The Secrets of Catie Hazard

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Miranda Jarrett

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15,1K

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Miranda Jarrett

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15,1K

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🏰 Historical 💕 Romance 💂🏻‍♀️ Soldiers 😌 Second Chances 💘 First Love 👩🏻‍🍼 Mothers 🤠 Westerns 🎖️ Love in Uniform

Chapter One

Newport

Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations

June 1767

All evening long the gold-haired gentleman had been watching her, watching her as surely as a hawk watches a rabbit, and there wasn’t a thing, not a blessed thing, that Catie could do to stop him.

No matter that he laughed at the ribald jests his two friends were telling, or raised his tankard in their noisy toasts, or roared his approval of the blind fiddler’s tunes along with the others crowded into the Crossed Keys tonight. Through it all, Catie felt the man’s green-eyed gaze always on her as she moved among the tables, trailing her, following her, never leaving her for an instant.

And, with all her heart, Catie willed him to stop. Couldn’t he tell she wasn’t like other serving maids? Her kerchief was tied modestly high across her bodice, her hair drawn back tightly beneath her cap. She didn’t whisper her name to the sailors at her tables, and she didn’t make plans to go out walking along the wharf with them in the moonlight. She didn’t squander her wages on strong drink and fripperies like the others, but instead sent as much as she could spare back home to her mother on the farm. She was a good lass, always had been. No one could say otherwise, or accuse her of being bold or slatternly.

Until now.

She swallowed hard and tried to concentrate instead on not dropping the four empty tankards clutched in her hands. Yet still she could not quite look away from the table nearest the fire. In all her seventeen years, she’d never seen a gentleman like this one, with his gleaming blond hair and his even white teeth and the fine linen ruffles at his cuffs, falling just so over his wrists. Not that he was a dandy or a fop. His face was tanned too dark for that, his shoulders were too broad and the hands below those ruffled cuffs too large and strong.

“You can just put your eyes back into your foolish head, Catie Willman,” snapped Rebeckah as she shoved Catie aside at the bar, pushing her tray of empty tankards forward to be filled by the keep first. “Them handsome gentlemen ain’t for the likes o’ you.”

After a year of serving the tables beside Rebeckah, Catie knew better than to try to push her way in front of the older woman, just as she knew she’d waited a moment too long to defend herself.

“A cat may look at a king, Rebeckah. There’s no sin in that.” But even to Catie’s own ears, the retort sounded wistful, not defiant, the way she’d intended, and the nervous little shrug of her narrow shoulders didn’t help, either.

And Rebeckah wasn’t a merciful woman. She squinted at Catie scornfully and laughed, showing the gaps between her tobacco-stained teeth.

“Kings, y’say? Fat lot you know of it, Miss Priss!” she taunted. “Right royal rogues is closer to the truth, come here tonight to take their sport among the common folk, a pox on the three o’ them. Handsome as sin and twice as wicked, and all the gold in their pockets won’t make them Sparhawks better than they are.”

“Sparhawks?” echoed Catie faintly. Even on the backwater farm where she’d been born, they’d heard of the Sparhawk family. The Sparhawks were Newport gentry, shipowners and captains, who lived with their fine, beautiful ladies in grand houses at the other end of town. No wonder she’d never seen the gold-haired man here before. She couldn’t help stealing another glance his way.

But this time he caught her. He cocked his head back a fraction, just a fraction, and smiled, slow and lazy enough to make Catie’s cheeks flame and her mouth fall open in a silent O of amazement.

Rebeckah shoved her again, this time hard enough that Catie nearly dropped her tankards. “I told you to quit your gawking, you silly little cow!”

Catie yelped, her side smarting where the other woman’s elbow had jabbed her. “And I tell you he was the one to stare at me first!”

“You?” Rebeckah’s brows shot up with cruel disbelief. “One of them Sparhawks fancyin’ a rabbity little chit like you? The only man ever looks your way, Miss Priss, is old Ben himself!”

Automatically Catie’s gaze darted to the front hall, where the tavern’s owner sat perched on his tall stool to greet the customers. Master Hazard was old, nearly twice her own age, with wispy auburn hair that trailed beneath his curled snuff wig and hands that always seemed damp when he brushed against her.

