The Daredevil Snared (The Adventurers Quartet Book 3) (39 page)
Read The Daredevil Snared (The Adventurers Quartet Book 3) Online
Authors: Stephanie Laurens
Of course, while she remained standing, he would stand, too, but with the desk separating them, he didn’t have too much of a height advantage.
She still had to tip up her head to continue to meet his eyes—the color of storm-tossed seas and tempest-wracked Aberdeen skies.
And so piercingly intense. When they interacted professionally, he usually kept that intensity screened.
Yet this wasn’t a professional visit; her entrance had been designed to make that plain, and Royd Frobisher was adept at reading her signs.
Her mouth had dried. Luckily, she had her speech prepared. “We received news yesterday that my cousin—second cousin or so—Katherine Fortescue has gone missing in Freetown. She was acting as governess to an English family, the Sherbrooks. It seems Katherine vanished while on an errand to the post office some months ago, and Mrs. Sherbrook finally saw her way to writing to inform the family.”
Still holding his gaze, she lifted her chin a fraction higher. “As you might imagine, Iona is greatly perturbed.” Iona Carmody was her maternal grandmother and the undisputed matriarch of the Carmody clan. “She wasn’t happy when, after Katherine’s mother died, we didn’t hear in time to go down and convince Katherine to come to us. Instead, Katherine got some bee in her bonnet about making her own way and so took the post as governess. She’d gone by the time I reached Stonehaven.”
Stonehaven was twelve miles south of Aberdeen; Royd would know of it. She plowed on, “So now, obviously, I need to go to Freetown, find Katherine, and bring her home.”
Royd held Isobel’s dark gaze. Although he saw nothing “obvious” about her suggestion, he knew enough of the workings of the matriarchal Carmodys to follow her unwritten script. She viewed her being too late to catch and draw her cousin into the safety of the clan as a failure on her part. And as Iona was now “perturbed,” Isobel saw it as her duty to put matters right.
She and Iona were close. Very close. As close as only two women who were exceedingly alike could be. Many had commented that Isobel had fallen at the very base of Iona’s tree.
He therefore understood why Isobel believed it was up to her to find Katherine and bring her home. That didn’t mean Isobel had to go to Freetown.
Especially as there was an excellent chance that Katherine Fortescue was among the captives he was about to be dispatched to rescue.
“As it happens, I’ll be heading for Freetown shortly.” He didn’t glance at Wolverstone’s summons; one hint, and Isobel was perfectly capable of pouncing on the missive and reading it herself. “I promise I’ll hunt down your Katherine and bring her safely home.”
Isobel’s gaze grew unfocused. She weighed the offer, then—determinedly and defiantly—shook her head.
“No.” Her jaw set and she refocused on his face. “I have to go myself.” She hesitated, then grudgingly confided, “Iona needs me to go.”
Eight years had passed since they’d spoken about anything other than business. After the failure of their handfasting, she’d avoided him like the plague, until the dual pressures of him needing to work with the Carmichael Shipyards to implement the innovations he desperately wanted incorporated into the Frobisher fleet and the economic downturn following the end of the wars leaving her and her father needing Frobisher Shipping Company work to keep the shipyards afloat had forced them face to face again.
Face to face across a desk with engineering plans and design sheets littering the surface.
The predictable fact was that they worked exceptionally well together. They were natural complements in many ways.
He was an inventor—he sailed so much in such varying conditions, he was constantly noting ways in which vessels could be improved for both safety and speed.
She was a brilliant designer. She could take his raw ideas and give them structure.
He was an experienced engineer. He would take her designs and work out how to construct them.
Against all the odds, she managed the shipyards, and was all but revered by the workforce. The men had seen her grow from a slip of a girl-child running wild over the docks and the yards. They considered her one of their own; her success was their success, and they worked for her as they would for no other.
Using his engineering drawings, she would order the workflow and assemble the required components, he would call in whichever ship he wanted modified, and magic would happen.
Working in tandem, he and she were steadily improving the performance of the Frobisher fleet, and for any shipping company that meant long-term survival. In turn, her family’s shipyards were fast gaining a reputation for unparalleled production at the cutting edge of shipbuilding.
Strained though their interactions remained, professionally speaking, they were a smoothly efficient and highly successful team.
Yet through all their meetings in offices or elsewhere over recent years, she’d kept him at a frigidly rigid distance. She’d never given him an opportunity to broach the subject of what the hell had happened eight years ago, when he’d returned from a mission to have her, his handfasted bride whom he had for long months fantasized over escorting up the aisle, bluntly tell him she didn’t want to see him again, then shut her grandmother’s door in his face.
Ever since, she’d given him not a single chance to reach her on a personal level—on the level on which they’d once engaged so very well. So intuitively, so freely, so openly. So very directly. He’d never been able to talk to anyone, male or female, in the same way he used to talk to her.
He missed that.
He missed her.
And he had to wonder if she missed him. Neither of them had married, after all. According to the gossips, she’d never given a soupçon of encouragement to any of the legion of suitors only too ready to offer for the hand of the heiress who would one day own the Carmichael Shipyards.
It had taken him mere seconds to review their past. Regardless of that past, she stood in his office prepared to do battle to be allowed to spend weeks aboard
The Corsair
.
Weeks on board the ship he captained, during which she wouldn’t be able to avoid him.
