Almost a Lady Read Free Page A

door barring her progress returned in full color.
    “So how is it that this kidnapping is not really a kidnapping?” she inquired in tones of deceptive mildness. “I’m knocked unconscious and many hours later find myself somewhere where I have no desire to be . . . imprisoned on a ship, no less. That seems to me a perfect description of kidnapping.”
    “But as you’ve already pointed out, I would surely know the name of a person I’d kidnapped,” he said, with another flickering smile. The little smile-creases around his eyes were much paler than the rest of his complexion.
    “Who brought me here?”
    “My men.”
    “Res ipsa loquitur,”
she declared with an air of triumph.
    She hadn’t expected a mere sailor to understand the legal term, but he shook his head and said, “Not in this case. My men were under the impression that you were the person they had been sent to collect. A person coming of her own volition. When you slipped trying to get into the coach—”
    “
Around
it,” she interrupted. “The open door was barring my passage.”
    “It was open in invitation,” he explained with an air of patience. “To make it easy for Ana . . . for the lady my men were supposed to be collecting.”
    Meg stared at him. “So where is she . . . this Ana?”
    His expression darkened and a shadow crossed his eyes. He regarded her with what felt like an uncomfortable closeness before saying rather curtly, “I wish I knew.”
    She glanced down at the creamy silk folds of her nightgown. “This belongs to her?”
    He nodded. “A perfect fit. You see, my dear ma’am, my men’s error was quite understandable. They had never seen their intended passenger in person but had been given a description that in essential details matches your own. They brought you here in good faith.”
    “Well, why didn’t you just take me back?” she exclaimed, rising from the chair with an agitated movement that set the skirts of the nightgown swirling. She stood, one hand on the back of the chair, facing him, her mind now clear, her eyes filled with anger.
    He said simply, “I couldn’t.”
    “What do you mean,
you couldn’t
?” Biting scorn hid the fear that up to now had been suppressed. For some reason it hadn’t occurred to her that this situation could not be rectified.
    “Sit down again,” he said quietly, but Meg understood it to be an instruction, not a request. She hesitated for a moment, then took her chair.
    “The tide was full when you were carried on board wrapped in a cloak. It didn’t occur to me to identify a woman I thought I knew, and when I was told that you’d slipped and knocked yourself unconscious, I instructed them to take you to sick bay. After that, with the storm coming up I had no time for anything but sailing us out of the harbor and through the storm.” He spoke with the same quiet authority, so that against every instinct she began to feel it all made sense.
    “Once matters were under control on the quarterdeck, I inquired after you and the surgeon told me that you would suffer nothing worse than a possible concussion and they had put you to bed in my cabin.” He shrugged. “I thought nothing of it . . . until I came below just before dawn and realized the disaster.”
    “Disaster,”
Meg said. “
I’m
a disaster?”
    He ran a hand through the wavy auburn hair that was a little longer than current fashion dictated . . . something that Meg noticed almost in passing. “It’s a little difficult to explain,” he said vaguely. “The lady you’re supposed to be was willingly engaged in an enterprise of vital importance. Her absence and as a consequence your unwitting presence is indeed a disaster.”
    Meg stared at him as if he was a snake charmer and she the snake. “Who are you?”
    “Names would certainly smooth the path,” he said with a sideways tilt of his head. “Just whom did my men pick out of the kennel yesterday afternoon?”
    “My name’s Meg Barratt,” she stated and