Treasure

Treasure By

Maren Smith

Treasure By

Maren Smith A Newsite Web Services Book Published by arrangement with the author

All rights reserved. Copyright 2008 © by Maren Smith

This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission of the author or Newsite Web Services, LLC Published by Newsite Web Services, LLC P.O. Box 1286, Loganville, Georgia 30052 USA [email protected] disciplineanddesire.com

CHAPTER ONE United States, 1812 Damn. The eggs had been eaten. Nina knelt at the edge of a horseshoe-shaped cliff, the wide brim of her white hat bending, and the veil that tied it about her chin to keep the wind from stealing it off her head whipping about her face and shoulders. Having escaped the spinsterly, if not functional, back bun in which she’d tied it, long thin strands of her raven hair danced and curled on the air as she bent to pick up the hollowed out shell of a broken blue and white egg. She frowned in disappointment, her eyes searching along the cliffs for a likely culprit. A shrill screeching from overhead made Nina look up. Seagulls, the unrepentant nest robbers, soared along the cliffs below and around her, screeching back and forth as they hunted along the crags and ledges for any other unguarded albatross nests to pilfer. “Blast and bother!” she said vehemently. She dropped the broken eggshells on the grass and pulled out her notebook to record the loss. What she needed more than anything else, she thought crossly, was to hire someone to start shooting seagulls. At least those that were haunting the cliffs where the rare and nearly extinct red-faced albatrosses reared their young. She stood up and, hands on her hips, glared out over the ocean. The waves beat at the base of the cliff far below her, the muted roar of each rushing impact sounding like thunder. Already as close to the edge as she dared to get, she leaned forward a little, trying to see down the sheer face of the cliff to determine which nests might now be empty. She couldn’t. She’d have to walk around the lower curve to the other side of the horseshoe, most likely counting other broken eggs as she went, and then

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use her binoculars to count how many nests remained productive. She was so irritated and so intent in her study of the cliffs that she almost missed seeing the ship. It came around the rocky tip of the opposite side of the horseshoe, gliding through the water at full sail. The men that moved upon the masts and deck were like tiny ants on a toy boat; their shouting was almost lost to the roaring of the waves. Though she doubted if anyone would see her, Nina raised her arms to wave at them. They were perilously close to crashing upon the rocks that lurked just below the frothy white waves. She almost called to them, but no sooner had she cupped her hands around her mouth, than did a second ship ride the tumultuous waves and hone into view in rapid pursuit of the first. The second ship flew a British naval flag and their guns were out. Nina dropped her hands. Her long skirts whipped about her legs as she turned and ran up the short incline to the peak of the horseshoe-shaped cliffs to get a better look. Although the first ship flew no flag, it wasn’t hard to recognize the drama unfolding on the seas below. Particularly not when the second vessel opened fire on the first. Loud cracks, like the snapping of great tree trunks, echoed up the face of the cliff, scaring the nesting birds into hasty flight. Cannonballs punched through the first ship’s stern, splintering the wood and sending chunks of the vessel raining down into the sea. They lost their main mast, and the dark shape of a man fell with it into the ocean. The waves took him, and Nina knew, even as she lurched toward the very edge of the cliff and looked down into the swirling, white surf so far below her, that there was no conceivable way for

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that doomed fellow to avoid being smashed against the barnacle-covered rocks. His ship didn’t stop for him, either. She couldn’t help but feel a sharp pang of sympathy for the lost soul, whoever he was, as the tide rushed in with a roar and crashed against the worn face of the cliff. Knowing a man had just lost his life down there, she covered her mouth with one hand and watched, wide-eyed, as the ships chased, one after the other, around the side of a rocky outcrop and disappeared from view. The ship without a flag was likely a pirate vessel, and the fallen man a blood-thirsty marauder. But, once again, her grey eyes drifted south to the frothy surf. Perhaps he’d gotten exactly what he’d deserved, and yet she couldn’t help but feel just a little bit sorry for him. Pushing back from the edge of the cliff and once more gaining her feet, Nina picked up her notebook. She paused for one more peek at the ocean, a part of her hoping against fate to spy the dark shape of a man swimming for all he was worth against the merciless tide. But there was nothing, and with a final shake of her head, Nina turned and headed for home. ______________ Nina sat at the foot of her bed dressed in her chemise. Slowly, she ran her hairbrush through her dark waist-length hair—ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred times—before laying down the brush and braiding the thick mass in preparation for bed. It was night. The lights were all out, and the fire was banked, washing the room in the soft amber glow of the still bright coals, which provided just enough warmth from the coastal chill. She was about to settle into bed with her diary when she heard a noise beneath the floorboards. Nina leaned over the side of the bed and looked

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down at the cracks and a few holes where the knots had fallen out. She listened carefully, and after a minute heard the sound again. A slight clinking of two glass jars knocking together, and the faintest rustling of her pantry shelves being raided in the root cellar below the house. Her mouth firmed into a disgruntled line. Raccoons. She got up and grabbed her night wrap. Bare feet padding whisper soft across the wood floor, she picked up her hearth broom and ever so quietly crept out the door. It was a comfortable night outside, a bit breezy, but that wasn’t unexpected being as she lived on a coastal cliff side. Her little, one-room home overlooked the small fishing town of Newport , but even halfway up to the nesting grounds of the albatrosses she observed, there was no escaping the sea spray, which carried on the wind and kept the grass beneath her feet perpetually damp. She crept past the begonia beds and around the rhododendron that dotted the corner of the house. Peeking through the bushes, she glimpsed the root cellar doors, which were closed, although obviously not latched. Her hands tightened around the handle of her broom. “Miserable creature,” she muttered under her breath. “It best not be having babies in the rafters again!” Her mouth set in a determined frown, she tiptoed her way to the root cellar. It wasn’t until she got the doors open, however, that she realized the raccoon somehow had a source of light with it. The cellar was by far too bright for what little illumination spilled down through the cracks and holes. Nina felt a little flicker of nervousness in her breast; her first thought being that her pantry was being raided by Indians. But, she tightened her

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hands around the handle of her broom and cautiously crept down the steps to stand on the cool dirt of the cellar floor. ______________ Although the house itself was relatively new, the cellar had once been part of a trading post that had stood here for almost fifty years until a fire had demolished the structure. In the very back of the cellar still stood the mouth of the same, deep, fresh water well that the trading post operator had dug who knows how long ago now. When Nina had first taken possession of the house, she had boarded up the gaping stone maw and blocked off access to the dangerous well by building her pantry shelves all around it. But now, Nina’s eyes grew large even as they grew accustomed to the dark. Because there, across the room, squatting down in front of the shelves with a jar of peaches held loosely in one hand, staring boldly right back at her, was a man. His black pants and vest contrasted the white of his shirt, open at the throat. His dark hair was long, tied back at his nape in a neat ponytail, and there were two pistols tucked into the waist of his pants. His handsome face was clean and even clean-shaven, except for a thin black mustache. “You’re no raccoon!” she blurted. In the dim light that filtered down through the cracks above, she saw his mouth spread into a slow and, her belly warmed unnervingly, rather seductive smile. “You’re no threat to my life or my freedom,” he countered, his voice as smooth as silk and as pleasant to her ears as the rest of him was to her eyes. Nina suddenly remembered she was standing, nearly naked, in front of a strange man with nothing but her nightgown and her wrap to cover her. Even

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worse, she had nothing to protect herself. Except the broom. As if suddenly snapping awake after an unexpected nap, she jumped and brandished the long handle of her hearth broom in front of her. “Don’t come any closer!” He ignored her for a moment while he opened the jar of peaches. “Mm,” he said, breathing in the scent of the sweet preserves. “Are these from the labors of your own hands?” His rakish eyes glittered almost black in hue in the shadows of the cellar. He dug into the jar with his fingers and removed the first slice. Smiling at her, he ate it. “The taste is as close to heaven as mortal man can get, while still on earth. And yet, it doesn’t sate the appetite, does it?” Nina felt herself blush all the way to her toes, as he slowly stood up. He took a single step towards her, still smiling, both threatening and not all at the same time. “Touch me, and I’ll scream,” she said, hating the way her voice quavered. His own, in striking contrast, was as smooth as any lovers as he said, “That’s the thing about living so far out of the safety of town. I don’t think anyone would be able to hear you.” “I haven’t anything worth stealing,” she said. He lifted another peach slice from the jar and dangled it into his mouth. He even licked the juice off his fingertips, loudly smacking his lips. “Mm. You’ve got more than you know.” She flushed even more brightly, and was suddenly very grateful that it was night and dark enough to hide her discomfit. “Keep your filthy hands out of that!” “You would begrudge a hungry man food?” he countered. “I’d begrudge you, you thief!”

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His eyebrows arched in mock surprise. “Thief, am I? You hardly know me well enough to slander my character with such vehemence.” “Why else would you be in my root cellar helping yourself to my preserves? In the middle of the night, too, and without so much as a by your leave? I—Who are you, anyway?” The man executed a neat bow. “Anthony Chance St. Claire. Chance, to my friends and colleagues.” He winked at her. “Named for an unsuccessful one my mother once took. Alas, I was the result. However, I am now at your service.” He smiled, giving her an offhanded shrug as he added, “So long as said service does not go too far out of my way.” Nina caught her breath, and for a moment she stared at him completely speechless. “Y-you’re a pirate, aren’t you? You’re from that ship I saw earlier. The one the British Navy was chasing.” “Pirate has such ugly connotations to it.” His smile was wholly unrepentant. “I prefer governmentally sanctioned entrepreneur.” “You could prefer potato in a sack, it wouldn’t change the fact that you are, indeed, sir, a pirate!” Nina glared at him when he threw back his head and laughed at her. “And, what is it that you do, my sweet?” She drew herself up stiffly. “I count albatrosses. And, unlike you, my job truly is governmentally sanctioned.” His look turned thoughtful. “The government pays you to count birds?” “They are almost extinct. As far as anyone knows, all that’s left of their species is up on that cliff, and they barely number a hundred.” “Really?” He cocked his head to one side, his eyes narrowing as he asked, “Is there a lot of money in that?”

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She brandished the broom at him again. “Not enough to hold me for ransom.” “Perish the thought,” he said, but from the speculative glitter in his eyes, she could tell that that’s exactly where his thoughts were taking him. His dark eyes raked her from head to toe and back again, and his smile widened again. “Well, I suppose you have caught me, Mistress...?” “Miss Turner.” “Mistress Turner.” He spread his hands in an all-encompassing shrug. “I am, therefore, at your mercy. Whatever shall you do with me?” Wholly unconcerned, he picked up the peaches again and dipped his fingers back in the jar for another sweet, soft slice. “Hey,” she exclaimed crossly. “Put that down, you... you... you pirate!” She jabbed at him with the handle of the broom, and just that quickly his hand abandoned the peaches, dropping the jar which shattered on the cobblestone floor. He grabbed the end of her broom, and one quick yank disarmed her completely. Nina jumped back a step as he stalked after her. In two long-legged strides, he overwhelmed her. He loomed so close in fact that she could smell the sweet peach flavor of his breath. “I suppose it would have been better if you hadn’t seen me,” he said contemplatively. Coming from any other pirate, those same words would likely have inspired fear. But from the dark-haired man standing so close to her—the heat of his naked chest warming the air between them, his sweet breath bathing her face, his very nearness playing havoc with her suddenly panicked heart— instead, they struck her as an almost sultry promise. “I suppose I shall have to keep you beside me until I’ve finish my business here.”

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“Keep me?” she echoed, unable to tear her eyes from his smiling mouth. “Oh, aye.” His gaze flit over her features. “You’ll be my captive until I go. You are a comely piece of beauty, aren’t you? A hot-blooded piece as well, of that I’ve no doubt. Well, come, Mistress Turner. I’ll not be mounting you here in the cellar.” Nina started, coming a little ways out of her stupor. “What?” “Upstairs with you, wench.” He turned her around and, with the bristled head of the broom, gave her a half-playful swat to the seat of her nightgown. “It’s late, and I would to bed.” “Oh!” Nine yelped at the impact, and one hand ducked back to grab her smarting bottom. “How dare you!” Catching her by the scruff of her bedclothes, Chance steered her back up the stairs and out of the cellar. The spell of attraction was well and truly broken as Nina was marched back around the corner of the house. Her bare feet swished through the tall, wet grass. There were still a few lights shining down the hill in the windows of some of Newport ’s townhouses. Her eyes were drawn to them, and it flickered in the back of her mind how she might raise an alarm. After all, where there was one pirate, there were bound to be others. For all she knew, the whole town might even be in jeopardy of a ransacking! Chance must have noticed the direction of her gaze and guessed at her thoughts, for he leaned in close behind her, chuckling as he said, “Don’t even think about it.” She frowned. “Just be a good girl, and I’ll be gone before you know it.” At that, Nina glared back at him over one shoulder, the moonlight illuminating his widening smile as he added, “Not that I would mind if you

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wanted to be just a little bit naughty. But, I might be forced to do something you won’t find very pleasant.” He gave her a minute to contemplate all the subtle nuances of that open-ended threat, and then tipped his head towards the house again. “After you, my darling.” “Pirate,” she muttered, and started inside. He laughed, and there was a sharp whoosh an instant before the broom bristles snapped across her bottom yet again. The impact jolted her hips obscenely outward. “Oh!” Grabbing her bottom, Nina ran into the house. ______________ She lay beneath the blankets, wide awake and glaring up at the ceiling. It was still too dark to see anything. Morning was beginning to brighten the sky, and the rising of the sun was causing the shadows in the room to retreat into the dingy grayness of the pre-dawn light. Her eyes felt as though they burned because she hadn't slept a wink all night. Lying sprawled beside her and snoring loudly, Chance certainly didn't seem to be suffering any similar form of insomnia. Of course, he wasn't a prisoner, either, so why shouldn't he sleep as peacefully as an angel? Nina scowled even more fiercely, hating the way his arm lay across her stomach, gently rising and falling as she breathed. She hated the way he'd tethered her to him, even though she knew it was only her own sense of injustice that made the length of rope that linked them from ankle to ankle burn into her skin like a brand. And, more than anything else, she really hated the fact that she didn't hate him anywhere near as passionately as a respectable woman ought to despise the pirate that was keeping her prisoner.

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True, he hadn't forced himself upon her, despite the fact that he was sleeping on her bed. So far, he'd even been fairly decent to her. But, he was still a pirate and therefore up to absolutely no good, and common decency dictated that she do everything in her power to escape his evil clutches and warn the rest of Newport about the wolf in their midst. She rolled her head in the near darkness and looked at his shadowy face. His breathing was still slow and easy, and his face seemed boyishly relaxed. As she lay watching him, it occurred to her that this would be the perfect time to attempt an escape. Just the idea of it made her catch her breath. What would he do to her if she accidentally woke him? What would he do to her in the morning, once he was well rested and awake, anyway? Nina reached hesitantly for his hand and ever so gently, picked up his wrist between two fingers. She lifted his limp arm, shifting it off her belly, and lay it gently down again on the mattress. His breathing remained steady. He didn't so much as twitch, but still she didn't dare move right away. She still had the rope tied around her ankle. As she lay there trying to think of the best way to free her leg, the thought occurred to her that he might not be asleep at all. He might just be pretending, waiting for her to try and escape. Her tongue darted out, and she licked her lips nervously. "Are you awake?" she whispered. "Mr. St. Claire? I need to use the necessary." He snored softly and twitched one finger on the bedspread. That was all. She sat up slowly, gingerly peeling back the blankets and doing her best to make sure he never felt a thing. Hardly daring to take her eyes off his

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shadowy shape, she reached for the rope that bound her ankle. She had to move carefully to avoid either jarring the bed or tugging on the rope, and it seemed to take forever before she picked the knot loose enough to slip her foot out of the loop, but the deep rhythm of his breathing never changed. She quickly glanced back at him over one shoulder and oh so gradually inched towards the edge of the bed. She couldn't help the slight wobble of the mattress as she stood up, but still, Chance slept on. The musket her father had given her lay leaned against the wall on the pirate’s side of the room. Even as she glanced at it, she discarded the idea of trying to sneak her way to it. Retrieving the musket meant getting close enough to Chance to accidentally wake him, and then what was she supposed to do? Shoot him? Somehow she doubted she had it in her to pull the trigger and possibly take the life of another human being. Her heart pounded fit to break right through her ribs, and each nervous breath came shallow and fast as Nina tiptoed towards the door. She picked up her shoes, tucking them under one arm before reaching for the door. Her fingers closed around the latch. Ever so cautiously, she turned it, wincing as the hinges squealed as she swung it open. Outside, it was almost dawn. Already, the horizon was lit up with the bright orange glow of a newborn day. In Newport , Hank, the dairy man would have already milked his cows, loaded his cart with the fruits of his labor and wheels of fresh cheese, and would be setting off to make his rounds through town. Old Barney, the night watchman would be limping from lamp to lamp, extinguishing the candles and changing those that had burned down to the ends of their wicks with fresh ones. Harvey, who ran the general store, would be finishing his breakfast and getting ready to set out

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his fruit stands on the sidewalk by his front door. And, Harvey's son, William, was plenty old enough now to mount his father's horse and ride as fast as he could for the sheriff of Cope Cove, the closest town to have a lawman and which lay seven miles south of them. Her heart in her throat and a plan of action in her head, Nina stepped towards the threshold. "That doesn't look like the necessary to me," Chance said. Nina froze, almost choking on her startled gasp. Her eyes darted to the bed, now awash with the glow from the rising sun. The handsome pirate lay as he had most of the night, but his eyes were slitted open, and there was that damned knowing smile curving the lines of his mouth. "Most people I know keep theirs in a pot under their beds. Tell me," he pushed himself up on his elbows. "You wouldn't happen to be trying to escape, would you?" Her mind went completely blank. She couldn't think of a single, half-way believable excuse, and when she failed to answer right away, her silence damned her. He angled his head, giving her a mockingly stern look. "Naughty, naughty," he tsked. Nina dropped her shoes and ran for the woods. She didn't need to look back to know Chance had already launched himself out of bed and given chase. She heard it in the slamming of her front door and sounds of his boots pounding the earth behind her. It was a doomed effort from the start. Though her home was only four hundred yards uphill from the edge of town, and though she ran as fast as she could, she only got thirty feet before she felt his outstretched fingertips grazing the back of her shoulders. She let out an ear-piercing shriek when he grabbed her from behind, stumbled over a

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massive pine root, and they both went down into the damp brush and dew-soaked ivy, nearly flattening a young plum tree as they rolled over it in a tangle of flailing limbs. "Get off of me!" Nina screamed again, and Chance quickly tried to cover her mouth. Furiously, she sank her teeth into his palm. "AAHHHA...OW! You blasted, bloody wench!" He rolled her onto her back, and instantly jerked his head back when her arms became a windmill of wildly punching and slapping hands. "Ow! Ow!" He grabbed at her wrists and quickly pinned them to the ground above her head. "Stop it!" Nina snapped her knee into his side. "Oof!" Growling, he climbed on top of her, straddling her waist so she could kick all she wanted to without hurting him. "Damn it! I won't hurt you!" She promptly let out another shrill, warbling scream, and he quickly captured both her wrists in one hand and covered her mouth with the other. "Are you trying to rouse the whole blasted town?" His expression changed instantly from one of irritation to a darkly amused well of course you are look. Fuming, Nina bit his hand again. She even ground her teeth to cause him as much pain as possible. His mouth tightened, and his eyes winced, but he didn't yell out. Instead, he let go of her hands and caught her jaw, pressing his fingers and thumbs into her cheeks to pry her teeth apart. There was absolutely no amusement in his eyes now. "Don't you ever bite me again," he growled. "Get off me and go away!" "I'll be gone just as soon as I've got what I came for," Chance promised her.

