The Prize

Virginia shrugged. “I suppose it is fine enough. But you know I adore Sweet Briar—there is no place I would rather be.”

For one moment Charles stared and then he was grim. “I know you are a clever young lady, so may I assume you realize your uncle is selling the plantation?”

She wanted to lean forward and shout that the earl had no right. She didn’t move—she didn’t even dare to breathe—not until her temper had passed. But even then she said, “He has no right.”

“I am afraid he has every right. After all, he is your guardian.”

Virginia sat impossibly stiff and straight. “Mr. King, I have come here to secure a loan, so that I may pay off my father’s debts and save Sweet Briar from sale and even possible dissolution.”

He blinked.

She smiled bleakly at him. “I have helped Father manage the plantation since I was a child. No one knows how to plant and harvest, ship and sell tobacco better than I. I assure you, sir, that I would repay your loan in full, with any necessary interest, as soon as was possible. I—”

“Virginia,” Charles King began, too kindly.

Panic began. She leapt to her feet. “I may be a woman and I may be eighteen but I do know how to run Sweet Briar! No one except my father knows how better than I do! I swear to you, sir, I would repay every penny! How much do I need to pay off Father’s debts?” she cried desperately.

Charles regarded her with pity. “My dear child, his debts amount to a staggering twenty-two thousand dollars.”

The shock was so great that her heart stopped and her knees gave way and somehow, she was sitting down. “No.”

“I have spoken with your uncle’s agent at great length. His name is Roger Blount and I do believe he is on his way back to Britain in the next few days after seeing to your affairs here. Sweet Briar is not a lucrative plantation, Virginia,” he continued gently. “Your father had loss after loss, year after year. Even if I were foolish enough to lend a young and untried girl such a sum of money, there is simply no way you could ever repay me—not from the plantation. I am sorry. Selling Sweet Briar is the only intelligent and viable option.”

She stood, sick in her heart, in her soul. “No. I can’t let it be sold. It’s mine.”

He also stood. “I know how upsetting this is for you. Virginia, I’m not sure why you are not in school, but that is where you should be—although if you wish, I could try to arrange a match for you, a good one, and speak with your uncle about it. That would certainly solve your problems—”

“Unless you think to marry me to a very wealthy man, then that solves nothing,” Virginia cried. “I cannot allow Sweet Briar to be sold! Why won’t you help me? I would pay you back, somehow, one day! I have never broken my word, sir! Why can’t you see that this is all I have left in the entire world?”

He stared. “You have a glorious future, my dear. I promise you that.”

She closed her eyes and trembled violently. Then she looked him in the eye. “Please lend me the funds. If you loved my father, my mother, at all, then please, help me now.”

“I’m sorry. I cannot. I simply cannot lend an impossible sum to a young girl who will never in an entire lifetime pay the bank back.”

She could not give up. “Then lend me the funds personally,” she cried.

He blinked. “Virginia, I do not have that kind of wealth. I am sorry.”

She was in disbelief. He started to say something about a fresh start, and she turned and ran wildly through the bank and outside. There she collapsed against a hitching post, panting hard, shaking wildly, tears of panic and desperation trying to rise. This could not be happening, she thought. There had to be a way!

“Miz Virginia? Are you all right?” Frank had her by the elbow. His tone was concerned and anxious.

She met his black eyes but did not respond—because an idea had struck her so forcefully that she could not respond.

Her uncle was an earl.

Earls were wealthy.

She would borrow the money from him.

“Miz Virginia?” Frank was asking again, this time with a slight pressure on her elbow.

Virginia pulled free of his grasp and stared blindly across the busy street. She did not see a single wagon, carriage or pedestrian.

She had not a doubt that her uncle had the funds to save Sweet Briar. He was her only hope.

But clearly he didn’t wish to save the plantation, or he would have already done so. That meant she had to confront him directly—personally. A letter would not do. The stakes were far too high. Somehow, she would find the means to cross the Atlantic Ocean, even if it meant selling some of her mother’s precious jewelry, and she would meet her uncle and convince him to save Sweet Briar rather than sell it. She’d beg, rationalize, argue, debate, she’d do whatever she had to, even marry a perfect stranger, as long as he agreed to pay off her father’s debts. Virginia realized she had to make plans and quickly, because she was on her way to England.

She knew she could do this. As her father was so fond of saying, where there was a will there was a way.

She’d always had plenty of will. Now she’d find a way.

CHAPTER TWO

May 1, 1812

London, England

WORD HAD SPREAD OF HIS arrival. Cheering throngs lined the banks of the Thames as his ship, the Defiance, proudly edged her way toward the naval docks.

