Her eyelids began to droop again, and, with supreme effort, she forced them back up. It didn’t help her effort that she couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t been running from an irate father or the furious Duke of Bleven and had snatched more than a few moments of sleep. It also didn’t help that the horse’s gait was so steady or that Nick was so deliciously warm and so solid to lean upon.
She would have liked to turn, put her arms about him, and curl up against his muscular chest. And she would have.
If she didn’t still hate him.
In fact, now she hated him more than ever.
Liar, thief...pirate captain.
Was nothing about him what she’d thought?
“You’re getting all stiff again.” Nick’s voice floated forward on the wind. “Thinking about me?”
“Not by choice.”
His arms were around her, holding the horse’s reins, and she saw one of his hands flex on the leather.
Good. She hoped he was furious. She wanted no sweet, whispered words from him. She focused her gaze on the landscape around them. The sky was lightening, and she could make out sandstone cliffs in the distance. The white sand beach was leading them into the shelter of a rather dramatic bluff.
“And I assure you that seeing you again, marrying you, and taking you to the Robin Hood was not my choice,” he said in clipped tones.
“How kind of you to remind me. Perhaps we should call ourselves fortunate that the priest accidentally married you to me and not Maddie. She would have swooned from heart palpitations by now. Though, with you being a thief and a pirate, you really have no business marrying anyone at all.”
She felt him stiffen.
“I’m not a thief. I occasionally liberate cargo—”
She knew what he was going to say. “Yes, yes. You steal cargo from His Majesty’s Royal Navy.”
“No. I have, on the rare occasion, liberated cargo from enemies of the navy, from other pirates. And when I sell said items, the proceeds go to the poor and needy.”
Of course, he did. And she was the Queen of England. “The poor and needy?” She gestured to the men riding beside them. “Like your crew.”
“They have to eat too.”
She rolled her eyes. “So you’re not actually a thief, but a hero.”
“Some might call me that.”
She could almost hear the pleasure in his voice. She didn’t like it. “Hmm. Interesting. The owners never miss these items, you say? Is that why the Duke of Bleven attacked us on the road to Gretna Green? Because he didn’t miss whatever it was you liberated from him?”
He hissed in a breath. “I didn’t...the whole affair was a minor miscalculation.” His teeth sounded clenched tightly together.
“Would you say that you make many of those, my lord?” Her voice sounded sweet and innocent, but she knew he felt the barb.
“Not near as many as you, Lady Nicholas.”
Now it was her turn to stiffen. His use of her new name brought all her anger back to the surface.
“For example,” he continued, “if you recall, it was you and my brother who wanted me to marry Lady Madeleine. I tried to refuse.”
He had, and Ashley wished she could have listened, but refusal wasn’t an option. She said, “What else could we have done? After spending all those days and nights on the road to Gretna Green, Maddie couldn’t return to London unmarried. She would have been ruined.”
“And marrying a pirate captain wouldn’t have ruined her? I had reasons for my rejection.”
If only she’d known that then...
“Considering those reasons,” she said, “what made you change your mind?”
