How To Please a Pirate (5 page)

“And since I’m bound by my vow of celibacy,
I’m not likely to produce one now, am I?” his uncle said with a
rueful expression. “The Crown is counting on that and is planning
to let the Drake barony become extinct. Our Protestant king and his
cronies will do all they can to make sure Catholic nobility
declines.”

“And for Dragon Caern Castle to fall back
into the Crown’s keeping,” Gabriel finished his uncle’s thought.
Strange that nothing had been said to him about the disposition of
the title when the King issued his pardon.

It certainly put this morning’s attack on him
in a new light.

Father Eustace clapped his hands together.
“But now that Gabriel is back, the castle will remain in Drake
hands.”

“Dragon Caern hasn’t suffered under your
rule, Uncle,” Gabriel said. “I’ve never seen the fields so green or
the crofters so prosperous-looking.”

“For that, you must thank Mistress
Jacquelyn,” his uncle said. “When Lady Helen died, she stepped into
the breach when our need was greatest.”

Gabriel cast Miss Jack a quick assessing
glance. A likely lad in a pinch, a worthy chatelaine and a damned
good kisser. Evidently a woman of many talents. He just wished
she’d quit scowling at him.

“I’ve never been one for administration,” his
uncle admitted.

“You were never one for prayer either as I
recall,” Gabe said.

“No, but when need arises . . . one comes to
it eventually,” Uncle Eustace said with a self-deprecating shrug.
“And it seems my prayer has been effective. Yet, we are not quite
safe. The Crown has placed certain conditions upon us.”

“What else is necessary?” Jacquelyn
asked.

“In order to assure that the Drake line will
continue, Gabriel will have to wed, bed
and
produce a male
heir—”

“I’ve no wish to wed,” Gabe said.

“Passing strange, I would have said you liked
women,” Jacquelyn all but purred at him. Her velveted claws didn’t
fool him one bit. She’d scratch him blind if she could.

“I like women fine, but I don’t care to be
trapped by one.”

“Ah! I see.” Her eyes darkened to gun-metal
gray. “As long as you do the trapping, it’s all well and good.”

“Hold a moment, children!” Uncle Eustace
interrupted, his gaze darting from one to the other, not missing
the smoldering animosity between them for a moment. “I’m trying to
impress something important on the pair of you. The long and the
short of it is this. If there’s no heir, Dragon Caern will be
forfeit to the Crown. Either a Drake continues the lineage or the
title will be held extinct.”

The sizzle went out of Jacquelyn’s eyes at
that dire prospect. “We can’t let that happen.”

“Passing strange,” Gabe taunted. “I would
have said you had little liking for Drakes or their lineage.”

“Is that the best you can do?” She arched a
russet brow at him. “Pity your wit isn’t as sharp as your
blade.”

“Alas, Mistress!” Gabriel gave her a sardonic
bow. “Nothing is as sharp as your tongue.”

“Would the two of you quit pricking each
other? Our situation is dire enough,” Uncle Eustace said. “Bald as
an egg, here it is. Gabriel, you must wed, man. It’s our only hope
of retaining this little patch of Cornwall for the people of Dragon
Caern.”

At that moment, five unidentifiable
creatures, stair-stepped in height and covered with mud, ran
screaming through the keep and up the stone steps with the
long-suffering Mrs. Beadle huffing after them.

Gabriel had seen Carib tribesmen once, a
fierce race of cannibals on one of the islands. Those primitive
people had nothing on the little savages that just streamed past
him. A long wail, a cry of the damned if ever he’d heard one,
wafted in an open window.

Jacquelyn’s lips went white. She looked more
flummoxed than when he slashed the first button from her boy’s
disguise.

“Mrs. B., where is the girls’ tutor?” she
asked.

“Trussed up in the pigsty and promising to
resign,” the housekeeper said. “Honestly, Mistress, you must do
something. That’s the third tutor in as many months.”

Mrs. Beadle turned and hefted herself up the
stone stairs after the fleeing barbarians.

“What on God’s earth were those?” Gabriel
demanded.

Jacquelyn turned her grey gaze on him. “Your
brother left no son to hold the keep, just as I told you.” She
pointed after the retreating tribe. “Those are your nieces.”

“Girls?”

“Aye, Gabriel, generally speaking nieces have
to be girls,” his uncle supplied unhelpfully.

