The Captain's Bride

Chapter One

     Captain Trevor Dane pulled his steaming mount to a halt at the edge of the barren spinney and slid stiffly from the saddle to the ground. From his vantage point on the crest of a low rise, he had an unimpeded view of the stately Tudor house lit from within by glittering chandeliers and from without by a full moon, set like a pale, gleaming eye in a clear, luminous sky. The muscle leaped along the hard line of his jaw as the strains of a country-dance wafted gaily to him on the chill breeze.

     "The devil," he cursed, presented with indisputable evidence that a gala was in full progress. He would be a bloody fool to brace Granville now before a house full of guests, never mind that he had traveled by coach nearly the breadth of England in only three days for the express purpose of demanding an audience with the man. Reason cautioned him to bridle his impatience and return to Exeter and his rooms at the White Hart Inn until a more propitious time. Sir Henry, after all, would hardly be amenable to leaving his guests in order to speak with a man whose name he had sullied and whose integrity he had called into doubt. But then, Sir Henry had thus far made it a point to deny Dane any opportunity to face his accuser.

     His eyes hardened to cold, steely points. In the three months that Dane had lain near death's door, Sir Henry had done his work well. In spite of the sixty-two gunAntiope's single-handed victory over a French seventy-four, Captain Trevor Dane had been overlooked for promotion. Far more importantly, for the first time in his nineteen years at sea he had been denied a ship.

     What the devil had Granville hoped to gain by seeing Dane cast on the beach, his career finished, his reputation in ruins? Granville could not have known of the meeting with Philippe Lambert. The devil, he had taken every precaution to make certain no one knew. Unfortunately, it would seem the same could not be said for that other, far more dangerous visit to St. John's Cathedral. Someone had been waiting for him to emerge from the church. The attack, coming on the steps leading from the cathedral, had been swift and silent. It was only by the merest chance that he had not ended up with a knife in his back. Still, if there was some sort of evidence that Dane had failed in his duty, why had he not been brought before a court martial?

     That was perhaps the most unnerving part of all, Dane decided, drawing his cloak more firmly about him against the brisk chill of the mid-February night. The bloody damned silence!

     Not even Admiral Sir Marcus Llewellyn, who had been captain of the first ship upon which Dane had served as a midshipman and who over the succeeding years had fostered Dane's rapid rise to post rank, had been willing or able to help him this time. His door, along with the others at the Admiralty, had remained closed to Dane.

     The message had been clear. Captain Trevor Dane was not to be given command of any ship ever again. No doubt he was fortunate that he was to remain on half-pay for the time being, he thought cynically. Colette, the French seventy-four, had foundered and sunk almost within sight of Gibraltar. The prize money she would have brought him, it seemed, was to have been his last. Hellfire! His career in the King's navy was finished. It had been better had he perished from the back shooter's cursed bullet!

     Briefly, he wondered what his uncle would say when he learned of his nephew's fall from grace. Not that it would matter. No doubt Blackthorn had long since forgotten all about the young scapegrace he had sent off to sea in the hopes that the King's navy could do what he himself could not—tame the wild streak that had landed the boy at loggerheads with his uncle more often than not. It had been a bitter parting. In nineteen years, there had not been so much as the exchange of a single letter between Dane and the earl, who by now must surely have sired himself an heir to replace his younger brother's orphaned brat. As for Dane himself, he would rather be reduced to penury than petition his uncle for assistance of any sort.

     But then, he was far from being either helpless or penniless yet, he reminded himself. Nor was he disposed to accept tamely his present turn of fortunes. He would not rest until he bloody well knew who had condemned him and why. And Sir Henry Granville would seem to be the man who had all the answers.

     Turning back to his mount, he vaulted to the saddle and rode at a brisk canter along the track that led to the rear of the house.

     He did not doubt how he would be received were he to call in the manner of a gentleman—at the front door. Bloody hell! It had been four months since he left his sickbed. Four months of writing letters petitioning an audience with their bloody lordships. Four months of cooling his heels in a waiting room crowded with unemployed officers as eager as himself for a ship. He had been put off long enough. Still, he was in no mood to be turned away amid the curious stares of Sir Henry's fashionable houseguests. He would await Granville in his study, he decided with grim appreciation of the irony of his position. No doubt at least there, he reflected acerbically, he would have access to a grog tray and a brandy to warm his insides before Sir Henry had him shown to the door.

