Read Online I Married the Duke by Katharine Ashe - Free Book Online

it, the ruby ring had dangled from its modest ribbon where the blanket gaped at her breast as though it weren’t worth five hundred guineas and she had no cause to hide it. Only the sight of that ring, and some remnant of gentlemanly honor his father and the Royal Navy had drummed into him, had restrained him from doing as he imagined.
    She claimed she did not belong to any man. Except for her saucy tongue, she responded to his decidedly ungentlemanly teasing as predictably as any virginal governess.
    But that ring told another story. Unlike his rakish cousin the Earl of Bedwyr, however, Luc preferred his women unentangled. Also, not shivering. Or tinged blue.
    He climbed the companionway to the main deck. The rain had let up while he’d been below fantasizing about undressing a woman while she sat before him. Wind sheared off the ocean to port cold and fresh. Within two days they would make harbor at Saint-Nazaire and his passenger would set off toward the castle, his castle to which he himself had not been in many months but where his brother, Christos, and his friend, Reiner of Sensaire, were now in residence.
    She was going to his house —his chateau that had come to him from his mother’s family, the mother who abandoned her young sons upon the sudden death of her husband, to then cast herself into the hands of revolutionaries in her home country. Now, a beautiful little English governess had sought him out to take her there so she could work for his friend.
    What were the odds? Luc wasn’t much of a wagering man, but he suspected they were pretty damn slim.
    The sea spread out around him, and the solid boards of his ship and the bleached sails above were peace. With a turn of his head he could see in every direction. He passed the remainder of the night as he usually did, watching the stars. Though he would have liked his hands around the ship’s wheel, he had drunk too much brandy, and while seven months ago that wouldn’t have much affected his ability to steer his vessel, he wasn’t so much of a fool that he believed he could steer both foxed and one-eyed.
    A pirate . He laughed. The One-Eyed Captain they would have called him if he had remained in the navy. Now when he returned to London he would be the One-Eyed Heir. And someday, perhaps, the One-Eyed Duke.
    That one-eyed duke would require an heir.
    He tried to imagine the society debutantes he had been introduced to in his youth before he escaped to war. The only face he could conjure was hers. Even pale and shivering, she was stunning. And she was not as disinterested in the company of a man as she said. Brandy had revealed a longing in her eyes that had gone straight to his groin.
    He didn’t need that sort of trouble. There would be women to spare in Saint-Nazaire who could satisfy his needs quite satisfactorily.
    If he could endure two more days of not touching her.
    Her hair bound up beneath that linen was driving him mad. Each time he’d glimpsed her across deck he nearly ordered her locked in the bilge so he wouldn’t be tempted to accost her and strip that damn turban off. She had to know that binding any part of her tightly away from sight made her all the more tempting. Especially that hair.
    It was glorious. Golden-red. The linen had slipped while she drank his brandy, and a crest of luxurious color showed above her brow. Like spun copper. He’d drunk with her to avoid snatching that turban away and seeing all of it. Then he had thrown her into his bed, despite her protests. That he had removed himself from the bedchamber was a miracle he was still too foxed to fathom.
    He reached up and pressed his fingertips into his right eye. A spark flashed, a tiny thread of lightning across the black, like his memories, fleeting yet devastating.
    As the first stirrings of gray crept onto the horizon, Luc got to his feet and—carefully, as he did everything now—made his way to the companionway and below. The dawn crew had stowed their hammocks, and