I Married the Duke Read Online Free PDF

cabin within was narrow and curved on one side along the curve of the ship. A long cot with wooden sides built into the wall, a small ledge, and four clothing pegs were its only furnishings.
    “Will it suit you, Miss Caulfield?” the captain said at her shoulder.
    “But— Is it your bedchamber?”
    “It was.” His smile was slow and his emerald eye danced with deviltry. “Now that you have paid for it, it is yours.” His gaze dipped to her lips.
    “But—”
    “I told you this is not a passenger ship, Miss Caulfield. Bunks are few aboard, and the mattress in my cabin is the most comfortable of those few. Do you concur, Mr. Miles?” he said without removing his attention from her.
    “Entirely, Captain,” the English Napoleon said.
    Dr. Stewart chuckled.
    They were enjoying this .
    “I cannot—” She had been forced to face plenty of indignities as a servant, but this was outrageous. “That is to say, it would not be proper for—”
    Captain Andrew lifted his brow.
    “I cannot deprive you of sleep, Captain,” she said firmly.
    “Dinna fret, lass. He’ll sleep fine and dandy with ye in his bed.”
    Dr. Stewart could not mean what she imagined. He was a priest, for heaven’s sake.
    The captain slanted him an odd glance.
    “Gentlemen,” she said, “if gentlemen you can be called,” she added under her breath, “this is insupportable, and you know it as well as I.”
    Captain Andrew laughed softly. It was a wonderful sound—deep and warm and confident and appreciative.
    She forced herself to look him in the face. “Captain?”
    “I am afraid I’ve nothing else to offer you, little governess, but a hammock on the gun deck with the crew or a straw pallet with the goats and sheep below. Would you prefer one of those?”
    “Not precisely.”
    “Ye’ll have ma cabin, lass,” Dr. Stewart said, and went toward the door. “The bed’s no’ so soft, an there be no door to lock. But ye’ll have the privacy a leddy needs.”
    She released a breath and slipped by the captain to follow.
    Dr. Stewart shook his head. “I warned ye she woudna take to it, lad. Some wimmen dinna care to be teased.”
    “Seems so,” the captain said quietly.
    She glanced back. He was no longer smiling, but watching her with that same intensity he had revealed for a moment on the street the night before, like he knew not only her thoughts, but also her fears.
    Like he was a wolf, and she the lamb.
    W ITHOUT ANY FANFARE of trumpets, the ship drew away from the dock with a sudden sway that left Arabella’s joints loose and her limbs trembling. Dr. Stewart invited her to the main deck to watch their departure. She declined and instead sat on her borrowed cot, clinging to its sides, eyes clamped shut, and thought of her sisters, Ravenna’s bright smile and Eleanor’s arm wrapped about her shoulder. Her heartbeats were frantic. Her palms grew slippery on the wood.
    She opened her eyes and reached for the shutter over the window. She folded it open. The sea stretched before her in undulating swells of white and gray.
    She slammed the shutter closed.
    A miniature bookcase beside the cot and bolted into the wall held several dozen well-worn volumes. She snatched up the closest, opened it, and read.
    When Mr. Miles scratched on the curtain with her dinner, her stomach was too tight to accept food.
    Eventually, she slept, restlessly, and dreamed of storms. She awoke to the steady drum of rain on the ceiling above her head. Mr. Miles brought her breakfast. She left it untouched.
    Her second day at sea proved equally eventless and equally exhausting. Her nerves were raw, her skin clammy, her belly cramped. She needed distraction. Not, however, in the form of a wolfish ship captain, whose deep voice and confident tread she occasionally heard through the wall shared between the cabins.
    But she was unaccustomed to inactivity. On her third morning aboard she ventured out of the doctor’s cabin to stretch her legs and seek out a hiding