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The sound of galloping horses coming from Newport caught both their attentions. Raising his head, Chance peeked around the huckleberry bush that partly shielded them from the road less than ten yards away. Nina was barely able to part the leafy branches and push aside the ivy enough to spy the posse of six men—two of which were dressed in the dark blue coats of the British Royal Navy, and two more in the bright red and white coats of English soldiers—riding hard up the hill towards them. Though it didn't look as though the men had seen them, the woods weren't dense enough to hide them for long. Nina and Chance looked at one another; she smiled, and it wasn't a very nice one. "One more scream," she told him, "and you'll be gone much faster than you think!" He looked from her to the riders, and then back to her again. "Don't, I warn you." Nina smiled, and then she opened her mouth, sucking in a very deep breath.

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CHAPTER TWO Chance quickly slapped his hand over her mouth, but as far as permanent solutions to his rapidly approaching and well-armed problem went, it wasn't a very good one. Instantly, she began to thrash beneath him, wrestling with his hand and squealing around his fingers, and the riders were coming closer and closer. He looked about him, but there were no good hiding places anywhere nearby and no way that he could get to one without being spotted, even if there were. His eyes fell on the young plum tree sapling they'd rolled over when he'd initially tackled her to the ground. His head came sharply up again, and he checked the progress of the riders. Damn! They were nearly on him. Glaring down at Nina, he shook his finger at her. "Don't say I didn't warn you, my girl!" Letting go of her mouth, he grabbed for his boot knife and then for the plum sapling. The instant Nina saw the flash of steel that made up the sharp, six inch blade, all the color drained from her face, and the scream that she’d meant to utter with petulance turned blood-curdling. It took two hard, hacking blows before he severed the sapling's trunk, no thicker really than his smallest finger, but very, very green. Grabbing Nina's arm, he rose up enough to flip her onto her belly. By the time her would-be rescuers came crashing through the underbrush, Chance had her pinned face-down on the ground while he thrashed away at her nightgown-covered backside with that whip of a plum switch. "By God, you'll tell me who it was!" he said loudly, and from the instant the stinging pain of that first stroke bit across her plump buttocks, Nina began to shout and thrash as though... well, as

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though she were being given the switching of her life. "Who did you have in my house?" He lay a good dozen snapping strokes across her bucking flanks before the horses drew abreast of him. He paused, switch at the ready for another swipe, and looked up in feigned surprise at the muskets he found aimed at him. Of the six men, four were British, and two looked like townsmen from Newtown . "You, sir!" one of the naval officers snapped. "What is your name? Identify yourself!” Chance frowned. “Who are you?” “Nina?” One of the two townsmen swung down from his saddle. He took two steps towards them, looking from Chance to Nina. “Are—are you all right?” "Is that the man?" Chance demanded. He took hold of Nina's arm and, getting angrily to his feet, pulled her up with him. "Is it?" He gestured to the townsman with the length of the supple switch. "Is that the man you're bringing into my house when I'm away?" Nina's jaw dropped and she gaped at him. "Oh! You—y-y-you...!" Disregarding the muskets completely, Chance quickly swung her around by one arm and lay three vicious swipes of that switch across her bottom. The blows were hard enough to make her jump and gasp, and before the last one fell, she was shouting out, "Stop it! Oh! Stop it!" She tried to turn around, to twist her bottom out of spanking's reach, but with a tight hold on her arm, he only circled with her, laying two more vigorous stripes low down across the backs of her thighs. The young man's face turned as red as Nina's. "Sir, I assure you! I have never set foot inside Miss Duncan's home!"

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"Ha!" Chance jabbed the switch in his direction. "Miss Duncan is it, now? Only a moment ago you called her by her Christian name!" "I asked you a question, sir!" the British officer snapped. Holding fast to Nina's arm and doing his best to maintain the airs of a jealous lover, Chance stalked towards him. "My name is Chance St. Claire," he stated coolly. "This is the woman who has promised to be my wife." He gave Nina another hard glare, ignore her open-mouthed look of shock. "That is, if she can manage to be faithful." She gasped in outrage. "I never...!" Both townsmen actually looked pained. "Sir!" the younger of the men protested. "I've known Miss Duncan ever since the day she arrived. Not once in all that time has she ever behaved improperly. Surely, you must be mistaken!" But his companion nudged him. "Come on, Bobby. Let them sort it out." Even the British officer and soldiers, although still glaring down their noses at him with suspicious eyes, turned their horses about and headed back for Newport rather than to engage themselves in a lover's quarrel. "Yes," Chance said softly, watching them go. "Let's sort this out." Keeping a firm hold on her arm, he steered her back towards her home. He could feel her trembling, but he didn't pay much attention to it until they were closer to the safety of her house, and the soldiers had vanished into the tiny seaside town at the bottom of the hill. "You fiend!" Nina hissed at him, when he shoved her through her own front door. "You absolute fiend!" Closing the door, Chance leaned over to peek out the curtain, just to make sure the soldiers weren't on their way back already.

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"How dare you malign my character the way you've just done! I have to live in this town! You— y-you—you fiend!" He turned to look at her, her nightgown disheveled, a sprig of ivy leaves in her mussed hair, righteous indignation on an otherwise lovely face. He held up the switch. "I've still got this, you know." She quickly caught her bottom in both hands and backed up a step. "Exactly." She bit her tongue, her eyes reluctantly following the switch while he brushed the curtain aside to watch the road some more. Grudgingly, she asked, "So now what do you expect to do?" Chance turned his head to contemplate her, and then his lips began to curl in the most devilish of smiles. ______________ “You can’t keep me tied to this chair indefinitely,” Nina grumbled, testing her bonds. Unfortunately, the blasted pirate was very good with knots. Perhaps because of his seaman’s past or perhaps because he was in the habit of tying up helpless, defenseless women, she really didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. It didn’t change the fact that she was well and truly restrained. To her own kitchen chair, no less. First with her wrists fastened together so that she clasped her hands as though deep in prayer, and then again with her arms tied tight against her chest, so that she could almost rest her chin upon her knuckles. Because she’d tried to kick Chance when he first started tying her down, he promptly bound each of her ankles to the front legs of the chair as well. She could barely move, and she glared at him hatefully as he bent to check his knots.

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“Is this too tight here?” he asked, feeling the tautness of the ropes around her chest. “Yes!” she snapped. “Good.” "Pirate," she muttered with no small measure of disgust. He grinned at her. "Are we ready?" Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "For what?" Nina let out a shriek when he took hold of her chair and tipped it backwards. Her entire body went stiff, and she panicked against her bonds, certain he was going to drop her on the floor. "Here we go," he said cheerfully, and began to drag her towards the front door. He paused at the lip of the threshold and peeked outside to make sure no one was coming up the road. “You can’t hope to keep me tied up forever,” Nina said again. “Sooner or later, people will begin to wonder why I’m not up on the cliffs, doing my job.” “I doubt anyone will be suspicious right away,” Chance said, swinging the door wide open. He tipped her chair back again and dragged her outside. She clenched her teeth as her chair bumped and clattered down the three stone steps to the cobblestone walkway, but at least he didn’t tip her over. “Scandalized, maybe. After all, a seemingly decent young lady in their midst has suddenly taken to shacking up with her beau outside the sanctities of marriage. Tongues’ll wag, that much is certain. And, all those God fearing townsfolk will look up here and shake their heads,” he tsked, “but I doubt they’ll be suspicious. After all, you are fairly attractive, and I’m a handsome, virile young fellow in my own right.” She scowled, clenching her hands so tightly that her knuckles turned white.

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He chuckled. “If you wanted to give me a big head, you could feign a limp after I go. That’ll really set those busy bodies a-gossiping!” Heat flared up to burn her face. “I’ll do no such thing!” Pulling the chair on its back two legs behind him, he dragged her towards the root cellar. “That’s the problem with women. You’ve all got your laces so tight it strangles your sense of humor.” “Ha!” she indulged in a very unladylike snort. “There’s nothing wrong with my sense of humor. You, sir, are nowhere near as charming as you think you are.” Setting her chair down on all four feet by the cellar doors, Chance grinned down at the back of her head. “Yes, I am. You just can’t see it because you’re so sour.” “I’m not either sour.” “You certainly are.” He unlocked the doors and, one at a time, heaved them up and open and laid them down on the grass. “You’ve been sour the whole time I’ve known you.” “You’ve taken me captive!” “But, I’ve treated you well.” “You thrashed my private person with a switch! Rather horribly, too, I might add. I’ve got marks! I can feel them!” “Is it terribly painful?” he asked, stepping down into the cellar and taking hold of her chair again. His smile was virtually gloating when he tipped her backwards again. “Well, it isn’t comfortable!” His smile widened. “I could rub it and make it feel infinitely better.” “You, sir, may keep your blasted hands to your blasted self.”

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He tsked. “Such language. Remind me to take care of all that vulgarity the next time I decide you could do with a sound thrashing.” Her mouth flattened, and she looked away. Then looked down, and then tried to crane her head back as she realized she was about to be dragged down into the cellar backwards. Her eyes flew startlingly wide. “Oh my! Goodness gracious me! Wait!” “No struggling now.” Chance pulled the chair down onto the first step. THUNK! “Oh!” Nina’s whole body went stiff. “Wait a minute, please! Cut me loose. I’ll walk, I promise.” “Sorry, my darling.” THUNK! “I’m afraid I can’t trust you.” THUNK-THUNK! “Just lie still and try to relax.” THUNK! “We’re halfway down.” She caught her breath as he bumped her down another two steps. “Three more,” he said cheerfully. Nina gritted her teeth. She could feel each heavy thump vibrating up her spine as he dragged and dropped the rear chair legs down the final three steps. “There you are!” He turned her chair around to face the pantry shelves and set all four legs on the ground. “How do you feel, hm? Safe and sound, in spite of a wee bit of jarring?” She cast him a disgruntled stare as he walked past her. “I have to use the necessary.” He paused in the middle of unloading her jellies and preserves off the shelves and turned around to give her a knowing look. “You’re just saying that to get me to untie you.” “I really do need to.” “You’ll have to hold it, then, because neither one of us is going anywhere until I get my treasure.” She blinked at him. “What treasure?”

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“The treasure my old shipmates and I hid here before someone decided to build a house on the spot.” It was then, as he was pushing the heavy pantry shelf to one side, that Nina remembered the old well. “Oh dear,” she said as he leaned over the side to look inside it. “Bloody hell!” he exclaimed. “Someone’s gone and filled the thing in with rubbish!” Nina averted her eyes when he suddenly turned to glare at her. “It was you, wasn’t it?” he demanded. “I did it months before I ever met you!” “Oh, aye, and if you had met me, you’d have filled it in for spite!” He leaned over the well, trying to gauge how deep the pack of boards and compost went, and then he slapped the side of the stone well with the flat of his hand. “Just for this, I ought to make you wet your britches!” He started to get up, and from outside the open cellar doors, in the distance they heard a cheerfully called out, “Hello! Nina, are you home?” Chance leapt towards Nina and quickly clapped a hand over her mouth. “Not one word, my darling,” he told her, staring up at the open doors. They both waited, listening carefully. “Nina?” the voice came closer. Cautiously, Nina turned her head, moving her mouth out from under his hand. “It’s Mrs. Lauderbaum, the pastor’s wife.” “What does she want?” he whispered. Dryly, Nina softly murmured, “Probably to confirm whether or not I’m truly living in sin and to bring me back to the Fold if I am.” Giving her a stern look, Chance pulled out his boot knife and quickly cut through the ropes that bound her. “If you try to warn her in any way, I’ll have two captives instead of one. I’ll take the whole town hostage if I have to. God only knows

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how many people I’ll have to kill when I run out of chairs. You understand me now, my darling, don’t you?” “Yes.” Rubbing her wrists, Nina stood up. “I understand that you’re perfectly dreadful.” Arching an eyebrow at her acidic tone, he gave her bottom a warning swat and followed her up the cellar steps and back into daylight. Abigail Lauderbaum was standing at Nina’s front door peeking inside when they rounded the corner of the house. She spied them out of the corner of her eye and jumped as she turned around. Her hand flew up to clutch her chest. “Oh, dear! You gave me such a start!” Pasting on her cheeriest smile, Nina went to greet the old woman with a hug and a gentle kiss to her cool cheek. “Hello, Abigail. What made you come all the way up here?” The old woman glanced past Nina to Chance and smiled much too brightly. “No reason, really. Oh, the boys came back to town this morning spouting all sorts of nonsense about you and your...” she hesitated. “Husband?” “Fiancé,” Nina said hastily. The old woman tried not to frown. “Yes, yes. That’s right. Fiancé. Well, congratulations, Nina dear. I’ve always wanted for you to find a nice young man to settle down with. Things are hard enough for a woman without her having to face this world all on her own!” Coming up behind her, Chance wrapped an overly familiar arm around Nina’s waist and drew her close to him. “Not to worry on that regard, ma’am. To take care of my Nina is my heart’s very desire.” “Yes, so I’ve heard. Well,” Mrs. Lauderbaum cleared her throat. “Nina dear, the Millers have generously offered to put your fiancé up in their son’s room until that happy moment when...”

