Swept Away by Phoebe Conn Read Free Book Online Page B

her cousin or join her mother. Finally she entered Lydia’s room. “Mother?” she called out hesitantly. “I’m not certain what we saw anymore, but Raven is not the type a woman can manipulate. He’s very much his own man.”
    “Every man can be manipulated by a clever woman, every last one!” Lydia insisted as she yanked the bell pull to summon her maid. “Eden is exactly like her mother. Exactly, and if her willfulness has spoiled your chances to marry Raven Blade, I’ll send her home and I won’t mourn if she doesn’t survive the voyage. Now go to bed. You’ve fittings for new gowns tomorrow and I won’t have you going out looking pale and drawn.”
    When Stephanie reached her room, she was shocked to find Eden waiting for her, but she didn’t waste a moment before venting the anger her mother had just fostered. “I had believed you to be so enamored of Alex I didn’t think you had even noticed Raven. If you have, forget it, because I won’t let you have him.”
    Eden had meant to reassure Stephanie that she had no such intention, but she was not inspired to respond to her cousin’s vicious challenge with such a courtesy. “You don’t own Raven Blade,” she replied proudly, “and you never will.” With a satisfied smile, she left her cousin to smolder in a tormenting mixture of jealousy and dismay.

Chapter Three
    July 1863
    Bound for the port, Raven left their townhouse before Alex was awake the next morning. Because he knew neither of them would be in any mood to be entertained the rest of the week, if ever, he had left the message he planned to stay on board the Jamaican Wind several nights while he made the final arrangements for the cargo they would be carrying home.
    “Home,” he recalled fondly, for indeed Jamaica was home to him. He had never felt welcome in London despite his numerous trips there. The city was not only terribly overcrowded but filthy as well, and now that the underground railway was being constructed, there seemed to be twice as much noise and dirt. All in all, he considered it a horrid place, one he would avoid whenever possible in the future.
    He was far more comfortable among the colorful folk who inhabited the docks, and in the rowdy taverns that catered to sailors’ tastes, than he was being entertained by Alex’s elegant circle of friends. He could laugh out loud in a tavern, swat the barmaids on the fanny, and down ale until he passed out if he wished. He could relax completely and be himself instead of the reserved gentleman London society required him to be.
    Alex knew how he felt and had taken him to the clubs where gentlemen gambled until dawn, but while the atmosphere was reasonably relaxed at such places, he had not been even remotely tempted to return on his own. He was not averse to an occasional game of cards, nor to playing for high stakes. He simply preferred the company of friends he respected to that of men who maintained their wealth by extorting high rents from the impoverished tenants who populated their estates. They were parasites in his view: living off the sweat of others while the most strenuous labor they ever did was to shuffle a deck of cards. Surely that was no way for any self-respecting man to live no matter how many titles he could claim.
    Raven had been born into a hostile world where even a child had to work from dawn to dusk in order to survive. Alex might have rescued him from that wretched environment, but Raven had never forgotten it. He considered men who pursued no useful work, or philanthropic endeavor either, to be insufferably weak and avoided them whenever possible. The problem was, he had been unable to do so for the last few weeks, and as a result, he was eager to return to his ship, where he felt completely at home and where there would be work for him to do that mattered.
    He whistled as he strode up the gangplank, and then broke into a wide grin when the mate came running to meet him. “I’m pleased to see you’ve