Pleasures of a Tempted Lady Read Online Free PDF Page B

now; when before she was so easygoinghe’d had to remind her to ask for what she really wanted rather than constantly allowing other people to make her choices for her.
    “Changing course, eh?”
    Will opened his eyes to see that Briggs had come to stand beside him.
    “Yes. I intend to take Miss Donovan”—how was it that he didn’t know whether that was still her name?—“to her family in London. She and I will disembark in Plymouth. You’ll replenish our supplies, and then I want you to continue to the search for the smuggler off the coast between Falmouth and Penzance.”
    Briggs merely raised a brow at this information, and Will continued, “I’m leaving you in command of the Freedom , Briggs. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t sink her.”
    Briggs’s lips twisted. “If you’re worried I’ll sink her, perhaps you shouldn’t leave me in command.”
    Will chuckled softly. “I’m not worried. You know I trust you.” As a sailor, he trusted Briggs more than anyone. Will could count the number of gentlemen he trusted on one hand, and Briggs was among them—even though his first mate wasn’t technically a gentleman.
    Briggs was a middle son in a long string of Briggses. A hard worker but entirely ignored by his family, he’d struggled through the ranks of the Navy on his own. After his near-fatal injury in the battle of Gramvousa two years ago, he’d gone home to recover, but his parents had both died since he’d joined the Navy, and he was politely turned away at his brother’s door and given the excuse that the house was full.
    He’d returned to London, where Will, having just leftthe Navy himself, took him in, helped him heal, and hired him into his fledgling shipping company.
    Briggs looked out over the gray waves, his face etched in severe lines, his scar wind-reddened. Will couldn’t fathom what weighed so heavily on Briggs’s mind, but Will himself was still engaged in the battle to refrain from rushing back to Meg.
    After a moment, Briggs asked, “How is it that you know Miss Donovan, Captain?”
    Will hesitated. It wasn’t something he liked to talk about. But Briggs was a trusted friend, and the truth of Meg’s identity would be common knowledge soon enough. In any case, it was better that Briggs learned it from him than someone else.
    “I intended to marry her eight years ago.”
    Briggs cut him a look of astonishment. “ That woman?”
    “That very one.”
    Briggs let out a whistling breath. “What happened?”
    “It’s a long story,” Will warned.
    Briggs shrugged. “We’ve got all night, haven’t we?”
    They didn’t, really. Soon, enough time would have passed that Meg and Jake would have completed their toilette and he could bring them their dinner. He slid a glance toward Briggs.
    “Her twin sister is the Countess of Stratford.” That would probably confuse the hell out of Briggs, but it would also bring to light the monumental nature of Meg’s reappearance into the world.
    Briggs was silent for a moment, but Will watched as his lips slowly turned down into a frown. Finally, Briggs said, “I see two impossibilities in that. The first is that, if I recall it right and if the gossip is correct, the Countessof Stratford’s twin perished some years ago. Second, isn’t the countess’s given name Margaret? How is it possible for twin sisters to have the same name?”
    “I told you it’s a long story.”
    “Perhaps you should tell it from the beginning, then.”
    Standing there, with the cold breeze ruffling his hair and the waves slapping against the hull of his ship as it forged toward England, Will told Briggs all of what had happened between himself and the twin sisters whose lives had become inextricably entwined with his own, Meg and Serena Donovan.
    Well, he told Briggs almost the entire story. He left out those moments—so many of them—that would always be for him and Meg alone.
    “Meg and her twin sister came to England eight years ago,” he began.