Stormy Persuasion by Johanna Lindsey

She shouldn’t have given up so easily on getting some answers. Jack wouldn’t
     have. Maybe she could ask Uncle James . . .
    “Nathan Tremayne,” said a deep voice.
    She grinned to herself and glanced at him for a moment. He was so tall and handsome
     with his long, white hair blowing in the sea breeze. He was standing several feet
     from her and staring at the moonlight on the ocean, too, so it didn’t actually appear
     that he had spoken to her. But he had. Was he as intrigued with her as she was with
     him?
    “How do you do, Nathan. Or do you prefer Nate?”
    “Doesn’t matter. D’you always talk to strange men like this?”
    “You’re strange?”
    “A stranger to you,” he clarified.
    “Not a’tall. We are actually old acquaintances, you and I.”
    He chuckled. “Telling each other to get out of a house five years ago doesn’t make
     us acquainted. And why were you trespassing that night?”
    “My cousin Jack and I were investigating the light we saw in the house. That house
     has been abandoned for as long as anyone living can remember. No one should have been
     inside it. But we could see the light from our room in the ducal mansion.”
    “And so you thought you’d found a ghost?”
    She blushed again, but they weren’t looking at each other, so she doubted that he
     noticed. “When we saw you there, it was a reasonable assumption.”
    “Not a’tall, just the opposite.” Was that amusement she heard in his tone? She took
     a quick peek. It was hard not to. And, yes, he was grinning as he added, “You drew
     a conclusion that no adult would have come to.”
    “Well, I wasn’t grown yet. That was quite a few years ago. And you were holding your lantern so that its light only reached
     your upper body. It looked as if you were floating in the air.”
    He laughed again, such a pleasant sound, like a bass rumble. It shook a lock of hair
     loose over his wide brow. His hair wasn’t pure white as she’d thought. She could see
     blond streaks in it.
    “Very well. I can see how your imagination could’ve played tricks on you.”
    “So why were you there that night and looking so sad?”
    “Sad?”
    “Weren’t you?”
    “No, not sad, darlin’.” But instead of explaining, he said, “Do you really believe
     in ghosts?”
    She looked up and saw his mouth set in a half grin and the arched eyebrow. Was he
     teasing her? He was! She also noticed his green eyes were gazing at her intently.
     Quite bold for a common seaman if that’s what he was. Quite bold for any man, actually,
     when they’d only just met—that first time didn’t count.
    In response to his teasing she said, “Jack and I admitted to ourselves a few years
     ago that we’d been mistaken that night. But we continued to refer to you as the Ghost
     because it amuses us. It was our special secret that we only shared with our younger
     cousins. It was much more fun to say we’d found a ghost than the new owner of the
     house. But you can’t be the owner of the house. What were you doing there?”
    “Maybe I like secrets as much as you do.”
    On the brink of discovery and of clearing up a mystery that had intrigued her for
     years, she was more than a little annoyed by his reply. “You really won’t say?”
    “You haven’t tried convincing me yet, darlin’. A pretty smile might work. . . .”
    Judith went very still. So still she thought she could hear her heart pounding. She
     couldn’t believe what had just become crystal clear to her. She knew who he was. It was that second instance of his calling her darlin ’. She’d been too flustered to pay much attention to it the first time he’d said it,
     but this time she remembered where she’d heard it before. A mere two weeks ago from
     a man who she suspected was far more dangerous than a vagrant.
    The moment it had struck her that night of how odd it was for a vagrant to be drinking
     French brandy, she had known he wasn’t what he’d first seemed to be. But