CHAPTER THREE

      JAMES WRITHED RESTLESSLY beneath cool linens.

      He was drowning—dragged beneath black water, sucked into frigid numbness. Wood splintered. Cracked. A timber shot from the water, and he made a desperate lunge. Grabbed hold.

      Wood turned to flesh beneath his hands. Cold became hot. Water became woman. The curling waves unraveled, tumbling, becoming hair like black walnut silk in his hands. Her body wrapped around him. Engulfed him. He gasped, tasting the wild sea on her skin.

      From somewhere far away, sultry voices pierced his dream. “...and have you try to bed him while he’s yet unconscious? Absolutely not.”

      “You offend me grievously, Katherine. I’m quite through with affairs. Tedious things. Besides, he could be anyone.”

      The voices threatened to tear him away. He strained to keep the woman alive, wanting. Needing. But she began to fade, slipping away.

      The voices broke through, stronger now. “For the moment, Philomena, he is our captive.”

      “Honestly, he hardly warrants such status.” A door closed. Footsteps tapped against wood. He awoke as if fighting the churning sea.

      “Nor does he warrant any other. Help me put this shirt on him before he awakes.”

      He opened his eyes to a sky-blue ceiling edged with gold scrollwork. His gaze swept over an ornate dressing table with an oblong looking glass, two armchairs upholstered in sapphire velvet, a chest of drawers inlaid with mother-of-pearl. He turned his head.

      A woman stood by the bed with a maroon tunic in her hands. Silken walnut waves fell to her hips from beneath a length of ochre cloth tied around her head in a makeshift turban shot through with shimmering threads. High cheekbones. Straight, finely sculpted nose. Statuesque profile, silhouetted perfectly by the light from a small bank of windows he recognized as belonging to a ship.

      He was on board a vessel. In the captain’s cabin.

      “Katherine. Look.”

      Her face snapped toward him. His gaze locked with glittering topaz eyes, and his pulse leaped. He struggled to think. To remember. He tried to lick his lips, but his mouth was powder dry.

      Someone else pushed in next to him—another beauty, this one with sable curls and wide, blue eyes. He felt a hand beneath his head, lifting, and a glass against his lips. Cool water slid over his tongue and he tried to gulp, but the blasted woman pulled the glass away.

      “Not so quickly,” she purred, and the glass returned. “Careful, now. Just a bit.”

      He sipped, then sipped again before she pulled the glass away.

      “More.” His voice croaked. The vessel rolled and creaked, lolling with the waves. And suddenly, he remembered. A storm. A wreck. Days upon days adrift at sea.

      A red flag with a yellow arm.

      “You speak English,” the bewitching one said. He watched her mouth move, could taste those sumptuous lips as if she’d been the woman in his dream.

      “Aye.” He tore his gaze away, only to have it veer to her breasts, covered only in the richly colored hues of Ottoman textiles draping her body. A blue jacket threaded with silver hung past her hips over a knee-length chemise, covering lighter blue, flowing trousers. A red sash tied around her waist held a gleaming cutlass.

      The image of her flesh burned in his mind as sure as if she’d laid herself bare.

      “You are a subject of the Crown?” she demanded.

      “Aye.” Beneath the covers, the idiot between his legs pulsed against soft linen, stubbornly holding on to the dream. He was naked. And chained, he realized when he tried to reach for the glass. Heavy links clanked against the bed, and iron cuffs banded his wrists. “Is this necessary?” he rasped.

      “I want to know who you are,” she said. “Your name. Where you’re from. Were you aboard a ship?”

      “Let him drink again,” the other one said, offering the glass once more. She eyed him curiously as he sipped. “There will be broth coming, and when you’re ready, some bread to sop it with.”

      The news made his stomach rumble. If the prospect of such a meager meal piqued his hunger, no doubt he’d been adrift a very long time. Already the idea of food began to tame the desire that gripped him.

      His name. His origin. Of course. His mind churned as if racing through mud, reaching for a false identity. “Thomas Barclay.” The lie fell roughly across his tongue. “I was aboard the man-o’-war Henry’s Cross. Went down—” he swallowed, his mouth already dry again “—northwest of Gibraltar. Near Cadiz.” That last, at least, was true.

      “When?”

      “April 10.”

      “Four days ago,” she said to her companion. “The current must have pulled him through the strait.”

      “Where are we?” he managed.

      “Anchored east of Gibraltar, awaiting conditions for passage west through the strait. You are aboard the brig Possession, and I am—”

      “Corsair Kate.” The irony of the situation snuck through the mental fog. Three years of quietly subverting orders to put an end to what the admirals considered her questionable seafaring activities, and now here he was. All that was left was to inform her that her ship was now the property of the Crown and declare victory.

      Those topaz eyes narrowed, and those lips curved ever so slightly. “You may call me Captain Kinloch,” she bit out in a voice both sultry and liquid. Fresh desire surged through him.

      This lust was unacceptable. He needed to regain control, but he was so weak he couldn’t lift his head—at least, not the one that knew better than to dally with the likes of Corsair Kate, who—since her father’s death six months ago—was also countess of the Scottish seat of Dunscore.

      The lady beside her laughed. “It’s a grand thing to have earned a pseudonym of such notoriety, Katherine. I rather think you should sanction its use.” This beautiful companion was most certainly the scandalous young widow Philomena, the countess of Pennington. And somewhere aboard would be the countess’s young niece, Lady India, daughter of the Earl of Cantwell. The tale of their rescue had become legendary: taken captive by Barbary corsairs during an ill-fated voyage to see antiquities in Egypt, and subsequently liberated when the Possession in turn captured the marauding ship.

      Captain Kinloch crossed her arms and pinned him with an assessing look. “The Henry’s Cross,” she said thoughtfully. “Captain James Warre’s command?”

      His own name on her lips caught him by surprise. “Aye.”

      Her lip curled. “You have indeed met with improved circumstances, then. What was your rank?”

      Improved circumstances? “Midshipman.”

      “Midshipman! You’re too old for that.”

      Hell. The real Thomas Barclay, of course, had been just the right age. “I was...demoted. Problems with the captain.” It took all his strength to hold her gaze.

      “With Captain Warre? What kind of problems?” she demanded.

      “Any number of things.” Devil take it, he could barely think.

      “I want details.”

      Damn the woman! “It was...a misunderstanding,” he rasped.

      In a heartbeat she whipped out her cutlass and laid it against his neck, leaning over him. “What kind of misunderstanding?” Those topaz eyes blazed, and the ends of her hair pooled on