The Price of Indiscretion Read Free Page B

leaped to Miranda’s defense and a sign she wasn’t so certain what the answer would be, either.
    “I’ve not been touched,” Miranda said almost defensively, adding to Charlotte, “Alex wasn’t like that.”
    “Too bad,” said Lady Overstreet. “A handsome savage in the forest. It could be interesting.” She laughed at her own little jest while Miranda lowered her gaze to her hands in her lap, her face burning. If she married, another man would have the right to touch her.
    Could she deal with it?
    For her sisters, she would.
    Realizing that they watched in silence, Miranda knew she’d have to reassure them. She picked up her untouched cider mug. “Then we have an arrangement, have we?” she said, proud that her voice was brave.
    “Yes,” Lady Overstreet said, lifting her own mug. “We have an arrangement. To your success, the Misses Cameron.”
    For the briefest moment, Charlotte and Constance met Miranda’s gaze. They sensed what this was costing her, and then Charlotte said, “Yes, to Miranda’s success. May she find a noble man.”
    “And one who will love her,” Constance echoed.
    They clicked their mugs with Lady Overstreet’s, and Miranda raised her drink, too. She smiled, she drank, she accepted her fate.
    She was finally turning her back on Alex.
    She prayed he would forgive her.

Two
    Ponta Delgada, Azores
    A lex Haddon, captain of the sloop Warrior , was so angry he could have chewed through his own mainmast.
    The Azorean pilot, a wily bastard by the name of Esteves, had charged him twice as much for his services as he had the merchant ship moored some way up the dock from the Warrior . Esteves knew that after crossing the Atlantic, the Warrior ’s hold full of sugar, rum, and tobacco, Alex desperately needed to replenish supplies. He knew Alex would have no choice other than to pay up. The bugger hadn’t even shown up to do the piloting but had sent his nephew Diego, a lad who barely had a beard on his chin.
    And now Diego had informed Alex that he must pay more.
    “For what?” Alex snarled, letting his temper show. The money was not the issue. Alex had more than enough in the hands of his bankers to pay Esteves a thousand times over.
    But it was a matter of honor.
    “F-for mooring,” the hapless Diego stammered.
    “Mooring,” Alex repeated, his doubts made clear as he let the word linger in the air. He looked past the lad to where his first mate, Oliver, a barrel-chested Scotsman, stood with Flat Nose, a Mohawk whom Alex had saved after he’d escaped from being impressed, and Vijay, the Arab they’d found floating adrift in the Mediterranean Sea, who would never tell his story. All three were part of the Warrior ’s thirty-man crew; each man had signed with Alex out of loyalty, not fear.
    “The pilot is aboard that merchantman docked up the way, Captain,” Oliver informed Alex. “That ship didn’t have to pay what we’ve been charged.”
    Diego swallowed, and Alex didn’t blame him. His men were a fearsome lot, Flat Nose with his bald head and smashed nose more menacing than the others, and Alex was a fit man to lead them. He wore his heavy black hair to mid-point down his back in proud defiance. Half Shawnee and half British, he had the blood of both great chiefs and aristocrats flowing through his veins. He bowed to no man, especially a pilot who felt his port was a petty fiefdom.
    “Bring me your uncle,” Alex said with quiet, and dangerous, authority. “I will not be fleeced just because my firm is small and he believes he can.”
    Diego ran for the gangway.
    Alex watched him go before saying to Oliver, “I can understand Esteves had to pilot in that manof-war over me.” He nodded to the British warship moored out in the harbor. Anchored close to the mouth of the port because its draft was too deep to be brought any closer, the ship had the ominous air of a bulldog guarding a door, reminding all who saw it that only a fool challenged the British navy.
    “But,”