The Lady's Pirate Excerpt 2

   The Lady's Pirate Excerpt 2:

✔️Man in distress

✔️Allies to Lovers

✔️Sexy times ensue

 

“You’re still here,” she said into the darkness.

Only Paulo’s outline was visible in the midday sunlight. He hadn’t wandered from the opening as she’d instructed but stood just beyond the sun’s reach. Not a fool, at least.

“I didn’t exactly have anywhere to go.” She didn’t need to see his face to hear the grin. “You’ve returned early. I haven’t a time piece on me, but I know it’s not dusk.”

He confused her, with his easy wit and sardonic joking in the face of invasion. Confused, yes, but Adi liked it. His easy manner lessened the burden of living in an occupied home, terrified one wrong word might see them all killed. Her mother-in-law closed up in the conservatory, Mélina tasked with playing for the colonel and Bardot, her mother keeping their small stores of food rationed so everyone ate.

No wonder she screamed into the storm last night. Adi wondered she didn’t do so every night.

“I brought more soup.” She skirted the small outcropping of rocks and held out the pot.

“I’m grateful.” He coughed and shook his head. “I’m afraid I swallowed more water than I intended.”

“How much did you intend to swallow?” She tilted her head as he accepted the pot and wondered if sitting looked too informal. She doubted there was any set etiquette for this sort of situation.

“None.” That smile was again evident in his voice. She wanted to see that smile, if it was as handsome as she imagined. Wide and boyish despite the warm masculinity evident in his tone. No, the man she half-dragged from the beach was no boy. “That plan didn’t exactly work out.”

Adi giggled only to immediately stifle it. A sharp thread of guilt wound through her—she shouldn’t laugh when the entire household lay under the threat of death. However even in the mere day since rescuing Paulo, Adi found herself lighter than she had been in years.

“Do most of your plans work out?”

“Eh.” He made a movement with his hand she couldn’t see between the deepening shadows and the bright sunlight. “Half and half, I’d say.”

“Not exactly a resounding endorsement.”

“I’m working on it.” He paused and she thought he sipped the soup. “Thank you for this, Adelaida. It’s delicious.”

“We have little meat.” She hadn’t meant to repeat herself, nor apologize for something out of her control, but felt she owned Paulo an explanation. “The French colonel, he slaughtered our pigs for his own men.”

“This is perfect, and I mean it. It’s more than I expected.”

He had an interesting way with words, and Adi frowned. “What did you expect?”

“Well, for a bit there, I expected to die on the beach.” He sighed and shook his head, his gait slow and unsteady as he moved beside her. “That didn’t happen, for which I am most grateful. My family would have been extremely displeased with me should that have happened.”

Something in his tone, just beneath the lightness of his words, told her the truth of that. They’d have been devastated if he’d died on her beach. Without saying, he told of his closeness with them. Family? Wife? Children? He hadn’t mentioned a wife. Hadn’t mentioned anyone. Shifting on her rocky seat at that uncomfortable thought, she curled her hands into her skirts for lack of anywhere else to place them.

“Where are they?” Her voice had dropped, and she cleared the strange huskiness from her throat.

He paused and though she couldn’t see his eyes in the uncertain shadows, she felt him weighing the answer. “Safe.”

“I’m glad.” She laughed, bitterness choking her. “Jealous, but I’m glad someone is safe at least.”

Available June 15, 2023

The Lady's Pirate Excerpt 1

The Lady's Pirate 

Chapter One

 

Southern Portuguese Coast

July 23, 1808

 

Adelaida Machado stepped from the cover of her family’s villa into the pounding vitality of the wicked summer storm. Though she reveled in the energy of the storm, she wasn’t foolish enough to race down the slick stone steps. Rather she cautiously picked her way, barefoot from the villa to the beach she so loved.

The wind whipped around her, as angry as the country as if the weather understood the simmering hatred lurking barely beneath the surface. Despite the late night and the driving rain, the air remained warm. Adi stepped off the last step and raised her face to the sky, letting the rain wash over her.

Another gust of wind plastered wet strands of loose hair against her cheek. Adi ignored them as she had ignored the constant frown of her mother-in-law, the worried look from her own mother, and the suspicious side-eyes of the French troops currently occupying her home.

She looked behind her, but no one followed her in this storm. No one was crazy enough.

For the first time in months, Adi breathed freely. Then she screamed.

Wading deeper into the ocean, her fingers clenched so tightly around her skirts she wondered if she could ever release the material. Adi vented her anger and sorrow and helplessness into the storm until she gasped for breath.

Head thrown back, eyes closed, rain running down her face and beating on her eyelids, she took in another breath. She released it in the same venting sounds, letting the wind catch her anguish and take it far out to sea.

Finally, spent, gasping for breath, knees weak, she opened her eyes. Nothing had changed. The rain continued pounding onto the coast like a vindictive maelstrom bent on annihilation. The sky remained black, heavy with clouds as if it wept for Adi and Portugal as she did. Her toes had gone numb in the cool, wet sand, and she slowly uncurled them as the waves continued their inexorable rush against the shoreline.

She could retrace her steps, walk back up the slick stone steps and back into the oppressive suspicion of the French colonel who thought her childhood home was now his.

Or she could not. Not yet.

Adi stepped toward the distant rocky outcropping that bordered the land. All her delay did was postpone the inevitable, but for now, that was good enough.

Suddenly, as if trying to impart a message, the wind completely stopped. Suspicion rose on her skin in a cold shiver, and she looked around the beach. It lay deserted. Wet, battered by the storm, and empty.

