of action against them.”

“What with the war against Napoleon well advanced on land,” Jack asked of Adam, the member of Parliament most honored for his advancement of the army against the French upstart, “are we not able to do this soon?”

“This spring, I do hope,” Adam replied, then considered Mark. “Winter in the north Atlantic is no time to cross. It was perilous enough to start out weeks ago!”

“Come in, Rogers,” Felice beckoned the footman who carried a silver tray filled with tiny cakes and muffins, butter and bread. “Why must you cross now, Mark? Stay with us. Any of us. All of us, each in turn. Go in the spring, why don’t you? Is that not a wonderful plan, Adam?”

Before Adam could answer, Emma took up the cause. “Yes! Go after you have pressed the Admiralty to rid the coastal waters of the Bou Regreb. Perfect time to cross, after you can do so safely, Mark. Don’t you agree, Jack? Wes? Adam?”

Mark frowned into Sirena’s gaze. “I am not certain. I will not commit to it unless….Sirena, what do you think of this?”

Was he asking her opinion only of the time of crossing? Or was he asking her more? To go with him? Once, weeks ago in some other lifetime, she had hoped and planned for that. Haphazardly, foolishly, she had run away from her home and father. She had stowed away on Mark’s clipper ship. She had not thought of the method or the consequences. As a result, her servant who had helped her had died. She herself had hidden away in the storage hold of the ship and nearly froze and starved to death. She had found herself in the arms and the bed of the man she now adored. That she did not regret, nor would she change. But the price for that bliss in his bed was his neglect of his duty to the bridge and their capture by Al Hassan. She and he plus his crew had been seized like slaves and imprisoned. Only to nearly starve and freeze once more on her return to a land she wished to leave as soon as possible. If Mark had declared he loved her, if he had shown the slightest inclination to marry her, she might have counted it all well worth the prize. The most valuable lesson she had learned in all this misadventure, however, had been to be true to herself. Honest, bold and upright about who she was and what she needed to hold her head up high.

“Sirena?” Mark stared at her, skeptically examining her features. “What do you say?”

For now? For all to hear? “I say you should cross when it is safe. Safe from winter storms and Al Hassan.”

“Wonderful!” Lacy set down her teacup and clapped in delight. “We shall fatten you both up and ensure your health, won’t we, Fee? Emma?”

“Absolutely,” Jack interrupted. “But I think we have a few other issues to contend with as well. Your cargo, for one.”

Marriage, for another. Sirena kneaded her fingers together. I cannot, should not remain here without it. Though I care naught about any scandal, I do care to know to what degree the man I love reciprocates my feelings.

“Milady,” Emma’s butler interrupted them by opening the salon doors and bowing to her. “The earl of Stanhope.”

Ambling in the door close behind the butler, John Stanhope took one shaky step after another across the Oriental rugs. His own servant held him by one arm as he aided him to a nearby chair where he surveyed them all, especially Mark and Sirena.

Each younger Stanhope male nodded in deference to the father they only recently began to know and care for with any affection.

“Father,” Mark greeted the man with a smile warmer than Sirena had seen ever before. “Thank you for coming.”

“I would not remain home to hear this second hand, Mark. Tell me. Quickly.”

Mark summarized the happenings of the past few weeks for him to bring the conversation around to the point at which the group was once more discussing Mark’s cargo. “I am afraid that is totally lost. The goods went to Al Hassan and his thieves. I welcomed your suggestion, Jack, to insure it with Lloyds, but now with this catastrophe on my record, few other merchants will want to ship with me.”

John pursed his lips. “What happened to you was not your fault. The storm, the seizure by those thugs were not events you controlled.. You are to be commended for escaping them.”

Mark inhaled. “That credit must go to my friend, Don Catalon, the Duke of Toledo who saw the opportunity and took it for us all.”

“This duke is with you here?” Adam asked with interest.

“In Dover, yes. I met him years ago in Bou Regreg’s dungeons. He became Al Hassan’s aide and translator.”

“Did he now? Well done.” Wes nodded, folding his arms. “And now that he is free, what are his intentions?”

