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Chapter 2
“Beg pardon, Cap’n?” Barney asked with aserious frown. “What scowling Irish biddy do you mean?”
Angry at Serenity, her chaperone, himself, and the reminder that his men had disobeyed a direct order, Morgan glowered at Barney. “What in Triton’s hell are the two of you doing here?”
Kit turned a bright shade of red and Barney drew himself up to the full five feet six inches of his height.
“Why, we’ve come to help you, Cap’n,” Barney said with a wide smile that showed off the gap between his two front teeth. “Thought you might need a good pirate sword to silence the tongue of that thieving dog what went and wrote about you in his story.”
Growling low in his throat, Morgan knew all too well that nothing short of bloodshed would intimidate Barney. “How many times do I have to tell you that we’re not pirates?”
“Right,” Barney said with a conspiratorial wink.“I know we’re not pirates.”
Morgan wanted to throw up his hands in defeat. With Barney practically bragging they were pirates, it was only a matter of time before someone believed the old sea dog and hung the lot of them.
If you had any brains about you at all, you’d throw the old barnacle and his bird off the ship at next sail.
But no matter how angry Barney made him, Morgan could never do that. Nay, he owed the old man much more than could ever be repaid.
If not for Barney, he would never have survived his years of imprisonment in the British navy. And though Barney’s grip on reality was sometimes shaky, the old man had a generous heart.
“So Cap’n, do we drop that there blooming writer into Davy’s Locker?” Barney asked.
“Nay,” Morgan said quietly, even though he did rather enjoy the idea of Miss James walking the plank. Perhaps a mouthful of seawater would quiet the wench. “It turns out that thehein this case is ashe. And I shall deal with her in my own way.”
Thunder clapped above their heads and the slow drizzle turned to a hard rain. Morgan scowled up at the sky, then at the pair before him. “Dammit, Kit, take Barney back to the ship and see to it that he’s dried out before he catches his death.”
“Bah,” Barney snorted. “What’s a little water to a pirate?”
“A bout of pneumonia if he’s not careful,” Morgan warned.
Lifting his tricorn, Barney curled his lip and ran his hand through what little gray hair remained. “You treat me like I’m nothing but an old woman.”
“Well, maybe if you didn’t follow me about like a mother hen I might not—”
“All right, Cap’n,” Barney interrupted, setting his hat back into place. “You just go on about your business and me and Kit will see to it that theRevengeis ready to sail when you are.”
Now, why did he have a hard time believing that?
Because it would be the first time in your life that you ever won an argument with Lord Thick and Knotty Pate.Resigning himself to the inevitable, as well as to the fact that he might not get a chance to finish a single sentence for the rest of the day, Morgan left them there while he retrieved his horse from the nearby hitching post.
He pulled himself up into his saddle and directed a meaningful gaze to Kit. “Take him home.”
“Aye, aye, Captain Drake.”
With one last look at the incorrigible pair, he set his heels into the horse’s flanks and took off after Miss James’s coach.
Hours later, dressed in her best gown, and standing in the middle of her father’s ballroom, Serenity forced herself to smile.
The open room was surrounded by Grecian columns wrapped with pink satin and ivy. A thousand beeswax candles flicked from the eight crystal and gold chandeliers and torchères positioned strategically around the room. The orchestra balcony overhung the right corner, and dancers twirled about while the other guests stood in clusters talking about politics, recipes, and the latest scandals.
Since the party began, Serenity had been pulled aside countless times by matrons wanting to know if she’d heard from her runaway sister, Chastity, and by kinder souls who wished her a happy birthday.
But it was terribly difficult to focus on her birthday party guests while her mind kept drifting back to her encounter with her mysterious man.
It wasn’t every day that one of her characters manifested himself in her office. Especially a character so handsome.
If only she had learned his name.