     Moments later, finding a measure of shelter for his mount in the lee of an outbuilding, Dane stripped off his cloak and slung it over the horse's back. The mount whose use had been arranged for him ahead of time by William Parker-Stanhope, Dane's former second lieutenant, should fare well enough for the time being, Dane decided with a mirthless twist of the lips. No doubt young Parker-Stanhope would be more than a little chagrined if he had to report to his father, the admiral, that the prime bit of blood had succumbed to an inflammation of the lungs thanks to the carelessness of the lieutenant's disgraced former captain.

     A hard glint came to Dane's eyes at thought of Parker-Stanhope's unshakable loyalty. What did men like Sir Henry Granville know of those who fought and died at sea? Amid the smoke and the fury of a broadside, sailors fought for the ship and for their shipmates. The sea and the horror of battle forged iron bonds between men who knew little of the reasons for why they were in the fires of hell, but only that they must fight in hopes of surviving to another day. In the heat of battle, they looked to the captain to see them through. The captain had no one to look to but himself.

     There was a purity of truth in that which not even the spite and secret ambitions of the powerful could sully, Dane thought grimly, as he made his way across the mews to the back of the house and let himself in through French doors that overlooked a rose garden, stark in its winter fastness.

     The withdrawing room in which he found himself was happily deserted, the fire left burning in the white marble Adams fireplace reduced to little more than glowing embers. Dane crossed the room and noiselessly opened the door a crack to peer out into a deserted corridor, dimly lit by a hall lamp. From somewhere above came the distant strains of music, denoting the ballroom located in the West Wing. No doubt the rooms adjoining the ballroom would be taken up with card players, which must surely mean Granville's study would be somewhere here, in the East Wing, far from the sounds of gaiety.

     Slipping out into the corridor, Dane made short work of locating the servants' stairs. A few moments later found him traversing the second-story hallway. It had been nineteen years since he had been in anything resembling the tasteful elegance of his present surrounds. The thick carpet that muted his footsteps was a far cry from the canting deck of a ship of war. His quarters aboard the two-decker Antiope had been luxurious in comparison to his cramped stern cabin on Mercury, the fleet eighteen-gun sloop-of-war, which nearly eight years before had been pounded into oblivion off the coast of France. Nevertheless, even aboard the Antiope his quarters had been Spartan at best, the accommodations of a man who had spent his life at sea and who had known nothing but war for far too long. And yet, given the choice, he would gladly have taken the many discomforts of even the meanest, most weather-worn, barnacle-encrusted ship of war over the finest house in England if it had meant he would be returned to the life for which he had been born.

     He was a sailor and the son of a sailor. Not only had he no taste for the opulence around him, but he felt out of place on land, like a bloody damned fish out of water.

     Perhaps it might have been different, he reflected, conscious of a sharp twist of hollo wness in the pit of his stomach, if there had been someone to give him a reason to start over in a new life on land. The devil, the last thing he should have expected upon coming home to the house he kept in the unfashionable part of London was to discover the single slender thread that was his only bond to the land was severed. Lynette, that sad, lonely girl who had loved him was dead.

     Could the fault for that, too, be laid at his door? he wondered bitterly. He had owed Lynette Lambert his life. He had given her precious little in return. When she needed him the most, he had been away at sea, as he had ever been. What the devil had possessed her to set out on her own for Blackthorn Manor in the north of Devon? Had it been purely by chance that a masked rider had tried to rob the post chaise, only to be frightened off by the guard's blunderbuss? Was it truly only a tragic coincidence that the single shot from the assailant's pistol had found Lynette? She had died alone. She had deserved far better than that. The devil! She had deserved far better from him.

     Angrily, he shoved all thoughts of Lynette from his mind. There would be time enough for recriminations later, he reminded himself, peering into an empty sitting room and moving on to the next door. For now, there were questions to which he would have answers.