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“I find the accommodations just fine right here,” Chance interrupted. He smiled. “I’ll not be leaving them.” Nina tried to smile without wincing. “Thank the Millers for us, please. I’m touched by their thoughtfulness.” “Nina, dear,” Mrs. Lauderbaum fretted. She reached out to take both of Nina’s hands. “I’ve always looked upon you as a friend. Even though you’re an Episcopalian—which you really shouldn’t be—the Methodist church is ever at the ready to help any and all of God’s children, just so long as they don’t revel in sin!” Chance began to drum his fingers on her hip. “Nina dear,” Mrs. Lauderbaum pulled her in closer by her imprisoned hands. “You aren’t being... forced ... to marry against your will, are you? You’re not in a... family way... now are you?” He began to drum his fingers a little faster. Nina smiled weakly. “Oh no. I...” she almost choked. “I just... I... love him.” Chance squeezed her waist. “We’re waiting for the right preacher to come to town, so we can hitch it up right.” The pastor’s wife looked startled. “Oh?” “I’m not a Methodist,” he explained. Now she looked disappointed, too. “Oh.” “He’s not Episcopalian, either,” Nina hastily interjected. “Really? Then what cross of the Almighty do you worship under?” Mrs. Lauderbaum asked. “He’s Jewish,” Nina said at the same time that Chance said, “I’m Baptist.” They looked at one another. “Half and half,” Chance finally hedged. “My mother was Jewish, my father was Baptist. I’m a little of both.” “Oh dear,” the pastor’s wife said, her smile turning slightly pained. “Well... well, well. We have

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three churches, but none are either I’m afraid. The nearest Baptist church is all the way in Cope Cove.” Chance smiled and spread his hands. “There, you see. As much as we dislike the idea of living in sin, ma’am, there’s just no way around it. We’ll have to wait until an accommodating pastor rolls into town.” “Well,” Mrs. Lauderbaum released Nina’s hands. “There’s little point in shutting the barn door if the horse has already escaped, but, young man, it just isn’t seemly for you to stay in a house with an unmarried woman.” “I’ll sleep on the floor,” he promised. “You can’t pull the wool over this old woman’s eyes.” She shook her finger at him reprovingly. “I love my Nina dear as if she were a daughter, and what you’ve done to her reputation is simply unspeakable. However,” she drew herself upright. “That’s all water under the bridge at this point. If we can’t keep you from the sin, my dears, then we’ll just have to remove the sin from the deed. Fortunately for the two of you, Judge Rineholdt’s in town. He’ll be staying through until tomorrow. He’s been very busy, trying and hanging all those wicked pirates the British have caught, but I know once I’ve explained everything to him, why he’ll waste no time seeing that the two of you get hitched properly. So put on your finest gown, my girl, and I’ll call together the townsfolk. Tonight, the two of you are getting married!” ______________ The wedding was to be held in Murphy’s Saloon. The Judge, a portly man in a black suit, looked grimly from Chance to Nina, his piercing blue eyes seeming to glare right through them as he listened to Mrs. Lauderbaum’s explanation. When she reached the part about sinful living, he rumbled a

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chilling, “I see. I’ll get the Good Book and draw up the papers.” Chance looked utterly relaxed, carefree almost. Why, he even stalked up to the bar and bought the assembled townsfolk a drink to celebrate his upcoming nuptials. That included the troop of Redcoats and the British Naval officers who were already bellied up to the bar, congratulating themselves on their successful pirate hunt. From the looks of him, it didn’t seem as though Chance could care less that, only hours earlier, eighteen of his shipmates had been found guilty of piracy and were sentenced to hang. Standing at the bottom of the stairs to the tavern’s second floor, hugging her best dress to her chest, it tickled at the back of Nina’s mind that all she had to do was yell ‘Pirate!’ and point. That would surely knock the gloating smile from Chance’s carefree face. In all probability, he’d have been instantly swarmed by the soldiers. And then he’d be hanged. He was a pirate after all. But, he hadn’t really hurt her. Except for that switching, which had actually hurt a good deal. But, it seemed a little childish to have a man hanged just because he’d spanked her, regardless of how undeserved it had been. “Everything’s been arranged,” Mrs. Laudenbaum declared, coming to stand beside her at the bottom of the stairs. “Murphy’s loaned you his third room. So, let’s go upstairs and get that lovely dress on you, dear.” Nina felt a spark of panic stab through her breast. She swallowed hard, looking from her to Chance. Catching her eye, he raised his glass into the air and shouted, “To the bride!” Since he’d just bought their liquor, everyone in the bar, including the British soldiers, cheerfully

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echoed the sentiment, and they all upped their glasses to drink. Chance’s must have been a strong one, for he sucked a sharp breath and stomped his booted foot three times on the floor. Knocking on the bar, he wheezed at the bartender, “Pour me another, my good man.” That feeling of panic sharpened until Nina could barely breathe. Catching Mrs. Laudenbaum’s arm, she quickly stepped in front of her, blocking her way up the stairs. “Would it be all right if I had just a moment or two by myself?” “Don’t you want help with your dress? Or your hair?” The pastor’s wife reached up and took out a wilting ivy leaf. She looked at it oddly, and then turned that same look on Nina. “It’s perfectly understandable to be nervous, dear. I can’t tell you how nervous I was when I was readying myself for Mr. Lauderbaum. And that first night,” she cupped her own face and shuddered. “I can’t tell you how much I dreaded it. But it’s a different story for you, Nina, isn’t it? You’ve already had your first night. Now, we have to make it respectable!” Nina blushed. “I just want a minute to—to compose my thoughts.” “Hm.” Nina could almost see the older woman’s mental shrug as she dropped the leaf and brushed off her hands on her skirts. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter, since in a few minutes all will be put to rights again. Go on, Nina dear. Take your minute, if you must. Heaven knows, after the ‘I dos,’ privacy in a woman’s life becomes increasingly short in supply!” “Thank you.” Nina couldn’t help but glance again to the bar where Chance stood watching her. Someone had given him a cigar, which he’d already lit. Their eyes met just as he was inhaling, turning the ashen tip of it red hot. He exhaled smoke like a dragon, blowing rings in the air, and then smiled at her. He winked.

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Her knees trembled, and her legs felt oddly weak. Grabbing onto the banister for support, Nina fled upstairs, anyway. She found the first empty room, not caring if it was the room Murphy had designated for her or not, and slammed the door. She then leaned back against it as if demons from hell pursued her from the other side. She looked around the tiny room, beyond the bed and washstand, and her eyes fell upon the window. It was slightly ajar, and over the tops of the buildings across the street, she glimpsed the beach. The blue gingham curtains were billowing gently in and out with the salty breeze that rolled in with the waves. Like a shock of ice, the realization hit her that in only a matter of minutes, she was about to be married to the swashbuckling marauder who’d taken her captive. She couldn’t stay here. She had to get out. Now! Before Mrs. Laudenbaum came up those stairs and sealed her fate, in all manner of kindness and motherly concern, to the despair of forever being known as Mrs. Anthony Chance St. Claire. Or, soon to be better known as Mrs. Pirate. Dropping her dress on the floor, Nina ran to the window. Grabbing the weathered sill, she shoved the heavy pane up as high as it would go. Thrusting head and shoulders outside, she looked up and down the near empty streets, shading her eyes to see in the direction of the setting sun, as it painted the sky in a masterpiece of oranges, p inks, and reds. She was saved from having to jump down to the street from the second story when she spied the heavy branches of an old maple tree, sprawling along the corner of the Saloon. Climbing out onto the sill and holding onto the roof eaves, Nina stretched out both an arm and a leg and just barely managed to reach it. She crawled into the tree. Her heart almost stopped in her chest as, below her, she heard voices

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talking and laughing. Within a few seconds, three men rounded the corner of the Saloon, walked directly below her, up the steps and disappeared inside. Had one of them bothered to look up, they’d have spotted her easily. Breathing a soft sigh of relief, Nina quickly scaled down to the bottommost maple branch and then dropped the remaining six feet to the street. A branch snagged the hem of her skirts and tore it, but Nina didn’t care. The instant she felt ground beneath her, she didn’t look back. Catching her skirts up in both hands to keep them from tangling in her legs, Nina ducked into the nearest alleyway. She ran for her very life.

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CHAPTER THREE It was the best bid for freedom that Nina had yet made since being taken captive. She had no idea of where she could possibly go, or how she would get there, or even how she’d live once she did. She had no living relations that she knew of and very little actual money. She really didn’t want to leave her house or her job, which she truly loved, but with equal passion was her fervent desire not to marry Chance. So, she ran. Just as fast as she could, racing down the back streets, ducking into doorways and behind carts anytime someone else stepped out into the streets. She raced to put as much distance as possible between Newport, the pirate, and herself, knowing she only had a few minutes before Mrs. Laudenbaum noticed her absence. But, despite all of her best efforts, Nina still only made it three blocks. An attempted shortcut was her undoing. As she ducked down the alley between the Mercantile and Maggy’s Boarding House, Restaurant, Postal Station and Carriage Depot, she spilled out into the square that overlooked the piers and ran smack into a pair of dangling legs. Nina jumped back with a shriek, realizing the legs were attached to a man, who was attached via a short length of rope to a gibbet that she’d never before seen erected anywhere in Newport. Eleven corpses in all hung swinging in the evening breeze, and though their heads were all hooded, she didn't need to see their faces to experience a shock of horror at witnessing the method of their demise. The sight alone was enough to stop her mid-flight with a shrill and horrified gasp. She retreated from the square—her eyes wide, her hands flapping at the air, her hair, the bodice of her dress just in case

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there were parts of the dead man somehow clinging to her—and bumped smack into a warm chest. Chance's arms came around her as she whirled about and, without a single qualm, buried her face against his chest to block out the sight. "Easy," he said, his arms tightening around her. He pulled her from the square and back into the alley. And then he simply held her, stroking her hair and murmuring, "It's all right. It’s all right." Nina clung to his coat, panting and trying hard not to cry. "Th... those w... were—" "I know who they were." His voice was grim and flat, almost to the point of being emotionally void. "And, although I know you don’t believe it, some of them were good men. Come on. There's nothing you or I can do for them now. No, don’t look, darling. Just come with me." Chance tucked her into the crook of his arm, shielding her eyes with his hand, careful to keep his body between her and the corpses that hung not far from the docks as a warning to pirates and privateers. They walked back to Murphy's Saloon side by side. Chance said not one word about her escape attempt. Neither did anyone else, though Nina did receive quite a few reproving looks when they walked through the front door together. And, this time, Mrs. Laudenbaum accompanied Nina upstairs and helped her into her best Sunday dress, a soft pink gown with roses on the bodice and lace on the cuffs and around the collar. Her hair was brushed down and, instead of being pinned up in her usual backbun, Mrs. Lauderbaum left the waist-length tresses down. As a final touch, she pinned two red carnations behind each of Nina’s ears. “There you are,” the old woman said with a smile. “As fit a bride as ever there was one.” Wisely, Mrs. Lauderbaum didn’t leave her side until she had walked Nina back downstairs and,

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while the pianist played a brisk wedding march, tucked her hand into the crook of Chance’s elbow. As any other courteous groom might, he covered her hand with his own, and Nina found herself trapped. By Chance’s hand, by the expectant and unwavering gazes of an entire town’s worth of people, and by the piercing blue eyes and deep voice of the Judge who married them. At a quarter past six on a Tuesday, a day that should have been spent on the cliff, observing the habits of the red-faced albatross, Nina threw away her life with a softly spoken ‘I do.’ She became the wife of a pirate. And, although the whole of Newport witnessed the event, and even celebrated it with an impromptu dance that lasted late into the night, she was the only one who knew it. Well, she and Chance, of course, who watched her throughout the night and smiled, his dark eyes shining in victory. ______________ "Had I known wives were such useful creatures," Chance said, "I'd have given in to the blessed union of marriage a long time ago." Nina raised her head, looking up the long neck of the well to where her new husband stood grinning down at her. For two days, now, they'd been working to clear out the debris that choked the way to his precious treasure. When he could no longer reach the obstacles with his hands, Chance had turned to her. He'd made a seat for her by tying a loop in a length of rope and, with Nina holding onto the line with both hands, lowered her down to the remaining blockage. By tying the other end to a sturdy ceiling rafter, he freed his hands to pull out whatever boards and branches that she then handed up to him.

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“Take yourself to the devil,” she muttered under her breath, struggling to wrestle a long, thin stick of a branch free from the debris that half buried it. “That’s hardly a kindly thing to say to your husband,” he laughed overhead. Bracing her shoes against the sides of the well, Nina grabbed the stick with both hands. She got immense satisfaction out of pretending it was Chance’s neck. “I’ll give you kindly!” She yanked, barely pulling it up another two inches. “Oh, blast and bother!” Nina wiped her sleeve across her forehead and glared at the offending branch. It wasn’t that she minded so much being used as a beast of burden. Instead, she chalked her ill humor up to enduring three consecutive nights now without gaining more than a few hours of sleep between them. The last two were the worst, for she'd lain in bed as stiff as a board, unable to close her eyes for fear that Chance might decide to exercise his husbandly rights. He hadn't, even though he was sleeping in her bed, lying right alongside her on top of the covers while she lay underneath them. Needless to say, she didn’t feeling very rested. Picking up two thick, partially rotted planks, she passed them up to him one at a time. It was only those freshly uttered vows to ‘love, honor, and obey’ that were still ringing in her ears, which kept her from clubbing him upside the head with one of them. His grin and laughing midnight eyes suggested he knew her black thoughts, anyway. “Pirate,” she grumbled, and reached down to wrestle another partially rotted board out of the jumbled mess that seemed to extend endlessly below her. “What was that, my darling?” She cast another dark glare up the shaft of the well at him.

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Chance grinned, tipped his ear to her and cupped one hand around the shell to better catch the acoustics of her voice. “You’ll need to speak just a little louder, my angel... My one and only... My darling little love pumpkin.” Hissing a breath between tightly gritted teeth, Nina put all her futile wrath into yanking on that imprisoned stick again. It snapped free with a suddenness that almost spilled her backwards out of the loop. She grabbed wildly for the rope with both hands, dropping the branch just as the light and tinkling sound of spilling coins filtered up from the bottom of the well. “Careful,” Chance called, and Nina hugged the rope, panting with the fear of almost having fallen. “Don’t spill my treasure.” Her head snapped back, and she glared at him again. “Spill your treasure? I could have fallen!” “A whole four feet,” he reasoned. “The debris will have broken your fall.” “You bloody, blasted—!” He extended one hand down into the lip of the well. “Here, give me the branch.” Holding onto the rope with one hand, she bent over backwards, kicking with her feet as she struggled to snag it with her fingertips. The instant she succeeded, however, she righted herself with a growl and took a swing at him with the thin, whippy end. Like a backwards piñata, dangling a good six feet below him, she smacked at his hands, arms and even aimed for his head. The stick splintered and cracked each time it hit the top of the well, and Chance stayed well out of striking range. “Now, that’s enough of that!” he told her, then quickly ducked his head back before she clipped him in the chin. “Nina, I’m warning you—!” “Hallo the house!” Nina froze even as she cracked the branch against the top of the well, shattering the end,

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which rained back down on her head as the bits of rotted wood tumbled and bounced off the sheer rock walls. “Hush!” Chance whispered. He turned his head away, listening. “Someone’s coming.” “Quick! Pull me up!” Frowning, Chance reached for the rope. “Oh, aye! I’ll pull you up all right!” He heaved and, with four strong draws, pulled her up to the lip of the well. Nina grabbed onto the cool stones with both hands and struggled to heave herself over the top. She only got halfway before Chance caught hold of the nape of her neck. With stones under her belly, he pushed her head down almost to the floor and his broad palm met her petticoat-padded backside with three sharp smacks. Although the impacts were hard, her skirts absorbed most of the force and, by the time he was done, all she felt was the mildest stinging sensation where she would normally sit down. But Nina still kicked and scrambled to break free. Hopefully, before he took it into his head to raise her skirts and continue in a manner that really would hurt! Stopping at three, Chance then pulled her the rest of the way onto the floor of the root cellar and dropped her there. “Misbehaving wench,” he grumbled. He picked a piece of wood up off a nearby pile. Originally part of a longer plank, it was now little more than a strip of kindling a good two feet long and four inches wide at the business end, which he waved at her threateningly. “The next time you lose your sour temper and try striking at me, my darling, you’d best remember I’ve got plenty at my disposal that would prove lethal to your sitting abilities for at least two days! Three, if you really annoy me!”

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Scrambling to her feet, she opened her mouth for an equally sharp retort, but a shadow fell over the root cellar stairs. “Hello? Anyone down there?” Painting the sunniest of smiles on his face, Chance cheerfully called out, “Hello, yourself!” He dropped the kindling on the floor and stalked toward the stairs, skirting around piles of debris that were stacked knee and even waist high wherever there was room. Rubbing her bottom and glaring mutinously at his retreating back, Nina picked up the strip of kindling that he’d threatened her with and tossed it back into the well. Trying for an unconcerned and maybe even friendly expression, herself, she then followed him to greet their visitor. It was Clive Irving, who ran the gun shop across from Murphy’s. Hunkered down at the top of the stairs, he tipped an imaginary hat when he saw Nina. “Morning to you both.” “Good morning,” Chance returned. He held out an arm to Nina, and she obligingly tucked herself into a strictly-for-show embrace. “What can we do for you?” “Well, it’s a mite awkward, what I’ve got to say, but I don’t really have much of a choice.” “I haven’t experienced many good conversations that started out that way,” Chance noted, and Clive smiled, albeit sheepishly. “Go on.” “They hanged the last of the pirates this morning.” Nina glanced at Chance’s face, but there was no discernable change in his expression. He still smiled, still waited expectantly for Clive to continue. Either he was a very good actor, or a truly cold-hearted individual. She frowned. It would be just her luck to wind up married to the latter. “Everyone thought the Brits would pack it in and go home,” Clive continued. “Seeing as how they’ve done what they came for.”

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“They’ve got no business being here, anyway,” Chance said mildly. “Seems to me that Newport did them a favor just by letting them dock their ship.” “I know it,” Clive nodded in good natured agreement. “I would have thought once we got independent of England, we wouldn’t have to worry about Redcoats telling us what’s what any more. But, here we are and so are they. Their blasted ships have been running blockades half a mile out to sea for the better part of six months, now. They harass our ships, steal our catches, press our men into serving their vessels, and now they’ve come into Newport as if they own the place.” Though he said it all without much rancor, there was a tightening around Clive’s mouth that denoted more than just a little resentment. “There’s some that think those boys they strung up for piracy probably weren’t anything more than Americans who didn’t want to give up their ships.” “Not much we can do about it, now,” Chance said. Again, Clive nodded his agreement. “Nope. Too right; there’s not. And, for the moment at least, it gets worse. Apparently, before they marched him to the gibbet, one of the men they hanged this morning told the Brits’ commanding officer, Powell’s his name, that there’s still at least one more pirate running around the countryside. Says they put him off to look for treasure and were supposed to come back and get him. Until the Brits captured them, that is. So, now, the Brits aren’t leaving. In fact, Powell’s putting his men up in our houses. He’s got men scattered all through town. ‘Til two days ago, he wouldn’t have thought to post anyone here with Nina. It just wouldn’t have been decent, what with a woman living alone and all. But, now, that that’s not the case anymore...”

