Charon's Crossing

"I am sure he is."

"If you will wait here, sir..."

The door began to shut. Matthew wedged his foot in it and smiled coldly.

"I don't wait on any man's doorstep. Either announce me, man, or I shall announce myself."

"Sir, I am afraid..."

"Indeed, you had better be. I have been at sea for weeks and I am in no mood to be—"

"Brutus?" The voice coming from behind the butler was soft and feminine and delicately English. "What is the problem?"

"There is no problem, Miss. It's just this... this gentleman wants to see your father, and I've explained to him that—"

"He has explained," Matthew said, pushing the door open and stepping inside the marble-floored entry foyer, "that American upstarts are, perhaps, not quite good enough to mingle in genteel English society. And I, in turn, was explaining to him that—that..."

His words trailed away. The girl was standing at the foot of a wide staircase. Her hair was the color of night, drawn back from her face and piled atop her head, though soft ringlets of it lay alluringly against her delicate cheeks and brow. Her eyes were as blue as the sky on a summer morning, her mouth was small and full and looked as if it had been stained with wild cherries. She was wearing a white gown that looked as if it were made of gossamer, and cut so that the neckline framed her perfect white shoulders and creamy bosom.

Matthew's heart turned over. He had heard Catherine Russell was beautiful but no one had prepared him for this. By God, she was the most exquisite creature he had ever seen.

"Lady Russell?" he said, when he could trust himself to speak. "Catherine Russell?"

"Sir." The butler's voice was chill with disapproval. "I ask you again to please wait until—"

The girl waved her hand in a gesture of dismissal. "That will be all, Brutus."

The butler's eyes narrowed but he bowed respectfully. "As you wish."

Catherine Russell waited until Brutus had disappeared. Then she came slowly forward, smiling as she advanced.

"You have the better of me, sir. You know my name, but I fear I do not know yours."

Matthew plucked off his tricorn hat and made her a low, sweeping bow.

"I am Matthew McDowell, ma'am, captain of the Atropos, and I am your servant."

"Indeed," she said softly. Matthew looked up. She was smiling at him in a way that made his head spin. There was an ivory fan in her right hand; she raised it and fluttered it lightly before her face. "My father has spoken of you, Captain. He said you were brave and courageous." Her eyes met his. "But he never mentioned that

you were also handsome."

A slow smile angled across Matthew's mouth. "Then it is I who have the better of you," he said softly, as he covered the distance between them. He stopped inches away, so that Catherine had to tilt her head back to see his face. "For I knew, even before I laid eyes on you, that you were the most beautiful woman in all this hemisphere."

Catherine gave a low, breathless laugh. Life at Charon's Crossing and on this dreary bit of England in the New World was almost painfully dull. She had found the eligible males wanting in looks, the ineligible ones wanting in charm, and all of them wanting in wit. Her father, who had spoiled and coddled her all her life, urged her to maintain social relationships with the daughters of the bankers and rich merchants who populated Elizabeth Island, but Catherine had long ago found time spent with ambitionless members of her own sex boring.

"I wish I could do something to make you happier," her father had said, just this evening, as she had lamented the awful sameness of another dinner party at which she had no wish to pretend to be the gracious hostess.

Now, it looked as if her father had fulfilled his own wish, albeit unknowingly, for she knew instantly that Matthew McDowell was going to make her happier. She knew of him, of course. He had come to sail these waters at the behest of her father and men like him, though she knew her father spoke of him with disdain.

"We need this man," she'd heard her father say, when she'd lingered outside his study as he'd discussed the war with the French with influential friends, "but we must not forget he is little more than a pirate, a hired ruffian to do our bidding."

Ruffian Matthew McDowell might be, but he was also stunningly handsome. Those shoulders. That chest, and those narrow hips and long, long legs. And oh, that hard, gorgeous face...

Oh yes. Clearly, things at Charon's Crossing were going to be much more interesting from now on.

"Ah, dear sir," Catherine said, fluttering her ivory fan with a practiced gesture, "I am disappointed, being told I am the most beautiful woman only in this hemisphere. I had hoped for more."

Matthew smiled into her eyes. "You misunderstood me, Miss Russell. The nations of the Old World have transplanted their fairest flowers here, to the New. And since you are, without doubt, the loveliest of them, so are you therefore the loveliest in all the world."