     Only briefly did it come to him to consider the possibility that Sir Henry, occupied with a house full of guests, would not come to his study before turning in for the night. In the few days in which Granville had been aboard the Antiope, Dane had become unavoidably familiar with the habits of the man who had displaced him from his quarters. He was, if nothing else, methodical. Every night, with a precision that had not gone unremarked among the officers whom he engaged in whist before turning in, Sir Henry spent an hour at work on his journal. It was not unlike a captain and his ship's log, Granville had remarked one evening to Dane, who had entered the chartroom to find Sir Henry bent over the map table and jotting down notations in his brown leather-bound book.

     "Been at it since I was a boy," Sir Henry had added, closing his journal and rising in preparation of retiring for the night. "Helps clear the mind to put the day's events in order, what?"

     It came suddenly to Dane to wonder if that was all Sir Henry had been doing in the chartroom, which, due to the civilian's presence on board, was being made to double as Dane's living quarters. He had not failed to note at the time that the ship's log lay open among the ordered debris of navigational charts and various personal papers, among them the last letter he would ever receive from Lynette. He had tried then to recall whether he had failed in his usual practice of locking the log away in his sea chest when he had done with it and could not. They had been beset by a swift and sudden storm so violent that he had been on deck without respite for the better part of eighteen hours. Hardly had Sir Henry vanished into his cabin than Dane had flung himself, fully clothed, upon his cot and sunk into the sleep of utter exhaustion. He had not thought of the incident again until after the battle with Colette when he had swum up out of the depths of a coma to lie, fretting with fever and pain over the nagging questions of who had shot him in the back from the deck of his own ship and why.

     If it had been Sir Henry who fired the shot that had felled Dane, there had been no one who witnessed it. Or at least no one who would attest to it. Even Murdoch, Dane's burly coxswain, had failed to come up with so much as a single seaman who would admit to having seen anything. But then, all but a handful of men had been occupied with following Dane in his mad scramble over the gangway to take the French ship. Perhaps it was true that no one had seen anything.

     Dane cursed under his breath. No matter how hard he tried, he could not shake the conviction that there was a conspiracy of silence surrounding everything that had happened to him. Someone had wanted him out of the way. Someone did still. And no one was talking. At least not yet.

     Someone would be made to talk, Dane vowed grimly. The silence would be broken this very night by Sir Henry Granville.

     Hardly had that thought crossed his mind than Dane came to an abrupt halt, his every nerve taut with awareness. Before him, only a few steps away, a door off the main staircase landing stood slightly ajar. From somewhere within had come the faint, but unmistakable sound of movement. He was sure of it, and all of his fighting instincts warned that it was not Sir Henry Granville beyond that door. It was an hour till midnight—hardly the time for a host to take leave of his houseguests. Furthermore, it would hardly seem reasonable to suppose that Sir Henry, or anyone else who had a legitimate reason for being in that room, would be relying on a single taper for light when there must have been lamps conveniently at hand. There! He heard it again—the distinct shuffle of papers. Noiselessly, Dane stepped to the door. Peering through the narrow opening, he could make out little beyond the eerie shadows cast by the flicker of candlelight, little, that was, save for a book-lined shelf along the far wall—indisputable evidence that he had located Sir Henry's study. Bitterly he cursed his lack of foresight in coming unarmed. But then, he had not planned to shoot Sir Henry, much as he might liked to have done in some of his darkest moments. Dane did not doubt, however, that whoever was in that room had not come similarly unprepared. He had not spent more than half his life in the King's navy without having developed a keen sense for danger.

     Cynically, it came to him to wonder why he should stick his bloody neck out to intrude on a probable burglar at work in the home of the man who had quite possibly attempted to put a period to Dane's existence and who had most certainly for all intents and purposes ruined him. Hellfire! Far from thanking him for it, Sir Henry was more than likely to have Dane thrown in gaol for entering his house uninvited. Indeed, it came to Dane that he could not think of a single good reason why he should interfere in something that was in reality none of his affair.

     Hardly had that thought crossed his mind than he was assailed by the distinct sound of a groan issuing forth from the confines of the study.

     "Coming around, are we, Sir Henry?" murmured a low voice, remarkable for its chilling lack of compassion. "A pity. You leave me little choice but to silence you again. I do hope for your sake that it will not be permanently this time."

     The devil! Dane cursed, silently, to himself.

