Page 1 of The Rebellious Countess (The Ruined Duchess #2)

Dear Sir Williamson,

Much to my horror chagrin, I find myself facing a firing squad married.

The Scotch merchant would not allow a Sassenach pirate an Englishman to purchase his liquor.

He said , and I quote, “Tek yer honkin’ Sassenach arse away til ye marry a wee bonnie lass of good breeding.

” Translation, if I didn’t marry a Scottish lady and quickly, I would not be able to purchase the Scotch needed to bribe the wicked witch tavern keeper at The Happy Hag.

Without that Scotch, the damnable Hag refused to set up my meeting.

Without a blasted virgin bride, the entire plan to recover the package would be ruined.

In this particular region, ladies of quality are bloody difficult to find.

When I happened across one in town, I knocked over two lads and their grandfather managed to obtain an introduction.

As gratuitous as it may sound, it turned out to be a disaster minor problem.

I did not know the identity of her brother-by-marriage until after I proposed, and by then it was too late to find another bride.

Yet with no alternatives, I had to make a decision which would could create a war violent enough for Robert the Bruce to dig out of his grave to fight bit of a scandal.

The young lady’s sister is the Duchess of Ross, bride to none other than Nashford bloody Harding, the bastard Duke of Ross.

Unfortunately, the duke and I are previously acquainted.

He broke my damned nose when he discovered me in a compromising position with a lady .

I will leave the details of our acquaintance to your imagination, but it is safe to say it was over his mother a woman he held in the highest esteem.

I have no doubt the duke will be in contact with you shortly, if he has not already.

Please know, the plan was to leave her in Dumfries, disappointedly untouched, but then the seller wanted to meet the lass at the docks and I had no choice but to take my bloody wife aboard The Maribelle.

When we arrive in Le Conquet, I will send the temptress young lady to Plymouth immediately.

The siren She may be a bit confused as to her identity, since I had to use an alias.

She will probably shed fathoms of a few tears and claim to be Lady Máira Collins, Countess of Dorset.

If you could take the damned shackles off my ankles arrange for an annulment upon her return, I would greatly appreciate the assistance.

I will keep her safe from the crew and myself hopefully throughout the voyage.

She is a passionate spirited girl who could use some assistance finding a husband after everything she has endured from me for her country.

My apologies for the black eyes the duke will deliver difficulties this will create. You have my word as a rogue who wants nothing more than to introduce Miss Blair to the sweetest carnal delights this side of heaven gentleman, she is untouched.

When our package is secured, I will send word.

Pray that I can honor my word,

Regards,

E

—An edited draft report to Sir Robert Williamson, War Office London, England from an unidentified agent of the Crown, Dumfries, Scotland.

It was written while the agent angrily awaited a Scottish smuggler, and edited later that night as he stared at his wife’s unconscious form lying across his captain’s bunk aboard his ship, The Maribelle.

Her undefiled breasts nearly bursting from the neckline of her wedding gown were a display that would tempt the best of men—especially men like him.

T his was her life. She was on the honeymoon trip of a debutante’s dreams. Passionate kisses, festive glasses clinking, raucous laughter spilling through the seams of the building and…

…A drunken sailor falling at her feet.

“Ummpf.” His fetid breath filled the air, and the condition of his rotting teeth made a shudder crawl through her body when he rolled over and grinned at the sight of her.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, missy.” Suggestive eyebrows waggled, and the gentleman tipped an imaginary hat on his head, his two front teeth displaying more filth than she’d seen in her lifetime.

She cringed and scooted further under the table. Cheap ale spilled over the edges, filth covered the floor where she cowered like a…a rat? A gasp was torn from her lips. Was that a rat?

Drat and double drat! She crossed her arms over her knees and brought the skirts of her soiled wedding gown closer to her body.

Her safe haven should have been the strong arms of her gorgeous husband wrapped around her body as she playfully dodged his public advances.

Instead, she was shooing away a beady-eyed rodent who only stared at her as if she were the one who needed to vacate the premises.

The rat, on second thought, was much more appealing than the two-faced, good-for-nothing blackguard she’d married.

That rat had abandoned her on the docks with no money, no luggage, and no way to find her way home.

Just some cryptic message passed on by a member of his crew as he’d pointed down the street of the dockside town.

“Talk to Hag. She’ll give you passage.”

It was as if Ellison had dropped her off in a foreign land, to be rid of her once and for all. She hadn’t even had her wedding night…

No. The only passionate kisses she’d witnessed were between the buxom barmaid and the beaver-toothed sailor currently crawling on his hands and knees toward the exit.

Máira winced as a handful of the barmaid’s strawberry blonde hair dropped to the floor and got lost in the shuffle and scuffle of the men fighting throughout the tavern.

The woman cursed, glass shattered and sprinkled to the floor in a storm of profanity. “May the devil take ya, ya dirty ol’ rum gagger.” A man staggered in front of her, his boots kicking the ball of hair closer to Máira.

“How did my honeymoon end in The Happy Hag tavern in France? France! Aren’t we at war with France?” Máira asked.

Her question went unanswered. No shock there.

Like the last several days, she was the last person on anyone’s mind.

From the time she awoke aboard a ship, she had one alarming experience after another.

There had been no plans to board a ship on their honeymoon.

There had been no plans to meet a pirate.

And there certainly had been no plans to end up in the middle of a brawl in a bloody tavern in France.