“Oh, aye, that’s your admirer,” continued Rebeckah relentlessly, leaning closer so Catie wouldn’t miss a word. “An’ even old Ben only smiles your way on account o’ you being so eager to work yourself to the very bone.”

“That’s not true, none of it!” cried Catie. “And I swear to you, Mr. Sparhawk has been watching me, all night, too!”

But still Rebeckah’s barbs struck painfully close to the mark. Why should she believe what Catie said about the fair-haired gentleman, when Catie could scarcely believe it herself?

Rebeckah’s eyes were glittering with malicious triumph. “Then prove it. Go to him now an’ ask if he wants his glass refilled. If he’s been oglin’ you, he’ll welcome the chance to see you close. Go on, show me.”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” said Catie hastily. “Besides, that’s your table, not mine, and I wouldn’t—”

“Go on, Miss Priss,” goaded Rebeckah. “Unless you’re afraid you’ll cross old Ben. Unless you’re scared. Unless you’re lying.”

Her heart pounding, Catie thumped the empty tankards onto the counter and spun about, her striped petticoat swirling around her ankles. If she hesitated for even a moment, she’d lose her nerve, and she couldn’t afford to do that. Swiftly she threaded her way among the tables and chairs, smoothing her apron with quick, anxious fingers as she went, heading directly to the table where the green-eyed gentleman waited.

He watched her come, his expression remaining almost languidly charming, while her own cheeks grew hotter still. She stopped before him with awkward abruptness, and barely remembered to bob the hint of a curtsy. Her heart was racing, and her mouth was so dry she prayed she’d be able to speak at all.

And at the last moment, to her horror, she realized she couldn’t. She swallowed convulsively, opened her mouth, and nothing, absolutely nothing, came out.

“Good day to you, lass,” he said, saving her from herself without a hint of mockery. “Or good evening, considering the hour.”

“Whichever Your Lordship wishes,” she said, finally finding a reedy, breathless voice to pass as her own. “That is, in truth it’s night, but if it pleases you to call it day, then so it is.”

She hadn’t thought it possible to blush any deeper, but after that half-witted speech she found she most certainly could, sinking deeper into mortified misery as her whole face burned, clear to the tops of her breasts.

But still he didn’t tease or ridicule her. Instead he merely nodded, the lazy smile that curved his lips meant for her alone. “What an agreeable creature you are,” he marveled softly, “willing to turn night into day and back again merely because I wish it”

“Aye, Your Lordship.” She wasn’t sure what else was proper. This close to the firelight, his eyes were greener than she’d realized from across the room, shadowed beneath the sweep of his lashes—green cat’s eyes, and she the little mouse with the racing heart, caught in their spell.

“Might I bring Your Lordship more rum?” she asked at last, struggling to return the conversation to the more usual topics. Surely she’d convinced Rebeckah by now. The sooner she left this table, the better. “Or is it something finer Your Lordship’s drinking this night?”

“‘Your Lordship?’” repeated the next man at the table, one of the two younger, black-haired, and quite drunk Sparhawks. “Your ruddy Lordship? Damnation, Anthony, no wonder you’ve been eying this wench all evening!”

Instinctively Catie moved back. Long ago she’d learned from her stepfather to keep an arm’s distance between herself and men who’d drunk too much, but by edging away from one Sparhawk she’d moved closer to the first, the fair one they were calling Anthony. Before she could protest—before she noticed, really—he’d taken her hand and begun lightly tracing his finger along her bare arm, from her wrist to the inside of her elbow and back.

“She’s merely displaying inestimable judgment of my true worth, that’s all, cousin,” he said, his lazy, green-eyed gaze never wavering from hers as his touch trailed across her skin. “As well as proving beyond question why the ladies smile more favorably in my direction than in yours. Isn’t that so, pet? Ah, a lass as wise as she is lovely.”

She knew she should pull her hand free. With any other man, she’d have done so already.

But not with him. The gentleness of his touch disarmed her, the feather-light caress across her skin leaving her speechless with startled pleasure.

