Becca The Outlaw's Sea Battle, Part 6 [short story, novel excerpt, chapter excerpt] by Neale Sourna
England; early 1690s
They'd been spotted, together, in port, shopping, of all things. They were gone by now, of course, or would be by the time he or any men he trusted could arrive to retrieve her, and yet John Eccleston, the Baron Ravenspurn, Third Earl of Northington, and newly made Duke of Hampshire, smiled, as he often did in his fashion, when he knew the goal of a fine and hard-won campaign would soon be his.
Supposed "unattainable" and "unassailable" goals were the best, for they garnered the greater reward, both personally and careerwise, whether in masculine war or at power-filled, subtle royal court.
Eccleston scowled, she'd run from engagement with him, and he'd found her and carried her himself from the isolated hunting lodge, in that great cape of Irish wool. He'd not noticed it then, a man's cape, he'd been so relieved to have found her well and unharmed, sighing in her sleep; for her popish pirate, no doubt.
The rogue Aidan O'Rourke had her, all right, that gentleman widower and foul Catholic loyalist turned pirate had walked up to her parent's home and had had a whiskey or two with a groom, as he'd seduced information from the man in easy conversation, after boldly raiding royal merchant ships and hiding in the cove nearby. And then, he'd sailed out of reach of Eccleston's gunfire, sailed with the outgoing tide, with her, after she'd sprinted....http://www.romantic4ever.com/romantic-fiction/becca-06.html
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