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of a single time it ever has, actually.”
    “Can we go to Barbados, Brendan? Spend the winter there with our daughter, with our grandchildren, and in warmth? Away from this bleedin’ cold? We can even ask Liam to go with us. It’ll be good for his rheumatism.”
    “What about Matt? The shipyard?”
    “Matt can manage without us for a few months.”
    “I don’t know, stóirín . We’re not getting any younger.”
    “Which is precisely the reason we should go. We can even take the new sloop, the one you designed and built for Kieran, see how she handles, see how fast she is, and heaven knows she’ll need to be fast to get us past the British blockade—”
    “I don’t know—”
    “Come now, it’ll be fun. For that matter, Kieran can go, too, as he hasn’t seen his sister since her wedding to Sir Graham and that was what, eight years ago now?”
    “If Kieran goes, he’ll be itching to take every British merchant ship that hoves into sight.”
    “Not if you captain her.”
    He smiled, his fingers moving ever closer to Mira’s nipple, and she turned within his arms, cradling his dear, handsome face within her hands as she gazed down into his warm and laughing eyes.
    “Please, Brendan?”
    The corner of his mouth turned up into a helpless smile, for he had never been able to deny her anything in the past, and he certainly wasn’t able to do so now.
    “Barbados it is, then,” he murmured, and set about the business of making her so warm that the wind howling outside, the cold drafts seeping beneath the window casements, were soon forgotten.

 
    Chapter 4
     
    “For heaven’s sake, Rhiannon, there are other things to look at besides Connor Merrick,” Alannah Cox said with a mixture of both exasperation and worry as she followed the direction of her companion’s gaze. “I’m beginning to think I’d have been wiser to leave you back in England.”
    “Oh, come now. We’re having an adventure.”
    “An adventure I’ll be glad to see reach its end.”
    Throughout the previous afternoon and all through the night, the Yankee schooner had cut through the long ocean swells like a knife through butter, raising Barbados as dawn had painted the sea in glorious colors of salmon, pink and silver. Under a flag of truce, Captain Merrick had brazenly sailed her into the turquoise waters of Carlisle Bay and dropped anchor amongst the British men of war there, almost within the shadow of Vice Admiral Sir Graham Falconer’s mighty flagship, Orion .
    Alannah was gazing down into the sparkling waters, so clear and crystalline a blue that they could see the anchor resting on the sea floor seven fathoms below.
    “Look at the fish down there, Rhiannon,” she said, shading her eyes against the sun as she peered down at the colorful marine life darting just beneath the surface.
    Rhiannon didn’t answer, and Alannah glanced up to see her charge still staring at the Yankee privateer.
    “Rhiannon!” she said sharply.
    “I’m sorry, what was that?”
    “Stop looking at him!”
    “But he’s taken his shirt off. I can’t help but look.”
    “He’s a damned pirate!”
    “Privateer.”
    “Same difference. It’s men like him who are capturing our merchant ships and driving up insurance so high that England is likely to go bankrupt before this war even ends. Why my brother even tolerates one in his waters, let alone right here under his nose in a British port is beyond my understanding.”
    “I am sure he’s caught in the middle, being married to Captain Merrick’s sister. One must keep the peace at home, you know.”
    Rhiannon’s gaze slid back to Connor Merrick, who, standing barefoot on the deck and clad in nothing but belted pantaloons cut off at the knee, was munching an apple while he directed the furling of the sails. He seemed not in the least bit concerned that he’d placed an American privateer squarely in the midst of the Royal Navy’s Caribbean fleet.
    If seeing his bare feet and calves the previous