“What? No! The whole world would see it! This is between you and me, Davies. A private wager.”
“Can a Montgomery be trusted to keep their word?”
She sent him an outraged glare, just as he’d known she would. “Of course!”
“All right then.” He reached out and pinched her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes again. “You know I’ll hold you to it, don’t you?”
Her throat dipped as she swallowed. “Yes.”
“Even if—by some miracle—you find a man fool enough to marry you while I’m gone, you’ll still have to grant me those kisses.”
“I know,” she breathed.
“Good.” With a final nod he forced himself to take a cooling step back.
God, they were ridiculous. Why couldn’t they simply admit to wanting to kiss each other? But things had gone too far to backtrack now. They were stuck in this cycle of provocative teasing, even though there was no question that Harriet looked at him with a combination of irritation and reluctant desire.
She might be too innocent to realize what it was, but he was not. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about it now. Not when he was about to leave.
He sent her a mocking bow. “I’ll bid you adieu, then, Miss Montgomery.”
She caught his wrist as he straightened, surprising him. She rarely touched him voluntarily. His skin tingled at the unexpected contact, even though she was wearing evening gloves.
“Don’t say adieu. Sayau revoir,” she scolded. “We have to meet again if you want those kisses.”
“Very well.Au revoir.” He tried to lighten his tone, to leave her with a laugh, but a crushing sensation was squeezing his chest and a knot of emotion was forming in his throat. Leaving her was harder than he’d imagined, damn it.
She released his wrist and lifted her chin to that haughty angle that made him want to grab her and kiss her senseless. “Stay alive, Davies. If I hear that you’ve died, I will beseriously displeased.”
Chapter One
London, July 1815
As he strode along Whitehall, Morgan repressed the urge to whistle a jaunty sea shanty. The sky was blue, the birds were singing, and the world was, in general, rather excellent.
There was nothing like a brief spell in prison to put one’s life in perspective, and he’d done a great deal of thinking while locked in his cell on Martinique. He’d returned to England with two specific goals: seduction, and revenge.
Although not necessarily in that order.
After almost two years traveling the globe with His Majesty’s Royal Navy, he was back in London and buoyed by the fact that the revenge part of his plan was about to take a significant step forward. Robert Dundas—Viscount Melville and First Lord of the Admiralty—had finally agreed to disclose the identity of the mapmaker whose incorrect chart had been the cause of Morgan’s shipwreck and subsequent detention six months ago.
Falsely accused of being an English spy by the island’s sadistic French governor, Morgan had spent each and every day of his incarceration vowing to exact sweet revenge on the cartographer responsible for his suffering.
The error suggested a shocking lack of competence.Sandbars, it was true, could shift position over time.Entire bloody island chainscould not.
The defective map had borne the name of an engraver, “R. Crusoe” of Bury Street, Bloomsbury, but no mapmaker of that name existed in London. The pseudonym—employing the name of Daniel Defoe’s fictional castaway—was clearly someone’s idea of a joke.
Morgan hadn’t found it remotely amusing.
But now, as he approached the Admiralty offices, a smile curved his lips. Today he would finally get some answers. And when he discovered the man behind that dangerously inaccurate map, he would track the bastard down and make him suffer.
He had no intention of subjecting the culprit to the same brutal hardships he himself had faced—starvation, beatings, unbearable thirst. He was nothing like General Jean-Luc De Caen, his captor, who’d treated Morgan and his crew with the utmost cruelty.
He just wanted an explanation. And an apology.
And then he’d punch the idiot in the face.
He’d lost weeks of his life in that sweaty, stinking hellhole of a prison. The least he could do was give the man a broken nose or a couple of cracked ribs, a few weeks of painful discomfort in return. That would be justice.
