My Lady Pirate Read Online Free PDF Page A

trees in silhouette. Suddenly, his eyes narrowed. In that sheltered harbor lay the finest schooner he’d ever seen in all his thirty-six years.
    From its rakishly cunning design to its ten guns, the vessel looked very well suited for the piratical endeavors in which it was doubtless employed—and, in that moment, Gray vowed
    before heaven and earth that the trim little craft would assist in getting him out of this predicament.
    When —he amended, with a rogue’s grin—he was ready to leave.
    His stomach growled with the ferocity of a tiger on the hunt, and he realized he hadn’t eaten for nearly a day. Did Queen Maeve—he chuckled at the absurdity of the title—think to starve him into submission? Submission to what?
    Her?
    He threw back his head in laughter. Majesty indeed! She was naught but a she-wolf, an unscrupulous thug who deserved no more than the loop end of a rope. When he got free, he’d damn well consider giving her just that for the way she’d treated him!
    Escape would not be difficult. However, wanting to escape was another matter entirely.
    Gray considered the lean beauty of his captor’s body, enough of which had been revealed to whet his appetite to see, touch, and yes, enjoy, more.
    No, he was in no particular hurry to leave.
    He had just sat down on the single item of comfort the room offered—a filthy straw pallet—
    when he heard the soft crunch of sand outside, growing louder and louder as the footsteps approached.
    “On your feet, dog.”
    Gray yawned, hid his hands behind his back, and did not bother to rise.
    “I said, on your feet!”
    “I prefer to sit, thank you,” he drawled. “Especially since you’ve anchored me to the floor.
    You understand, don’t you?”
    Sure enough, he heard the angry clang of a key in the old lock, and a moment later the rusty hinges squealed in protest as the door swung outward. Gray waited, his hands behind his back so his captor would not see that they were loose and, therefore, quite capable of strangling her.
    But the Pirate Queen was taking no chances. In one hand she held a lantern, in the other a flintlock pistol. Both the lantern and the pistol were raised; the one to blind him, the other, if need be, to kill him.
    “Get up.”
    He shrugged and got to his feet.
    “Make one move and I’ll blow your damned head off.”
    Gray had a whole vocabulary of smiles. Smiles to tease, smiles to charm, smiles to frighten, smiles to bode ill . . . smiles to win a female heart.
    This last he flashed at her and was rewarded by a burst of angry color across his captor’s face.
    “Blast your eyes, have you no brain in your head? Are you not afraid of me? I could have
    you shot! I could have you nailed to a tree and gutted! I could—”
    “Why don’t you, then?” He regarded her with studied insouciance, his gaze raking
    appreciatively over her bosom.
    For a long, terrible moment she said nothing, her face a pale oval of anger and disgust. She finally set the lantern down, flung her hair over her shoulder and spat, “Because you might be worth something to me.” She turned away to hide her expression, began picking at her sleeve, and in a sullen voice, added, “Because . . . you’re my Gallant Knight.”
    “Your what?”
    “My Gallant Knight !”
    He shouldn’t have smirked. He shouldn’t have laughed. But unable to help himself, Gray did both, and the resultant slap across the side of his face stunned him to silence.
    “Do not,” she shouted, “ever laugh at me again!”
    It was all he could do not to reach up and touch his throbbing cheek, but Gray could not, would not, allow her to see that he was far from being totally at her mercy. Instead, he drew himself up and, still clenching his hands behind his back, summoned another smile: this one reserved for Ladies Who Have Just Been Insulted and Must Be Placated.
    “Forgive me, your most Royal Highness ”—bending deeply at the waist, he gave a chivalrous bow—”but I merely found the idea