With This Kiss: Part One by Eloisa James Page A

vision black for a moment.
    There was love in that portrait.
    Real love, not the sort of love-of-a-brother affection he had for Grace.
    She would get over him, of course. All that love and warmth and humor she offered… there were probably a hundred men at her feet every night.
    She could have accepted any number of proposals over the last years. She’d always written wryly of the London season, making it sound as if she hovered on the margins of ton .
    But she was irresistible on paper, and would be more so in person.
    Even so, in the grip of vanity, he decided that she had waited for him since she debuted. That she would still wait for him. He just had to make it home alive and whole.
    And then he would marry her. It was the least he could do to thank her for all the wonderful letters. He pushed away a small voice that spoke of selfishness. He wouldn’t propose in order to get more letters, but to thank her for those he had already received. And because he loved her; he really did.
    Months passed, the way they do at sea, the days carelessly thrown away in a billow of cannon smoke and men’s lives. One day he received papers indicating that he had been awarded yet another prize from the Royal Navy. The HMS Daedalus was to be commended for meritorious service in the line of duty. And they gave him, as its captain, a large amount of money.
    Philip, his first lieutenant, saluted him with a shot of their carefully rationed brandy. His parents wrote. The duchess sent an exquisitely written note, with a scrawl on the bottom from the duke. Grace did not write.
    He got a note from Lily, a dashed-off letter sending him love from all. She made a list and then said something about each member of their two families. Fred was “sent down from Cambridge, for nakedness. Papa won’t say where but it must have been in public.” Cressida was “sick after eating too many gooseberries.” And Grace… “Grace is being wooed by a very nice man named Lord McIngle who says he’s met you several times. Grace laughs, and says she likes him because he has never flirted with me , which is true enough. He has eyes for no one but Grace.”
    For a moment he wondered if Lily meant to phrase her last sentences like that. If there was censure implied between her lines.
    But Lily wasn’t complex or thoughtful, the way Grace was. She was dazzling and rather shallow, while Grace was full of mystery. A man could spend a lifetime learning all there was to learn about Grace.
    He had kept every one of Grace’s letters, but he sent this one of Lily’s overboard with a curse at a man he’d never met, a Scottish lord who was winning—had apparently won—the only thing in the world that he wanted.
    But later that day, he found himself writing a reply to Lily, anyway. He had never written Grace more than a paragraph or two. But he didn’t feel that he could simply launch into the only questions that interested him: How is Grace? Is she happy? Does she miss writing to me? Who the hell is McIngle?
    His letter stretched to five pages, reaching the important part—the only thing he cared about—on page four. He watched the thick packet disappear into the diplomatic pouch, destined for the Duke of Ashbrook’s daughter. Not the right daughter, but a daughter.
    That night he lay awake, pulsing with rage at the idea of Grace marrying a man he dimly remembered as a pleasant fellow, but not one who could protect her if highwaymen stopped her coach…
    It occurred to him that brothers don’t feel this sort of wild panic and rage at the idea of their sister marrying a pleasant fellow.
    They didn’t lie awake, picturing a sister in peril…
    The crucial fact: she wasn’t his sister .
    And he didn’t feel brotherly toward her. Not at all.
    A couple of weeks later, the HMS Daedalus encountered the Loki , a Baltimore clipper slave ship.
    This time, when the smoke cleared, Captain Barry didn’t walk out unscathed. His second-in-command, Lieutenant Philip