There, he’d said it. He had been totally, completely honest with her. He smiled ruefully. “But then you suit me, too. I never realized just how much until the few days we spent together on what you insisted on calling our quest.” He laughed. “As if I were a knight or something. I’m far from that, Abby. I’m just a man, just your average, run-of-the-mill guy who happened to pick an unusual career.”
He tried to explain how he felt about the life he’d chosen. “I’ve always loved the challenge, the risks, the danger, but you added some things I hadn’t even realized I was missing. You added the passion and the laughter. Whatever happens between us, I will never forget that. It will be my greatest treasure. So, you see, Abby, maybe I’ve already found what I was searching for my whole life without even recognizing it.”
He was surprised to find that a tear was tracking down his cheek. He couldn’t recall the last time he had cried, the last time he had acknowledged pain of any kind, but most especially the sort of emotional hurting he was experiencing now. He ached with a yearning he had sworn he would never allow himself to feel again. He had promised himself that there would be no more close ties to bind him, no more beloved friends to lose.
He had not counted on Abby weaving her spell around his tired heart, only to threaten to leave him behind as so many others already had by dying too soon. If he could draw her back through sheer force of will, then that was what he would do. He would not lose her. The time might come when he would have to give her up, but he would not lose her like this.
“Come on, sweetheart,” he coaxed. “You’ve been sleeping entirely too long now. I think you’re just hiding out, because you don’t want to hear what I have to say about this fool stunt you pulled, but it’s time to wake up and face the music. You know perfectly well that running off was a crazy thing to do, no matter how provoked you were.”
Abby moved restlessly, almost as if the accusation had her squirming.
“It’s true,” he said, pressing his point. “Just look at the trouble you managed to get yourself into.”
* * *
“Come on, sweetheart.... Wake up and face the music.... Just look at the trouble you managed to get yourself into.”
Abigail heard the words as if from a great distance, but the arrogant demand with its edge of impatience irritated her. Face the music? What did that mean? And what was this trouble she was being blamed for? She’d merely wanted to have one incredible adventure, to share a few moments of high drama with a man she had been planning to marry.
She had the sense, though, that Riley—or was it this Earl of Wilton?—was angry with her. And there was no doubt at all that he was deliberately taunting her. As soon as her head felt a little better, she would tell him exactly how she felt about that. Maybe she would even ignore this throbbing in her head and tell him now, while her temper was still riled.
She opened her eyes and dared a peek. To her dismay, her world suddenly seemed to spin wildly, landing her in yet another unfamiliar place. This clearly wasn’t Arizona or Mexico or even the pleasant English countryside, she decided with a strange sense of weary acceptance as she stared at a distant shoreline dotted with palm trees and a few ramshackle buildings. What the devil had she gone and gotten herself into now? Perhaps this was the trouble to which Riley had referred.
In fact, if her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her, she was not only on board a ship, but she was about to be set upon by a band of pirates. She shook her head to clear it, then looked again. Definitely pirates.
Now where the dickens had they come from? she wondered. Her head throbbed unmercifully. It was difficult to think clearly with that constant pounding going on. Where was she this time? Surely not the Arizona desert. She had a vague recollection of longing desperately for adventure, maybe even trying to make her own, but pirates? They most definitely had not been part of any scheme she could recall.
Or were they? She racked her brain, searching for a memory of some reference to such devils of the high seas. It seemed the Earl of Wilton had said something about pirates, but surely he had only been teasing her. Surely he wouldn’t have tossed her aboard one of his ships and allowed it to be beset by pirates just to teach her a lesson. If that wasn’t it, though, then how could she account for her present circumstances?
Maybe she’d been mistaken, she decided hopefully. Perhaps it had been an illusion. Or another one of those peculiar nightmares. Her head did seem to be throbbing quite intensely, worse by the minute, in fact. Perhaps that was the cause of this odd vision she’d had. She blinked and cautiously glanced around again, only to let out a little moan of dismay at what she saw. It was far more disastrous than she’d thought.
These were definitely pirates, with ragged clothes, swaggering walks and a lascivious gleam in their eyes that made her tremble with fear. Above her a Jolly Roger flew from a ship’s mast. She tested the floor beneath her feet and discovered old wood planking, not the plush carpet she was used
