Kit Black by Monica Danetiu-Pana Read Free Book Online Page B

his money on the illegal slave trade. I assume you noticed his servants. Did you notice the keeping huts?”
    â€œThey’re well treated.” I flushed with guilt. I knew he was right, but I was too ashamed and caught up in my change of luck. I just threw any doubts to the back of my mind.
    Roger sighed. “Such a nuisance, lass, these high ideals. I wish you well on the race.”
    â€œYou’ll be with us, won’t you?”
    â€œAye. I’ll be with you, lass. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
    ***
    I shall not give all the details of the race. It was close. The wind was favorable, and Terry, for all his lack of stature and steel, has a mind like no other for finding a good course. We came through every storm with our sails intact and met no Navy frigates, which had been my greatest fear. Laffite had a run in with some Spaniards. I met him with days to spare.
    We danced on the decks, a wild jig of triumph. Terry and I howled with laughter, dousing each other with champagne. Roger just stood by and smiled at us, a benevolent father.
    If Laffite was disappointed, he didn’t show it. He lifted me up and twirled me in a circle, telling me that I was as fine a Captain as any he’d ever had.
    â€œI have an invitation to a ball in Paris in two days time. I want you to accompany me,” he said as he placed me down.
    A ball. Me at a ball? My heart started to race.
    â€œIt’s being given by the Marquis de Balzaque. I knew his sons when I was a young man in Marseilles. The toast of Parisian society will be there.”
    â€œWould we be welcome?”
    â€œWe’ll be most welcome. Rogues, such as us, are celebrated in society. And I am making a grand name for myself. The funny thing is that the Marquis de Balzaque’s younger son is a Navy man. But I’m sure he will be quite civilized. He always has been before.”
    â€œIf you want to take me, I’d be honored, Captain.”
    â€œJean will do, my dear.”
    I was fitted with a dress at a Parisian couture house a day later. It was a rushed affair, but I could not imagine anything turning out more beautiful. I looked at myself in the ice blue satin gown, my hair drawn up into a love knot on my head with tendrils of hair escaping in wisps. The hairdresser had surrounded the love knot with tiny roses. She said it was a shame about my tanned skin. A lady’s skin should be pale as cream. She wondered how I had become so brown. Just to shock her, I told her that it was hot on the ship, and that sometimes I took my shirt off and went naked like the men. It was true. They barely noticed any more.
    I wished that Armand could see me like this. What would he think? Would his heart pound wildly as it had that day when we said goodbye? I was to find out sooner than I thought.
    ***
    I will never forget looking up from a sip of my champagne, my gaze locking with a pair of jade green eyes that stared at me from across the crowded room. It was him. Armand. Even in my dreams he had not looked this good, this vital, graceful and overwhelmingly masculine. He was not dressed in his Navy uniform. He wore civilian formal wear like Jean and the other men, and though he should have appeared plain and unadorned, the cut of his clothes made him seem far more desirable and elegant than anyone else in the room. I think he was the only man, other than Jean, who did not sport powder or a wig.
    Instead of shiny colored satin and tumbles of lace, he wore a severely tailored coat of deep midnight blue velvet and a cream silk shirt with high collar and cravat. His shirt ruffles were plain below the wide cuffs of his coat, his breeches black. His only bow to fashion was his vest made of black and silver brocade. He wore little in the way of jewellery, just a diamond stickpin, and a signet ring on his left hand. His face was every bit as handsome, even more so since he had entered his thirties. He was paler than he had been in Ajaccio,