“He wishes to return to his country and regain his lands and titles once Spain is returned to its rightful king.”

Adam raised his brows. “Perhaps we in Parliament might have a few good words for him.”

“And the Admiralty,” added Wes, “might find his insights useful when we pursue Al Hassan.”

“All good intentions,” John Stanhope observed, “but our first concern must be to put Mark back on his feet, eh?”

“True,” Jack agreed. “And I think there is a useful way. What if,” he asked with a self-satisfied smile on his face, “we pooled our resources to make that a reality?”

“I want no charity,” Mark declared.

“And you’ll get none,” Adam grinned with a twinkle in his eyes. “We three have a stake in our cousin’s trading company in Hong Kong.”

“He’s right,” Jack added. “Plus a year ago, I invested in a commercial shipping company out of Boston, Massachusetts. Father has a stake, too. They’ve profited from sugar and tea trade between America and England, but they recently lost a partner who died. They search for another ship ready to take cargo between America and Portsmouth. You would have to sail at least part of the year from Boston, instead of Baltimore. Would you be willing?”

Mark looked stunned but eager. “Of course. To earn my living is my goal.”

Sirena beamed with pride. She’d known that about Mark. His independence, his resolve to live up to his ideals were hallmarks of his character. I wish to emulate him.

“Perhaps, too,” John added, “I should send a letter to my brother in Hong Kong.”

Jack agreed. “We should influence our uncle and his two sons in Hong Kong to ship on your Water Witch.”

“Or, Adam,” Felice said to her husband with a glint in her eyes, “because we’ve made such good profits from our investment with them in China, we could fund the building of another clipper for Mark?”

Adam grinned at his wife. “You know the books better than I, Fee, and if you say we have the funds…?”

She wiggled her brows in glee. “We do.”

“Then we will!” Adam beamed at Mark. “What do you say?”

“I say you have an agreement. But only if it is clear that I pay you back with interest.”

“Done!” John snapped his fingers and shifted slowly in his chair to examine Sirena. “Now tell me, my dear, what do you intend to do about your father? He has grieved terribly over your loss. And we are shocked as hell you sit here, alive and breathing.”

“That is thanks to Mark,” she told the earl with pride. “He was quite good to me when in fact I was only a stowaway.”

John frowned at Mark. “You did not know she was aboard when I was in Dover to see you off?”

“No, sir. I did not lie to you.”

“I see. Good. When I read Emma’s note this morning that Sirena had survived, I did wonder if you’d known. Your grief over her loss seemed a palpable thing.”

Sirena remembered Mark’s shock and joy when Simpson brought her to him. The warmth of his welcome was a heart-rending moment she would never forget.

Mark nodded. “It was, sir. You can imagine my surprise to have my crewman bring me a disheveled youth in ragged clothes.”

John barked in laughter. “Did you really change your dress, my girl?”

Sirena managed a smile. “I did, my lord.”

“Cheeky, that.”

“Yes, my lord.” She considered her hands in her lap. “I know that now. I was naïve.”

“Most certainly. And your motivation? What was that, Sirena?”

The earl’s question was fierce, his tone imperial. But she did not flinch from answering. His inquiry was grounded in more than curiosity, but in concern for her welfare. “I would not marry de Ros.”

“A sound decision,” the earl replied with a chuckle. “De Ros is an ass of the first order. If you married him, you would be bored from your first day with him.”

“Plus,” Lacy added with a lift of her shoulders and a twinkle in her eyes, “Mark showed us what a blowhard he was when he failed to show for the duel.” Mark crossed his arms and scuffed the carpet with his shoe. “He never thought I would challenge him. I was rather glad he did not appear that morning with his pistols and a second. I am a terrific shot. Have no idea of his talents.”

“He’s all bluff and bluster.” Jack growled, then gave his wife a tender look. “He is one of those men trained to think a wife’s fortune should be his to squander.”

“Well, then, Sirena,” John Stanhope said with a tone that brooked little argument, “shall we summon your father now?”

“No, sir.”

Gasps of shock rose from each one in the room.