“Alas, sweet child, I’m not your lordship, or anyone else’s, either,” he continued. “Merely plain Anthony Sparhawk, of Franklin County in Massachusetts Bay, and these two worthless rogues are my cousins Jonathan and Joshua. Your servant, ma’am.”

“Nay, but I am the one serving you!”

He chuckled, a rich, deep sound that warmed Catie even over the din of the taproom. “It’s only an expression, sweet. A politely meaningless turn of phrase. Though I’d be most honored to turn the tables—ah, another expression, eh?—for so pretty a serving lass.”

Confused, Catie looked away, down, as the immaculate linen of Anthony’s ruffled cuff fell across her own red, rough little hand with its bitten nails. It was all nonsense, him calling her pretty and lovely, the sort of claptrap drinking men always said in taverns when the rum was doing the talking. She wasn’t lovely and never would be. But oh, from a man this gentle, this charming, this beautiful, how she wished it were true!

“’Ere now, Catie, where’s our rum?” demanded an irritated male voice behind her. “Or be you too busy playin’ patty-hand with them fancy cockerels t’ serve us honest laborin’ men?”

There was nothing gentle about the hand that suddenly snaked around her waist now, yanking her away from Anthony and nearly off her feet. Zeb Harris was a regular customer, a hawser in the shipyard, and he and his four friends all roared with laughter as Catie stumbled, barely catching herself on the edge of their table.

“Off with you, you little hussy, an’ fetch our rum,” growled Zeb as he smacked her backside. “Else I’ll complain t’ Master Hazard.”

“Oh, n-no, Zeb, you needn’t do that!” stammered Catie hastily, at once humiliated and contrite and strangely close to tears. “I’ll fetch it right now, I promise. ’Twas wrong to keep you waiting, Zeb, and I vow it won’t happen again!”

But as she turned to hurry to the bar, she ran instead squarely into the broad chest of Anthony Sparhawk. Lord, she’d no notion he’d stand so tall, nearly a head more than herself.

“Oh, sir, forgive me, I didn’t mean to—”

“Hush now, no harm’s done,” he said, smiling as he gently steadied her with his hands on her shoulders. “Far mightier foes than you have tried to do me in, and I always prove remarkably hardy. And mind you, no more apologies, either.”

Mutely Catie nodded. The light pressure of his palms was as oddly unsettling as his fingertips had been on her wrist, yet once again she felt incapable of pulling free.

“Enough of your dawdlin’, you lazy little hussy!” roared Zeb impatiently. “Now leave your fancy boy be till later, an’ fetch my rum!”

Catie felt Anthony tense, though his face didn’t lose its smile as he looked over her head to Zeb. “The lady,” he said pointedly, “doesn’t wish to hear your insults, any more than you deserve her attentions.”

In an instant the taproom fell silent. Every eye was turned toward Catie and the two men, every ear strained to hear Zeb’s reply.

Zeb shoved back his chair as he rose to face Anthony. “Catie Willman ain’t no lady,” he said belligerently. “She’s a ha’penny rum-shop wench that’s paid t’ do as I say. An’ you’ll keep your fine nose out o’ my say-so, if you don’t want it broken.”

“Shall I now?” asked Anthony with a mildness that fooled no one. “And here I was going to offer you the exact same advice.”

Trapped between them, Catie looked frantically from Zeb to Anthony and back again, her hands twisting in her apron as she felt the hostility flaring on either side of her. The two men were matched in height, but Anthony, in his blue superfine jacket and embroidered waistcoat, was a gentleman, and what could such a gentleman know of tavern brawls? Zeb’s muscular arms were larger from toiling in the shipyards than most men’s thighs, and his strength was combined with both a notoriously short temper and a fearsome long knife that everyone in the Crossed Keys knew well to avoid.

Everyone, that is, except the Sparhawks. The two dark-haired cousins had come to stand behind Anthony, their good-natured drunkenness vanished as they curled their hands into fists at their sides. The tables around them had emptied with an unimaginable speed, with men clambering over chairs and benches to find a safer place—something Catie wished she could do, as well.

“You must not do this, Mr. Sparhawk,” she said urgently, drawing herself up as tall as she could to appeal to Anthony. “I’m just as Zeb says, a serving lass, nothing more. I’m not worth this!”

