Mariah's Prize by MIRANDA JARRETT Page A

face. He liked the way she bantered and bartered with tradesmen, how quickly she’d learned to cope with the thousand details of outfitting the Revenge, even how, when faced by her father’s obvious incompetence, she’d remained devoted to his worthless memory.
    This small, dark-haired lass with the rippling laugh was beyond all his experience. There’d been plenty of women whose company he enjoyed, and one—Catherine—whom he’d loved dearly, but Mariah West was the first that he had ever liked as much. It was the damnedest thing, and it did absolutely nothing to improve his temper this morning.
    He scowled at the sloop’s long, red pennant waving languidly against the slate gray sky. He didn’t like the heavy look of the clouds, a sure sign of foul weather to come, and the air was too hot and still to suit him. Already his shirt was stuck to his back beneath his coat, and tide or no tide, it was high time they headed out to the deep water, where the winds would fill his sails and clear his wits. This morning he had no patience with the crowds of laughing, cheering townspeople come to the docks to see them off, and though he suspected they were counting on him to make some sort of patriotic, death-andconfusionto-the French speech, he had absolutely no intention of obliging them.
    Once again he scanned the milling crowds on the dock. Where the devil was she, anyway?
    He turned and tripped over a small, towheaded boy coiling a line around a pin.
    “What the thundering hell d’you think you’re doing,” he began as the boy cowered before him, ‘you fumble-fingered little son of a”— ” You needn’t swear at the boy. Captain Sparhawk! ” said Mariah warmly.
    “From where I stood, you were the one who was clumsy, not he!”
    Gabriel swung around to face her, his feelings at seeing her again decidedly mixed. She stood with her balled fists on her waist, and beneath her wide-brimmed straw that her eyes were narrowed and her face flushed with anger. Oh,
    they were a righteous pair this morning, he thought grimly, trying to remember how differently he’d planned this reunion.
    Ignoring her for the moment, Gabriel cuffed the boy lightly on the side of his head. “Off with you, puppy. Find Mr. Fair and tell him I said to put you to more useful work out of my sight.”
    “You’ve no right to strike him!” declared Mariah indignantly.
    “He’s scarcely more than a child!”
    “I’ve every right in the world, and if he’s in this sloop’s company, he’s not a child.” He didn’t really expect her to back down, and she didn’t, her little chin raised stubbornly and her black brows tugged down low over the bridge of her nose.
    “If you were a man, I’d seize you up for back talk and have the bos’n give you a dozen lashes to take the bile out of your tongue.”
    “Then perhaps you’d best prescribe two dozen for yourself, Captain!”
    This wasn’t going at all as Mariah had expected, though in a peculiar way it was easier. Easier to be angry at Gabriel than to let him know how hard it was for her to come to him after last night, better to have him berate her for interfering than whisper honeyed lovers’ words that confused and shamed her. All better than having him kiss her and caress her and make her world turn upside down with the sweetness of his touch.
    “I’m quite certain your bos’n would be willing to oblige.”
    “What in God’s name are you doing on board now, anyway?” he demanded, as if he didn’t already know. Against his best intentions he pictured how she’d looked last night, her eyes seductively half-closed and her lips parted as she’d arched back against his pillows.
    Some things, it seemed, hadn’t changed one bit between them.
    “I’m coming with you.” The determination in her eyes dared him to object.
    “My sister has eloped with a young man, and I must go after them to bring her back. They sailed last night with your friend Captain Richardson. I would have been