Mark stepped forward and took her hand. “Darling, he needs to know you are alive.”

“He does.” She got to her feet. “Emma? Jack? May I have use of your carriage? I need to see him.” Tell him my plans.

“Of course, you may.” Emma pulled the bell for her butler. “I’ll have it brought round immediately. I shall hurry along my maids to let you bathe and dress.”

Mark tugged on Sirena’s hand. “I’m coming with you.”

“No, Mark.”

His sapphire blue eyes widened with surprise. “But you came to me. I am responsible for you.”

Because I made you so. “I owe my father an explanation and an apology.”

“So do I.”

“No. You protected me. For that I am grateful. But you did not ask me to leave my father’s house.”

“Sirena,” his voice rose, “I need to tell him—”

“Mark.” She put up a hand. “Whatever you wish to say to him must come later. Please understand. This I owe my father. This,” for my own self-respect, “I must do alone.”

Chapter Nine

Sirena took the rickety stairs to her room in the White Swan with conflicting emotions. To finally secure passage for herself on a transport ship to Philadelphia after three weeks of searching Portsmouth for an opening was a relief. A triumph, in fact. To know that she was finally leaving England and beginning a new life for herself was a terror. A heartache.

She opened her door and sat down on the bed. Her little room had become her home these past weeks. She loved its simplicity. The gnarled wood. The soft eiderdown of her mattress. The freedom it represented. If she also hated the solitude, she told herself it gave her an opportunity to reflect upon the rightness of her decision to leave England, her father, the society she’d been bred to enjoy and dominate. The simple meals she ate in the common room below gave her pause just as they gave her nourishment and gratitude for her education, her determination and her hope that what she embarked upon was a better life.

That she also began this new life alone seared her with regret. But to stand alone for herself by herself had been necessary to her pride, her integrity. Mark had taught her the value of honoring one’s integrity. In any venture, he had been honest, bold and true. He would want for a mate a woman of like character. And though she was not yet that woman, though clearly he had not thought so either or he would have proposed marriage, now she would be a woman of strength. Her own woman. In a year or two, had she left home as she did now with money in her pocket and her father’s blessing, she might have won the heart of a man like Mark.

“As it is…” She covered her mouth with one hand to hold back tears. “No. I will not think of what might have been. Only what good days lie ahead for me.”

Her father had been nigh unto apoplectic at the sight of her that afternoon. With her hair hanging down her back, dressed in Felice Stanhope’s ginger-colored day dress and leather slippers with Emma’s wool cape about her shoulders, Sirena had gone home to Maxwell Terrace. Her father, who had only moments before received a note from the earl of Stanhope to notify him of Sirena’s existence and return from a sea voyage, stood on the front steps and greeted her with tears running down his cheeks.

“My dear girl,” he whispered, then caught her close and hugged the breath from her. “I cannot believe you are here and whole and sound. My God, you are thin. Come in. Come in. Let us help you inside.” And so the nobleman who appeared to have aged a decade or more in the intervening weeks had taken her into his house and more deeply into his heart than ever he had allowed her before.

There, as he held her hands while they sat before a roaring fire in the main salon, the Duke of Fyfe fawned over his only child, pampering her with candies and whiskey, a cashmere shawl over her knees to keep her warm and near him, and more attention than he had ever before shown her. There, he listened to her tale of escape from this house, her sorrow over her maid’s untimely death, her journey aboard Mark Stanhope’s Water Witch, their capture and escape from pirates and their final return to England. Her love for Mark Stanhope she alluded to but did not explain. Not only would that have been too painful to describe, it would have invited questions from her father that would have embarrassed them both. Her erotic delights in Mark’s arms, in his cabin and in the confines of The Rouge, she vowed never to share with anyone. Those memories were too precious to describe to anyone. Those memories were her prize for enduring hardships that were hers alone. Memories of love to last a lifetime.