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The muscles of Chance’s jaw tightened and released one time. “How many men is he thinking of putting here?” “Two.” “He can’t!” Nina gasped, and Chance’s arm tightened around her waist. “Of course, he can,” he said with feigned nonchalance. “He’s threatened to shoot any one who conspires with the pirate or hinders the soldiers in any way,” Clive added. “And, that includes resisting the orders of the boys he’s parceled out around town. I’ve got three in my home. Two seem decent enough. If that third one makes one more advance on my wife, I’ll break his neck.” Chance halfway smiled. “Of course, there’s no telling what Powell’ll do then.” “And, that’s the only reason I haven’t already killed the man. I’ve got four little ones and, though Mary isn’t showing just yet, she’s got another on the way. She doesn’t need that kind of worrying on her mind.” “But, they can’t stay here!” Nina protested. “This is my house!” “Our house,” Chance corrected, lightly squeezing her waist again. “But, there isn’t room. Where will we put them?” “We’ll find a place.” “No, they can’t stay here! I don’t want them—” “Nina!” Chance said sharply. Her mouth snapped shut with an audible clatter. She glared up at him. “It’s about time you got dinner started. And you can plan on setting two more plates at the table. We’ll be having guests for supper.” Despite Clive’s presence, he gave Nina’s bottom a sharp swat that sent her hurrying up the stairs.

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The apples of her cheeks turned pink, and once she reached the top, she spun around and glared at him. Looking from him to Clive and back again, she clamped her mouth tightly shut, snapped about on her heel and marched into the house. Her cheeks burned even hotter when she heard Clive’s low chuckle behind her. “Nina’s a good girl, but she’s a lively one. Comes from living alone too long, I suppose.” “Not to worry,” Chance said, and she clenched her hands into tight fists at her sides when she heard him say, “That’s one wildcat I’ll have tamed back to kittenhood in no time. You’ll see.” She should have let him hang. For that matter, she should have gone ahead and shot him! Nina threw open her front door so hard that it banged against the wall. Her musket was leaned up against the wall on the side of her bed that Chance had appropriated for his own use. She took it, found the shot to load it, and marched herself back outside again. Both Clive and Chance stopped laughing when they saw her, but without so much as a glance in their direction, she headed into the woods. Apparently, neither man was daring enough to follow her, for Nina was still alone twenty minutes later when she finally managed to track down the animal she wanted. She killed it with a single shot, picked it up by its rat-like tail and headed again for home. Clive had left, and Chance sat waiting for her on the front porch. He took the gun from her the minute she rounded the corner of the house. “Don’t you ever do that again,” he said flatly, and checked to see if the gun had been reloaded. Nina rounded on him. “This is my house! Nobody tells me what to do in my house!”

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“I do,” he corrected, leaning down until he was nose to nose with her. “For as long as I’m here, in fact, my orders are the only ones that matter. Or, do I need to tie you to another chair to remind you exactly what kind of arrangement this really is?” He glanced down at her hand and wrinkled his nose. “Please tell me that’s not what you’re fixing for supper.” “If you think you can avoid tying me up long enough for any kind of meal to be fixed.” Nina dropped the dead possum on the porch steps and smiled with feigned sweetness. “If you’ll be so good as to skin and gut it, my dear husband, I’d like to get the meal underway.” Her smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and she turned on her heel, stomped up the three short steps and slammed into the house. ______________ Nothing smells worse than boiled opossum. The whole house reeked of it. So did the yard. The foulness of the scent seemed to follow Chance out onto the porch to greet the two British soldiers as they hiked up the road to the house. He could tell just by watching their faces exactly when the rank odor hit their noses, because both men stopped dead in their tracks on the road, their noses wrinkling, and stared back at him in disbelieving horror. “Good evening,” he called as they drew reluctantly closer. “Are you boiling socks?” one of the soldiers asked. Although his stomach roiled, Chance made himself smile. “No, sir. That there is good old fashioned down-home cooking. Come on up.” He waved them forward. “We’ll set you up a bed on the porch.”

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They looked at him, and then at one another. “If it’s all the same to you, sir. We’ll sleep over here.” Chance tried to look disappointed. “Suit yourselves.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them briskly together. “There’s a rain barrel around the side of the house to wash up in. The missus should have supper on the table shortly.” He left the men staring at one another and, no doubt, wishing they could disobey orders and head back to town. Though closing the front door made the smell that much worse, he knew he’d never be able to keep from laughing once he got inside. “You are brilliant,” he chuckled as he bounced across the floor to join Nina at the hearth. He leaned in close and kissed her on the cheek, trying not to inhale as he did so. After two hours of stirring her odorous possum stew, she smelled almost as bad as the meat did. “It may not force them to leave, but they sure aren’t going to enjoy their stay.” The sidelong look she gave him was a prickly one, and she didn’t say anything. But, it was enough to wither Chance’s good cheer. His smile evaporated under a nauseating wave of possum funk as she lifted the ladle to offer him a taste. He held up one hand, turning his face away. “Thank you, no.” “Suit yourself,” she said briskly. “Must you always be so disgruntled?” “Must you always smack my bottom? You seem determined to labor under the false impression that you are my father.” He shook his head, his smile partway returning as he laughed, “Trust me, darling, I look upon you as anything but a child. Mine or anyone else’s.” “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. Instead, I’m a wildcat in need of taming!”

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“I actually didn’t mean for you to hear that part.” She smacked her stirring spoon against the side of the pot and gave him a look blacker than the cast-iron. “Oh, come now, darling. It was nothing more than idle talk.. Don’t take it to heart.” “Don’t call me that!” she hissed, lowering her voice to keep from being overheard. Still clutching the overlarge wooden spoon in her hand, she shook it at him angrily. “I’m not your darling, your dear, your pumpkin, or anything else that’s yours! You are abusive and bullying, and I have no interest in you whatsoever. The day you retrieve your treasure will also be the day I celebrate your eminent departure with uninhibited joy!” “Abusive?” he echoed. “And bullying!” “Because I patted my wife’s bottom with fondness?” “Fondness shouldn’t hurt!” “Ah, but that’s love now, isn’t it?” Chance caught the hand that brandished the wooden spoon, quickly twisting her wrist behind her back and pulling her abruptly close to his chest. “I guess neither of us is meant for married life since an obedient wife shouldn’t ought to threaten her husband, either.” Nina froze in his arms, her eyes widening, not even trying to struggle free. Slowly, her muscles went slack as the anger drained out of her, and in a soft and faintly trembling voice, she said, “A husband shouldn’t threaten, much less deliver, injury upon his wife.” “A spanking, if well meant and well placed, is hardly an injury,” he argued. “It is a valuable lesson. A joy to give, and sometimes even a pleasure to receive.”

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“Ha!” she quavered. “That’s a lie if ever I heard one.” “Perhaps you should broaden your experiences.” Chance reached behind her back with his free hand, his fingers traveling down her arm to remove the wooden spoon from her grip. She tried to hang onto the end of the handle at first, but then just let it go. He smiled, bowing his head almost to the point of kissing her. “Sometimes a good, sound spanking is the best way to show a naughty wench of a wife the errors of her ways.” He shifted the spoon in his hand, laying the wide concave head to the back of her skirts. “I don’t need to be taught anything from a pirate,” Nina whispered, her gaze dropping to his mouth. Her lips parted. The tip of her tongue darted out to moisten the pink bow of her mouth, and her soft breath caught. “You,” he chuckled, “need to be taught a good many things. All of which, in my opinion, would be vastly more effective if delivered without the barrier of your skirts and underdrawers.” He raised the spoon, and let it fall gently back across her bottom in the softest of pats. Her whole body jumped, but still she didn’t struggle against his hold. Chance pulled her closer and gave her another soft, infinitely gentle swat with the wooden spoon. His smiling mouth lowered when she caught her breath, for a moment closing her eyes against the sensation. “You see?” His lips came to within an inch of her own. “There might just be a thing or two that I could teach you after all.” She began to tremble in his arms, so he pulled her even closer. Now, he could feel the rapid beating of her heart against his chest, see the rise and fall of her breasts above her bodice, the soft mounds quickening with each breath. For the first

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time since he’d met her, Nina wasn’t fighting him. Instead, ever so slightly, she raised her face, softly, hesitantly touching her mouth to his. Ah, the thrill of conquest. Letting the wooden spoon fall to the floor, he captured her face in the palm of his hand and met her tentative exploration with a hunger all his own.

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CHAPTER FOUR Chance kissed her hungrily, and for a while he couldn’t have cared less that the whole house stank of cooking possum. Nina melted in his embrace. Her eyes closed, and she made a soft whimpering noise in the back of her throat. He knew surrender when he heard it and for that one moment, as the rest of the world faded away to nothing, and his every waking nerve suddenly focused in on the press of her sweet body against his own, for that one instant in time, Nina was entirely his. And then they heard the first sharp pop. Chance raised his head to listen, and Nina sagged a little against him, touching two fingers to her flushed lips. A few seconds later, a second pop echoed in the distance. Gun fire. Letting go of Nina was nowhere on his current list of the top ten things he’d rather be doing, but as a second volley of duel pops echoed to his ears, Chance frowned and turned his head to look out the window. “Stay here.” He headed for the door. Neither of the British soldiers were anywhere in sight, although their gear was still leaning up against the side of the porch. All except for their Brown Bess muskets. A second volley of shots and the sound of laughter echoed down from the top of the cliffs that overlooked the ocean. High over the evergreen and broad-leafed trees, he saw a flock of albatrosses circling. “Looks like the Brits have decided to hunt up their own supper,” he called back over one shoulder. Hands on his hips, he listened as a third set of twin shots, sounding mere seconds apart, rang out and one of the large, white birds faltered mid-flap, crumpled in flight and fell like a stone out

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of sight. “You know, we could probably get another foot or two cleared out of the well if we hurry.” He was just about to turn around when Nina ducked out of the house and ran past him. “Hey!” Chance shouted after her. She held her skirts up to keep them from tangling in her legs, and her feet pounded over the ground quicker than he’d ever seen a woman run before in his life. Quicker than most men, for that matter. “Wait! Nina!” She never looked back, but kept right on running. Chance was still admiring her speed and thinking he was going to have a difficult time trying to empty that well by himself, when it suddenly occurred to him that Nina was holding her skirts up with one hand, but in the other, she had gripped the same musket that had brought low that malodorous supper that was still bubbling over the fireplace inside. Somewhere in the faint recesses of his memory, he heard himself ask her again, And what is it that you do, my sweet? I count albatrosses. Two more shots, spaced only by a heartbeat of time, snapped him from his thoughts, and he watched as another bird fall. “Bloody hell!” He jumped off the porch. “She’s going to get her fool self killed! Nina!” Chance ran after her, calling her name again and again, but she vanished in the trees up ahead, without ever once looking back. ______________ Nina was out of breath by the time she reached the grassy clearing at the top of the cliff. She had a terrible stitch in her side, but that was nothing compared to the pain that seized her heart when

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she saw the litter of injured and dead albatrosses that peppered the ground. The British soldiers stood near the edge of the cliff, laughing as they reloaded their guns. The taller of the two finished first, set his sights on the first bird that swooped past and instantly brought his gun back to his shoulder. The musket belched smoke as he fired, and the bird was knocked from the sky. Flying just beyond the edge of the cliff, when it buckled its wings it fell irretrievably into the ocean. No longer interested in catching dinner, the soldiers were now deeply engrossed in an impromptu shooting match, and her albatrosses were the uncontested losers. Nina saw red. “How dare you!” she screamed and charged them. The shorter of the two men failed to turn quickly enough, and wielding her musket like a club, she struck him across the back of the head. He dropped to the ground like a rock and lay there motionless. Caught in the midst of re-loading his weapon, the taller of the soldiers stared at her in open-mouthed shock. “What are you doing?” “What have you done?” she shouted back. “How could you?” Backing up a step, the soldier tried to finish loading the next shot into his musket, but Nina braced the butt of her own gun against her shoulder and pointed it straight at him. It wasn’t loaded; she hadn’t had the time, but the Englishman didn’t know that. He froze the instant he saw the barrel of her musket train onto him. “Drop it on the ground,” Nina ordered. “You’re going to want to think about this, luv,” the soldier told her, his eyes hardening. “You’re in a lot of trouble right now. You don’t want to go making things worse.”

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She shook from the fury of her emotions. The crying sounds of the albatrosses as they circled their nesting grounds, their fallen comrades and mates, seemed to pierce all the way through her. Nina took a single, ominous step towards him. Through gritted teeth, she snarled, “I said, put that damned gun down!” The soldier’s mouth became a tight, hard line and his blue eyes glittered angrily. Slowly, he bent over and gently lay his musket in the grass. “Now back away,” she told him, gesturing with the gun for him to go. “You’ve just attacked two of England ’s finest,” the soldier told her, taking a small step back from the edge of the cliff. “Keep going!” “Don’t go thinking you’ll get away with this, luv.” Keeping her musket locked on him, as soon as Nina drew close enough, without taking her eyes off him, she reached down to grab his Brown Bess and promptly threw it over the side of the cliff. Aghast, the soldier cried, “Fool woman! What’s the matter with you?” Nina backed up a quick step, raising the musket a little higher. Had it been loaded, she might have been tempted to fire, but her eyes kept trying to blur, and she had to blink repeatedly to keep her tears at bay. Just out of the corner of her eye, she could see the crumpled and bloody body of one bird, its wings flapping against the ground but unable to move. She dared not look at it fully for fear that she might break down completely. A warbled groan came from the soldier she’d struck, but she didn’t turn to face him either. Already, the look on the face of the man before her had turned murderously dark, and he’d lowered himself into a partial crouch, his hands held out from his body as if he were trying either to calm her

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down or ward her off. But, it was just as likely that he was preparing to grab at her. “Get up, Ernie,” he softly called to his fallen comrade in arms. “Get ‘er gun.” Nina shifted her stance, turning sideways in an effort to see both soldiers at the same time, but the fallen man was too far behind and to the left of her. Regardless of what Ernie was doing, she dared not take her eyes off his companion. Ernie groaned again. “She hit me... Me ‘ead’s bleedin’... Uugggh...” “Get up,” the taller soldier ordered. Her fingers clasped and re-clasped themselves upon the musket. Her palms felt sweaty, and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. “Back off,” she told the soldier, but he was done accommodating her. There was a distant crashing through the underbrush behind them. “Nina!” “Chance!” she called back, still without taking her eyes off the soldier. She didn’t dare. “Me ‘ead,” Ernie moaned. “Get up,” his companion snapped unsympathetically. “Get ‘er arms!” And to her, his mouth spread in a slow, ugly smirk, as he said, “You’ll be god damned lucky if I don’t throw you off this cliff after my gun.” Her burgeoning panic died beneath a tidal wave of fury. Nina took two menacing steps towards him, bringing the muzzle of her musket level with his face. “You’ll be god damned lucky if I don’t throw you off first!” His smirk slowly faded, but the dangerous light in his eyes intensified. “You want to pull the trigger?” he asked, soft and low. “Go on, luv. Shoot me, then. Either way, I’ll see to it you ‘ang.” “Nina!” Chance shoved through the bushes that stood sentry at the top of the cliff’s clearing. He took one look at her and the situation that had

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already spiraled well and truly out of control, and started towards her. “Put the gun down, darling.” The soldier smiled; and it wasn’t a friendly one. “That’s right, luv. Listen to your man and put it down. Not that it’ll ‘elp you now. Get up, Ernie.” Nina backed up a step when she heard Ernie stumble to his feet. He groaned again, and the hairs at her nape prickled in warning. But, instead of attacking her back, he staggered into view at the corners of her sight and stumbled over to join his companion, one hand clasped to the back of his head. In the next instant, Chance was beside her. She didn’t know why his presence should make a difference, but the anger drained out of her so suddenly that her legs went weak. Nina began to tremble and the musket to shake as Chance eased out his hand and gently placed it over the top of one of hers. The pressure he exerted was minute, but Nina lowered the gun anyway. Everything began to swim before her eyes, and her voice broke. “Look at what they’ve done,” she said, her voice dropping to a raspy whisper. “I know,” he said, his voice soothing and soft. “It’ll be all right.” His arm settled around her shoulders, but she threw it off, refusing to be drawn into his embrace. “You don’t understand!” Hot tears welled up, slipping past her lashes to trickle down her cheeks. “This was the last known colony of red-faced albatrosses left anywhere in the world. There were only sixty breeding pairs. Look at what they’ve done! Three... four, five, six... at least one was shot over the water...” She turned around, her eyes darting from one feathered corpse to the next. “Fourteen, fifteen... Oh God! I thought the milliners were bad, but at least they made hats!” Again, Chance tried to pull her close, but Nina wrenched out of his arms. “Don’t! Don’t you dare comfort me!”