“Hidin’ behind the chit’s petticoats, are you now, my lord?” taunted Zeb, mimicking Catie. “’Feared you’ll soil yourself, are you, my lord?”

At last Anthony’s smile vanished, his dark brows coming together in a single line as he guided Catie to the side and out of the way.

“Mind yourself, pet,” he ordered, swiftly shrugging his arms free from his jacket and tossing it over the back of a chair. “This will be but the work of a moment.”

“But Mr. Sparhawk, sir, you’ll—”

“It’s Anthony, sweet, just Anthony. None of this mistering between us.” The quick, fleeting grin, almost boyish, was for her alone, as was the selfmocking wink. “Not now, and certainly not later.”

“Anthony, is it?” taunted Zeb, shifting back and forth on his feet in anticipation. “Ah, Anthony’s such a right manly name!”

From the corner of her eye, Catie saw Ben Hazard come trotting across the room, his round face puckered with anxious concern. No wonder, thought Catie— they all knew how dearly the last fight Zeb began had cost the tavern in broken crockery and chairs. And if the board that granted the keepers’ licences learned that a party of Newport’s finest young gentlemen had been injured here in a brawl, then the Crossed Keys could be ruined forever.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, please!” cried Ben, his hands outstretched in his most conciliatory manner, to include both Zeb and Anthony. “Surely we can consider other, more peaceful ways to settle this dispute, eh?”

With a frown, Anthony glanced his way, and in that fraction of a second of inattention Zeb lashed out, his huge bunched fist flying through the air so fast that Catie shrieked. But though Zeb was fast, Anthony’s reflexes were even faster. Suddenly Zeb buckled over, his arms flailing ineffectually as he gasped for breath, Anthony standing over him with his legs widespread and scarcely a single gold hair disarranged. With an indignant roar, one of Zeb’s friends seized a spindleback chair and swung it at Anthony, who twisted and ducked as Jon Sparhawk lunged forward. Amid the crash of splintered wood, the three of them toppled to the floor in a tangle of flailing arms and legs, knocking over a table and sending spoons flying and bottles and plates shattering.

“Catie, here!” shouted Rebeckah, dodging forward to grab Catie’s hand and pull her clear. “Quick now, come with me!”

She shoved Catie over the counter of the bar and scrambled after her, slamming the grate back down for extra protection.

“Zeb and the others will kill those gentleman, I know it!” cried Catie as she and Rebeckah crouched together on the floor behind the bar, listening to the barrage of oaths and grunts and breaking wood.

“Nay, they won’t, not by half.” Unperturbed, Rebeckah eased the cork from the bottle of brandy she’d filched from the bar and drank deeply. “Gentry or common-bred, most men be the same as curs in the street when it comes to a good scrape.”

“But they’re—”

“No, they ain’t,” said Rebeckah flatly. “I told you them Sparhawks’d come down here for a bit o’ sport, an’ by Mary, they found it with Zeb an’ his lads.”

Unconvinced, Catie wrinkled her nose and tried not to imagine what was happening to Anthony Sparhawk’s beautiful face. She’d seen too many fights not to.

Rebeckah cackled and poked Catie in the side. “But what the devil were you about, setting that gentleman off like that?”

“I did no such thing!” said Catie indignantly. She shielded her head with her arms as an empty bottle struck the grate above them and bits of slivered glass showered down. “I only went to that table because you dared me! You saw how it was!”

“Oh, aye, else I never would have believed it. Plain Miss Priss teasin’ them Sparhawks into takin’on Zeb.” Rebeckah shook her head as she took another long swallow of the brandy, then frowned as she cocked her head toward the door. “There come the watchmen. That’ll put an end to th’ sport for tonight, and us left to do the tidyin’.”

At the sound of the harsh wooden rattle carried by the night watch, the sounds of the fight abruptly ended, replaced by running footsteps and shouted warnings as the combatants—and the customers—fled. Quickly Catie rose to peek through the grate, eager to see how Anthony had fared.