     "Captain Dane! By all the saints, this is fortuitous," exclaimed the masked man, white teeth flashing in a grin of unholy amusement. "You are just in time to die, Captain, for the villainous attack on Sir Henry."

     The pistol lowered and fired. Dane, hurling himself to one side, felt the breath of the pistol ball whip past within inches of his cheek. He landed hard on his side and, rolling, bounded to his feet—in time to see his assailant vanish through the doorway. On the point of following in pursuit, he went suddenly still as Sir Henry, uttering a groan, stirred.

     Bitterly Dane cursed. All in an instant it came to him, the peril of his present circumstances. In truth, the vanished assailant had spelled it out for him. He would have the devil's own time trying to convince anyone it was not himself who had bludgeoned Sir Henry. The real assailant, after all, was nowhere in sight.

     At least he was sure that Sir Henry was alive. Equally certain was that his only hope of avoiding being accused of a crime of which he was innocent was to find the masked intruder before he himself were discovered. Dane sprang for the door.

     "Bloody hell, who—! You, there—stop, I say!" rasped after him as he bounded into the hallway and came to a sudden halt.

     The corridor stretched before him—deserted. Reasoning the blackguard must have fled up or down the curving staircase within easy access, Dane made to descend the stairs, only to go suddenly still at the sound of voices in the foyer below.

     "It was a pistol shot. Could hardly be mistaken in that."

     "I daresay it came from the floor above, Sir Oliver."

     "The study!" exclaimed a woman's voice in tones of rising alarm. "Faith—Sir Henry He said he was going to fetch a sample of his favorite blend of snuff for Lieutenant Cordell."

     "Lady Granville is in the-the right of it, sir. Sir Henry and-and I were discussing the merits of a new blend of Turkish r-rappee he had recently acquired."

     "There would seem little point in standing around indulging in speculation," observed Sir Oliver with pompous self-assurance. "I suggest someone had ought to go up and investigate."

     Dane, about to be caught on the staircase, did not wait to hear more. Turning, he bounded up the stairs two at a time and fled along the upper story hallway—only to turn back as a door opened at the far end of the corridor and three gaily appareled females emerged, laughing and chattering among themselves.

     Dane opened the door nearest him and stepped inside—and found himself staring directly into startled eyes of a singularly spellbinding blue-violet hue.

     Given the instant impression of a stunningly beautiful countenance framed in luxurious curls the blue-black of ravens' wings, Dane was momentarily deprived of the power either to move or to speak. Indeed, he had the most peculiar sensation that time itself had been suspended for the space of perhaps four or five heartbeats as he stared into what could only be described as the face of a veritable paragon of loveliness. Then, inexplicably a becoming tinge of color rose to the silken smooth cheeks.

     "This is all very flattering, I am sure. Nevertheless, I'm afraid, sir, I must protest," declared the paragon of feminine loveliness, seemingly torn between wry amusement and a rising indignation. "As it happens, I have had quite enough of adulation for one night. Therefore, if you don't mind, perhaps you would be so good as to—"

     She was not allowed to finish what her uninvited caller might be so good as to do. Dane, hastily pushing the door to with the heel of his boot, caught her to his chest and covered her mouth with his.

     Telling himself that his sole intention in availing himself of the young beauty's lips was to silence her before she attracted the notice of the three passing gaily by outside in the hall, Dane yet could not but note when the slender form clasped in his arms changed from rigid bestartlement to something quite on a different order.

     Egad, the paragon of beauty, it would seem, was a female of uncommon passion. Indeed, he could not be mistaken in thinking that she had melted against him or that she was returning his kiss with a sweet, untutored fervor that was as unaffected as it was innocent.

     With no little sense of bemusement, he released her lips and lifted his head to behold the young beauty's eyes closed, her lovely face wearing a singularly dreamy aspect that brought a wry twist to Dane's lips. Then the beauty's luxurious black eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks and drifted open.

     Dane's smile froze and slowly faded as he stared into the unguarded depths of eyes that gazed wonderingly back at him. She remained unmoving, her eyes fixed on his, for so long that Dane suffered the birth of misapprehension. She was clearly past the first blush of youth—not so young as he had first supposed. Still, she could not have been above two or three and twenty. More than that, she was obviously a female of quality unused to being kissed by strange captain. You cannot begin to know how long I have waited for this moment. Still, I cannot but wonder. Why did you do it?"