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“Were I you,” the taller of the soldiers said, “I’d take what comfort I could get. Your wife ‘as assaulted two officers of the Crown. She threatened us, endangered our lives while in the course of our duties. I’m placing her under arrest.” Nina whirled to face him, her face blazing with barely suppressed fury. “Duties?!” She would have stepped closer to him but for Chance’s restraining arm. “My gun wasn’t loaded.” “What?” the soldier demanded. Even more surprised, Chance echoed him. “What?” Grabbing the gun from her hand, the soldier checked it for himself. “Go back to Powell,” Chance said. “Tell him to house you somewhere else.” He took hold of Nina’s arm and started to go, but the British officer followed them. “Did you not ‘ear me? I’m taking your wife under arrest!” When the tall soldier grabbed for Nina’s other arm, Chance pulled his pistol from the waistband of his trousers. “This one is loaded,” he said. He held the gun level with the taller man’s head. Nearly cross-eyed as he stared down the metal barrel, the soldier took a healthy step backwards. “You are all guests here, in this town as well as in this country,” Chance told him. “Be careful that you do not overstay your welcome.” The soldier frowned, his expression as dark as a thundercloud. “I’ll see you both ‘anged with the rest of the pirates,” he vowed. Keeping himself between Nina and the soldier, Chance backed away. “You won’t be the first to try.” When they stepped past Ernie’s musket, still lying in the dirt where he’d fallen, Chance bent to pick it up and tossed it over the cliff as well. He saluted both soldiers with his pistol.

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“We’ll see you soon,” the taller of the two men said. “Looking forward to it,” Chance called back. ______________ Although Nina would gladly have sent both soldiers running back to town, Chance took hold of her arm and pushed her out of the clearing ahead of him. She tried to outpace him, but he managed to stay even with her long, angry strides and neither said a word until they’d put a good two hundred yards distance between themselves and the soldiers. “My colony will never recover,” Nina said bitterly. “First the Dodo, now the albatross. Men simply are not happy unless they’re eradicating something.” “You’ve got even less sense than my senile old grandmother,” Chance answered back. “Which I really didn’t think was possible since during the last ten years of her life, not only did she believe herself a man, but she actually thought she was the pope. We had to bring her tithing every time we came to visit. She even peed standing up, and the mess she’d make almost—almost!— rivaled the one we just came through up there!” Nina stopped walking and, a few steps later, so did he. He turned to frown at her. “Those birds were a sanctioned species,” she told him hotly. “I am paid to be their caretaker! Those men just decimated my colony!” “I don’t care about your birds,” Chance snapped. “I care about those soldiers. This isn’t over.” He pointed back up the hill behind them. “They’ll make certain of that. And, not that I want to hurt your pride at all, my darling, but if the government really wanted to protect those birds, they’d not have sent a lone woman to do the job!”

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Nina’s eyes burned, and a choking lump rose up in her throat. “I want you out of my house! It’s because of you that they’re here at all! You and your blasted treasure!” Turning sharply, she started walking again, and almost made it to her front porch before the first choking sobs broke from her chest. Covering her mouth, she ran up the steps and slammed the front door behind her. ______________ Chance sat on the front porch, for the first half hour listening to Nina cry and feeling like a first-rate ass. The temptation to go inside and apologize for his hurtful words was tempered only by reminding himself that he was a pirate, and pirates weren’t sorry for anything. And, besides, he told himself sternly, there was only one good reason to apologize, and that would be only if he intended to remain married to Nina— lovely, spirited girl that she was—settle down here in Newport and make a proper go at a respectable living. And, quite frankly, he didn’t. In fact, he had perfectly respectful pirately intentions. He intended to get his treasure, he intended to get out of Newport, and he intended to retire himself to a nice little tropical island full of rum and brandy and women with flowers in their midnight black hair, dressed in little grass skirts and absolutely nothing else. No, his plans were set, and they did not include apologies or remaining married to lovely, lively, and bird-guarding spinsters in the very town that had hanged his seafaring brethren. So, out on the porch Chance remained. He kept watch until the two soldiers slinked back to get their gear and, without a word to him, headed down the hill for town. He cleaned and loaded both of his pistols, as well as Nina’s musket, and he waited.

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The sun went down. The stars came out. The hideous smell of the possum lingered on, lasting long after Nina took the stew pot outside and gave the contents a proper burial in the woods behind the house. When she returned, she walked past him with a back as stiff and as straight as a broom handle. “What's for supper?" he asked. "Possum," she snapped back. "It's buried in a hole twenty yards that way." And then stalked back inside the house and slammed the door again. Ah, the harmonial bliss of married life. With a sigh, Chance leaned back against a roof post, stretched his long legs out in front of him, and continued to watch the road. The British didn't disappoint him either. At a quarter past eight, just as the velvet of the night's sky was darkening, and the glowing crescent of half a moon appeared from out behind the coastal clouds, Chance heard the sound of several horses and a dozen or more marching boots coming up the road. This was it. With a heavy sigh, he stood up as the first moving shadows disengaged themselves from the constant dark of the surrounding woods. Powell led his small troop from a seat of power atop a huge black stud that had the look of a draft horse about it. The beast was tall and blocky, muscular from pulling a delivery cart or plow. Chance smirked; it must have been quite the step down from what the Englishman was accustomed to, for he’d made an obvious attempt to dress it up with a decorative saddle that looked to be worth three times the value of the horse. In comparison, it made the British naval officer seem ridiculously overdressed in his military frock, which was trimmed in gold. "Your wife," Powell announced briskly. "Where is she?"

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From inside the house, Nina must have chosen that moment to blow out the lamp, for the windows suddenly went dark and everyone was left to the black of night. Glancing at the glass panes over one shoulder, Chance then faced Powell again. "I do believe she has retired for the evening." "This is not a social call, St. Claire. Bring her out here." "May I ask what this is regarding?" Even by the half-moon's light, Powell's face turned obviously apoplectic. "You know dashed well what this is about! Your wife assaulted two of my men." “Your men took their sport on her livelihood. The birds they shot were government-protected fowl. Nina’s their guardian. Therefore, she was doing her job.” “Soldiers of His Majesty’s army by far outrank the life of any bleeding bird! She will answer for her crime, and if you stand in our way, you will answer with her!” Rising, Powell swung down from his saddle, and Chance stood up. From further on down the road, there came the rustling tromp of even more marching boots and Chance groaned inwardly. Although it was difficult to tell by moonlight just how many soldiers he was facing, he knew it was already more than he was likely to handle. “Sir,” one of the blue-coats on horseback said. Powell turned around, just as the shadows of the second group disengaged themselves from the woods and came up into the clearing around Nina’s house. Instead of aligning themselves with the British, however, the small army of men came to stand with Chance. “Good evening,” Clive called to him. “Well, good evening right back,” Chance said, not bothering to hide his surprise.

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“Nice night for a walk.” Clive took up a position beside Chance as the rest of the town’s men fanned out along the porch both behind and around him. Every one of them was carrying a gun. “It is at that.” Chance grinned and turned back to Powell. “I don’t think my wife is going anywhere tonight.” Fuming, the British officer got back up on his horse. Not even the shadows could hide his impotent fury. “Mister Barker!” he snapped out. One of the foot soldiers stepped forward. “Sir!” “You’ll be housed here for the remainder of our stay in this...” he drew a seething breath as he glared at his opposition. “...quaint American town.” “I’m more than happy to do my part,” Chance said cheerfully. “Although, being newlyweds living in a one room house, I’m sure you’ll understand, Mr. Barker, if I ask you to sleep on the porch.” Lips tightly compressed, Powell reined his horse around and shouted for his men to return to town. “Something tells me that one is too in love with his own authority to let this be the end of it,” Clive said softly. They watched the soldiers retreat back down the hill, and then Clive said, “Harvey sent his boy for the Sheriff in Cope Cove.” Chance started. “Sheriff? What for?” Clive looked at him. “Given the chance, he would have hanged Nina.” “Then we won’t give him any more chances.” “We may have the numbers, but they have the arms and the experience to use them. We’re fishermen and farmers, not soldiers. Mark my words,” he turned to watched the last of the retreating Redcoats. “We’ll see worse before things turn to the better again.” When the last of the soldiers had gone, Chance thanked and bid good night to the men of Newport who had come to his aid, and they too filed back down the road to town.

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Sitting down on the porch once more, for a while Chance listened to the silence of the night. Crickets called, and the muted rush of the waves beating against the cliffs and the beach seemed almost soothing. When he felt relatively certain that Powell wouldn’t be back that night, he picked up his pistols and musket and went inside. Nina had gone to bed. She lay on her side, presenting her stiff and angry back to him. Though she pretended to be asleep, he could tell by her breathing that she was still very angry and very much awake. “I have survived the night,” he said as he lay down on top of the blankets beside her. “Jolly good for you,” Nina flatly replied. “Pirate.” It was always good for a man to know exactly where he stood with a woman. Sighing, Chance lay down beside her, his guns in easy reach, and closed his eyes. ______________ It took Chance twice as long as the soldier outside to fall asleep, but Nina lay as still as a rock until his breathing turned deep. Only when the two men were snoring in tandem did she finally push the blankets aside and emerge, fully dressed, from bed. Watching Chance carefully, she tiptoed to the fireplace to light her lamp, turned the wick down as low as it could go without extinguishing, and then, as quietly as she knew how, slipped out the door. She crept over the sleeping soldier and scurried around the house to the root cellar. Once safely down the narrow stairs, she paused to listen, but Chance’s slow and even snoring was easy to hear. It all but rattled the floorboards. She scowled up at the ceiling a moment, and then made her way to the well. She hung the lamp from a hook in the ceiling. Through the darkness and the remaining debris that still choked the well,

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she thought she glimpsed the sparkle of something golden. Her mouth flattened, and Nina glared up at the ceiling again. Then she set to work. Using the same rope Chance had dangled her upon, she tied a series of loops into the length to create a kind of rudimentary ladder and tossed it down the throat of the well. Nina tested Chance’s knot, which still secured the line to a thick ceiling beam, and steeled herself to once more venture down into the earth below her cellar. Tipping her head back to make sure Chance was still asleep, she quickly undressed, removing all but her chemise. Bending down, she lifted the hem of her skirt in front and reached under to grab the opposite side. Pulling it through her legs, she then tucked the back hem into her waistband, creating a form of functional trousers that, at the very least, were sure not to trip her as she attempted to negotiate her way up and down the rope loops. “This is it, Nina old girl,” she whispered as she sat down on the rocky edge of the well. She swung her legs over the side and let them dangle down in the darkness. “It’s long past time somebody gave that pirate what he deserves!” Crawling down to the remaining rubbish, she began to shift and move the boards and rotting branches, stacking them as neatly as she could to one side. It was hard on both her hands and her legs, and the rope hurt the sides of her feet, but she carried the biggest obstacles up to the root cellar floor one or two pieces at a time until she finally uncovered the old and worn leather chest that rested, not at the bottom of the well, but on a flat stretch of rock that jutted out like a ledge, a good two feet from the uneven side. The lid was half cracked open and bits of coin and jewelry were scattered among the remaining

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boards and sticks. Nina hesitated a moment before laying her hand on the chest. She opened it. More than just coins and jewelry, the treasure also consisted of silverware and goblets, a sparkling pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, Oriental idols made of jade and bits of ivory. She stared for a moment, wondering just how much it all might be worth. Not that it mattered. She had no intention of keeping any of it, and Nina quietly closed the lid and latched it shut. Tying the end of the rope ladder to the handle, she slowly began the last climb she’d ever have to make to the top of the well. Nearly to the end of her strength, she heaved herself up over the stone side both panting and chuckling grimly under her breath. Dirty, sweaty and sore, she almost couldn’t wait to see the look on Chance’s face when he discovered his precious treasure was gone. Overhead, his blissful snores continued to rattle the floorboards as Nina, grunting and gasping, began the arduous task of hauling the heavy chest up to the surface of the root cellar.

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CHAPTER FIVE Although the chest itself wasn’t very large, Nina still had to break the contents down into manageable portions before she could pick it up and carry it out of the cellar without half killing herself. Keeping part of the treasure in the leather chest and tying the rest into a pair of burlap flour sacks, she was able to move the ill-gotten stash down to the hill to the beach in only two trips. To avoid being seen by anyone in town, Nina closed the shade on her lantern, which left only a thin slit through which light could escape. Although it was just barely enough to allow her to see where she was going, any kind of illumination at night this close to town could have been easily spotted. And so, she stayed well off the road, preferring instead to take a shortcut through the cover of the woods. She hugged close to the edge of the cliff, following the jagged rocks in their sometimes easy and sometimes steep slope down to the soft beach sand. It was sheer luck that she managed to catch the ocean at low tide. The waves were already starting to roll back in, but they were still a good distance away. That left her with plenty of time, so long as she didn’t dawdle. The cave itself was known, ironically enough, as Smuggler's Hole. The entrance could only be reached by walking along the tidal pools once the water had receded from the cliffs. At high tide, the entrance was completely covered by the crashing waves that made it impossibly treacherous to get to, but once inside, a steep rocky climb led to ground higher than the water line. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, and stalagmites grew up like fangs from the floor. Hundreds of thousands of years of water erosion left behind a honeycomb of underground cave passages, dry but for a gentle

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saltwater pool at the entrance, whose calm and unmoving surface during times of high tide belied the savagery of the waves outside. What made Smuggler’s Hole the perfect cave, in Nina's estimation, to hide Chance's ill-gotten treasure, was the long natural shaft tucked into the back of a tiny stone niche. She didn't know how deep it was. It could have been bottomless for all she knew. But the point remained, that she could easily drop the chest down into that hole and there it would stay, safe from accidental explorers, until she chose to come back for it. Preferably after Chance had long since given up and gone! With the faint light of a dimmed lantern to guide her, Nina smuggled the chest into the cave first, and then made a second trip for the gold- and silver-filled flour sacks. Painfully aware that she would be easier to spot with a light, she left the lantern next to the chest. And, because she knew the tide was already coming in, and because she really, really didn't want to get caught in the cave when the waves once more met the cliffs, Nina was almost running with the sacks slung over her shoulders, panting, her back and shoulders aching, a breathless stitch piercing her side, by the time she reached the beach for the second time. Beaches were eerie at night. The sand seemed almost to glow in the light of the moon. Until the clouds rolled over it, blocking out the light entirely, and then everything just turned black. Every step she took, as she struggled to pick her way across the barnacle-covered rocks to the cave, was perilous. A bad fall or a turned ankle now... she shuddered as she envisioned having to crawl back to the beach over rocks and shells sharp enough to cut her flesh to ribbons. The clouds rolled on across the night sky and once more the moon came out. With a start of dismay, Nina realized she was too far down the

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cliffs. She'd passed the cave in the darkness and quickly turned around to retrace her steps. The incoming tide was now very, very close, and she had to hurry. Ducking under the entrance, careful not to touch rocky sides, coated as they were with the razor-sharp shells of white barnacles and dark indigo muscles, she stumbled up the steep incline and walked back into the narrow niche where she'd stashed the chest and lantern. Not far from the deep, rock shaft, she dropped the heavy burlap sacks and slowly stood up. She stretched, trying to work the ache out of the small of her back, as well as a painful knot between her shoulders. "What in the hell do you think you're doing?" Nina jumped, whirling around. Her startled shriek died to a squeak before it ever got free of her throat as Chance climbed up out of the tidal po ol and stalked up the steep incline towards her. It was the maddest that she'd yet seen him. His eyes flashed in the lantern light, his mouth was furiously set. Even his hands looked angry, clenched into tight fists at his side. When she backed up, she bumped into a stalagmite, and he was on her before she could get around it. A cave, she decided, was not the most advantageous place to find herself confronting a pirate. When he was within a few feet of her, he stopped advancing and looked down. “Nina, my darling,” there was a distinct edge to his tone. “Please tell me you’re not trying to steal my treasure.” Nina stiffened her back. She pushed her hair back from her face, squaring her shoulders and trying her best to look a great deal braver than what she felt right now. Particularly when he raised his head from the chest at their feet and once more locked eyes with her.

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“You don’t deserve it,” she told him. “It’s not really yours, anyway. It belongs to the poor, defenseless people you robbed.” He tipped his head back and laughed, a dry and sinister sound. “Hogs wallow! If you had any idea the amount of effort that goes into the compilation of even such a meager hoard as that, you’d not now begrudge me the free spending of it!” “I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone so arrogant and selfish!” He spread his arms, in an all-encompassing gesture at himself. “Excuse me, madame, but... Pirate!” “I’d rather see it returned to its rightful owners than to give it back to you!” Nina snapped hotly. “You’re callous and uncaring! You’re—” “A pirate!” he said even more incredulously. “Did you not hear me the first time? And where does all this animosity stem from? I haven’t tortured you. I haven’t forced myself upon you. I’d be forced to hang my head in shame if anyone found out just how decently I’ve treated you. It’s a good thing I plan to retire, since my reputation after this will hang in tatters!” “Your reputation?” Nina echoed incredulously. “You’ve done nothing but hurt me since the day you arrived here! Just look what you’ve done to my colony!” “I wasn’t up there shooting a one of your blasted birds!” “The Brits wouldn’t have been either, if it weren’t for you!” “Of all the stubborn—”Growling, he took another step towards her, and Nina abruptly dropped to her knees. She shoved the two bags and then the chest into the natural stone shaft a bare second before Chance fell halfway over the hole, his outstretched arms flailing frantically to catch his treasure before it fell out of reach.