“That pretty man be long gone,” said Rebeckah, rising more slowly as she recorked the brandy and slid it into her pocket with a fond pat. “Nor will he show his face round here again. His sort never do. Nay, by morn he’ll forget he was even here, save for the bumps an’ scrapes.”

Forlornly Catie saw that Rebeckah was right. The taproom was empty, the floor littered with splintered furniture, puddles of spilled drink, and smashed dishes. Even the tavern’s most prized possession, the colored engraving of the king, swung crazily from its single nail over the fireplace. Catie tried to tell herself it didn’t matter, that he didn’t matter, but, miserably, she knew she was lying.

“Best forget him, same as he’s done with you,” advised Rebeckah philosophically. “Besides, you’re headed for trouble enough. Here comes ol’ Ben, an’ he don’t look pleased.”

One look at Ben Hazard’s furious face, his cheeks livid and his thin lips pressed tightly together, and Catie knew with a sinking feeling that Rebeckah was right once again.

“Rebeckah, go to the kitchen and fetch cloths and pails to clean up this wretched mess,” he ordered with an angry flick of his hand. “Nay, Catie Willman, you stay. I’ve words to say to you.”

With obvious relief, Rebeckah scurried off, leaving Catie to face Ben’s wrath alone. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble, sir,” she began uneasily, “and if that’s what—”

“For God’s sake, girl, have you no wits?” With disgust he pulled off his wig and slapped it on the counter. “This—this shambles is the least of my trouble this night! I thought we had an understanding, Catie.”

“An understanding, sir?” said Catie faintly.

“Aye, Miss Cate, and don’t pretend we didn’t. Before this, I’d believed that by your interest in this trade and your willingness to work at it you would be equally willing to share the profits, as well as the toil.”

“Forgive me, Master Hazard, but I do not—do not follow you.” It was exactly, horribly, as Rebeckah had predicted, the only role for plain, dutiful Catie Willman.

Ben sniffed and scowled and twisted his mouth to one side. “How can I make it more clear, Catie? A tavern needs a woman’s eye to make it respectable and prosper, and I judged you able to fill that role. I’ve grand plans, Catie, enough to make us both proud. But the wife of a tavern owner must be a sober, hardworking woman, and after tonight—”

“The wife?” repeated Catie, her voice turning suddenly squeaky. “But you haven’t asked for me, any more than I’ve agreed to accept you!”

“If I haven’t spoken before this, it was because I did not feel such idle words were necessary between us.” Impatiently he thrust his fingers through his wispy hair, still matted flat by his wig. “Be honest, Catie. What better offer are you likely to have?”

Tears of frustration stung her eyes. If she was honest with herself, the way Ben asked, then she’d have to admit that his offer was a handsome one, a chance to improve her station far beyond what she’d dreamed when she ran away from her stepfather’s farm.

Yesterday, even this afternoon, Ben’s offer would have been enough. But that would have been before she heard the sweet, empty praise of Anthony Sparhawk, and discovered how much her poor, parched heart ached to hear such words again, sweet words meant for her alone.

And with no answer she could bring herself to speak, she turned and fled. She ran through the taproom and the kitchen and out the back door to the yard, and she didn’t stop until she reached the well, to lean against the rough bricks.

She didn’t want to be sober and plain and capable, and she didn’t want to work her life away as Ben Hazard’s wife. She was only seventeen, and she wanted to be pretty and merry and praised by a gentleman with golden hair and red silk flowers on his waistcoat. She wanted—oh, Lord help her, she didn’t know what she wanted, and with a muffled sob she buried her face against her forearm.

“Did they blame you for that foolish row, pet?” asked Anthony softly. “’Twas hardly your fault that we Sparhawk men regard such scrapes as entertainment.”

Startled, Catie swiftly raised her head. He was standing there in the shadows on the other side of the well, his jacket and waistcoat gone, one sleeve of his fine linen shirt torn in a strip from the shoulder.

“Mr. Sparhawk!” Self-consciously she rubbed away her tears with the heel of her hand instead of taking the handkerchief he offered. “Oh, dear Lord, look at you! Are you hurt? I can take you into the kitchen and—”

“No, lass, I swear I’m none the worse for wear.” He stepped into the moonlight to show he’d no hideous bruises or blackened eyes. “And for the last time, it’s Anthony, not Mr. Sparhawk.”

