Pleasures of a Tempted Lady Read Free Page A

had been lost at sea eight years ago. He glanced significantly down at the boy. “Later.”
    Briggs nodded, but his speculative blue gaze didn’t falter.
    Meg let out a soft puff of breath, jerking Will’s attention to her. He hurried over to her. “Meg?”
    She’d grown still again.
    Briggs came to stand beside him, the boy at her side. “What’s her name?”
    “Margaret Donovan,” Will responded instantly. Was it still her name? Had she married? He glanced downward, but the child stared at the unconscious woman without a change of expression, giving him no clues.
    Suddenly, the lad tugged out of Briggs’s grip and scrambled up the side of the bed, smearing his dirt and grime over the silk counterpane. Briggs reached out, intending to stop him, but Will held up his hand. “Let him go.”
    The boy tucked himself against Meg’s body, slung his arm around her, and closed his eyes. Without waking, Meg wrapped her arm around the boy’s thin shoulders and drew him close.
    Will watched them for a moment longer. “Perhaps it’s simply that both of them are exhausted from their ordeal.”
    “It seems that way,” Briggs agreed.
    Will’s curiosity gnawed at him like a hundred mosquito bites begging to be scratched, but for now, Meg and the child needed to rest.
    He could wait a few hours. Hell, he’d waited for Meg for six years before he’d learned that she’d been lost at sea. A few hours longer couldn’t hurt.
    He released a shaky breath. “I want them watched at all times. I don’t want to see any more escape attempts from the little one. Or from the lady,” he added as an afterthought. It seemed a reasonable assumption that she might try to escape. If she’d kept herself hidden from him for eight years, why on earth would she want to be found now?

Chapter Two
    M eg hurt all over, but it felt like she was drifting on a cloud.
    Where was she?
    Her body didn’t want to respond to her commands for it to open her eyes, but she managed to peel them open a crack.
    Nausea overcame her so fast and so hard, her eyelids slammed shut again.
    Slower. More slowly this time.
    She was wide awake now. Jake’s slumbering body was heavy and warm beside her—a familiar, comfortable presence. The ship rocked beneath them—and the everyday creaks and groans of the rigging sounded overhead.
    She drifted off again but then came wide awake with a painful jolt.
    No!
    This wasn’t right. She wasn’t supposed to be on the Defiant . She and Jake had escaped. They’d been sailing for Ireland… and then it had begun to storm…
    She couldn’t remember what had happened during the storm. Obviously, something had gone terribly wrong. Caversham had found them.
    Oh, God.
    She kept her body very still, combating the choking sobs that welled in her throat. After all this time… she’d planned it so perfectly. She’d spent years planning it, for heaven’s sake. It had been her and Jake’s only hope of escape.
    And now Caversham would punish them both. He’d make sure it never happened again.
    She gathered Jake closer against her body, bending her head to bury her lips in the little boy’s hair. The strands weren’t as baby soft as they usually were—they were stiff with salt and reeked of the sea.
    “Meg?”
    She froze, not breathing. She didn’t recognize that voice… and yet she did .
    Her heartbeat pounding in her chest, she tried cracking her eyes open again. The cabin was bright and blurry, and she couldn’t make out any shapes. Pain sliced through her skull, and she choked back nausea. She squinted, trying to discern the shadows and figures in front of her.
    “Are you in pain?” The voice was soft, full of compassion. She wasn’t used to male voices sounding like that. She was only used to the harsh, guttural noises of the men from Caversham’s ships. And Caversham himself, coldly aristocratic. A shudder prickled her skin at the thought of his voice.
    And then it struck her as she squinted harder and the blobs