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that his oversized body contained. His hair and brows were black as tar—the black, guessed Rose, by which he'd earned that foolish prefix—and so was the beard that darkened his jaw. In the middle of all that black his eyes were an astonishing green, pale yet brilliant as they studied her with an intensity that made her blush from her toes clear to her cheeks. No wonder he'd succeeded so as a privateer, she thought stupidly. One look from those eyes and his enemy would simply turn to jelly where she stood.
    Yet that wasn't quite right. The enemy would most likely be male, a
he
, not a
she
. And the only jellified
she
right now was herself, Miss Rose Everard, spinster. She could have counted to a hundred in the time she'd let slip past here gawking on his deck. She blinked, forced herself to think once again and finally remembered to speak.
    "Good day, Captain Sparhawk," she said as briskly as she could. "I am Miss Rose Everard of Portsmouth in Hampshire, and I have come to speak to you concerning this vessel, which, you should know, belongs to my father, Sir Edmund Everard."
    "Oh, hell," he said with disgust he didn't bother to hide. "Miss
Rose
Everard. Why the devil didn't I guess?"
     
     
     
     
Chapter Three
    « ^ »
    A ghost, thought Nick furiously as he stared at the woman before him. She had to be a ghost.
    But how could she be a ghost, too, when the ghost, the real ghost, was the one she so resembled? She must be the living version of the ghost or angel or whatever Lily was, which would make this girl—what?
    Lily's sister: he'd settle for that. If he considered it any further he'd lose his mind or his temper or most likely both. The wonderful prize Lily had promised, the improbable course on the chart that he'd reluctantly followed, the chase and the shamefully easy capture of the English merchantman: every bit had been somehow contrived by Lily to bring her sister here.
    It wasn't even as if she was Lily's twin. Far from it. This girl was smaller, not even to his shoulder, with dark hair drawn severely back from her pale, serious face, and though the shape of her eyes was similar to Lily's, their color was only a faded gray version of her sister's brilliant blue. Mourning wasn't supposed to be attractive, but the hideous black gown she wore drained her cheeks of any color and hid whatever feminine roundness she might possess beneath its stiff, salt-stained folds. She had none of Lily's laughing merriment, none of her teasing charm, but somehow the similarity was still intangibly, annoyingly there, in the shape of her face and the way she lifted her chin to talk to him.
    And in how
much
she talked.
    "There's not much guessing involved in it at all, Captain Sparhawk," she was saying. "It is merely the simple truth. I expect by now you've rifled through the
Angel Lily
's papers enough to recognize my father's name, and it wouldn't take a great scholar to determine the rest."
    Rose sighed. She hadn't expected the man to be gracious, or even civil, but she had hoped he'd at least listen. But he wasn't. He wasn't even pretending to hear what she said, instead staring at her with an ill-humored scowl.
    "It's the simple truth, sir," she said again, hoping repetition would make it sink in. "And this vessel—"
    "You're Lily's sister," said Nick abruptly, closing the distance between them. Before she could react he took her chin with one hand and turned her face up toward his. "You can't be anyone else."
    Instantly Rose jerked away, the heat from his touch burning into her skin. "How dare you?" she gasped. "How
dare
you?"
    And without a thought for the consequences, she reached up and slapped him as hard as she could.
    Nick didn't flinch, even though his face stung like hell. All he'd wanted to know was if she were real, or if somehow he was imagining her, too. He hadn't meant to set her off like this. Now he knew every man on deck was watching and waiting for him to toss her over the side at the very least for striking