When she came to the end of her tale, she told him then she would not re-enter his house or society. The old man did not argue with her, but declared instead he did not care what she did as long as she lived and was happy with her choices. To merely know that she lived, he said, was an unexpected boon, more than he deserved for his domineering ways. So when she told him she wished to travel to America and live there for the rest of her days, he did break down then. His tears tore her heart to shreds, but for her own happiness, she did not relent. Instead, she asked him for three favors. The cost of a traveling wardrobe was the first. Pocket money of three hundred pounds, silver. “A small portion of what my wedding would have cost you, Father. I pray you will consider it a loan to help me on my way. I will not run away from anything or anyone again. That was not kind or fair to anyone, not you or me.” And ultimately, not Mark Stanhope, either. To have foisted myself on him was unthinkable. Yet, in my self-centered way I did it.

To her request of the third favor, her father balked. “I do not understand your reasoning on this. I saw how Mark Stanhope cared for you, my child. While he met de Ros’s challenge of that silly duel and proved his chivalry, he seemed so honorable, so rational. Yet, I daresay I saw him look at you with eyes of love many a long evening before and after that. If you were to tell me now that you wanted to marry him, Sirena, I would not object. The man saved you and brought you home to me again. Why, Sirena, why then may I not tell him where you are going?”

And though she thought her explanation simple, the old man said he understood, but didn’t, yet he finally agreed. When she climbed into a traveling coach hours later, she had silver in her pocket, a bank note for hundreds more, and the name of a Portsmouth dressmaker whom her father would pay for warm winter clothes for her journey across the Atlantic.

As she walked the streets of Portsmouth for the next few weeks trying to book passage to the United States, she gave herself permission to remember Mark and hope that someday he would understand that she left him because she was not his equal in honor or courage.

She prayed, however, that she would learn both so well, that she would teach their child to emulate his father.

Mark pushed up his coat collar against the wind and falling snow. Worn from combing the wharfs of Portsmouth these past four days, he cursed at the foul weather and pulled his hat more securely over his head. Wicked as hell to be out in December on the shores of England, Mark had never known relief from the country’s raw winter elements.

His heart was as cold. Numb. Where the hell would she be in this town?

Her father, poor man, had struggled to share with him any of her intentions. “She made me promise not to tell you, Mr. Stanhope. I wronged her before. I’ll not do it again.”

“But, sir, she left my brother’s house to come to you, refused my escort, and gave me no indication she would never return. I care for her, sir. I love her. I must find her and ask for her hand.”

“I have always known you prized her, Mister Stanhope. I did not approve of you for my girl, but after she told me how you looked after her and saved her, I can do naught but say you are a very good man. And I know, above all others, she loves you.”

“She told you that?”

“No. She did not need to do that. Just as I never needed to hear it from your lips, but I fear for what she wants to do.”

Mark had leaned closer to the old duke. “What does she want to do, sir?”

He had gone nearly out of his mind at the answer.

Why she wanted to sail to America, he could, in many ways, understand. She had always wanted freedom from her condition as much as she wanted him. That had made her a woman worth having. A woman worth saving and savoring. A woman meant for him. His equal.

How she had gotten to Portsmouth, Mark could imagine. Her father had given her money. This time as she departed England, she would not go without giving her sire a proper goodbye. She would go with dignity and a plan.

But what the hell she planned to do, how she planned to live without him, Mark was wild to know. “Tell me, sir,” he had urged the sad old man, “give me some hint where I might find her. She is the woman I love. She loves me well, I know, sir. Help me. I cannot tell you all that happened those weeks she was with me, but I will tell you I came to respect her as no other woman. I never told her that. I should have. I had so many things to do, to think of to get us all to safety and back to England. To work with my brothers and my father to save my ship and my crew and my friends and to do it with dignity. To reject any charity and instead, to build a future for myself and one worthy of her.” He’d gone to his knees and took the duke’s shriveled hand in his. “Give me a hint, sir, where I might look. I want her for my wife, and I swear you will never be sorry to say I am your son-in-law.”

Daily visits for three weeks to the duke had finally worn the old man down. Four days ago, worried himself because he’d not had any notes from Sirena, he had given Mark one word. “Portsmouth.”

Since then, Mark had walked the docks talking to any stocking ships bound for America. He’d found two, talked with their captains, asking if they had taken passage from any young women. None was their answer.

