The Captain's Wicked Wager Read Online Free PDF

inappropriate, but he could not help it. He was gratified as well as confused. “You should have told me. I would not have…”
    “What,” she interrupted, anxious to stall the guilt she saw looming in his eyes, “what would you have done differently? I knew the risks. I accepted the odds. I put up a creditable performance—at any rate, you seemed to enjoy it. That is what it was, though, a performance.” She shrugged with what she hoped was nonchalance and turned to go, but a strong hand on her arm wiped the triumphant smile from her face.
    “I wonder, though, my lovely Belle, why you waited so long? Had you made your need for a candidate to deflower you known, any man on earth would have been willing. Yet you chose me. Why?”
    She licked her lips nervously.
    Ewan laughed. “Take some advice from an experienced campaigner and retreat while you’re ahead, Belle.”
    Isabella glared at him furiously, but could think of no retort.
    Ewan took her arm. “It’s gone one o’clock,” he said, his tone more conciliatory now.. “I find a night such as the last makes me uncommonly hungry. Let usgo in search of sustenance.”
    With her nose studiously in the air and her temper simmering, Isabella walked with him back to the house.
    But it was not in her nature to sulk, and over a repast of cold cuts and hothouse fruits, Ewan set out to charm her. Since he touched not on the personal, and his opinions happily coincided with her own on an astonishing number of topics, this he did very well. He had a dry humour and pithy wit which Isabella found most invigorating. He made her laugh. She realised it had been many months since she had done so. His tales of his army days were fascinating, recounted with a modesty and humour which made her warm to him all the more.
    “You’re very self-effacing about your exploits,” she said teasingly…“I had heard you were quite the dashing hero.”
    “I prefer to let my actions speak for me, rather than words,” he replied with a shrug.
    “Tell me,” she asked, “what turned you into such an avid supporter of Mr Fox and the Colonists— Americans, as I believe they like to be called? Having fought so loyally for the King, it seems a rather paradoxical stance to take.”
    “Some would even say traitorous,” Ewan said bitterly.
    “Not I,” Isabella said firmly.
    He looked at her searchingly. “Thank you for that.”
    Silence reigned for a few moments and Isabella held her breath, aware that the matter was important to him and deeply personal.
    “I suppose it started at Bunker Hill,” Ewan said in alow voice. “I was just twenty, too young to question why I was there, nor to doubt that I was fighting on the right side. We won, but it was a pyrrhic victory, the casualties were severe. You can have no idea how…”
    His grim expression bore testimony to the dark memories crowding his mind. Isabella took his hand.
    “Anyway,” Ewan continued, “it was horrible for both sides. And that’s when I began to realise it was wrong, too. We British were the trespassers, the usurpers. I realised that, but I could not do anything about it. Soldiering was my life. Loyalty to my colonel unquestioning, even if I did question the cause. Then our old enemies the French joined the Americans, and confused the issue. It was only years later, after Washington took our surrender in Yorktown, that I had time to sort out my feelings. And only when I left the army could I speak my mind without being disloyal.”
    “You certainly did speak your mind,” Isabella said, remembering that even her father had called Ewan a turncoat.
    Ewan shrugged. “Much good it did. I was cut by a number of my comrades. I featured in one of Mr Gillray’s caricatures as a wild Scotsman in a kilt, and now Fox looks like he’ll be stuck in opposition to Mr Pitt for the rest of his life.”
    “Have you no desire to take a more active part in politics?” she asked curiously.
    Ewan shook his head. “Words and