     Her first words did little to assuage Dane's uneasy feeling of guilt. Indeed, it was immediately to come to him that the shock of his ungentlemanly transgression must surely have unhinged her mind. Or perhaps she was deliberately mocking him, he thought suddenly, struck by her use of his naval rank in addressing him.

     She was here, at the home of the man who had ruined him. Perhaps it was not so farfetched to think that she might know perfectly well who he was or even that she had entertained some absurd girlish fantasy about dallying with the infamous Captain Trevor Dane. No doubt she was not so innocent as he had supposed, but one of those spoiled young beauties who delighted in playing men for fools.

     A dangerous glint came to his eyes. Perhaps she should be taken down a peg.

     "How not, my girl,' he replied, flicking her under the chin with a careless forefinger, "when you are possessed of lips as luscious as ripe, red berries—and just as bitter-sweet?"

     "Bitter-sweet?" echoed the intriguing young woman, a flicker of interest dispelling somewhat her dreamy expression. "Thank heavens! I was afraid for a moment that you were going to ruin everything by concocting some extravagant simile in praise of my beauty. I believe, captain, I should never have forgiven you for such a lapse."

     Dane, given to behold a bewitching gleam of humor light up the paragon's magnificent orbs in accompaniment to that final, unexpected announcement, was made to reassess his earlier, hastily drawn conclusions. Beautiful—yes, but not spoiled. She was far too unassuming in her manner to be one of those heartless jades who collected unsuspecting men and then discarded them as soon as they had lost their charm of unattainability. Nor did he judge her to be of the highest ranks of Society. Although her gown of lavender sarcenet appeared of the first stare of fashion, she was far too lacking in the haughty airs of one used to command the deference of her inferiors. No doubt she was the daughter of a younger son of aristocracy who had embarked on a career at law or in the Church. Or perhaps she ranked no higher than the offspring of a country squire. Whatever the case, she was undeniably enchanting.

     In spite of the fact that his finely honed instincts for self-preservation were warning him against tarrying in the house of his enemy for so much as a moment longer than was necessary, Dane found himself leaning over the girl. "From which, am I to presume that you do forgive the liberty I took in kissing you?" he queried, noting that, despite his own generous inches, she had only to tip her head back to look into his eyes. "I warn you, I am sorely tempted to do it again at the smallest provocation."

     "No, are you?" she had the temerity to answer him. "Perhaps I should tell you, then, that my grandpapa says I am provoking in the extreme."

     The little devil! thought Dane, keenly appreciative of the fact that she had tipped back her head, not to look him in the eyes, it would seem, but to give him unimpeded access to her lips! Furthermore, her arms had slipped up around his neck causing her lissome form to press against his lean, masculine length. Egad! Her grandpapa, Dane did not doubt, was deserving of sympathy.

     "Well, captain?" demanded the paragon of beauty, her eyes questioning on his. "You did say, did you not, at the smallest provocation?"

     "Impertinent little baggage," declared Dane with a wry twist of the lips. "If you are not careful, you are like to discover what happens to young ladies who deliberately provoke strange men."

     If he had thought by that to bring her to a sense of her own peril, he was to be immediately disappointed.

     "I believe, sir,' she had the temerity to reply, "that that was precisely my intention. My name, by the way, is Violet, and I do not find you in the least strange—save that you would seem inordinately pale for a naval officer." A frown darkened her lovely eyes as they gazed searchingly into his. "I fear you have been ill, captain."

     "If I have, it is nothing to concern you," Dane answered perhaps more coldly than he had intended.

     To his chagrin, the girl's dammed enticing lips curved quizzically upward. "Dear, have I offended you? That was never my intention, I assure you. It is not my usual practice to pry, but I did wonder. You are young, sir, to wear the twin epaulets of a post captain. I believe you must be one of England's many unsung heroes. You have the look of one who has known little of peace in his life and a deal too much of war."

     "Have I?" Dane queried harshly. "What the devil could you possibly know of me—or of war, for that matter? You are a beautiful young woman. Why the deuce are you hiding out in your bedchamber when by all rights you should be in the ballroom surrounded by a host of fawning admirers?"