Devlin O’Neill stood square on the quarterdeck, unsmiling, his arms folded across his chest, a tall, powerful figure as still as a statue. For the occasion of this homecoming—if it could be called such—he was in his formal naval attire. A blue jacket with tails, gold epaulets adorning each shoulder, pale white britches and stockings, highly polished shoes. His black felt bicorn was worn with the points facing out, as only admirals had the privilege of wearing the points front to back. His hair, a brilliant gold, was too long and pulled back in a queue. The crowd—men, women and children, agile and infirm, all London’s poorest classes—raced up the riverbanks alongside his ship. Some of the women threw flowers at it.

A hero’s welcome, he thought with no mirth at all. A hero’s welcome for the man one and all called “His Majesty’s pirate.”

He had not set foot in Great Britain for an entire year. He would not be setting foot there now, had he a choice, but it had become impossible to ignore this last summons from the Admiralty, their fourth. His mouth twisted coldly. What he wanted was a steady bed and a pox-free woman who was not a whore, but his needs would have to wait. He did not wonder what the admirals wanted—he had disobeyed so many orders and broken so many rules in the past year that they could be asking for his head on any number of counts. He also knew he would be receiving new orders, which he looked forward to. He never lingered in any port for more than a few days or perhaps a week.

His glance swept over his ship. The Defiance was a thirty-eight-gun frigate known for her speed and her agility, but mostly for her captain’s outrageous and unconventional daring. He was well aware that the sight of his ship caused other ships to turn tail and run, hence his preference for pursuit at night. Now top men were high on both the fore and main masts, reefing sails. Fifty marines in their red coats stood stiffly at attendance, muskets in their arms, as the frigate cruised toward its berth. Other sailors stood with them, eager for the liberty he would soon grant. Forecastle men readied the ship’s huge anchors. All in all, three hundred men stood upon the frigate’s decks. Beyond the docks, where two state-of-the-line three deckers, several sloops, a schooner and two gunships were at birth, the spires and rooftops of London gleamed in the bright blue sky.

The past year had been a very lucrative one. A year of cruising from the Strait of Gibraltar to Algiers, from the Bay of Biscayne to the Portuguese coast. There’d been forty-eight prizes and more than five hundred captured crewmen. His duties had been routine—escorting supply convoys, patrolling coastal shorelines, enforcing the blockade of France. Nights had been spent swooping upon unsuspecting French privateers, days lolling upon the high seas. He had been rather wealthy before this past year, but now, with this last prize, an American ship loaded with gold bullion, he was a very wealthy man, indeed.

And finally, a smile touched his lips.

But the boy trembled and remained afraid. The boy refused to go away. No amount of wealth, no amount of power, could be enough. And the boy had only to close his eyes to see his father’s eyes, enraged and sightless in his severed head, there upon the Irish ground in a pool of his own blood.

Devlin had gone to sea three years after the Wexford uprising, with the Earl of Adare’s permission and patronage. Adare had married his mother within the year, although his baby sister, Meg, had never been found. The earl had fabricated a naval history for Devlin, enabling him to start his career as a midshipman and not as the lowliest sailor far below decks. Devlin had quickly risen to the rank of lieutenant. Briefly he’d served on Nelson’s flagship. At the Battle of Trafalgar, the captain of the sloop he was serving on had taken an unlucky hit and been killed instantly; Devlin had as quickly assumed command. The small vessel had only had ten guns, but she was terribly quick, and Devlin had snuck the Gazelle in under the leeward hull of a French frigate. With the French ship sitting so high above them, her every broadside had sailed right over the Gazelle. His own guns, at point-blank range, had torn apart the decks and rigging, crippling the bigger, faster ship immediately. He’d towed his prize proudly into Leghorn and shortly after had received a promotion to captain, his own command and a fast schooner, the Loretta.

He had only been eighteen.

There had been so many battles and so many prizes since then. But the biggest prize of all yet remained to be taken, and it did not exist upon the high seas of the world.

The heat of highly controlled rage, always broiling deep within him, simmered a bit more. Devlin ignored it. Instead of thinking of the future reckoning that would one day come with Harold Hughes, now the Earl of Eastleigh, he watched as the Defiance eased into its berth between a schooner and a gunship. Devlin nodded at his second in command, a brawny red-haired Scot, Lieutenant MacDonnell. Mac used the horn to announce a week’s liberty. Devlin smiled a little as his men cheered and hollered, then watched his decks clear as if the signal to jump ship had been given. He didn’t mind. His crew was top-notch. Some fifty of his men had been with him since he’d been given his first ship; half of his crew had been with him since the collapse of the Treaty of Tilsit. They were good men, brave and daring. His crew was so well-honed that no one hesitated even when his commands seemed suicidal. The Defiance had become the scourge of the seas because of their loyalty, faith and discipline.

He was proud of his crew.

Mac fell into step with him, looking uncomfortable in his naval uniform, which he seemed to have outgrown. Mac was Devlin’s own age, twenty-four, and this past year he had bulked out. Devlin thought they made an odd duo—the short, broad Scot with the flaming hair, the tall, blond Irishman with the cold silver eyes.

“Ach, got to find me land legs,” Mac growled.