Bound by Decency Read Online Free PDF Page A

partner had disguised himself so completely was like asking her to believe her mother still lived. Cain’s interest in Theodore Cathain stemmed from something else. She would be wise to discover what that something was.
    India dropped her head onto the back of the chair and closed her eyes. She gritted her teeth against the tossing of the ship and forced her mind into silence.
    To her horror, Cain rose behind her eyelids.
    Only, where he wore loose trousers and a seaman’s shirt moments before, in her vision he dressed in the stylish suit she’d imagined Teddy in, a dozen times or more. Standing over her as he had, he didn’t glower. He cupped the side of her face. His thumb caressed the length of her neck and tickled the fine hairs behind her ear. His eyes held hers, sharp and unsettling. Full of words she couldn’t understand, but some unexplainable part of her soul recognized. And on those sensual lips, the hint of a genuine smile danced. As if he found her pleasing. As if he desired her.
    She snapped upright. On a violent shake of her head, she whispered, “He’s not Teddy.”
     
     

 
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    A s Cain stepped through the door to the main deck, a foul-breathed sailor skidded to an abrupt halt. He grinned, though he lacked the teeth to make it complete. “Cap’n! I was on me way tae fetch ye. Trouble be fast approachin’ on larboard.”
    Every muscle in Cain’s body tensed at the veiled excitement in the seasoned sailor’s voice. He stepped the rest of the way outside, brows drawn tight as he looked over the rail. At the sight of a warship not more than five hundred yards away, he clenched a fist.
    “Damn me,” he muttered. He grabbed onto the bowline, swung himself around the mizzenmast, and rushed up the short stairs to the quarterdeck where Drake stood at the rail, a brass spyglass lifted to his eye.
    “You’re just in time for the fun, Cain. Seems His Majesty’s finest couldn’t resist a little bit o’ sportin’ at first light.”
    Cain pulled the glass from Drake’s hand and lifted it to his eyes, though he didn’t need to look. The flapping Union Jacks off the main mast told him everything. Out of habit, he surveyed the hull, counting gun ports. Twenty coal black muzzles stared him in the face.
    He lowered the glass and pulled in a deep breath. His mind worked quickly, calculating odds, debating whether to stand and fight or whether a speedy disappearance would be in their best interests. It made no sense for a single warship to draw so close. The Kraken outgunned her by twenty. Doubled her standard crew. Why would the Royal Navy foolishly enter such skewed stakes? Better yet, how had she found them? When he’d left the decks earlier, he’d seen only the single distant light.
    “Shall I give the call to guns?” Drake’s question held the anxiety of a man sporting for a fight. “She’s easy pickin’s all by herself.”
    With a slow shake of his head, Cain squelched Drake’s enthusiasm. “Let’s see what she’s about. She may pose no threat.”
    Drake’s jaw dropped in disbelief. He recovered with a double blink. “Your mind is full of cotton, Cain. She’s right there for the takin’. We fire on her bow and bring her to her knees, I say.”
    Exasperation rammed Cain like a stone fist. Though Drake’s skills at sea were exceptional and his argument well-suited to the life they had assumed, his logic held an error they could ill-afford to make. Cain thrust the glass back into his quartermaster’s hands. “Have you forgotten the cargo in my cabin? It’s not her death I seek. As certain as that warship sails in range, another isn’t far behind.” He looked once more to the approaching Navy ship. “We stand and wait. Maintain our course. She cannot possibly recognize us. Let us see what she’s about.”
    “You’re cursed with this decency,” Drake muttered. He braced his hands on the rail and stared down at the sea. “What