Epilogue

From the crow’s nest Adriana shaded her eyes as she gazed over the flat green land spread out beyond the bow of the ship.

“So many estuaries,” she murmured to Roarke, as the ship tacked its way through one of the winding silver rivers. “We’ve been wandering this web for hours. Are you sure the pilot knows where he's going?”

“He’s native, he knows the land.” Roarke placed his forearms against the edge of the crow’s nest as he squinted at the unbroken wilderness. “The fact that he speaks French is proof that he knows the backwoodsmen who’ve settled here.”

She gazed over the new country with a flutter of excitement. The gentle wake of the passing of their ship startled a flock of large white birds. Strange trees with exposed roots gripped the shallow shore. Even from the crow’s nest she spied ripples beneath the water, proof that it teemed with life.

Adriana breathed in the sultry air. While recovering in the swamplands, Roarke had heard from Carolinian traders returning from the backcountry of how the French were settling at the mouth of a river called the Mississippi. A whole new world stretched beyond the Carolina backcountry, a world far away from the laws that gave no quarter to people struggling to build a better life. What greater refuge for an English pirate who once fought for the French, and a Frenchwoman who had escaped English justice?

“It reminds me of the Santee,” she said, seeing in her mind’s eye these wetlands turned into rice fields. “Or how Charles Town must have been before the English cleared the island.”

“It’s a frontier where the natives still rule,” he said. “What men have come are the kind who trade with the tribes, marry the native women, use their guns only for game, and don’t bother with forts or jails.”

“No rules,” she murmured, “no unjust law.”

“A new start.” He pressed his lips against her hair. “Freedom.”

Freedom.

The word settled into her heart. Everything she’d done up to this point in her life—dressing as a boy to keep herself safe, signing on to a merchant ship to earn a skill and have coin, taking up with the pirates, moving from the safety of the Santee to Charles Town in order to gather a small fortune—had all been done for one simple reason: So that she could live safely, independently, and free.

Now Roarke ran a warm hand down her back, distracting her from her thoughts. He ventured lower, nudging away the waistband of her breeches so he could slide his palm over the curve of her backside. She smiled a secret smile. She knew he loved when she wore breeches, especially now that she was enough of a woman to fill them out.

She tilted her head to meet the brightness of his gaze, more green than gray today because of the reflection of the land around them. The onshore breeze sent tendrils of his dark hair dancing around his face. A smile played around his lips, mischievous and knowing, for they’d only just finished dressing. They had shucked their clothes as soon as they’d climbed to the crow’s nest, taking advantage of a moment of intense and delicious privacy in a place where she could cry out her pleasure without worrying that the sailors could hear her.

The suntanned crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened. Words weren’t always necessary between them anymore, especially when it came to this. Her pulse jumped as he lowered his lips toward hers.

A shout of Captain rose up from below just as Roarke gently sucked her lower lip into his mouth. He smiled and pulled back from the kiss. Pressing his forehead against hers, he grinned ruefully. They were all too familiar with such interruptions.

He leaned away from her and shouted, “What is it, Drake?”

“A settlement!”

The rail dug into her side as she strained to see what Drake was pointing at. From on high, it looked like nothing but a wet thicket of willows and dwarf palmetto trees, but as the ship tacked closer to shore she glimpsed, camouflaged by the shadows, a cluster of thatched-roof huts amid what looked like a small native village. A few people had started to gather, a motley group of backwoodsmen in breeches and linen shirts, natives in loincloths, and a few bearded trappers dressed head-to-toe in skins.

Roarke clasped her hand.

They were finally home.

 

 

THE END

 

 

I hope you enjoyed HER PIRATE HEART! With every historical romance, I try to deliver to you what I crave in every novel I read: A sense of being swept away on a great adventure with a strong and wonderful man. My greatest wish is to make your heart beat faster, make you gasp, and, in the end, make you sigh with satisfaction.

Have I succeeded? Please let me know! Reviews and ratings not only help other readers find the books they’ll love—they also serve as a way for me to measure if I’m actually doing well what I set out in life to do best. So if you have a moment, I would be forever grateful if you left a rating or an honest review at your favorite review website. Even just a few words are appreciated. Many, many thanks.

 

Ready for another sexy, adventurous road-trip romance? Check out SING ME HOME, next!