Read Taming Charlotte for Free Online

questioned.
    Patrick smiled. “I’m sorry if they won’t do, darling Charlotte. Since I don’t wear dresses, I’ve never seen reason to carry them about in my sea chest.”
    Charlotte closed her eyes and took ten deep breaths before she was calm enough to speak to the captain in a civil tone. “If you’ll just grant me a few minutes’ privacy.”
    “Certainly,” he conceded graciously, but he didn’t leave the quarters, he only turned his broad, imperious back.
    Using the covers for a tent, Charlotte scrambled into the breeches, which were too large for her at the waist and tight across her bottom, tucked in the tail of the shirt she’d slept in, and cinched the belt around her middle. She needed to use a chamber pot in the worst way, but she wasn’t about to do
that
with Mr. Trevarren in the room.
    “Where are we?” she asked instead, moving to the porthole and looking out. She saw turquoise water, beaches so white that they dazzled her, a spacious palace flanked by a desert of snowy sand. “Is there an American embassy here?”
    Patrick answered her questions in reverse order. “I’m afraid not, goddess. As for our location, we’re just a short swim from the palace of the sultan of Riz.” She felt his gaze touch her, rather than saw it. “I wouldn’t recommend jumping into the drink and splashing for shore, though, since there are probably at least a hundred sharks circling the ship, waiting for galley scraps.”
    Charlotte shuddered, but her aplomb was the only defense she had left, and she wasn’t about to abandon it. “I don’t splash when I swim, Mr. Trevarren,” she said. “I have an excellent stroke.”
    He stood beside her at the porthole, gave her a sidelong glance and an irritating grin. “All the more fun for the sharks. They probably like it when their breakfast puts up a fight.”
    Charlotte’s stomach growled right then, at that very inauspicious moment. She couldn’t help it; she needed a big meal in the morning, the sooner after she woke up, the better.
    “I want to go home,” she said, and suddenly her eyes were brimming with tears.
    To her surprise, Patrick behaved like his fantasy self and touched her cheek lightly with the fingers of his right hand. “You will,” he said hoarsely. “I promise you, Charlotte—no one is going to hurt you.”
    She wanted to believe him—oh, she wanted it desperately—but Charlotte was no fool, and she knew the rules governing her life had changed significantly since the kidnapping.
    “Your family,” Patrick began seriously. “Would they want you back?”
    “Why wouldn’t they, for heaven’s sake?” Charlotte rested her hands on her hips. Although she wouldn’t have admitted the fact, she liked wearing breeches and wondered why women hadn’t adopted the fashion.
    He studied her face solemnly with those dark, dark blue eyes. “Even considering that the kidnapping wasn’t your fault—beyond the unquestionable idiocy of wandering without a male chaperon in the marketplace, of course—your reputation is not what it probably was before. There are people who wouldn’t receive you in their parlors, Charlotte, or acknowledge you on the street.”
    Patrick’s words were not only patently unfair, but true, and Charlotte’s fury was partly despair. “The ones who matter, my papa and my stepmother, my sister and brothers, my aunt and uncle and cousins and my friends, would not only accept me, they’d welcome me home!”
    He took her gently in his arms, pressed her to his chest, and she heard and felt his heart beating against her cheek. “Of course they will,” he agreed. “Of course. Now, let me get you something to eat.”
    Charlotte went to the porthole the moment Patrick had left the cabin and searched the dazzling horizon for some means of escape, but all she saw was sand, sea, the palace, and the merciless, sugar white desert beyond.
    Immediately she propped the desk chair under the door latch and made a quick search for a