To make matters worse, every rotten thing that occurred to her could be traced back to the moment she had said “I do” to the Earl of Dorset, the bloody blackguard who’d ignored her the entire voyage to France.

A voyage that should have taken less than a day, but had been interminably long.

On the very first day, she’d been lost and disoriented.

With each roll of the waves, her stomach had done three.

When lightning cracked and thunder roared, she’d sworn her head split in two and bounced off the walls.

Her roaring megrim evidence of her being stuck in a hellish nightmare.

She’d finally crawled out of the cabin and to the ladder to make her way to the deck.

The rain then pelted her face and soaked her dress like a second skin to her body.

As she’d shielded her face with her hands and looked up to the where she thought a captain of a ship might be—there he stood, wearing pirate clothes. Pirate clothes .

If her face had any color to it at all, it leached from her cheeks when she looked around and saw the hard men manning the decks.

It only proceeded to get worse when her husband’s beautiful head of hair turned in her direction and his handsome face delivered an angry scowl.

His icy glower held enough menace to pierce her heart with ten daggers, like the one he wore strapped at his waist. In that moment, she felt a fear like nothing she’d felt in her life, and she’d felt plenty of fear before boarding that ship.

Her life had not been made of tea cakes and fripperies.

Yet the gorgeous, strapping, sweet, doting Earl of Dorset who had worshiped the ground she walked while they’d been on dry land in Dumfries, had turned into a cold, arrogant bastard pirate aboard ship.

A bastard who leapt over the railing onto the deck in front of her before she could run back to her cabin and bolt the door.

“What the hell are you doing up here?” he’d bellowed.

It could have been rain splattering on her face, but she’d imagined it to be angry spittle.

That along with her sudden memory of her older sister Iseabail lecturing her.

“You can’t possibly know him well enough to marry him!

” had been enough to make her toss her accounts all over his shirt.

She’d waited for a backhanded blow that never came.

Instead, he’d looked down at his shirt, rolled his eyes, and ripped it from his body.

One minute it was there, and the next she was staring at the broad expanse of a naked chest with too much muscle.

Flawless skin sculpted into the ideal embodiment of the male species.

Michelangelo would curse his perfection.

“Bloody hell,” she cursed his perfection.

Ellison blinked at profanity, then tossed her over his shoulder like a basket of fish.

She hadn’t fought him. She’d let him carry her below deck, into the cabin she’d occupied where he unceremoniously tossed her onto the bed and left her without another word.

Then he’d bolted the door shut—from the outside!

The ship had rocked and swayed violently as she’d stared at the door.

If it took on water, she’d go down to Davey Jones’s locker without anyone the wiser.

Despite knowing the furious pirate was the same man she’d married, she hadn’t recognized the man who’d secured her in a room with no lifeline.

He hadn’t the time, nor the inclination, to deal with his sick wife.

She had hoped things would change, return to normal when they’d docked in the port of…port of…bloody hell. She didn’t even know what port she was in, and now she was cursing like the sailors around her. Would she have to fight as well?

A man bent over and looked under the table, his eyes met hers and her blood curdled under his scrutiny.

His coat was clean, his trousers that of a nobleman, and his manners gave the appearance of a gentleman as he reached out to take her hand.

Only a fool would believe he meant to rescue her from the melee.

And despite the evidence to say otherwise, Máira was no fool.

She scooted back in the corner, pushing the rat out of his home and the man’s grin grew.

“You like it rough, chérie ?” His aristocratic polish and refined English were completely out of place with the street-born curses of the Frenchmen fighting around them.

Yet deep in her marrow, Máira recognized the evil within.

Not for one moment did she believe they would bond over shared nationalism. This man was evil down to his toenails.

“I will make you scream and beg for mercy,” he cooed.

He thought she was French and didn’t understand.

To a naive miss who didn’t speak English, he would probably appear as a debonaire gentleman coming to her rescue.

Máira knew differently. She understood more than she cared.

His brown eyes spoke of a lost, soulless man who hadn’t felt anything other than disdain for another human being in years, if ever.

He lunged for her ankle and she screamed, but there was too much noise for anyone to hear.

She kicked and punched, striking him on the temple which only seemed to feed his violence as he dragged her out from under the table and wrenched her arm behind her back.

She screamed once more, as her face slammed into the floor.

“I’ll teach you to strike your betters, bitch.” She felt his breath on her ear as he attempted to slam her face against the floor a second time, but she twisted her body, sacrificing her shoulder as her arm wrenched higher.

A scream vibrated through the air, and Máira wasn’t sure if she was screaming or someone else was making the unholy noise.

Her attacker’s grip went suddenly slack and he fell onto his belly next to her.

Arms underneath his chest and his head turned to the side, he looked directly at her.

He didn’t smirk, or talk, or even crawl away on his knees.

He laid there bleeding with a knife the size of Cook’s meat cleaver buried in one sightless eye.

Máira bit the back of her hand to hold the scream in her throat. She had never seen a man die before. She had experienced tragic loss multiple times, but this was gory and horrifying. Tears of blood streamed across the bridge of his nose and cheek and down onto the floor.

She wished the man at her side was her husband—the dirty Lothario who’d left her to this fate. This was what her sister had warned her about, the life of a woman who took a chance and married a stranger.

Bloody hell. “I swear I’m going to kill him.”