He needed a brandy, a warm fire, and a place to rest for tonight. Rushing in to an inn whose owner once sailed with him, Mark sat by the hearth and unbuttoned his great coat.

“Sir?” a serving girl appeared. “Grog for you?”

“Hot whiskey, please. Is Ray Drummond here? I knew him years ago and I’d like—“

A ruddy-faced man appeared from the back of the inn. “Stanhope!”

Mark spun.

“What in hell are you doing here, me boy?” Drummond’s Irish brogue not quite as thick as when Mark and he had sailed together out of Baltimore when they were both twelve.

“Looking for some potato soup, you rebel.”

“You look like you need more than that! Bring out the brandy, Moira. And the bread and butter.” Drummond fingered Mark’s fine lapel and cravat while the serving girl scurried away. “You seem different. Prosperous. Do you stay in Portsmouth or are you--?”

“Looking for a woman.”

“Oh, hell, Mark, my lad. We all are, eh? ‘Till we find one we can’t live without.”

His humor fell on deaf ears. “I’m serious, Drummond.”

His friend slapped him on the back. “Come sit over here by the fire. So you think she’s here?”

“In Portsmouth, yes.” Mark told him a summary of his relationship with Sirena while the man looked at him with a smile growing on his lips.

“Dear me, she’s led you a merry chase.” Ray Drummond rocked to and fro on his heels. “Moira! Will you bring the brandy before the next Coming? Our guest will perish of thirst!”

Mark ran two hands through his hair. “I don’t care, Ray, if I have to look in every house and barn here. I need to find her before she leaves for America.”

“Ah. You love her,” his friend crooned like a moonstruck Irish lad as he looked over Mark’s shoulder, entranced.

“I do. I need to tell her.”

“Why’s that?” Drummond asked, tearing his gaze from the back of the room to him.

“I want to marry her.”

“Is that so?” Drummond sounded pitiful.

Moira plunked a mug of steaming hot whiskey in front of him. Grateful, he thanked her and picked up the mug to inhale and close his eyes.

“Is that so?” asked a woman’s voice, one he knew, one he had yearned to hear again for weeks.

There she sat, across from him. Her raven hair flowed down her shoulders like a young girl. Her purple eyes were clear and round and taking in his own with sad delight. Her lips quivered as she fought tears.

“That’s so,” he whispered, reached out and took her hand to draw her to his lap. With her welcome weight in his lap, he took her in his arms, cupped her cheek and kissed her with all the hunger of the past weeks without her. “I love you,” he told her once, twice and then again. “Have you been here all this time?”

“With Drummond and his Moira?” Sirena smiled tremulously into Mark’s eyes. “I was. They took good care of me. Moira’s a good cook. And Drummond, well….”

“He’s rare, eh?” Mark threaded his hand through her lush long hair and held her by the nape to kiss her lips again. “Thank God. I worried so. I was out of my mind to find you.”

“How did you?” she asked, not entirely happy, but wary it seemed that he would hunt her down.

“I searched the city. For four days now, I have looked for you everywhere, darling.”

“And how did you know to come here?” she said, now even more distant, almost angry.

Mark pulled back. She wanted to argue? “I begged your father to give me a clue.”

She shot from his lap.

He caught her by the wrist. “No, you don’t escape that easily!”

“Exactly!” She spun on him, advancing with two fingers to his chest. “I am not easy!”

“God knows that’s right!”

Mark saw from the corner of his eye Ray Drummond salute him and shoo Moira from the common room. He seized Sirena’s forearm.

She yanked back, but he did not let her go.

“Why did you run away from me?” he demanded, his voice booming with tension and passion, rejection and joy.

“I did not run away from you!”

“No?” He caught her other arm and made her face him fully. “What do you call it then?”

“Freedom!”

“How free are you?” he chided her, lost in whatever nonsense she tried to justify her actions.

“Free as you,” she tossed back.