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He failed, and an eerie silence stretched on for what seemed an eternity before they heard the gold crash into stone somewhere at the bottom of that deep, shadowy pit. One of the bags must have broken open, for the coins and jewelry hit the rocks with a light, musical tinkling that gradually faded into stillness. “My treasure,” Chance said softly. There was a distinct note of pain in his tone, and the sound of it left her feeling nowhere near as vindicated as she’d thought she would. Nina sat up and dusted off her dirty hands one against the other. “There,” she said, hiding her unexpected remorse behind a bitterly small smile. “Now, we’ve both lost something precious to us. How does it feel? Not very pleasant, I expect.” He rose up onto hands and knees, and after a moment, his gaze shifted from the long shaft back to her face. His pained expression vanished behind an utterly black wave of fury. “You ill-tempered, sour, little wretch!” Nina scrambled backwards, bumping again into the stalagmite, but he caught her all the same and dragged her to her feet. Chance shook her shoulders, “Have you any idea what you’ve just done?” “Yes,” she shouted back. “And, I’m glad I did it! You could torture me a thousand times, and I’d still be glad!” “Oh really?” His hands tightened on her arms, and he dragged her over to a pile of rocks. Sitting down on the largest, he yanked her kicking and shrieking across his lap. Nina gasped as her stomach landed against his hard thighs. She quickly reached out to brace both hands on the rock floor to keep from toppling over his lap completely and onto her nose. His arm clamped down across her waist, pinning her in place, and before she could try to rise, Nina

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suddenly became aware of a very distinct breeze back where her skirts should have been. Her jaw dropped, but before she could look behind her, yards of dress and ruffled petticoats fell over her head like a shroud, blacking out everything but his leg and the ground directly before her. “Oh! Stop it! Don’t you—OH!” Nina’s eyes bulged even wider as she felt his hand grab the back of her pantalettes. He ripped the fragile lace in his haste to skin them down off her rounded bottom, baring her completely to view. All around them, the rocks seemed to vibrate as a low rumble of thunder shook the air around them. It was a sound Nina knew well; the waves were coming in. Chilly panic gripped her insides. “Wait!” Nina cried. “Please! I—” Chance’s palm cracked down hard across her exposed flesh with surprising force. Nina caught her breath loudly. Her whole body stiffened, and her mouth dropped open with shock. “Oh!” He drew back his arm and slapped her backside a second time, just as vigorously as the first, jolting her over his knee. “You spoiled, ill-mannered, ungrateful—” He walloped her unprotected nether cheeks again and again, his hand seeming to grow harder with each crisp smack that left her bottom feeling as if it were covered by a swarm of angry stinging hornets. “Wait, please, we have to—OW!—get out we— OUCH!—can’t stay!—OH!—Please!—OH! Stop it, Chance—OUCH! You’re killing me! Please!” The sharp slaps of flesh solidly striking flesh reverberated through the underground cave, echoing off the fangs of rock, fading into whispers down the dark passages. The cacophony of echoes and cries nearly drowned out the rushing roar of the waves as they came crashing up against the cliffs

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again, louder and louder, with more and more fury as the quantity of water increased. But Chance paid as much attention to the tide as he did to her kicks and pleas. He kept right on paddling her. No matter how she twisted and bucked, thrashing and scissoring her legs, his hand found her bottom with unerring accuracy. He spanked her until it felt as though she’d backed into a hot stove and caught fire from behind. She snapped a hand back in an attempt to grab at his. And, when that failed, the only measure of protection that she could muster was to cover her exposed bottom, palm up and fingers splayed wide apart. “A thousand tortures, remember?” Chance snapped. He grabbed her wrist and pushed it aside, holding her wrist to keep it out of his way. “This is merely number one!” “Oh! Oh no!” Her eyes watered, and Nina erupted in a fury of struggles to either free her hand or to remove his arm, so she could roll off his lap. Anything, just so long as the end result included his immediate cessation of the battery he was subjecting her achingly hot backside to. Tears stung her eyes. With each new smack of his palm, not only did the surface of her skin smart and sting, but the pain was radiated deep into her flesh until her muscles all throbbed with it. Radiating out from her buttocks, the hurt quickly became all that she could think about; the spanking all that she could feel. “Please!” she sobbed. “I can’t bear it! Please, stop!” Chance did. Abruptly. No grand finale or harder than normal smacks. No lecture to blister her ears, or to leave her with something to think about while she nursed her throbbing nates. He just plain stopped spanking and, picking her up, dumped her

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down on the ground, a mound of disheveled cotton skirts at his feet. Still seething with anger, he shook his finger in her face. “I’ve had about all of the cantankerousness that I intend to take from you! You’ve done this just to be difficult and spiteful! You—” He suddenly glanced past her shoulder and his eyes widened. He stood up. “Bugger me blind! The water’s come in! Come on, Nina.” He reached for her arm, but she yanked herself back out of his grasp. Sobbing, she crawled a short distance away, jerking her torn pantalettes back into place and struggling to get her layers of petticoats back down over her flaming hot rump. “Don’t you touch me!” she cried. “Be mad about it later,” Chance said. “We don’t have time for this now! We have to go!” “We can’t!” she snapped, sniffling and hiccuping and trying to stop crying all at once. “The water’s coming in. The entrance is completely covered over. That's what I was trying to tell you!" She swiped her wrists angrily across her eyes, rubbing away her tears to glare at him. Her bottom pulsed and ached so fiercely it was almost as if she could feel each individual smack of his hand still burning into her. She could even feel the rising heat through her clothes, and it made her wince. “Oh.” "Do you mean to say we're stuck here?" Chance asked her. "Yes!" she spat. She cupped her bottom in woefully tender hands, rubbing gently as if that could sooth her martyred posterior, certain that her flesh was swollen to a size that was at least twice what it should have been. "All night?" "Until the tide goes out again tomorrow morning, yes." Nina sniffled and rubbed her bottom again.

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Chance stood up. He walked back down to the water's edge and, bracing his hands on his hips, glared down at the water. “You’re an absolute beast!” she snapped at his back. “If you think brutality can break me, you can jolly well think again. I’m stronger than that; I’m stronger than you! I’m not sorry! I’ll never be sorry!” Chance turned around and looked at her. He tilted his head to one side, his black eyes beginning to crackle angrily all over again. “Do you know, I don’t think I was quite done with you yet.” Nina struggled to get to her feet as he came striding back up the short incline to her. "You don’t want to be sorry? That’s fine with me," he said, taking hold of her arm and sitting back down on the rock. "Torture number two, coming right up!" Nina screamed, kicked and flailed, but he had no more difficulty turning her across his knee this time than he had the first. Once more, he bared her wildly bucking nates, pinned her thrashing legs between his own, and for the second time that night, his hand began a vigorous tattoo all across the blazing surface of her thoroughly well-spanked bottom. ______________ They lay side by side in the darkness, the lantern flickering on the verge of extinguishing itself, and waited for the tide to recede. On the levelest, flattest slice of rock they could find, they’d made a bed of sorts in an attempt to pass their confinement in some measure of comfort. Every one of Nina’s petticoats had been shed to form a sort of mattress. Chance had contributed his coat as a blanket, which they were struggling to share with the utmost civility. It was cold and

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uncomfortable, but there wasn’t a thing either one of them could do about it. Now and again, Nina still sniffled, but they hadn’t said anything to one another since lying down together over an hour ago. At least, he thought it was probably an hour ago. It was hard to tell when one’s surroundings were perpetually dark and unchanging, except for the constant motion of the tide. The water lapped gently at the rocks inside the cave, while outside, the roar and crash of the waves beat rhythmically against the cliffs. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his coat moving ever so discretely as Nine slipped a hand back over her thigh. Trying not to be obvious about it, she gingerly massaged her bottom. Hands laced behind his head, Chance said, “You deserved every lick of that.” “I’m still not sorry,” she sniffled back at him. “You’re awfully brave for a woman who still has nine-hundred and ninety-eight tortures left to go.” “Take yourself to the devil.” Finished rubbing her bottom, Nina folded her arms in front of her again and curled into a tight little ball for warmth. They didn’t speak again for what felt like another hour. Finally, Chance sighed. Beside him, he could feel Nina shiver, and he turned his head to look at the back of hers. “Are you cold?” he asked. She rolled over just enough to glare at him out of the corner of one red-rimmed eye. Her mouth was tight and unamused, and the tip of her nose looked a little red. “What is it to you if I am? Would you hold me for warmth?” Chance rose up onto one elbow. “I might.” Nina rolled back over and folded her arms across her chest. She harumphed. “I’ll never be that cold!” “You really are a stubborn piece of work than, aren’t you?” Shaking his head, Chance lay back

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down. He glared up at the shadows that flickered across the stalactites on the ceiling. The light bounced off the rippling water and danced upon every rock surface around them. After a moment though, he rose back onto his elbow again and looked at her. “Are you this prickly solely because of my profession, or are there other reasons as well?” “Hundreds of reasons,” she grumbled. “Thousands of them. Millions even.” “Name them,” he said skeptically. “You just spanked me! Do you really need to ask?” “Yes, but you deserved that, so the spanking doesn’t count.” She muttered something uncomplimentary about his parentage and the manner of his possible conception, then sighed. “We don’t have time enough for me to name them all.” “Name one, then.” She rolled back over and glared at him more fully. “Why?” He shrugged. “What else have we got to do?” “We could sleep!” She turned again to face her side of the cave and this time closed her eyes. She sniffled one last time and then rubbed her nose before settling down. He leaned over her, peering through the shadows to better see her face. He let a minute go by before asking, “Are you asleep yet?” Now it was her turn to sigh. “No.” “All right, then. Name me one thing. Just one and then I’ll leave you alone the rest of the night.” Frowning, she opened her eyes. “Promise?” He held up one hand. “On my honor, I swear. Just one.” “All right,” she huffed. She scowled back at him, looking him up and down before declaring, “You’re not fat. So there.”

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Chance blinked at her twice. “You don’t like me because I’m not fat? What kind of reason is that?” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, raising her chin just a little as she said, “If you were fat, you’d have a bigger coat, and I wouldn’t be so cold right now.” He half laughed, and then poked her shoulder when she tried to close her eyes again. “Come on, a real reason now.” “All right, your mustache.” “What’s wrong with my mustache.” He reached up, smoothing down the short hairs with two fingers. “It’s thick, it’s well grown, it’s trimmed...” “It looks like a dead caterpillar lying across your face.” His shoulders sagged. “Come on, Nina. There’s got to be a better reason than that.” “No. You said I only had to give you one, and here I’ve given you two already. I’m all done.” Chance lay down on his back, lacing his hands behind his head again. He let another minute go by. “It’s because I’m a pirate, isn’t it?” “Oh, for crying out loud!” Nina gave up on sleep. She flopped over onto her back beside him, then hissed a sharp breath as her bottom came in contact with the unyielding rock beneath them. She winced, shifting much more gingerly after that to find a comfortable position. There wasn’t one, and in the end she gave up searching. With a sigh, she simply folded her hands across her chest. “All right,” she said evenly. “If you want to know the truth, then yes. Yes, that’s the reason in a nutshell. You rob people, and you kill them. So there, I don’t like you.” “The only people I’ve robbed and killed are the Brits, and we’re at war with them so that hardly counts.” “They’re still people,” she protested.

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“Yes,” he said patiently. “But, they’re British, and they started it. They don’t like anyone, just ask the French. Besides, you’re not looking at this in the right way. For every one of them that I kill, that’s one less of their soldiers capable of taking the life of one of ours. I’m actually doing our country a service by simply being... me.” “You are full of yourself tonight, aren’t you?” She gave him a knowing look and turned her face away. Chance rose onto his elbow again, resting his head in his palm as he leaned over her. “All right then, how about this? Supposing I were a blacksmith?” “Supposing you were.” “Well, I wouldn’t be a pirate, then would I? I’d be a well-meaning, respectable fellow. And if you were trapped in an underground cave with a well-meaning respectable fellow—a fellow, I might add, that you were married to—you’d let him hold you then, wouldn’t you?” It was hard to tell by the dying lantern light, but for a moment he could almost have sworn her face turned a pale shade of pink. Nina cleared her throat. “Maybe,” she finally hedged. “If you were a blacksmith and a respectable man. And if I was married to you for real,” she said, rolling partway over to give him another disgruntled look, “instead of to keep you from being hanged—I still can’t believe I did that! And,” she added, pointing a finger back in his face, “we’d have to be in love.” She paused, letting him digest her multitude of conditions, as she lay back down. “Then I might let you hold me.” Chance arched his eyebrows, as he considered them. “Three out of four isn’t bad.” “Three out of four?” she echoed, astounded. “I used to be a blacksmith,” he pointed out.

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“You used to be a cute and cuddly baby, too, but not anymore!” “I’m fairly certain I can be respectable if I put my mind to it.” “Ha!” she laughed. A little more quietly he admitted, “I might love you.” The words hung between them, neither one saying anything for the longest time. Only the gentle lapping of the water against the rocks, and the pounding of the surf outside the cave filled the silence. “You don’t either,” she hedged. “I’m pretty sure I do.” “You’re a villain,” she protested. He tried not to feel wounded by that. “Well, not all the time. I mean, upon occasion in my youth I might have done one or two things.” “You’ve got a blackened heart!” Again, he shrugged with his eyebrows. “There might be a slight smudge of pink in there somewhere with your name on it.” Nina stared at him, shaking her head back and forth. “No. You can’t be in love with me.” “I can’t?” She shook her head even more determinedly. He couldn’t quite place the look on her face. It wasn’t mocking. She didn’t seem completely repelled by the idea that he might love her. Rather, she almost looked frightened by the idea. Well, maybe not frightened, but certainly unnerved. On the meter of love, he supposed that ranked somewhere above complete and utter revulsion. He drew some comfort from that, and said, “No. I really do think I might love you. Even when you threw my treasure down that hole, I could still feel it. Right up in the back of my throat... admittedly, mixed in with a little bit of anger. But it was there.”

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“In your throat? That’s more of a tonsil thing, isn’t it?” “I’ll be damned.” Chance looked at her. “I think you just made a stab at humor. I must be rubbing off on you.” “Heaven forbid,” she muttered. “For your information, madam, a man can feel love just about anywhere. I don’t just feel it with my heart, I’ve also felt it a bit further south than that.” “Now, that! That’s lust!” Nina jumped at the chance to rationalize her panic away. “There’s no way that you could possibly be—that we could be— in love, I mean. And there’s really no point in talking about any of this anyway.” “You said we,” Chance noted. “No, I didn’t!” “Yes, you did. You said there’s no possible way that we—plural, as in you and I—could be in love.” He rose onto his elbow, smiling again. “Nina, my darling—” “Don’t call me that.” “Do you love me?” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, then quickly rolled back over and put her back to him again. “Absolutely not. I’ve got a million and one reasons for why I shouldn’t care a fig about you. And, I’m sure you’ve got to have a list at least as long as that of all the reasons why you couldn’t love me, either.” She shut her eyes and pretended to go to sleep. Chance watched her for a while, his gaze tracing the slope of her neck and the dark mass of her hair as it fanned out on the whiteness of their nowhere near soft enough petticoat bed. He smiled faintly and reached out with two fingers to lightly caress the soft strands. “Shouldn’t and couldn’t,” he murmured softly, reaching over her shoulder to caress the softness of

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her cheek, “I’ve often discovered, have absolutely nothing to do with can and do.”

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CHAPTER SIX “There’s a million and one reasons,” she said again, her voice sounding tight with strain. “If you think about it—really think hard—you’ll discover all sorts of arguments for why we can’t possibly be in love.” Unfortunately, she was having a hard time trying to convince herself of this, much less Chance. Oh, her head had no trouble at all believing it. He couldn’t love her. They didn’t know each other anywhere near long enough for that; that was reason number four hundred and ninety -seven, right there. And, he was a pirate, for heaven’s sake! By all rights, she shouldn’t need any more reasons than that! Oh no, her head was one hundred percent certain that nothing good could ever come out of loving a scoundrel like Chance. He was a heartbreak just waiting to shatter her into pieces, but the rest of her refused to listen to the warnings in her head. And, of course, Chance wasn’t cooperating. “I can’t think of a single reason,” he said. “Try harder,” she encouraged, clasping her hands under her chin. “Well, there’s your high spiritedness,” he finally suggested. “But, honestly, I find that more endearing than disgruntling. At least, I do when it doesn’t involve a vast amount of my wealth disappearing from view.” “This is all a hoax, that’s what it is. You think by declaring your love, that I’ll fall madly and passionately into your arms for a night of wild lovemaking. Well, you can just think again!” Scowling, she closed her eyes and tried to get comfortable. “There’s your sour mood and acidic tongue,” Chance added thoughtfully. “But, I’ve almost

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decided those are no more than a defense against the world. A way to protect the lonely, tender-hearted young woman that lurks inside of you. Just waiting for the right man to come along and let her out.” “Let her out?” Nina snorted. Chance leaned down close to her ear, and in spite of herself, Nina shivered at the caress of his hot breath as he whispered, “So she can be herself. Wild and passionate, warm and friendly—surely it hasn’t been so long that you can’t remember what friendly feels like—in the arms of someone who’ll let her be anything she wants to.” “You’re off your cork,” Nina quavered. “Of course, there’s also your ill-temper to contend with,” he said, a corner of his mouth smirking upward as he watched her hunch her shoulders and try to ignore him. “Still, a well-placed spank or two seems just the thing to keep that in check, so again, I can’t truly think of one thing wrong with you.” “You lack imagination.” He sighed. “You know, we don’t have to make mad, passionate anything. It’s so cold in here, I doubt if I could find my man Thompson much less use him with any lasting degree of noteworthy ability.” “Oh!” Nina covered her ears with both hands and rolled even further away from him. “I merely suggest,” Chance persisted, “if you are indeed cold, then I am willing to keep all sentiment of love to myself and enfold you in the most chaste of embraces, solely for the sake of keeping us both warm for one night.” “Thank you,” she muttered. “But, no thank you. The word of a pirate holds no weight with me.” “Hm,” he said, and lay back down again. Side by side, they were both quiet, both staring into the dark. Nina couldn’t account for his mood, but she

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didn’t think she’d ever be able to sleep again. Her eyes were wide open, and the very idea that the black-hearted scoundrel behind her would profess himself in love with her, left her feeling warm enough almost not to need his coat. Almost. She shivered, pulling herself into an even tighter ball and pressing her hands to her womb. An odd sort of heat was building there, aching and pulsing in time with the throbbing of her bottom. “Of course,” Chance said, breaking the silence. “If I were a blacksmith right now, I’d also have a good deal more strength than currently I do. In all probability, you’d still be across my knee with your bottom bared and bouncing under my hand.” Any qualms that she might have had about loving him back became null and void right there. She raised her head and glared at him. “Thank the Lord there’s at least one good reason for why you chose a life of piracy!” Grabbing his coat sleeve, she yanked it more fully over her and flopped back down on her side. She clenched her jaw, determined not to feel at all sorry for having hogged the only cover between them. Chance could use some cooling off time. In fact, after a comment like that, he practically deserved to freeze! Rather than yanking his coat back over himself, Chance tucked his coat around her. Though he didn’t touch her, he did move close enough that she could feel the heat of him against her back. She could even smell him, the musk of a man, mixed with the faint scent of sweat, leather and the saltiness of the ocean. “Nope,” he said again, as they lay there together, the flicking light of the lamp growing dimmer by the second. “I still think I love you.” “I’m not sorry I dumped your treasure down the shaft,” Nina muttered, but her tone lacked the proper note of disgruntlement to be convincing.