That sound came again. She’d thought it was the rain against the rocks, but no. Now that the wind eased, it sounded like something else.

A person.

Unease skittered down her spine. For one frozen moment, Adi didn’t know whether to race for the villa or investigate. The French occupation had taught her a caution she’d never before possessed, not here in her idyllic childhood sanctuary. However, no matter how brutally they treated the coastline, she refused to cower.

Picking her way over the rocks, she searched for the source of the noise. A villager, hiding from the French? There were many of them now. Perhaps the noise was merely an animal, a dog who wandered too far in the storm and became trapped.

She blinked as a gust of wind smacked her in the face. A man. As battered from the storm as the coastline, he half sat, half leaned against the rocks clutching a satchel of some sort.

“I hope it’s waterproof,” she muttered. Shaking her head at herself, Adi grimaced as she searched for a way over the rocks that wouldn’t tear up her bare feet. “Are you breathing?”

She carefully placed her hands on the rocks and peered over the barrier. Studying him for a moment, she took in his clothes, soaked through obviously, plain but in the darkness looked well-tailored. No hat, no uniform insignia, just a shirt and trousers, and shiny boots that would no doubt be as ruined as her gown.

He seemed alive. Sitting on one of the flatter rocks, she swung her legs over and scooted to the other side. Adi ignored the rending sound of fabric.

“Who are you and where did you come from? Fisherman? Probably not. Smuggler? Perhaps. Pirate?” Her lips twitched. Now she was being fanciful. Pushing off the rocks, she landed on the wet sand with a painful thud.

Ouch. She gingerly turned her ankle, but other than a faint twinge, it seemed unharmed. Adi sighed, but there was no help for it now. Crouching before the man, she brushed his wet hair from his forehead.

He startled awake, clutching the satchel as if it were a lifeline.

“Olá?” She asked, leaning back.

“Ah.” He coughed, one hand clutching the satchel, the other holding his chest as if his lungs ached. Otherwise, he seemed unharmed. “Olá.”

“Can you stand?” She asked in Portuguese, suspicious. But he seemed to understand well enough. Adi straightened and quickly looked up and down the still-deserted beach. Still, with the break in the storm, best to get moving. Just in case one of the French soldiers tried finding her. “We need to move off the beach.”

“Sim,” he agreed but didn’t move. “That would be for the best.”

 

Available June 15, 2023

Chocolate and The Lady's Pirate

 Chocolate plays a significant but small role in The Lady's Pirate. Adelaida's family are chocolatiers to the crown, but with the French invasion that's all disappeared. Especially since the royal family also disappeared to Brazil.

In the National Palace of Sintra they also had chocolate and pastry molds. No, I did not steal one! I was tempted, though! Here are some photos I took of original molds, several hundred years old. And yes, these are what Adelaida uses in The Lady's Pirate.

National Palace of Sintra

 After visiting Portugal, I did extensive rewrites of the kitchens in The Lady's Pirate. They are not typical English kitchens, they're so much more! More open because of the heat in a far more southern country. Check out the combination oven and stove. The countertop/bench along the fires is made of clay, which conducts the heat. The tiles keep it all together. So they put the pots on the bench over the fires for things like broths and such, and then the square holes are for breads. There's also a spit which was ginormous!

SINTRA Portugal TOURISM Guide - Complete 2023 Trip Planner

Kitchen - National Palace of Sintra (parquesdesintra.pt)

Portuguese Boats

 For someone who suffers from terrible seasickness (and many other forms of motion sickness) I spend a lot of time researching boats. But in The Lady's Pirate, those boats are needed!

Part of my story involves boats, specifically how many people can fit in a Portuguese fishing boat? There's a formula. Number of people = vessel length (ft.) x vessel width (ft.) ÷ 15. Why 15? No idea, but that's the official formula. 

When we were in Portugal, we visited the Maritime Museum and it was fascinating. I know, it doesn't sound it, but it really was amazing. Below are 2 photos I took in the museum of types of ships I use, the caique and the barca de pesca. 

Caïque - Wikipedia

The Lady's Pirate Cover

 I can't believe I never revealed my cover here! Time has completely gotten away from me! I adore this cover, it's perfect for the location-Portugal-and the setting I wanted to evoke.

The Lady's Pirate

Adelaida Machado loved 2 things. Creating unimaginable chocolate creations to tempt the senses and walking the beach along her family's villa. The first sustained her during the French Invasion. The second brought her Grayson Conrad.  She could've done without either.

Grayson Conrad agreed to deliver food and medical supplies to a Portuguese contact in exchange for French troop movements. Running a blockade? Easy. He hadn't counted on the storm that destroyed his ship or the beautiful widow who rescued him from the rocky shoreline.

Sparks fly, and not just when she discovers he's English and a risk to everyone she loves. He gives her the only hope they have that perhaps the French can be overthrown, and she'll do everything in her power to help him. Even at the risk to her own heart. But when a traitor in her village brings down the wrath of the French army, Adelaida has two choices--give up Grayson or sacrifice everything she holds dear.

Available June 15, 2023

Portuguese Chocolate Research

Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures by Marcy Norton is one of the books I read in my research for The Lady's Pirate.

Other articles were The History of the Chocolate Bonbon, a short Wikipedia history of the chocolate truffle to figure out wording and timelines, an article on revitalizing ancient traditions, and a History Channel bit on the history of chocolate. 

Napoleon's Death

 I missed it, he died May 5, 1821 so the anniversary was Friday. The most likely cause of death was stomach cancer, however I particularly like the theory that one or more of his closest advisors who surrounded him at his death also poisoned him.

He always looks so put out!