“You think I am?” he scoffed at her words and shook her, hauling her inexorably closer to his tired, aching body. “How free am I if I can’t breathe because you are not with me? Hmm? How free am I if I walk the streets of London and wonder where you are, how you are, why you left me? How free am I, I insist you tell me, if I must learn from your father that you love me? That you asked him to help you leave me? That you came here all by yourself in a town filled with sailors and thieves from a hundred different countries dying to grab a woman off the streets and imprison her? How free am I?” he bellowed.

And she began to cry in earnest now. Her heart-shaped face crumpled in tears, and she nestled into his chest. He stroked her hair for minutes as she wet down his cravat and broke his heart. “Darling, don’t cry anymore, will you, please? I cannot bear it and neither can my very expensive London tailor.”

She laughed through her tears and punched him in the stomach. But instantly was back in his embrace again. “Tell me,” she whispered and hiccupped, “how you found me. I need to know you are real. No mirage.”

He fished a handkerchief from his vest pocket, and grinning like a love struck fool, he wiped the tears from her plump rosy cheeks. “I begged your father to tell me. Every day I went to his house and begged. For three weeks, I did this. The poor man was tired of me, to say nothing of his butler.”

They both laughed.

Mark brushed his lips on hers. “I was a crazed fool without you. I told him so, and he believed me. He would even welcome me into the family.”

“He would, eh?” she teased him.

Mark nodded. “If you’ll give me long enough that I might propose to you properly. Will you?”

“I’d love to hear it.”

He put her on the chair and then got to the sawdust-strewn floor. From his jacket pocket, he produced a golden ring. “My dearest Lady Maxwell—”

She giggled, clapped her hands and rocked on the chair in glee. Her brows danced. “Go on. Do go on!”

He gave her a lopsided grin. “I have lately become a man of means.”

“Is that so?” she asked with interest.

“Very true. My father, brothers and I have formed a company. A trading company.”

“It’s a reality then? What you talked of that morning I left?”

He nodded. “Stanhope Shipping and Commerce will ply the ports of Boston, Baltimore, Portsmouth and Hong Kong. Perhaps others, as years go on.”

“How exciting. Oh, sweetheart,” she drew back, momentarily shocked she had exuded such an endearment. “I am so happy for you.”

“I would be happier if I knew you would come share my good fortune with me.”

“Would you, really, Mark?” she asked, as if the very idea was an impossible dream.

He grabbed both her hands and squeezed. “My dearest darling Sirena. How’s that?”

“Better. Oh, definitely, much better.”

“I adore you.”

“Mark,” she whispered, and the tears rolled down her cheeks again.

“I adore you. Your bravery. Your wit. Your conversation.”

“Do you?” She seemed whimsical now.

Eager now to draw on her gayer mood, he said. “I love everything about you. Your mouth, your nose, your hair. Your body.”

She glanced about, biting her lower lip to see if anyone overheard. Skeptical still, she tipped her head one way and the other. “Do you like my dancing?”

“My dearest love, if you can like my dancing, I can certainly applaud yours.”

“Oh, wonderful. You are very good.” She was beaming now. “Continue, do.”

He cleared his throat and gave her a look of pain. “I want you to come back to London with me.”

“I won’t go to my father’s house.”

“No. You won’t go anywhere from now that you care not to go. You could come to stay with any of my brothers and their wives. They have offered this if you would honor them. But you would stay only for a few days.”

“Why? Where would you have me go after a few days?”

“Away with me on a honeymoon trip. Jack has offered us his house in Durham.”

“I’ve never been to Durham.”

“I have a license, sweetheart. In my coat. I applied for it, hoping when I found you, you would permit us to use it. Say you’ll marry me, Sirena.”

“Mark, I must tell you that—”

“What more could I give you? Name it. Tell me. Do you want to sail with me?”

“What?” She was astonished at his switch form one subject to another.

“Yes. I would hope that from time to time you’d sail with me to many ports.”

“You mean that?”

“Of course, I do. I have noticed you are a very good sailor.”

“Oh, now you are being ridiculous.”

“No. In fact, I have proof.”

“Like what?”

“You stayed in my storage hold for two days and didn’t lose your guts. You survived a storm at sea and never had a moment’s seasickness.”

