“What do you mean?” she asked, leaning forwards on her seat a little, concern darkening her eyes and her gaze.
“Heard tell that a few months back a great storm swept through this region and wiped out most everything in its path. The captain’s home onshore was destroyed, and The Aurora herself so badly damaged he could only limp back here to Kirkcudbright. My spies tell me he met a lady and plans to marry.”
Daniella gaped at him. So many changes. Would she even recognize her father?
Darius shrugged. “I only hear the stories. I do not get to judge the validity or accuracy of the news.”
James’s stomach dipped out, leaving him with an empty hollowness. If Germaine had met a lady in Kirkcudbright and lived there now, where were Amelia and his mother? “But you have spoken to him? In person?”
Darius shook his head and grinned. “Not in years.”
James had to draw a deep breath and count to five before he asked his next question. “So what will you do with us if he isn’t there? I take it you have some sort of plan?”
“I don’t need much of a plan. He is there.”
“What?” This from Daniella. James squeezed her hand where it lay in his.
“Plan?” He gestured for the pirate to elaborate.
“I deliver Daniella and the man who abducted her and I have repaid a debt.”
“I don’t understand,” Daniella muttered more to herself than to Darius. Her eyes narrowed. “You were of a mind to throw me overboard.”
Darius’s grin grew wider. “A ploy. A spot of mischief if you will.”
“Explain,” Daniella demanded, fists clenched in her lap.
“The last time I was with your father in Kirkcudbright, I asked him could I ever restore my honour in his eyes. His simple answer was a yes. Rescuing you—in more than one way, I feel obliged to add—is repayment of my debt for the mutiny.”
Daniella cursed beneath her breath.
Before James could scold her on the language, Darius tsked. “Lady Lasterton would not mutter obscenities.”
James understood two things in that moment. Darius was no lowly servant pressed to service on a pirate ship. He had been a gentleman once upon a time and knew the only outcome for an unmarried, unchaperoned scandalous hoyden. James should have heard it the first time he spoke. The second was clearer but no more comprehensible than the first. “You forced me to rescue her from you so I would have her gratitude.”
“It worked splendidly.”
“So this has all been?” He waited for a suitable answer. He waited for an excuse not to plant his fist into Darius’s lying face.
“Meddling,” he said, still grinning. Darius then addressed Daniella, who was as tight as a cobra about to strike with her own particular brand of poison. “I really did think I was saving you that day on the road. But then it became clear there was another game at play. A game bigger than any of us.”
“You consider yourself Cupid?” James asked with disbelief.
“She needed a push in your direction. When she started asking if she could sail on my ship, I knew I had to do something to nudge her on another course. I will not have a woman on my ship indefinitely. My men would eat her alive.”
Daniella shrieked and lunged for Darius in the small space. Patrick, who sat next to the gentleman cum pirate, had to duck out of the way.
“You scared the hell out of me!” she yelled as she tried to hurt him.
James pulled her onto his lap, his arms around her so she couldn’t move. “What my wife is trying to—”
“You’re a bastard, Darius,” Daniella said.
James put his hand over her mouth to stop her next attempt at flaying. “I’m not sure your story is entirely credible.” Darius’s gaze never wavered so James went on. “You expect us to believe you got involved though you had no way to assess the risk? I could have shot you dead on your horse that day.”
“At quite a miserable stage of my life, Daniella and her father saved me and I repaid them by trying to take their ship. I owed it to the captain to bring her back safe—with her reputation intact.”
A sudden sharp pain on the palm of James’s hand made him growl. “Did you really just bite me?” he asked his bride as she struggled against his grip.
“Was any of it true?” she asked. “Did you suffer torture at the hands of an evil man?”
“No.” Damn his insufferable smugness. “I was pulled from the water by a merchant ship a few hours later and delivered to the Americas. There I stayed and worked until I fell in with the good graces of a shipbuilder. The ship I sail now is one of his.”
“You’re nothing but a hopeless romantic,” James said incredulously at the same time Hobson muttered, “Addled, the lot of ya.”
“I saved both your hides today. Daniella, your father might now hear you out before he cleaves your husband in half. Lasterton, you have the chance to decide if your precious items are as precious as your new wife. I have cleared the muddy waters. You can thank me later.”
*
Daniella couldn’t breathe. Her chest grew tight and her stomach threatened to rebel as her heart clamoured in her ears to the tune of her rushing blood. It was one thing to have entered a makeshift marriage to get herself home and assuage James’s infernal honour; it was a different matter when none of it needed to have happened at all. “You tricked me.”
“You were enamoured of him anyway. I merely expedited proceedings.”
“Expedited proceedings?” she repeated, fury giving way to a shocking numbness.
James twisted her on his lap to gain her attention. “Pay him no mind. What’s happened has happened and we’ll deal with it after we meet with your father.”
“This all worked out very well for you, my lord.” At the correct salutation, he frowned. She went on. “Now you get to save