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After a brief pause, breathing into her hair and along the nape of her neck, Chance replied. “I am sorry about your birds. I’m sure you were the best caretaker they ever had.” Nina’s eyes began to burn. She wished he hadn’t apologized; now he was making her like him. “Nina?” A trickle of moisture tumbled down her cheek. Behind her, she felt Chance rise up onto his elbow, and she quickly dashed a hand across her cheeks to wipe the errant tear away. When he leaned over a little more, she tucked her chin further down. “Go away,” she said thickly. After a moment, Chance lay back down again. Another tear rolled past her lashes as she blinked. Unable to hold them back, Nina wrapped the cuff of his coat sleeve over her mouth to hide any accidental sounds that she might make as she cried, but he heard her anyway. Chance’s arm snaked around her waist, pulling her back against him. “It’s okay to cry,” he told her. “Nobody expects you to be strong all the time.” “Pirate,” she choked. What did he know about anything, anyway. He kissed the top of her head, and Nina gave up. She rolled into his arms, burying her face against his warm chest, and cried as though her heart were breaking. “You’re supposed to be mean and cruel,” she wept, and thumped him on the shoulder with one fist. “Get back into character!” Smiling, Chance kissed her forehead and brushing back her raven hair. As if he were the most perfect of gentleman, he simply held her while she cried herself out. Eventually, the lantern died, and the inside of the cave became as black as pitch. ______________

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Nina tried to make herself look presentable for the long walk back up the hill to her house, but regardless of how she shook out her clothes, they still looked slept in. And though she combed and re-combed her fingers through her hair, it still looked bedraggled. As if she and Chance had spent the night together on the beach. Oh, how she hoped no one from Newport saw them, but such would be a minor miracle. The town was simply too close to the beach and the sun was already up by the time the tide retreated enough to release them back into the world. They walked through a half inch of swelling and retreating water, around tidal pools and anemone beds, and finally made it around the sheer rock of the cliffs and onto dry sand. Old Barney, the night watchman, saw them first. He was at a distance, though, and he only raised a hand to wave. Chance waved back; Nina hurried up the beach, anxious to disappear into the woods before anyone else saw her. Halfway up the hill, however, they ran into Powell’s patrol. And, unfortunately, he saw her at the same time that she saw them, leaving her with no chance to duck down out of sight. “Well, well,” Powell said, as he rode through the woods towards her. “If it isn’t the lovely Mrs. St. Claire. Settling right in to married life, I see.” She flushed uncomfortably when his eyes roved over her, and then Chance stepped between them. “Back from your cave explorations?” Powell asked. “And what cave would that be?” Chance asked. The British commander narrowed his eyes. “I am not a fool. Don’t treat me as if I were. I saw the two of you walking to the beach late last night. When you didn’t return, the night watchman suggested you might be touring some of the underwater caves that pepper the base of the cliffs.”

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“Ah,” Chance nodded. “Actually, what we were engaged in is something more along the lines of a romantic moonlit stroll. We walked in the sand, dabbled our toes in the water, breathed the cool night air and talked fondly of what our future might hold. My condolences to your missus if you are unfamiliar with that sort of loverly courtship.” Powell dismounted from his overdressed workhorse, handing the reins to one of his soldiers and pushing past the beast’s inquisitive head to approach them. “Are you a pirate, Mr. St. Claire?” “Not since last I checked. Why?” “What do you do?” Nina reached out to touch Chance’s arm, moving a step closer to his side, not at all liking the way Powell was looking at them. When he felt her hands, Chance gave her a smile and a quick wink. “I spent my apprenticing years as a blacksmith. I’ve been thinking of taking it up again.” Powell wasn’t amused. “You know, I do believe I would like a tour of that beach. In particular, I’d like to see the cave I’ve heard so much about.” “By all means.” Chance gestured towards the ocean with one hand. “It’s a free country, or so I’ve been told. Help yourself.” Taking Nina’s arm, he started to lead her past Powell. “You, Mr. St. Claire,” the British commander said, stepping into their path again, “Are going to give me that tour.” “Actually, we do have other things planned for today.” Chance tried again to go around him, but both he and Nina froze when Powell raised one hand, and his soldiers all raised their muskets. “I see. Well, I can hardly argue with such eloquent persuasion.” Powell smiled thinly.

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“Take yourself on home, Nina, my darling.” His hand at the small of her back pushed her beyond the train of the muskets. “Wonderful day that it is, I suddenly feel like a stroll on the beach.” “Naturally, I have nothing against allowing your wife to return home. After all,” Powell chuckled, a dark throaty sound that raised the hairs on the back of her neck and sent a chilly shiver racing down her spine. “She is hardly under arrest... yet.” Nina hesitated, knowing if she left, there would be no witnesses to argue the circumstances should Chance not return with him alive and well. “Maybe I should go, too.” “No,” Chance said flatly. “I know the caves better than you do,” she argued. “Nina,” he warned. “Go home.” “But—” “Go on,” he told her, and then smiled. “Not to worry, my darling. I’ll be back soon.” He leaned down to kiss her cheek and squeezed her hand as he whispered, “I want to finish what we started in the cave.” She blushed. Pirate, her head kept repeating, over and over again in an effort to keep her focused on the unchanging truth. Don’t care, the rest of her replied. Quite simply, it had felt too nice when she’d awakened, stiff and sore from sleeping on a rock, but in Chance’s arms nonetheless. With no other choice, she had to let him go. She stood on the hill and watched as Powell, flanked by English Redcoats, surrounded Chance. He winked at her. “See you soon.” She wasn’t reassured. Gathering her skirt in her hands to keep from tripping on the hem, she turned once more and started up the hill. This time alone. “Oh, Mrs. St. Claire!”

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Her back stiffened, and she stopped. Turning to face Powell, she arched one eyebrow in icy question. “Yes?” “Don’t go too far,” he said. “Depending on what we find in our beach combing explorations, we may have a thing or two to discuss, you and I. In fact, just to make sure you don’t get lost... Mr. Barker!” The soldier who had spent the night on their porch stepped out of his ranks. “Sir.” “Kindly escort Mrs. St. Claire to her home. And keep her there until I return.” Chance’s smile had vanished. “You just said she wasn’t under arrest.” “Yet,” Powell emphasized. “Of course, if your sense of justice cries foul, I could always make other arrangements. For instance, I could have her held in the brig aboard my ship until we return. Would that be better?” He paused and, when Chance only glared, answered his own question. “No? Well then, let’s have no more complaints.” Nina’s eyes narrowed at Powell. Brave was the last thing she was feeling, but she raised her chin anyway. To Chance, she said, “I’ll be waiting for you.” His smile returned, making his dark eyes twinkle. “That’s my girl.” Turning her stare to Powell, her jaw tightened. “I’ll even set the table for tea.” She turned on her heel and stalked angrily up the hill, muttering under her breath, “The worst tasting tea I can dig out of my cupboards!” Behind her, Chance began to laugh, but his carefree manner didn’t make her feel any better. ______________ Nina marched ahead of Barker, not saying a word until she reached her front porch. His gun against his shoulder, the soldier took up a sentry position to the right of the door and waited.

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“So I’m not under arrest, am I?” she asked, arching a sarcastic brow. “Yet,” Barker said, shrugging one shoulder, and waited. Scowling, Nina stormed inside and slammed the door behind her. She stood hands on hips, glaring at the floor, both angry and worried at the same time. She didn’t even want to think about what might happen if Powell discovered the treasure. Not that such was likely. Even with her lantern, she hadn’t been able to see that far down the natural shaft. The naval commander might suspect Chance of being a pirate, but there was little that he could do about it without real, hard evidence to back up his suspicions. Nina brought her hand to her mouth and subconsciously began chewing on her thumbnail. No, there really was no reason for her to worry about Chance. He was a scoundrel. And scoundrels always managed to take care of themselves. Until they got hanged. Don’t think about it, Nina. She continued to stand by the door, glaring at nothing in particular and chewing on her thumb, when it suddenly occurred to her that something in the house wasn’t right. She couldn’t see either of Chance’s pistols, though she was sure he hadn’t been wearing them in the cave. Her musket was also missing from its place in the corner by the bed, and she was absolutely sure that wasn’t stuffed in the waist of his trousers when Powell stopped them. Frozen in the middle of biting her nail in half, Nina really began to study the room. A tiny wooden music box that had once belonged to her mother had been moved from its place on the mantle and now sat behind her grandmother’s silver candlesticks at one end. Also,

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a kitchen chair had been pulled away from the table, leaving it askew from the others. Nina didn’t move. She looked carefully from object to object through the room until, for whatever reason, her eyes fell upon an empty knothole in the floor by her bed. Through it she could see that the doors to the root cellar were open. Daylight was tumbling down the stairs, spilling over part of a stack of wood that she’d created the night before, illuminating the face of the man standing as motionless as the shadows down below. Her jaw dropping as she realized that he was staring right back up at her through the very same knot, his eyes as hard as fine-steel knives. Nina shook her head for a moment, disbelieving her eyes. But, then she blinked, and the man launched himself from the shadows and up the root cellar steps. Not only did Nina see him move, but his boots pounded heavily upon the wooden stairs. The sound of it was enough to snap her back to reality. Whirling, she flung open the door, startling Barker. She tried to duck past him, but he caught her arms. “You’re not to go anywhere, miss,” he told her. “Commander Powell was very clear. ‘E wants you right here wh—” A sudden gunshot crack startled the briefest squeak of a scream from her chest as warm splatters of blood hit her face and chest and Barker’s head suddenly snapped to one side. As if she’d slapped him, except that no reddening palm print appeared on his cheek. However, his protests were instantly silenced all the same. Nina sucked a startled breath, but then, without a sound, her legs rooting her to the porch, she watched as Barker crumpled. Slowly, he fell over backwards onto the steps. Gravity pulled him down

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them until he lay as if sleeping on the grass, his eyes staring up at the sky. Unmoving. Unblinking. The steady clump of a hard-soled shoe stepped onto the opposite end of the porch, and Nina tore her eyes from Barker to look. All the air whooshed right out of her lungs, and for a brief, panicked instant, she couldn’t make herself breathe. His breeches and brown coat were fashionable, if a little rumpled and dirty. He had rings on his fingers and a gold loop in one ear. The stubble of three days growth marred his chin, and the chiseled lines of his jaw, turning scruffy what would otherwise have been a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee. His shoulder-length hair was unbrushed and unfettered, curling in salt and pepper waves about his neck and face. In his hands, he carried Chance’s pistols. One was still smoking from the shot that had killed Barker. The other he pointed directly at her head. “Hello, my darling,” he said softly, silkily. He took another step toward her. “I’ve got two questions for you to answer. If you do, I might just leave that pretty head of yours attached to your shoulders.” Nina looked from the pistol to him. She swallowed hard. “W-what do you want to know?” “Where’s Chance?” he smiled; there was even gold glittering in his teeth. “And more importantly, where’s my treasure?” ______________ He’d only spent forty minutes in Powell’s company, and already Chance was ready to nominate Mrs. Powell, whoever she might be, for canonization. The man was practically impossible to please. His second biggest flaw was his complete mistrust of others. The British commander absolutely refused to believe anything Chance told

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him. That made it very hard, in Chance’s opinion, to lie successfully. He held himself perfectly relaxed, arms folded across his chest, his back leaned against the stone wall between the two armed guards that Powell had seen fit to bring with him. He barely even twitched an eye when Powell leaned over the natural shaft, examining it closely. When he rose again, the British man turned partway around and gave Chance a cold stare. “You’ve never been in this cave before?” “Not to best of my recollection,” Chance assured him. “You’re lying.” Naturally. “Sir, you wound me!” Chance affected a pained look. “Whatever makes you say such a thing?” “There are footprints in the sand on these rocks.” “The four of us just walked through this cave,” he said. “I am the only one who has come this far,” Powell argued. “But, now, you do have feet,” Chance pointed out. “Mine are a good deal larger than the maker of this print.” Chance shrugged. “What does that prove? Everyone in Newport knows there are caves along the cliffs. They know the caves can be freely accessed during times of low tide. Children probably come here to play and explore, so long as their parents don’t know they’re here. Any number of people could have walked here before us and left those prints.” “And so could your confederate.” Chance blinked. “My what?” “Your wife,” Powell bit out.

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“Impossible,” Chance assured him. “I can assure you, Commander, my wife was tucked right up next to my heart all the night long. And, since her feet remained relatively close to the rest of her, I’m fairly certain they could not have made those marks.” “You’re lying.” And here they went again. This time, however, Chance only smiled. He held up one finger and tapped it to the side of his temple. “It’s one thing to suspect dishonesty, my good man, but quite another altogether to prove it. You may well be right. There may be a chest of riches buried in some dark recess of this place. Or, I might just be a decent and well respected member of the community that you’ve singled out to mistrust.” “Just what is it that you do for this community?” Powell demanded. “And don’t say blacksmithing. Newport already has one. I’ve met him, and he looks nothing like you.” “Doesn’t he?” “His name is Robert.” “Well, damn. I don’t suppose Robert is a buckle-kneed old man, desperately clinging to life until that blessed day when he can pass his hammer on to a younger man, relinquish his hold on mortality, and exchange it for a well-earned eternity with nothing more strenuous to look forward to but eating grapes from the fingertips of angels and partaking of afternoon tea and cookies with the Almighty?” “He’s thirty three,” Powell said dryly. “Well,” Chance said again. “Damn.” At the moment he wasn’t finding it difficult to feign disappointment. “I suppose I’ll simply have to make my living as a fisherman.” Powell’s eye’s lit up. “I knew it. You are a pirate.”

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Chance laughed at him. “If your only prerequisite for piracy is that a man be in a boat, then you’ll have to hang half this town!” “Don’t think I haven’t thought of it.” Chance’s laugher petered away to sporadic chuckles as he realized Powell might well be serious. “I was joking, Commander.” “I’m not laughing.” “No, I can see that.” Chance left his position between the two soldiers and strolled back toward the mouth of the cave. “Has anyone ever told you, you are a dreadfully serious fellow?” A gentle wave of water only an inch or so thick rolled into the tidal pool, catching Chance’s attention. “Oh dear.” He gestured to the already retreating wave. “That is our cue to go. You may stay as late as you like, but I for one have no desire to stay in this cave, waiting for another low tide.” “Another low tide?” Crouching on the very edge of the tidal pool, one hand on the stone for balance as he prepared to hop down and leave the cave, Chance paused. “I beg your pardon?” “You said, another,” Powell drawled, a calculating look in his eyes. Abandoning the natural shaft, he joined Chance by the pool. “Another, as in you’ve been here before. Last night, perhaps?” Chance stepped down. “We’ve already been over this line of questioning. Many times, in fact.” “You’re a pirate, Mr. St. Claire,” Powell said, walking closer. “Oh, now, really,” Chance laughed. “I do believe you’ve got pirates on the brain. I bring you to one cave, there’s not a single gold coin or jewel-induced sparkle anywhere to be found, and yet you’ve judged me fit for the gallows on the sole grounds of what? That one pirate, on the way to being hanged,

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suggested that you might not have caught them all?” Powell scowled, his eyes narrowing. He looked about him yet again, turning in a full circle, but there weren’t many places for him to go unless he wanted to get down on his belly and sandwich himself between giant slabs of rock, in claustrophobically narrow spaces. More water rolled into the cave on the next wave. “We really should be going,” Chance suggested, watching the water spill over the tops of his shoes, just a little more than an inch deep now. “I’ve decided I’m not done looking around.” The British commander snapped around, striding back into the deeper recesses of the cave, poking his head into the shadows. “By all means, stay here if it suits you.” He turned to go. “If he tries to leave,” Powell told the two soldiers standing by the entrance, “shoot him!” “For what?” Chance snapped. “Having the temerity to stay out all night on a beach with my wife?” “For piracy!” “With the proof of that lying where? In my horde of highly coveted barnacles and stalactites?” Enraged, Powell crossed the distance between them and jumped down into the tidal pool. He stood toe-to-toe with Chance. “Where is that treasure?” “Nowhere that I can see,” he announced with confidence. “I could have you shot, sir!” Powell shouted. “That you certainly could,” Chance easily agreed. “But such conduct is befitting neither an officer of his Majesty’s Royal Navy, nor a gentleman. And, I’m sure, although you’ll likely try, the deed of my murdering will not pass unnoticed. Eventually, it would get back to your superiors. Foul

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acts often do. And then all these buttons and the stripes upon your cuffs, which you wear so well,” he reached out to give Powell’s uniform coat a single tug. “They might very well disappear. What on Earth would you do then, I wonder?” For the longest time, neither man moved nor spoke. Then Chance patted Powell once on the shoulder and walked out of the cave.