“I see. Well, I agree. I am a good sailor.”

“The best,” he acknowledged and held up the ring. “More than that, you are the most courageous woman I know.”

She knit her brows. “How can you say that?”

Noting her incredulity, he stated the obvious. “You left your home to make a new life for yourself. Perhaps you did not do it in the best way, not telling your father and then stowing away on a clipper. But you survived it and then survived even worse circumstances. You were a prisoner of ruthless men.”

“In both cases, you saved me,” she declared.

“You took initiative to save yourself with what means you had to hand. Many women would not have even tried. You did. You endured. And I am proud of you. Immensely proud of you.”

“I want that to be so.”

“I have never lied to you, Sirena.”

She gave him a tremulous smile. “That I do know.”

“Good.”

“I wanted you to be proud of me. But more, I wanted to be proud of myself.”

“You should be.”

She grinned, relenting. “I am learning.”

He beamed at her. “I want you to marry me, darling, because I love you. Because you’re a good sailor. Because you are sweet and wise, and strong.”

“And how am I in bed?” she shot back, wickedness suddenly in her deep purple eyes.

He caught her close. “Tell me you’ll marry me, and I’ll demonstrate how good you are in bed. How good we are together.”

She circled her arms around his shoulders. “I’ll gladly marry you, Mister Stanhope.”

With a whoop of delight, he gathered her up in his arms and headed for the stairs. “You will never be sorry. But I must say, have you gained weight on Moira’s cooking?”

“Take me upstairs, Mister Stanhope, and I will tell you why I am getting fat.”

Two hours later, the American captain and his future wife, the duke’s daughter, descended the stairs to announce to the proprietor, Ray Drummond, his wife Moira and the two other patrons in the common room that their wedding would be in London next week. The captain bought two rounds of drinks for all, because he said, he was soon to become a husband and a father. “And my child will have my wife, my name and my attention, I swear to you,” he promised his betrothed with a hot kiss that had the group clapping, “as long as I live and breathe.”

About the Author

Cerise DeLand believes great romances match feisty women with one—or more—men who cannot live without them. And Cerise knows men—all types of them from living in Italy, England, Japan, New York, Washington—and wild west Texas! She blends that intimate knowledge with a passion for European and Chinese art and travel to delightful lands she loves to write about.

An award-winning author, Cerise has also penned 18 print romances and mysteries (under another name), many of which have been selections of The Doubleday Book Club and The Mystery Guild. And what does this prolific author do when she’s not writing? Ah. She is an excellent cook. To taste and prepare a few of her delicacies, do come to her blog, especially on Thursdays for her Afternoon Delights, elegant simple refreshments to serve after your rendezvous! http://cerisedeland.blogspot.com

The Stanhope Challenge Series by Cerise DeLand

Now Available at Resplendence Publishing

Lord Stanhope’s Improper Proposal

Lord Adam Stanhope faces the Stanhope Challenge of wanting to marry...and knowing it will be loveless and tormenting. But he takes one look at his childhood friend, now a lovely widow, and proposes a marriage in name only. But when he learns that his bride is determined to be his lover as well as his wife, he faces a bigger challenge: Accept her delicious offer to delight them both in bed or spend his life in a greater torment...alone.

Lady Featherstone’s Fervent Affair

Willful Lady Lacy Featherstone knows how the lack of love can warp a person’s life. When her dashing fiancé, Colonel Wesley Stanhope retreats to his hunting lodge after a devastating cavalry injury in Spain, she sweeps into Wes’s hideaway with a scandalous proposal. Wes will make her his wife or she’ll make him her lover. But if Lacy cannot conquer the Hero of Talavera with logic and kisses, how risqué must she become to prove that she is his equal in fortitude…and the only one worthy to grace his bed?

Bonus! This title includes a free read, Lady Ramsey's Ribald Choices. Don't miss this additional installment to the Stanhope Challenge series!

Miss Darling’s Indecent Offer

Emma Darling needs a protector and when she appeals to Jack Stanhope, she knows that the noted rake has never wished for a wife. That’s fine by Emma, who wants a husband--and not just in name--but only for little while.

