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arrival and her matronly escort.
    Tall and stately in her demure white muslin gown, the lady was as out of place as a swan among seagulls. The haughty tilt of her chin and the bored expression on her face told everyone who looked at the lady that she wasn't here by choice.
    Julien opened his mouth, like a fish out of water sucking for air. The sight before him had to be a trick of his eyes, an apparition born of his tale to the girls.
    But as she moved closer, his memories sprang to life. She continued forward like the sea breeze that had fostered and nurtured her most of her life. Her hair, though well contained in the latest fashionable style, still held the dark, rich essence of ebony.
    Unlike the other misses, with their downcast glances and shy manners, this woman entered the room as if it were a dockside tavern, head held high, eyes alert for danger, her shoulders thrown back in a daring manner.
    It couldn't be her, he tried to tell himself. After all, she was wearing a dress. The woman he'd known and loved had conceded to wear a dress only one other time.
    On the day he'd married her and made her Maureen Hawthorne de Ryes.

Chapter Four
    Maureen entered Almack's with no small measure of impatience. She'd spent the last month cooped up in the Johnston house, enduring numerous fittings, lessons, and countless other indignities. Used as she was to the freedom of the sea and being the commander of her own fate, she found her prison, regardless of its comforts, unbearable.
    The only thing that kept her sane was the one thought, the one driving desire.
    Find de Ryes. Make him pay.
    She'd waited eight long years to see this happen. And now, perhaps even tonight, she would see her long-sought revenge finally come true.
    She had wanted to start weeks ago, but the Lord Admiral and Lady Mary had made it clear that Maureen was under no condition to be presented to society until she demonstrated the ladylike behavior necessary to move amongst London's finest.
    The Lord Admiral's rules were very clear. She would follow Lady Mary's instructions to the letter. She would not venture out into public until it was determined that she was suitably prepared; this included walks in the park or visits to dressmakers and other shops.
    When Maureen had balked and told him she'd rather take the gallows over this high-handed treatment, she found him intractable.
    To Maureen's further dismay Lady Mary had taken to her new duties like a newly promoted squadron leader, eager to do battle and prove her worthiness, especially with the Lord Admiral's considerable purse at her disposal. And where her Aunt Pettigrew had given up, Lady Mary only dug her aristocratic heels in deeper and made Maureen's life a living hell.
    Lessons in serving tea. Curtsying. How to enter a room. How to dance. How to hold a fan. Conversation that neither began with such salty phrases as
blasted, lazy sod,
or
bloody
nor included any other of the colorful expressions with which Maureen usually peppered her speech.
    Much of it she remembered from Aunt Pettigrew's endless lectures, but remembering and putting into practice notions she hadn't considered in over ten years were another matter.
    No, becoming a lady, Maureen decided, was akin to being keelhauled — without the advantage of drowning halfway through the punishment.
    The only thing that bore her through more than one painful hairstyling session or visit from the pin-wielding seamstress was the thought of watching de Ryes's miserable carcass swing through the air.
    The wretched bastard. The scurvy sod-kissing ...
Mentally she cursed his hide with every phrase she was now forbidden to use out loud.
    "Don't you dare scratch," Lady Mary whispered to her as they walked down the steps.
    Maureen lowered her hand, wondering for the thousandth time at Lady Mary's unerring ability to perceive when she was about to commit another social gaffe.
    But the lady's command did nothing to alleviate the blasted itching from the ribbons at