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CHAPTER SEVEN The waves were coming in knee-high by the time they waded around the cliffs and reached the flat expanse of the beach. Although they had left almost a dozen men at the base of the cliffs to wait for them, not a single man of them remained on guard there. Nor was Powell’s horse present. At least not at first glance, although a quick scan of the area showed the animal had wandered almost three hundred yards down the beach to graze on a grassy inlet. Hands on his narrow hips, Chance looked up and down the beach. “Perhaps they went back to town.” “I’ll have the hide from their backs if they have,” Powell muttered. The four men began to make their way up the beach, slogging through the shifting sand until they reached sporadic clumps of grass and then well-packed earth. A game-trail of a path lead up the side of the cliff to the first shady trees that made up the woods that covered the hillside. "Where do you think you're going?" Powell asked, when Chance started for them. "I have a beautiful wife waiting for me at home. I intend to join her there and see if I can’t make her heart grow fonder without my absence." "I haven't dismissed you." Stopping mid-step, Chance sighed and then turned around. "Commander, I am neither British nor am I a member of your ship or army. In fact, you are a foreigner in a land that your own country is striving to war with. Thus far, I have followed your edicts for no other reason than because I am humoring you. To be perfectly blunt, sir, I don't have to do a damn thing you ask. Now, run along, find your men if you desire to, but my involvement

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in your churlish games is at an end. I am going home." Flushing angrily, Powell opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, there was a woman's high-pitched scream and the sharp report of a pistol from further up the hill. Chance dropped into the tall grass just as a high pitched whine zipped past his head. One of the soldiers fell over backwards, the other snapped his musket from his shoulder and promptly returned the fire. Chance raised his head just in time to see an old shipmate, Sam Gray, ducking down into the grass, his arm around Nina's throat as he forced her down with him. "Bayonet!" Powell snapped. "No!" Chance jumped up. "He's got Nina!" “I could give a hang for the confederate of a pirate!” Chance spun on the soldier, a young man barely in his twenties. “If you do anything that threatens the life of my wife, I will kill you with my bare hands.” Still trying to affix his bayonet to the end of his musket, the soldier looked from Chance to Powell and back again. His eyes were wide, and his hands shaking. He swallowed hard. Powell stepped up to his shoulder. “Don’t you worry about what he’s going to do to you, Collins,” he growled. “You worry about me!” Having reloaded his pistol, Sam came up out of the grass and, using Nina as a shield, fired on them again. Chance and Powell both hit the ground. Collins barely managed to duck and almost dropped his gun in the process. "Charge, blast it all to hell!" Powell blustered, as the Pirate and Nina dropped back down in the grass. Chance grabbed Collins's leg, knocking him to the ground when he tried to obey. Clawing his way

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up the man's body, Chance grabbed him by the lapels of his uniform and shook him. "If you get her killed, I swear I will devote the rest of my life to finding new ways to cause you pain!" "Get off me!" Collins shoved him to one side and again tried to charge up the hill, but promptly hit the ground, covering his head with both hands when Sam popped up out of the grass to fire yet again. Chance ducked behind a tree just as the shot splintered the bark where his head would otherwise have been. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Powell pull his own pistol and aim up the hill. Chance tackled him before he could fire, and both men fell heavily into the brush, rolling the short distance down hill and back onto the sandy beach. Chance surfaced on top of the other. He balled up his fist, slugging Powell in the jaw, once, twice, and again, growling, "Don't! Shoot! At! My! WIFE!" Sam came up out of the grass again, his pistol reloaded, but this time before he got off a shot, Nina grabbed the barrel of the gun and bit down on the arm he'd anchored around her neck. Leaving Powell to bleed in the sand, Chance ran up the hill. "Now?" Collins raised his head to ask as Chance tore past him. "Yes, bloody now! Charge!" The young man scrambled after him, and they tore up the hill, Chance bellowing at the top of his lungs. Sam yelled, struggling to free his gun from her grip and his arm from her teeth. When she refused to release either, he abruptly let her go. Opening her mouth, Nina shoved away from him and began to run. She fled uphill, virtually on hands and knees as the ground became very steep beneath her.

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Swearing and clutching his arm, Sam glared first after her and then at Chance. His face flushed dark red. “Back stabbing mongrel son of a—!” Gun in hand, he turned around to take aim on Nina, but stopped the minute he faced the Newport road. “Hold!” Sam didn’t move. He stared into the woods, breathing heavily and furiously. Ignoring the command, Nina continued to claw her way through the bushes, until she heard Clive’s familiar voice call out, “Nina! Over here!” She changed directions instantly. Both Chance and Collins stopped running and, following the direction of Sam’s stare, discovered the woods in the direction of the road were positively crawling with armed men, the closest of which were already less than fifty feet away. Through the brush in the distance, Chance saw the familiar red and white of the British soldiers thoroughly surrounded by every day Colony brown. The sheriff of Cope Cove had finally arrived, and he hadn’t come alone. “Drop your arms!” he called out. Glancing left and right, Sam watched as the Sheriff’s men, as well as a good many men from Newport , closed in around him. He turned his head and glared at Chance. “Put down the gun!” the Sheriff barked a second time. Chance saw a corner of Sam’s mouth twist up just before he raised the pistol. Chance hit the ground. When the young man didn’t instantly fall in the grass next to him, Chance belatedly reached up to grab a fistful of his uniform and yanked him down just as the Sheriff’s men opened fire. Hovering at Clive’s side, Nina turned her face away as the second to last pirate in Newport was shot down. Now, there was only one more left.

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Covering her mouth with her hand, she sank to her knees and didn’t say a word. ______________ Chance was on his feet before the gun smoke cleared. “Nina!” Racing past Sam’s body to where she knelt on the ground behind Clive, he fell down beside her. He cupped her face, tilting back her head so he could see her eyes. There was blood smeared around her mouth. Sam’s, he realized, from where she’d bit him. “Are you all right?” She nodded. Rapidly. Her wide eyes blinking back moisture. Shakily, she whispered, “Are you?” “Yes.” He hugged her tightly and kissed her forehead. Sitting down in the grass beside her, he could have cared less who was watching or whether they’d be scandalized or not. He pulled her into his lap, holding and rocking her close. Softly, he began to laugh. “It certainly took you long enough to get away from him, didn’t it?” Nina tipped back her head to stare at him. “What do you mean?” “As I recall, it didn’t take you anywhere near that long to get away from me when the notion took your fancy.” She only half-playfully punched his shoulder. Lowering her voice to keep from being overheard, she hissed, “Perhaps it never occurred to someone as thick-headed as yourself, but he might just have been a better pirate!” “Not possible, my darling.” Hugging her fiercely, he kissed the shell of her ear and quickly ducked out of reach of her batting hand. “I’m the best.” “Not to interrupt,” Clive said, leaning over them. “But are the two of you all right?” “No!” Nina snapped. “Right as rain,” Chance corrected, and cast the Newport man a sunny grin. “A little shook up is all.

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She’s a fragile thing, really. Shocks like what she’s just had, take it all right out of her.” “Get off me!” Nina growled. “I see.” Clive nodded, although he hardly looked convinced. “Clive,” the Cope Cove Sheriff drawled. Shaking his head at them both, Clive turned away from them. “ Harvey ?” “Are you aware your countryside is crawling with Britains ?” “We’ve put out traps,” Clive joked. “They’re just a wee bit smarter than rats.” The Sheriff shook his head, watching as two of his men brought a bloody and unsteady Powell up from the beach. “Didn’t we already throw you boys out of this country once?” “I was doing you a service,” Powell said stiffly. He touched his bloody nose with two tender fingertips and glared at Chance, who was struggling to get to his feet just as Collins was being led past them at gunpoint to join the rest of his comrades. “Wait!” Chance called out. “Not him!” The Sheriff turned around to look at the young man. “Why not?” “Yes?” Collins asked, blinking in surprise. “Why not?” Chance insinuated himself between the armed escort to drop a friendly arm around the young man’s shoulders. “This here is Collins. My brother’s sister’s first cousin twice removed.” Collins stared at him until Chance, out of the corner of his mouth, said, “Play along, boy. You followed my orders instead of Powell’s. He’ll skin you alive.” The young soldier turned green first, then managed a sickly smile. In a thick, London accent, he said, “Yes, Oy’m... what ‘e said. True blue American.”

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“I don’t care,” the Sheriff said. “All right, leave the boy.” Powell turned apoplectic with pent up fury. He stared from Collins to Chance. “You all deserve to get murdered in your sleep!” “You know,” the Sheriff mused to Clive. “There have been reports of a French vessel in the waters off Florida . I’m sure Bonaparte’s men would know what to do with our uninvited English guests.” Clive began to laugh. Powell paled. Slapping Collins on the back, Chance then reached for Nina and hugged her again. This his eyes widened, and he abruptly raised one hand. “Excuse me?” He quickly caught the Sheriff’s arm before he could turn away. “Just out of curiosity, what’s to become of his ship? It wouldn’t, per say, be up for grabs now, would it?” Nina elbowed him in the ribs. The Sheriff shrugged. “That’s not my call. It’ll probably be given to a competent captain and sent out to harass the British barricades.” “Whose call would it be?” Chance asked. Nina elbowed him even more sharply, and he stepped out of her embrace, pushing her behind him. “Mine,” Clive said. “Along with the other founding members of the town. At least until the government says differently.” “Chance,” Nina warned. He held up a finger, “Just a moment, my darling.” He watched as Clive walked away to join the rest of the men in transporting their captives. “No,” she told him. “No, what?” he replied, distracted. “You want that ship. I can see it in your beady black eyes.” Chance turned around to look at her. His eyes narrowed calculatingly, and he took a deep breath.

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“Are you feeling all right? You look a little peaked.” “I said, no,” Nina told him. “You really should go back to the house and rest.” He brightened. “Or better yet, count your birds. They haven’t been counted in days.” “Chance, I said—” He covered her mouth with his hand, and then he held up one finger, looking sternly into her eyes. “My darling,” he explained. “A house is like a ship. There can be only one captain. In our particular house, I am that captain. You are the first mate, helluva job, lots of responsibility. But, I’m the captain. Only the captain can tell the captain no. Understand?” “I said, no, and I mean it,” she continued unbrokenly the instant he took his hand off her mouth. “We’re going to have to work on this,” he told her. “Collins,” he turned to the young man. “What kind of ship is yours?” “Man o’ war,” Collins said. “Damn fine ship, that.” Chance stroked his mustache, then caught Nina’s look and corrected himself. “Damned fine fishing vessel. Lots of room to hold lots of fish.” Her hands found her hips and she frowned at him. “Come, Collins,” Chance turned to follow Clive. “Let’s go see if we can’t buy ourselves a fishing vessel. How wide are your shoulders, do you think? Can you fit down a narrow hole?” Nina shook her head as she watched him go. “Pirate,” she muttered under her breath.

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EPILOGUE The screaming seagulls alerted her when she was no longer alone in the clearing on the cliff. Lying flat on her stomach, head and shoulders dangling part way over the side, Nina looked up from the nest she’d discovered, tucked up underneath the overhang of earth and rock and glanced over her shoulder as Chance came up behind her. “I can see the front page of the paper now,” he muttered. “‘Woman falls to her death doing something incredibly stupid.’” “James is much more eloquent with his headlines.” Ignoring his black look, she waved him over and pointed. “Come see. There’s a baby in this nest. And, I can see at least three successful hatchings further down.” He came over the to cliff’s edge, but instead of bending over it, he grabbed Nina by the waist of her skirts and dragged her three steps back. “Oh, stop it!” she grumbled, climbing to her feet to dust down the front of her dress. “I know what I’m doing.” “Then kindly know what you’re doing well enough not to perch on the verge of falling off into the ocean.” He gave her a brisk swat on the bottom to add emphasis to his words. Nina jumped, but then glared at him. “You’re in a frightful mood.” “They won’t let me have Powell’s ship. A captain from Cope Cove is coming to appropriate it. They seem to think he could put it to better use than a would-be blacksmith.” He rolled his eyes. “Does that mean your pirating days are over for good?” “For the moment.” Hands on his hips, he scowled at the ocean. Sunlight sparkled across the

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rolling water, painting it the same color as the evening sky. “And, I’ve lost my treasure. Neither Collins nor I are narrow enough to fit down that hole.” “Good,” Nina said. “It’s likely even too narrow to lower you to the bottom.” “Even better,” she quipped. “We could have a child,” he mused. Slapping her hands to her hips, Nina really glared at him then. “I might make a good father,” he protested. “You don’t know for sure that I won’t. In fact, I’ve enough personality to me, I could be parent enough for the both of us on those days when you’re so sour.” Her eyes narrowed. “All right, all right,” Chance threw up his hands as if giving up entirely, a course of action which lasted less than ten seconds. “Perhaps I could borrow somebody else’s?” “Chance!” “Just one or two six year olds, that’s all I’m asking.” “No!” “But the treasure—my gold—my—” He growled, clenching his hands into fists and bending over backwards as he shook them at the sky. “I suppose there’s no help for it, then,” Nina said dryly. “You simply have no choice but to get a job and work for a living. Oh, the shame of it. What will all your brigand friends think?” Dropping his arms at his sides, Chance looked at her, but she only stared back, completely unrepentant. His eyes narrowed, and he turned to face her fully. “Considering that you’re the ill-tempered wench who threw my hard-earned savings down that hole to begin with, it would

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behoove you to at least pretend some measure of remorse.” “As it happens, I’m not the slightest bit remorseful. The wealth in that chest didn’t belong to you. I—” Her eyes widened slightly, and she took a healthy step back when he peeled his coat from his shoulders and dropped it on the ground. “If you’re having some difficulty in summoning up some apologetic feelings, I believe I know just the thing to help you.” He stalked towards her, his dark eyes glinting dangerously. Nina grabbed her skirts and backed up a little bit faster. A nervous laugh tickled at the back of her throat. “I hardly think that’s necessary... Chance? My husband? M-my love?” She pointed a finger at him, shaking it warningly. “Y-you stay back! The Sheriff hasn’t left yet, you know. It’s not too late for me to report you to him! What about Collins? You’ll not spank me in front of him! I won’t allow it!” “Won’t you now?” He began to roll up his shirt sleeves, and Nina spun on her heels and ran for home. He chased her all the way down from the top of the cliff to her front yard. And though she made it up the porch and slammed the door just steps ahead of him, he still managed to barge his way inside before she could erect a hasty furniture barricade. “Don’t you touch me!” she warned him, thrusting a chair—a very ineffective buffer— between them. “Y-you evil... a-arrogant...” “Pirate,” he finished, and knocked the chair to one side as he reached for her. Shrieking, Nina ducked his grasp and ran for the bed with Chance fast behind her. She clambered onto the mattress and tried to escape to the other side, but Chance caught her ankle and hauled her flat on her belly back to him.

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Half-standing and half-kneeling on the bed over her, he caught her wrists behind her back with one hand and began to spank her. Five hardy swats fell one right after the other, and Nina screamed as though she were being flayed alive. Then he flipped her over onto her back and fell down over the top of her, pinning her hands above her head and wedging himself between her splayed legs to keep from being kicked. She bucked and shouted like an unbroken filly, but Chance hung on until she fell exhausted and panting beneath him. Hair completely covered her face, a few strands billowing around her mouth with every gusty exhale. Shifting his grip on her wrists to one hand, he parted the raven tresses to better see her face. Nina panted through her open mouth, her cheeks pink from exertion, her eyes flashing and shining in the light of the fireplace. “That’s better,” he said, a smile beginning to creep across his mouth. Her gaze dropped to it, and for the barest moment, her panted breaths hitched in her throat. Her pupils dilated, and the pink stain on her cheeks flushed down the slope of her neck to brighten the pale surface of her chest. Even the soft peach-like mounds of her breasts, rounding gently where they pressed against his chest, blushed. It was a look that was unmistakable. He almost laughed aloud, but for his own body, which was responding harmoniously in kind. “All right, my darling,” he said, feeling almost breathless himself. “Now what have you to say for yourself?” Her gaze came back to his, and her chin lifted even as her eyes drooped half-closed with heavy-lidded seduction. “Pirate,” she said huskily. Laughing, Chance kissed her, and in every meaning of the words, they became man and wife.

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