Jack is keen to avoid the bad luck that plagues Stanhope marriages, but this gamin beauty rouses his protective instincts and his satyr’s hunger. Can he escape their temporary marriage and a few, blissful weeks of carnal delight with his heart intact? Or will taking her to his bed ruin each of them for any other lover?

Also Available from
Resplendence Publishing

Lady of the Isle by Temple Hogan

From the Sea Series, Book One

From the sea, two tormented souls are washed ashore—one a beautiful, mysterious lady, the other a man who'd once been the King's warrior and is now a lowly fisherman. As Rioghnach and Cormac learn to heal and trust in love again, they spend sun-seared days and starlit nights exploring the need that draws them together.

The Trouser Game by Genella deGrey

Miss Jillian Kelley, a young woman on the brink of a new millennium, has just returned from University in the States. Her new knowledge of the world—and its endless possibilities facilitates a desperate need to break free from her mother's old-fashion Victorian parlor ideal of proper behavior.

As Miss Kelley avidly pursues her childhood crush—a traditional Brit with property– a handsome American with whom she shared a passionate night comes to call. The insufferable intrusion is annoying, however, his irresistible seductive ways draw her cravings to the surface like the rise of a tide.

Bradley Townsend accepted with pleasure the bequeathed gift of Miss Kelley's virtue the very night they met, but the adventurous blue-eyed beauty stole his heart, leaving him holding nothing but a note in the morning. There's no way in Hell he's going to let her slip through his fingers—even if he has to hop on a ship, follow her home and seduce her all over again.

Infernal Devices by Abigail Barnette

The Two Aces. Victorian London’s most salacious secret, the club is a place where erotic fantasies are played out among clockwork automatons and aether powered machines. Where nothing is off limits and the pleasures are as wicked as the imagination will allow...

Permilia Deering goes to The Two Aces looking for the sexual excitement that she knows she will not find with the man to whom she is affianced, notorious cold-fish Wallace Sterling. On her first visit to the club, she meets the Ace of Spades, a masked stranger who drives her to heights of passion she’s never dreamed possible—and makes her seriously reconsider becoming a mannerly society wife.

When Wallace Sterling first glimpses his fiancée standing outside The Two Aces, he assumes she’s uncovered his secret identity—the Ace of Spades. But Permilia has no idea that her intended is living a double life, and Wallace worries that he’ll be out of the picture once she gets a taste of what the Ace of Spades can offer her...

Chasing Temptation by Regina Carlysle

London’s Haute Ton calls her Miss Temptation. But Elizabeth Grayson can’t be bothered by society’s diversions while seeking justice for her murdered sister. She is a woman on a dangerous mission. Now is not the time for mindless social engagements or courtships from men she has no intention of marrying. However, Christian Delaford is no ordinary man. He stirs her like no one she has ever met before. His eyes speak of sin and tangled sheets. Of decadent nights spent in his arms. Far too diverting for her peace of mind.

Christian Delaford, the Duke of Haverton, must be married by midnight of his birthday or forfeit his heritage to a distant relation. After years of living a hedonistic life in the Orient, the thought of binding himself forever to an insipid English Miss fairly curls his toes. London’s current ‘diamond of the first water’, however, changes his mind. In Elizabeth, he finds a bold and daring woman who harbors a terrifying secret. He vows to chase Miss Temptation, to the ends of the earth if needs be, and save her from the forces that would tear them both apart.

The Virgin Pirate  by Temple Hogan

Book One in the Pirate's Booty Series

Born to a life of piracy, Nellie Bouchard knows no other life, but she longs to find a world beyond the ruthless violence and danger. Her wish is fulfilled when she captures Lord Trey Carlyle. Mesmerized by his masculinity and raw sexuality, she insists he teach her the secrets between a man and woman. Long tropical nights and sun-drenched days aboard her ship allow him to show her every aspect of sexual encounters while she teaches him about love. But he’s her captive and she’s a pirate with a price on her head. Their future might mean separation…or death.

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