“Anthony, then.” She frowned and clucked her tongue with dismay. “But look what’s become of your beautiful clothes!”

“Ha! Old rags, not to be missed.” Dramatically he held his arms out straight at his sides so that the tattered fabric fluttered in the breeze. “You know, I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

She hoped the shadows hid her flush of pleasure. He had come back, no matter what Rebeckah said, and he’d come back to see her. “Why did you take my side against Zeb?”

“What, because you’re a serving girl in a sailors’ tavern?” He let his arms drop back to his sides and walked around the well to join her. “Ah, that you must blame on my grandfather’s teachings. His own chivalrous inclinations were wonderfully universal, an indubitable doctrine I espouse as my own, as well.”

To her shame, she hadn’t the faintest idea what he’d just told her. Such grand language the gentry used!

“But why?” she asked hesitantly, praying another question would not displease him. “Why me?”

“Because I wished it, pet. Because you’re fresh and pretty, with marvelous, solemn eyes that shine like polished pewter.” He was studying her intently, almost frowning, like an artist composing a painting. “You color most charmingly, too, you know, especially by moonlight.”

“But I’m not pretty,” she protested. “It’s very gallant of you to say that foolishness about my eyes, but I know they’re just gray, just as I know my face is too round and my hair’s drab and straight. I know I’m plain. Everyone tells me so.”

“Then everyone may go to the devil.” Gently, easily, he drew her close, guiding her arms around his waist. “Someday you’ll be more beautiful than all of them put together.”

“But I—”

“Hush now, and listen to me.” He cradled her face in his hands, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs. “The loveliest flowers are often the ones that take the longest to blossom. I can see the promise of real beauty in this charming little face already, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

For an endless moment, Catie let the sweetness of his words wash over her, before she forced herself to break away. “We can’t stay here. Someone may see us from the tavern.” Someone like Ben Hazard, she added mentally. How she’d hate for him to spoil this moment with his grumpy face! “Come, across here to the stable.”

Shyly she took his hand. Anthony Sparhawk wasn’t like the other men from the tavern that she’d always avoided. He was a gentleman, and he had defended her against Zeb. How could she not trust him?

“I was born on a farm,” she explained as she led him across the shadow-filled yard to the stable that shared the well with the Crossed Keys, “and when I cannot bear the city crowds and noises any longer, I come here to be alone with the beasts. Mr. Freeman— he’s the ostler—he understands, and lets me come and go as I please.”

Carefully she unfastened the latch and slipped inside, pausing for Anthony to follow her up the ladder to the loft. Her feet slipped deep into the mounded hay, the fragrance musty and redolent of summer. She knelt beside the narrow window and looked out at the harbor and the ships at the moorings.

“When all the sails are furled like that, I think the masts look like trees,” she said dreamily, the breeze from the harbor cool on her cheeks. “A whole magic, silvery forest on the water.”

She heard the straw rustle as he came to kneel beside her. “How old are you, pet?”

“Seventeen,” she admitted, hoping he wouldn’t think her a child. “But I’ve been working in Newport on my own since last spring.”

“That makes seven years between us. Was I ever as young as you, I wonder?”

She turned and smiled. “Of course you were,” she said. “Seven years ago.”

“Of course.” Gently he tugged off her white linen cap, letting her fine, pale hair spill over her shoulders. “In the morning I’ll be sailing in one of those ships for England. After years of fighting the French for king and country, my grandfather’s at last seen fit to reward me with a lieutenancy in a real regiment. My commission’s waiting in London.”

“London?” said Catie unhappily as she shook her hair back from her eyes. He might as well have said the moon. “When will you come back?”

“Ah, that only God in His mercy can answer. One year or ten, or maybe not at all.” He spoke with such a brave melancholy that it tore at her heart, and impulsively she slipped her arms around him, eager to take the sorrow from his blue eyes.

“You must not talk that way,” she said fiercely, pressing her cheek against the fine linen of his shirt. “You will come back, I know it.”

He sighed, letting his hands settle around her waist to hold her against his chest. “A good soldier’s life isn’t his own, pet, and he never knows when it may be forfeit.”

