The Rogue Pirate’s Bride by Shana Galen Read Free Book Online Page A

heading for the cutters ferrying sailors to and from the ships in the harbor.
    She couldn’t wait to tell her father what she’d seen on the Shadow . Now he’d have a reason to pursue and destroy the pirate ship. Despite her throbbing knee, her battered hands, and a dull headache, she smiled.
    ***
    “I don’t care if the rogue planned to assassinate the King!” Admiral Russell boomed, hands cutting the air in front of Raeven. “I don’t care if the blackguard plotted to kidnap the Regent—though we might all be better off if he did,” he muttered. “It’s no excuse for your reckless behavior. Your behavior is impulsive, undisciplined, unrestrained, un…” He gestured violently, face red, too angry to form the words.
    Raeven pursed her lips and waited. “Unacceptable?” she ventured.
    “Damn it, girl!” He slammed a fist down on the cherrywood desk in his cabin, sending a sextant crashing to the floor and several maps flying into the air like startled seagulls. From behind the admiral, Percy gave her a pained look. She knew what he was thinking: why did she try to help? Why didn’t she keep her mouth shut? There was no reasoning with her father when he was in this state. In her opinion, there was never any reasoning with him.
    It had taken her three hours to return to the Regal , and as she’d feared, in the five or six hours she’d been away, her absence had been noted. From her chair on the opposite side of the desk, she could just see the face of her father’s little clock. Devil take it, but he’d been railing for almost thirty minutes.
    He shoved his palms down hard on the desk and leaned over until his face was level with hers. “Do you find this tedious, girl? Am I keeping you from another, more pressing engagement?”
    “No, but—”
    “Good, because you and Mr. Williams will be busy swabbing the decks and emptying the buckets all day.”
    Percy closed his eyes and shuddered. It wasn’t the first time her actions had caused him grief. But she’d find a way to make it up to him. Just as soon as she had Cutlass.
    “Fine, but—”
    “Fine? Fine? ” He was about to speak again, but before he could form the words, he erupted into a storm of hacking coughs. It was three or four minutes before he recovered, and drawing the handkerchief from his purpling face, he wheezed, “You don’t feel even a moment’s remorse. Do you comprehend the trouble you might have gotten into? The pirate could have raped you, girl! Worse, he could have decided to have you keelhauled or flogged or—” He dissolved into another coughing spell.
    “No, he couldn’t. He was too eager to be underway,” Raeven said, taking advantage of her father’s incapacitation.
    “Oh, well that’s even better! At this moment you could be somewhere in the middle of the Channel with no one but Mr. Williams the wiser. That blackguard could sell you into slavery or take you to—”
    “Sir.”
    But he was still listing all the horrors that might have happened. Horrors of which she was well aware. Horrors she had escaped. Easily escaped, at that.
    “Sir… Father !”
    “What?” He stared at her, arms locked at his sides. “What have you to say for yourself?”
    “He’s getting away.”
    Behind her father, Percy closed his eyes and sighed heavily, like a man doomed to the gallows and resigned to his fate. Her father, obviously similarly exasperated, sat heavily in his chair. “Since we’re not chasing the rogue, dear daughter, he can’t be getting away.” He dabbed at his forehead with the handkerchief.
    “But that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” Now she stood and braced her hands on his desk. “We should be chasing him. He has arms and medicines for Spain to use against us.”
    “That may be.”
    “ May be? I’m telling you what I saw with my own two eyes!”
    “And it’s valuable intelligence. I will grant you that, though the manner in which it was obtained is completely un—”
    “—acceptable.