Captive Embraces by Fern Michaels Read Free Book Online

housekeeping duties and take the wheel from Jacobus.”
    On deck, the wheel in her grip, Sirena felt as though she had taken a grip on life. She was at peace. A feeling which had eluded her for too many months. A feeling she relished and accepted.
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    Lashing rain beat against the tall, narrow windows of the expansive, gray stone building across the canal from The Hague. For once Caleb van der Rhys took no notice of the harsh weather which cursed Holland. Usually, his mood would blacken with the low, scudding clouds and his thoughts would invariably return to the sun-filled days of the East Indies. He detested this country, the school he attended, and the boredom of his existence. The regimentation of his days was a far cry from the excitement and danger he had experienced at sea when he served as cabin boy to Sirena van der Rhys, his stepmother. In those days she had been known as the Sea Siren and he had fought beside her as she wreaked her revenge on those who had made her life a living hell. He had been a badly misused cabin boy, indentured from ship to ship, when she had found him and had made him her friend.
    Because of Sirena he had been reunited with his father, who had thought him dead for many years. Regan was everything a young man could hope for in a father and Sirena, who had met her lusty match in Regan and married him, was more than a young man could wish for in a stepmother.
    Caleb stood before the tall looking glass, smoothed his dark hair and straightened his silky, white cravat. He nervously brushed minuscule specks of dust from the sleeve of his jacket and stood on one foot, rubbing the toe of a polished boot against the back of his other leg. Satisfied that the tips of his boots were dazzling and his cravat was properly tied, he brought himself to full height and purposely restrained himself from running headlong down the corridors to the austere front parlor to greet Regan.
    Caleb had been wrestling with Latin when the dormitory messenger had interrupted his studies and relayed the information that Mynheer van der Rhys was awaiting him downstairs. In the midst of his excitement, Caleb held a single wish in his heart; that Regan had come to take him out of school and return with him to Java. Mingled with that hope was the certainty that Regan would view him as a full-grown man and accept him as such. Caleb glanced once again in the mirror and straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin. There was no denying that he was no longer the boy Regan had left behind in Holland. Caleb’s features had matured. The soft, boyish roundness had disappeared from his jaw and he had been shaving regularly for more than six months now. His coat fit snugly around his broad shoulders and emphasized his muscular build. In a few months he would be eighteen, surely old enough to make his own way in the world and take his place as a man among men.
    He bounded down the steps three at a time and only had a second to tighten his lips over an ebullient whoop of joy.
    Caleb walked into the sparsely furnished parlor where visitors were admitted. His dark eyes lighted at the sight of his father, then immediately darkened to a scowl. “Sirena isn’t with you?” he asked accusingly.
    â€œNo,” Regan answered, his voice little more than a deep growl. “I told you in my letter not to expect her. Why do you torture yourself with the thought that she would come here? Look at you!” Regan said jovially, trying to distract Caleb from his thoughts, “I left a boy and now I return to find a man!”
    Caleb stood next to his father at eye level, a replica of his father except for his dark hair. “I’m pleased you accept me as a man. Then you understand my feelings and have come to take me out of school.”
    â€œNo, Caleb, that is not my intention,” Regan answered with a deep sigh. Why did everything have to come to an opposition of wills? Caleb might be his own son, yet he was more