“But that’s so sad!” cried Catie, pushing herself back so that she could search his face. With all his grim talk of war and soldiering, she had meant to comfort him, but she was the one who felt safe here, his arms around her making a special haven in the warm, fragrant straw. “How can you bear to sail from home, knowing you may not live to return?”

With infinite care, he slowly traced the bow of her upper lip. “You can help me bear it, sweet,” he said, his voice deep and low. “Give me a memory to take with me.”

He kissed her then, as lightly at first as his touch had been, brushing his mouth across her lips until they parted willingly for him. If he wished to take the memory of her kiss with him into battle, then she’d give it gladly. How, really, could she not?

But in the first instant, disappointment stung her, for he tasted unmistakably of rum. How could he share this same rare joy that she felt if his senses were clouded by liquor? Then he deepened the kiss, his mouth warm and sure, and she forgot the rum and everything else in the heady new sensations swirling through her.

Drawn into his passion, she scarcely noticed that he’d lowered her back into the rustling pillow of the straw, or that somehow her skirts had become tangled above her knee as he caressed the soft skin above her stockings and garters until she sighed into his mouth with pleasure.

But still she started when she felt his hand roam higher, and clumsily she tried to move away and push down her skirts.

“You—you must not,” she gasped raggedly as she broke off their kiss. “No, Anthony, please.”

“Yes, sweet lass, yes,” he murmured, his breath warm on her ear. “I told you I was a chivalrous man, and I mean to prove it. You’ll have your pleasure from me, be sure of that.”

And Catie gasped, her protests forgotten as he kept his promise. She had no words to describe the delicious heat that filled her body as he kissed her and touched her again, or experience to warn her what would come next as her body arched with instinctive wantonness.

Another moment, her ravished senses pleaded with her conscience, only another precious moment more.

The pleasure spiraled dizzily upward, and her conscience fell silent. Lost in her own world, she didn’t try to stop him as he shifted on top of her. He was a gentleman, her Anthony, and she would trust him not to harm her.

She would trust him; and then came the sharp, sudden hurt that ended that trust and the pleasure with it, and the helpless little cry tore from her heart when she realized too late what he’d done, what she’d done, and now could never undo.

Afterward he smiled down upon her as he stroked her cheek with the back of his hand and called her his own sweetest pet, coaxing her to smile, too. But she didn’t smile; nor did she weep, either, not even when he heard the ribald, drunken bellow from the street and with an oath rolled off her to one side. All she did was close her eyes so that she would not have to see the shame of his nakedness.

“Damn Jon,” muttered Anthony as he buttoned the fall of his breeches and bent to peer from the window into the street below. “He’ll bring the whole bloody watch back here again.”

He turned back to her, shaking his hair back from his face as he shoved his shirttails back into his waistband. “I must go now, pet,” he said hurriedly. “I’ve still much to do, packing and such, before I sail, and besides, it’s high time I stopped my sot of a cousin from braying like a jackass at the moon.”

She’d sat up by then, tucking her petticoats tightly over her legs and hugging her bent knees to her chest. She could not understand why there was no blood on her shift to prove she’d been a maid, and miserably she wondered if that was a sign of her wickedness and sin.

He fumbled in his pocket, his fingers jingling coins together. He held them out to her as he bent to kiss her farewell, silver coins shining in the moonlight that had lost all its magic.

“Go,” she said softly, lowering her face to avoid his lips. Now she was only a fool, but if she took his money she would be something far worse. “Just—just go.”

And without another word, he left. She listened to the ladder from the loft creak beneath his weight, and heard the thump of the latch as he let himself out, the echo of his footsteps fading down the street while one of the horses in the stalls below stirred and nickered sleepily.

Alone in the silence, she closed her eyes. No matter how tightly she curled herself, the cold, empty hollowness deep inside wouldn’t go away. It was bad enough that she’d lost her maidenhead here in the straw like a common strumpet, to a man who’d never bothered to learn her name. But worse still was knowing that when Anthony Sparhawk took the innocence of her body, he’d also destroyed the innocence of her heart, and her future with it. And that she would never be able to forget.

Or forgive.