“Girls,” Mistress Jack affirmed. “Girls
who’ve lost both their parents and will lose each other if Dragon
Caern is forfeit to the Crown. They’ll be wards of the King,
separated and fostered out to God knows where. Imagine five pawns
of noble blood for the Crown to use. The King will marry them off
one by one to secure this alliance or repay that favor—”

“He’d have to bathe them first,” Gabriel said
uncharitably. He had enough trouble understanding women. Girls were
another hornets’ nest altogether.

“Perhaps you’d do well to concentrate on the
problem at hand.” Jacquelyn folded her arms over her chest and
narrowed her eyes at him. “You must fight to hold Dragon Caern. You
must wed and sire an heir, my lord. Otherwise your nieces and all
the folk of the Caern will suffer. Now, will you honor your
responsibilities or will you not?”

Gabriel had led his crew in countless
skirmishes, but this was a fight with rules he didn’t understand.
In truth, he’d never felt more like hoisting all his canvas and
running before the wind. But when Miss Wren looked at him as if
he’d been weighed in the balance and found sadly wanting, he itched
to prove her wrong.

“I’ve never yet run from a fight.”

“I’ll take that as
consent
, my lord,”
Jacquelyn said with a dangerous glint in her eye. “Very well, to
business, then. Do you have a woman in mind to wed?”

“Mistress Wren, I’ve been at sea—“

“Yes, and I’ll try to make sure your time as
a . . . a mariner doesn’t prove a sticking point with your
prospective bride. Given your recent behavior, I doubt you have any
idea of the proper way to woo a woman.”

“What makes you say that, Jacquelyn?” Uncle
Eustace asked.

Her mouth flew open in a small ‘oh.’ Gabriel
smiled. She’d been close to accusing him of manhandling her, but
was finally caught in her own net. She couldn’t denounce his
boorish behavior without admitting her own unwise caper as a
boy.

“She’s right, Uncle. I’ve been absent from
polite society for a number of years.” Gabriel made her an awkward
bow for Eustace’s benefit. “Perhaps, Mistress Wren, you’d be kind
enough to teach me the subtleties of courtly love.”

He couldn’t think of a better way to continue
his campaign to meddle with the bothersome wench.

“It would be my pleasure to remind you of
your forgotten manners.” She glared at him. “But I suspect that is
a task for which we have insufficient time. When would you like to
leave for London?”

“London?”

“All the finest folk flock to London for the
marriage season.” She cocked her head at him as if he were a dunce
not to know it. “Even with a few rough edges, a man with title and
lands will find a wife of good family there easily enough.”

“No, not London,” Gabriel protested. “I mean,
I’ve just returned home. I’ve no wish to leave Dragon Caern so
soon.”

The less said about his real reason for
avoiding the city, the better.

“Very well, but that narrows your choices
considerably, my lord.” She turned to go. “Tomorrow I’ll start the
process of finding a suitable wife for you from the daughters of
the regional nobility.”

“And my lessons in wooing as well,” he
reminded her, tossing out the challenge as if it were a thrown
gauntlet. “Don’t be forgetting that.”

Miss Wren shot him a brittle smile. “Never
fear, Lord Drake. I shall look forward to teaching you a
lesson.”

“You may find me a daunting pupil.”

“And me a demanding teacher.”

Aye, lass. I certainly hope so.
Gabriel planned to have her far past demanding. He intended to see
her beg.

“I trust you’re capable of getting the heir
Dragon Caern needs,” she said with daggers in her voice. From the
corner by the wine decanter, Eustace made a noise of surprise, like
a pig bladder balloon deflating suddenly. Then the priest hid his
urge to laugh with a quick drink. “Pressure can do strange things
to a man, I’m told.”

Gabriel swallowed his shock at her slight on
his manhood. By Thunder, he should have bent her over that boulder
after all, the Code be damned.

“I’ll try to find a woman who pleases you,
but no matter what, the needs of the estate must come first.” She
smiled at him sweetly, but he wasn’t fooled for a moment. Miss Wren
would happily saddle him with the first horse-faced daughter of a
pig-farmer she could find.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, Your Lordship, I
believe Mrs. Beadle could use a hand.” Mistress Jacquelyn dropped a
quick curtsey and started up the stairs in the direction of his
shrieking nieces.