     "Precisely because I was besieged by a plethora of doting swains," retorted the singular young beauty, making it clear that he had slipped a cog in her estimation by his insistence that she should behave in the manner of an Incomparable. "I did tell you, did I not, that I had had enough of adulation for one night? I came to my chamber to escape all that sort of nonsense before it was discovered that, far from being either a goddess or an enchantress, I am simply a woman, and a rather prosaic one at that. I fear you would find I am neither exciting nor dangerous, but hopelessly commonsensical, were you to come to know me at all well, captain." To his discomfiture, she favored him with the full force of her compelling eyes. "Certainly it would seem I have failed utterly to be provocative in your view. How very lowering it is, too. Must I remind you, captain? You have yet to kiss me again."

     Hellfire! fumed Dane, who, for no little time, had had to his considerable will power not to give into the urge to do far more than kiss the wholly desirable creature residing in his arms. This exquisite child had not the smallest notion what she was doing to him. It had been two years since he had taken a woman to his bed. Two years since he had been near enough to any female, let alone one on the order of this one, to inhale the sweet, clean scent of her. The aroma of lavender mingled with rosemary assailed his nostrils like intoxicating wine. Worse, the warmth of her firm, young body pressed against his was eliciting a decidedly masculine response that, left unfulfilled, promised to afford him no little future discomfort.

     "You, my girl, are in danger of provoking a deal more than you bargained for," growled Dane. Judiciously, he pulled her arms down from around his neck and held her wrists captive at his chest. "Are you not in the least curious as to why I should have burst, unannounced, into your bedchamber? I might be a desperate man, a burglar perhaps, intent on knocking you alongside the head and absconding with your jewels."

     "If you are, captain, then you are going to be exceedingly disappointed. Other than my mother's locket," she said, touching an exquisite gold relic of another age that hung on a chain about her slender neck, "I'm afraid I haven't any jewelry of any value." She frowned, gazing up at him. "It did occur to me at first that you had followed me in here," confessed the surprising young beauty, seemingly not in the least disturbed at such an eventuality. "Not to rob me, but to woo me. On the other hand, it is true that I did not see you in the ballroom. In which case, I daresay you had some other reason for breaking into my room. Not that it matters. You are here, are you not? I daresay it was an inevitable result of a chain of circumstances, which will in turn instigate any number of further chain reactions, one of which I yet dare to hope will lead to that second kiss you promised me."

     "Little baggage," uttered Dane, startled into giving vent to a deep-throated laugh. "I never promised you anything."

     "On the contrary, captain, you stated plainly that you would kiss me at the smallest provocation. I, in turn, have given you every provocation. Next, I daresay I shall be reduced to pleading, which would be the shabbiest thing. You cannot know how long I have waited for a man like you to do what none other has ever dared before. I was beginning to think I should never know what it was to be—"

     Whatever it was that she had thought never to know she was not to be allowed to say.

     "Hush!" whispered Dane, touching the tip of his index finger to her lips before she could finish. In the ensuing silence, the unmistakable clatter of footsteps up the stairs to the landing sounded clearly. "Much as I should like to continue our discussion," he murmured, his face grim, "I fear I have already lingered too long. Needless to say, no one must find me here."

     "Are you indeed a burglar, then?" queried his companion, reaching without hesitation behind him to turn the key in the lock. Then taking his hand, she led him to the window and threw open the sash. "Never mind. I am perfectly aware you are no such thing. I do hope you are not afraid of heights."

     "No sailor who has ever trimmed a sail in the midst of a storm long entertains a fear of heights," declared Dane, thrusting a leg through the opening. He paused, clasping the girl's hand as she glanced over her shoulder at the peremptory assault on her door. "I am not a burglar, but I am a man with implacable enemies. Promise me you will do nothing to bring harm to yourself. If they guess I was here with you, tell them I gave you no choice but to help me."

     "Never mind about me, captain. I am well able to fend for myself. There is a ledge. Make your way along it to the corner of the house. I believe the drainpipe is firmly enough lodged to bear you safely to the ground." She looked at him, her eyes expressive of regret mingled with urgency. "I shall keep them occupied as long as is necessary for you to make your escape. Pray take your time, captain. I should be greatly displeased if you were to fall to your death."