Weeks during which he could press her to engage in direct communication, enough to resolve the situation that still existed between them sufficiently for them both to put it behind them and go on.
Or to put right whatever had gone wrong and try again.
In response to his silence, her eyes had steadily darkened; he could still follow her thoughts reasonably well. Of all the females of his acquaintance, she was the only one who would even contemplate enacting him a scene—let alone a histrionically dramatic one. One part of him actually hoped...
As if reading his mind, she narrowed her eyes. Her lips tightened. Then, quietly, she stated, “You owe me, Royd.”
It was the first time in eight years that she’d said his name in that private tone that still reached to his soul. More, it was the first reference she’d made to their past since shutting Iona’s door in his face.
And he still wasn’t sure what she meant. For what did he owe her? He could think of several answers, none of which shed all that much light on the question that, where she was concerned, filled his mind—and had for the past eight years.
He wasn’t at all sure of the wisdom of the impulse that gripped him, but it was so very strong, he surrendered and went with it. “
The Corsair
leaves on the morning tide on Wednesday. You’ll need to be on the wharf before daybreak.”
She searched his eyes, then crisply nodded. “Thank you. I’ll be there.”
With that, she swung on her heel, marched to the door, opened it, and swept out.
He watched her go, grateful that she hadn’t closed the door, allowing him to savor the enticing side-to-side sway of her hips.
Hips he’d once held as a right as he’d buried himself in her softness...
Registering the discomfort his tellingly vivid memories had evoked, he grunted. He surreptitiously adjusted his breeches, then rounded the desk, crossed to the door, and looked out.
Gladys Featherstone stared at him as if expecting a reprimand.
He beckoned. “I’ve orders for you to send out.”
He retreated to his desk and sank into the chair behind it. He waited until Gladys, apparently reassured, settled on one of the straight-backed chairs, her notepad resting on her knee, then he ruthlessly refocused his mind and started dictating the first of the many orders necessary to allow him to absent himself from Aberdeen long enough to sail to Freetown and back.
To complete the mission that Melville, First Lord of the Admiralty, had, via Wolverstone, requested him to undertake.
And to discover what possibilities remained with respect to him and Isobel Carmichael.
* * * * *
Copyright © 2016 by Savdek Management Proprietary Limited
PRE-ORDER/BUY
LORD OF THE PRIVATEERS
If by chance you missed the previous volumes in THE ADVENTURERS QUARTET, look for
THE LADY’S COMMAND
and
A BUCCANEER AT HEART
to read the beginning and second stage of the adventure, respectively detailing the uniquely thrilling journey into marriage of Declan Frobisher and his new wife, Lady Edwina, and the meeting and entirely unexpected romance between Robert Frobisher and the bossy Miss Aileen Hopkins.
And if you missed Stephanie’s recent three releases in her long running Cynster series, further details can be found by clicking on the titles:
BY WINTER’S LIGHT
THE TEMPTING OF THOMAS CARRICK
A MATCH FOR MARCUS CYNSTER
Other Titles from Stephanie Laurens
Cynster Novels
Devil’s Bride
A Rake’s Vow
Scandal’s Bride
A Rogue’s Proposal
A Secret Love
All About Love
All About Passion
On A Wild Night
On A Wicked Dawn
The Perfect Lover
The Ideal Bride
The Truth About Love
What Price Love?
The Taste of Innocence
Temptation and Surrender
Cynster Sisters Trilogy
Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue
In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster
The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae
Cynster Sisters Duo
And Then She Fell
The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh
Cynster Special
The Promise in a Kiss
By Winter’s Light
Cynster Next Generation Novels
The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
A Match for Marcus Cynster
The Casebook of Barnaby Adair Novels
Where the Heart Leads
The Peculiar Case of Lord Finsbury’s Diamonds
The Masterful Mr. Montague
The Curious Case of Lady Latimer’s Shoes
Loving Rose: The Redemption of Malcolm Sinclair
Bastion Club Novels
Captain Jack’s Woman (Prequel)
The Lady Chosen
A Gentleman’s Honor
A Lady of His Own
A Fine Passion
To Distraction
Beyond Seduction
The Edge of Desire
Mastered by Love
Black Cobra Quartet
The Untamed Bride
The Elusive Bride
The Brazen Bride
The Reckless Bride
The Adventurers Quartet
The Lady’s Command
A Buccaneer at Heart
The Daredevil Snared
Lord of the Privateers
Other Novels
The Lady Risks All
Medieval
Desire’s Prize
Novellas
Melting Ice
– from the anthologies
Rough Around the Edges
and
Scandalous Brides
Rose in Bloom
– from the anthology
Scottish Brides
Scandalous Lord Dere
– from the anthology
Secrets of a Perfect Night
Lost and Found
– from the anthology
Hero, Come Back
The Fall of Rogue Gerrard
– from the anthology
It Happened One Night
The Seduction of Sebastian Trantor
– from the anthology
It Happened One Season
Short Stories
The Wedding Planner
– from the anthology
Royal Weddings
A Return Engagement
– from the anthology
Royal Bridesmaids
UK-Style Regency Romances
Tangled Reins
Four in Hand
Impetuous Innocent
Fair Juno
The Reasons for Marriage
A Lady of Expectations
An Unwilling Conquest
A Comfortable Wife