“Don’t worry, Lord Drake. I’ll see you wed by
the end of next month,” she called down to him. “You have my word
upon it.”

Gabriel watched her mount the stairs,
temporarily robbed of the power of speech. His uncle pressed a
glass of wine into his hand.

“She’s an exceptional fine woman, our
Mistress Wren, but strong-minded as a mule,” Uncle Eustace said. “I
like my women more biddable—I mean, I did when I was allowed to
like women, you understand. Make no mistake. Jacquelyn will do
exactly as she says. She’ll see you wed even if she has to marry
you herself.”

“Well, here’s hoping it doesn’t come to
that,” Gabriel said, swallowing hard.

He still fully intended to meddle with the
little vixen, if only to put to rest her snide comment about
whether he was capable of getting an heir. There were ways a man
could torment a woman with pleasure before he took her, ways to
reduce the wench to helpless pleading. It would do the indomitable
Miss Wren good to be humbled before she fell.

And he was just the man to do it. She’d thank
him in the end. He’d make sure of that. His cock twitched at the
bare thought of subduing her.

But there could be nothing more between them.
Miss Jack had a will of tempered steel. Like his uncle, he
preferred his women on the softer side.

“No, I don’t think she’ll do,” Gabriel
said.

“Amen to that, nephew. Of course, you
couldn’t marry Miss Wren in any case,” Eustace said. “Just to make
things more difficult for us, the missive from the royal court
stipulates a well-born wife in order to satisfy the Crown and,
bless her heart, Miss Jack has no idea who her sire is. So our
Jacquelyn is out of the running.”

Uncle Eustace clinked the rim of his drink
with Gabe’s and knocked back the contents in one long swallow.

“Good thing, too,” his uncle said. “The pair
of you would kill each other within a fortnight.”

Mid-morning sunlight streamed through the
green glass windows of the solar. The shimmering threads in the
ancient tapestry on the far wall fairly vibrated with color.
Ordinarily, Jacquelyn loved this bright room. Now, she prowled its
perimeter, stopping every third circuit to tap her toe with
impatience.

“Trust a bloody pirate to sleep away the day
when there’s serious work to be done,” she grumbled.

The new Lord Drake and his nefarious friend
Meriwether had gotten roaring drunk after supper. The pair had
every soul in the castle quaking in their beds, certain of
impending mayhem. Jacquelyn kept one ear cocked for the rasp of
swords or splintering furniture if the debauch turned violent.

Instead she was treated to a concert of
raucous singing. Once, Jacquelyn even thought she heard Father
Eustace’s quavering tone join in on the fifth chorus of a
particularly ribald song, but she dismissed it as the fancies of an
over-wrought mind.

Gabriel Drake had her turning mental
cartwheels.

The fate of the girls—indeed everyone at
Dragon Caern—was now in the hands of a pirate. How was she to
manage a fellow who willingly turned his back on the civilized
world? And this man had not only stooped to piracy, he’d led a pack
of the mad seadogs.

For once, she wished she had her mother’s
ability to effortlessly bend a man to her will. A sought-after
courtesan, Isabella Wren had been a renowned beauty, a regular bird
of paradise. Even though she’d lost her protector years ago and
hadn’t bothered to acquire a new one, Jacquelyn’s mother was still
in demand at the most decadently fashionable salons. In the
rarified air of that not-quite-respectable world, her stock in
trade was now sparkling wit. When Isabella Wren entered a room, she
claimed the space by right. Moving with remembered grace, she drew
all men in the room into her wake, panting to do her bidding. The
wags who wrote for the London tabloids claimed she should have been
named Swan instead of Wren.

But Jacquelyn was more like their dowdy
surname, plucky and hardy assuredly, but not the sort of woman men
fell over themselves to please. Jacquelyn sank into one of the
heavy Tudor chairs, its oak now blackened with age. She sighed.

Her mother would know what to do with a
pirate.

The scrape of a booted foot on the threshold
brought her chin up. Gabriel Drake paused and leaned on the
doorjamb, his broad shoulders filling the opening. He folded his
arms over his chest and cast her a sideways glance. Barring his
tousled hair and the shadow of a beard darkening his unshaven jaw,
the Lord of Dragon Caern looked no worse for his late-night
carouse.

By rights, he should be bleary-eyed and
staggering,
Jacquelyn thought crossly.
Perhaps the Devil
does look after his own.