Dancing with a Rogue (54 page)

Her heart dropped. “I can find another part.”

“Is that what you want?”

It wasn't. She wanted him. But though he'd said he loved her, he mentioned nothing about the future.

But their lack of honesty before had led to disaster. “No,” she said softly.

“Does that mean you might like to see new places?”

“Boston, in particular,” she said, holding her breath.

“I am a sailor,” he warned.

“Can I sail with you?”

“Aye,” he said. “If you are my wife.”

Her breath caught in her throat. After a few seconds she asked, “Is that an offer?”

“
Oui
,” he said with that amused smile she loved so much.

“Then yes,” she said. “Yes.”

Very, very carefully, she leaned down and sealed the bargain with her lips.

Epilogue

Boston

1822

They waited at the docks for the ship to anchor. A runner had reached the house just twenty minutes earlier, telling Merry Manning that the
Monique
had been sighted.

Gabriel would be aboard. So would Pamela, Pamela's husband, Robert, and their two children.

It had been three months since she had seen her husband, nearly five years since she had seen her sister.

Only a pregnancy had kept Merry from this voyage. She had been on grand journeys to China and India. In the past three years, though, she had stayed home after the birth of David, now a toddler three years old. Another new child was due in two months. Even now she could feel her kicking.

She was quite sure that the child was a she, though a second boy would also please them both.

As she reached the waterfront, just minutes from their home, she saw the ship approach the wharf. Gabriel was on the deck, just as she had seen him years earlier. His hair was shorter and glinted like gold in the sun, and his posture radiated the confidence she had always loved.

Beside him was Pamela, waving madly. She held the hand of a girl that looked about David's age, and Robert—a broad smile on his face—held a younger sibling.

She and Gabriel, Pamela and Robert had been married in the same ceremony in London before she and Gabriel had left for America. Monique had liked Robert immediately. He was a kind and compassionate man who obviously adored Pamela. He had not cared that she had lost most of the fortune accumulated by her father, and the estates as well.

Pamela had used what money she'd been able to save from her father's estate to join Robert in Edinburgh while he finished his medical studies. He was now a physician in the same village where his family lived.

David yelled and waved as he saw his father, and Gabriel grinned back. In minutes Gabriel and her two friends departed the ship. David ran toward his father, who scooped him up and gave him a hug and introduced him to his cousins before setting him down. David shyly ogled his cousins.

Then Gabriel turned to her. The broad smile turned tender as his gaze went to her widening form, then to her face. He touched her cheek as he often did with fingers that adored. Then he kissed her in front of a goodly part of Boston until she thought she would melt into the earth.

His eyes promised heaven a few hours later.

She turned to Pamela, who was watching with amused affection. “I see nothing has changed between you two,” she said.

“Nor you,” Merry replied. Robert's eyes regarded his family with unmistakable pride and love.

Pamela took Merry's two hands and held them. “A long visit this time.”

“Perhaps we can convince you to come to Boston,” Merry said. “The city is in need of fine doctors.”

Something in Pamela's eyes told her it was not an impossible dream. She knew Robert's father had died, following his mother's death by only a few months. Merry imagined that gossip had not made their life easy.

But that would come later.

Now it was time to return home. Tonight they would celebrate the reunion. Sydney and Dani, who lived several blocks away, were eager, as well, to see Pamela and Robert. Sydney was a foreman in the shipping company and was soon due for another promotion.

This would be Gabriel's last voyage as a captain. Now that Samuel Barker was retiring, Gabriel would assume control of the shipping company. It would mean an end to captaining ships, but Gabriel had assured her he would be content.

“I was restless because I had no home, no anchor,” he had told her before this last trip. “You and David and the new one are my home and my life. I have reached my landfall.”

She knew they would journey together again. But it would be for pleasure and joy. Just as she had tinkered with a few plays until her son came. She did not miss it.

She'd discarded the name of Monique as well. Merry suited her much better these days.

All those thoughts warmed her as she stood in the loving circle of her growing family. She'd never thought to have such joy.

Gabriel reached down and slyly felt her stomach under her cloak. The baby kicked. “Ah, a little spitfire,” he said. “Takes after her mother.”

She smiled back. “Or his father.”

She offered one hand to him and the other to Pamela.

“Let's go home.”

About the Author

Patricia Potter is a
USA Today
–bestselling author of more than fifty romantic novels. A seven-time RITA Award finalist and three-time Maggie Award winner, she was named Storyteller of the Year by
Romantic Times
and received the magazine's Career Achievement Award for Western Romance. Potter is a past board member and president of Romance Writers of America. Prior to becoming a fiction author, she was a reporter for the
Atlanta Journal
and the president of a public relations firm in Atlanta. She lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2003 by Patricia Potter

Cover design by Mimi Bark

ISBN: 978-1-5040-0647-7

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

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