The Admiral's Heart by Danelle Harmon Page B

all.
    “I’m sorry?”
    “Never mind, Captain, it’s just the hot air
getting to me, I must have mistaken you for someone else.”
    The duke of Blackheath selected a bit of
cheese from a passing tray and slowly put it into his mouth,
watching Pippa—who was beginning to feel hot and a bit panicky
beneath the constraints of stays and fitted bodice—from over the
top of his fingers. “Nonsense, Pippa,” he murmured. “Captain Lord
comes from an illustrious naval family. His father was master of
HMS Ryegate . Captain Lord is, himself, commander of one of
the two frigates that will be escorting Charles’s regiment across
the sea when they leave here next week.” The duke smiled, his
black-nightshade eyes never leaving Pippa’s. “And his brother is a
famous admiral.”
    His brother is a famous admiral.
    Pippa gulped down the lump in her
throat.
    “In fact, he is here now, and approaching as
we speak. Sir Elliott? I do believe you are acquainted with my
cousin, Lady Philippa?”
    No. Oh, God, no.
    Pippa’s gloved hand tightened like a claw on
Captain Merrick’s perfect blue sleeve, and every bit of blood in
her body immediately stopped flowing. She couldn’t breathe. She
couldn’t move. And she certainly couldn’t think as she slowly
turned and, her ears buzzing and her knees going strangely
boneless, looked up, up, up, into a pair of gray eyes the color of
slate.
    A pair of gray eyes she had not seen for
nearly ten years.
    A pair of gray eyes she had never
forgotten.
    The great, glittering chandelier was
suddenly too bright above Admiral Sir Elliott Lord’s handsome blond
head, the music from the orchestra, the laughter of the revelers
and dancers too loud, and she felt as though a horse had landed a
solid and punishing kick to her stomach.
    With a hastily murmured apology, she turned
on her heel and fled.

 
    Chapter
2
     
    “I must say, Admiral, you have quite an
interesting effect on women,” the duke of Blackheath mused,
nonchalantly finishing his bit of cheese.
    But Elliott was already heading out of the
ballroom, determined not to let his quarry escape so easily.
    He saw a flash of blue ahead as she rounded
a corner, and broke into a run. He would not lose her. Even if he
had to chase her from here to London.
    And he’d be damned to hell and back if he’d
allow Sir Geoffrey, or any of his subordinates to know that he felt
dismasted, in irons, as stricken as a brig that had just been
smashed beneath a salvo of chain shot, and he damn well didn’t need
the young Captain Merrick, whose arm had been so conveniently
placed beneath Pippa’s hand when he’d come upon the little group,
trying to make himself useful. Elliott was on the distant side of
thirty. The far distant side. He had enough aches and pains when he
got up in the morning these days, and though his sandy blond hair
was still thick and rich and showed no sign of either thinning or
gray, the lines that bracketed the corners of his eyes, carved
there by sun and salt and the passing of years, were an all too
blatant reminder that he was no dashing young buck like the
handsome Captain Merrick or even that pink-cheeked pup, Oliver
Heathmore.
    Pippa. Of all people to encounter
here. Of all people to run up against when it had taken him ten
years to forget her.
    Of all people.
    There, ahead, a door, ajar. He pushed it
open.
    Nothing.
    He kept going, moving faster now.
    Another door. Closed.
    He shoved it open and there she was,
standing by a window with one hand anchoring herself on its sill. A
candle in a glass globe stood on a small table nearby, striking
gold into her beautiful face.
    “Elliott,” she said weakly.
    He stopped in his tracks, one hand still on
the door, just looking at her.
    She was beautiful. Heartbreakingly so.
Certainly, the years had treated her kinder than they had him. But
then, the one doing the jilting wasn’t usually the one who did the
suffering. And by the looks of her, she hadn’t suffered one bit.
Skin that was