     "No less than should I," said Dane feelingly. Pulling her without warning to him, he kissed her soundly on the lips. "Thank you, sweet, lovely Violet. I shall not soon forget you—or what you have done to me this night."

     "Done to you—?" she gasped, a hand pressing unconsciously the tumultuous rise and fall of a firm, well-rounded breast.

     His teeth flashed in a rueful smile. "I daresay you will haunt my dreams at night for a long time to come."

     The next instant, he was on the ledge groping his way in the dark, while behind him came the sounds of shouts and finally the window sliding shut.

     He was conscious of an unwonted pang of regret when, some moments later, he dropped from the drainpipe to the earth and stole through the grounds to where he had left his mount. No doubt it was fortunate that he would never know who his sweet, incomparable Violet really was, he told himself wryly, or that he in all likelihood would never lay eyes on her again. Those few, fleeting moments in her presence had wrought havoc on his usual, cool composure, and in the weeks to come he would need all of his wits about him if he were to have any hopes of untangling the dangerous web of intrigue that seemed to be closing in around him. Reminding himself that the last thing he needed was to be distracted by a paragon of beauty with eyes the mesmerizing hue of violets, he sent his mount at a swift canter away from the great Tudor house set in the swale.

     Tomorrow he would have need to consider what his future course of action was to be. If he dared not now approach Sir Henry, he had at least been face to face with his enemy—a masked man who had known Captain Trevor Dane on sight and had not hesitated to try to put a period to his existence, a man, moreover, who had managed to disappear seemingly into thin air. Dane did not believe for a moment the man's vanishing act could be attributed to anything of an extra-ordinary nature. Patently, Sir Henry's assailant had been one of the invited guests. It would have been a simple matter, after all, for the masked intruder to divest himself of his disguise and rejoin the rest of the company in the ballroom without undue comment. It was even possible he had been among those who had assembled at the bottom of the stairs.

     Dane's lip curled in sardonic appreciation of that overheard conversation. "Sir Oliver' could have been no one other than Vice Admiral Sir Oliver Landford. Naturally, where Landford was, one could expect to find Lieutenant Alastair Cordell, the admiral's aide, in attendance. It would seem it was a small world after all, thought Dane with ironic appreciation. It had been Landford who had ordered Dane to transport Sir Henry to Gibraltar, a duty better suited to the sloop Blue/in or one of the frigates, not a lumbering two-decker. Dane had thought it strange then. How much more suspicious had it loomed in the wake of subsequent events! Unfortunately, the attack on Sir Henry would seem to make little sense in light of the incidents aboard Antiope that had nearly put a period to Dane's existence. If Sir Henry had fired the shot from Antiope'?, deck, then who had assaulted Sir Henry in his study? Presumably, the assailant had been in search of something among Sir Henry's papers when he had been surprised by Sir Henry's unexpected arrival. Dane would have given a great deal to know what that something was. It would seem it was not Sir Henry himself the intruder had been after, else Sir Henry would undoubtedly be dead.

     Clearly, there was a deal more involved than the attempted murder and subsequent discrediting of a lowly naval captain. The question was what had the one to do with the other? The answer obviously revolved around the events in Malta—his secret meeting with Philippe Lambert and the assignation to which he had been drawn in St. John's Cathedral. He had been a bloody fool to listen to Lambert. Hellfire! He was a naval captain. The last thing he could have wished was to play the part of a bloody spy.

     Grimly, it came to him that he was at a distinct disadvantage in the sort of game in which he had inadvertently become engaged. He was a naval captain, lacking in both fortune and influence. On the deck of a ship in the line of battle, he was a force with which to be reckoned. In the salons and closed rooms in which the powerful waged their wars of intrigue, he would have been out of his element even if he were not barred from those inner sanctums. The devil, he thought, relinquishing his mount to a stable lad at the White Hart Inn in Exeter. It was a twisted coil in which he found himself, and he had only suspicions and a multitude of unanswered questions from which to start.

     Curiously enough, however, Dane's last thoughts before he fell into the sleep of utter exhaustion some twenty minutes later concerned neither Sir Henry or his masked assailant, but a slender girl with eyes the deep, mesmerizing blue of violets.