High Seas Stowaway

“Mendoza!” he shouted. “Turn back to Santo Domingo. We have a knave to set ashore.”

Balthazar reached down to grasp the lad by the collar of his doublet, knocking his cap askew. One long, dark brown curl escaped, falling along a startlingly graceful neck.

The stowaway shoved Balthazar’s hand away, standing up straight as he/she pulled off the cap. Bianca glared up at him, shaking her hair free over her shoulders.

“You cannot turn back, Captain Grattiano,” she said. “The wind is against you.”

As Balthazar stared at her in utter astonishment, he heard someone roar with laughter. “Looks like we have a new crew member, captain.”

“I can swab a deck or mend a rigging rope with the best of them,” Bianca declared. Her words were bold, but her eyes—her eyes still held that deep caution. That distance.

A distance that had suddenly grown much narrower.

Balthazar caught her against him, his lips coming down hungrily on hers as his crew broke into raucous cheers.

HIGH SEAS STOWAWAY

“Smell the salt spray, feel the deck beneath your feet

and hoist the Jolly Roger as McCabe takes you on an entertaining, romantic ride.” —RT BOOKreviews

A NOTORIOUS WOMAN

“Court intrigue, poison and murders fill this

Renaissance romance. The setting is beautiful…” —RT BOOKreviews

A SINFUL ALLIANCE

“Scandal, seduction, spies, counter-spies, murder, love

and loyalty are skilfully woven into the tapestry of the Tudor court. Richly detailed and brimming with historical events and personages, McCabe’s tale weaves together history and passion perfectly.” —RT BOOKreviews

Amanda McCabe wrote her first romance at the age of sixteen—a vast epic, starring all her friends as the characters, written secretly during algebra class.

She’s never since used algebra, but her books have been nominated for many awards, including the RITA^>®, Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Booksellers Best, the National Readers’ Choice Award, and the Holt Medallion. She lives in Oklahoma, with a menagerie of two cats, a pug and a bossy miniature poodle, and loves dance classes, collecting cheesy travel souvenirs, and watching the Food Network—even though she doesn’t cook. Visit her at http://ammandamccabe.tripod.com and http://www.riskyregencies.blogspot.com

Previous novels by the same author:

TO CATCH A ROGUE^>* TO DECEIVE A DUKE^>* TO KISS A COUNT^>* A NOTORIOUS WOMAN^{>^} A SINFUL ALLIANCE^{>^}

* Linked by character

^ Linked by character to HIGH SEAS STOWAWAY

Venice—1525

He was there.

Bianca Simonetti stared down from her narrow bedroom window, peeking through the merest crack in her curtain to the young man who stood on the narrow walkway far below. Though she could see little but his pearl-trimmed red velvet cap, the glossy fall of his dark hair on his shoulders, she knew it had to be him. Balthazar Grattiano.

For no one else in all her fifteen years had ever made her heart beat as he did. It pounded now in her breast, the rush of nervous blood loud in her ears. Her very fingertips and toes tingled with hot, nervous life whenever she just looked at him!

She knew that she was far from the only female in Venice he affected this way. His dark green-gold eyes, muscled shoulders and elaborate codpieces were the subject of many whispered, blushing confidences from patrician salons to two scudi brothels all over the city. Bianca heard much of it, for all those women, countesses and whores alike, came to her mother with their secret desires.

Maria Simonetti, long a widow with her own household, was the most gifted fortune-teller and tarot-card reader in Venice. She could not practise her trade openly, of course; Venice was not the strictly religious enclave Madrid was, but no one wanted to court charges of witchcraft. So, the lower stories of their house were let to a dressmaker and a wigmaker, while Maria told her fortunes in a back room, discreetly draped and curtained.

But everyone in the city knew, in their own unstated way, of Maria’s gifts. The women especially. They came seeking a glimpse of their future, assurances about their husbands or lovers or businesses. They came in tears, in hope, even sometimes in elation. And, very often, they came with anxious questions about Balthazar Grattiano. They never noticed Bianca, sitting so quietly in the shadows, and she heard them all.

Balthazar was handsome, one of the most handsome men in Venice. That was obvious just to look at him, of course. He was rich, the only son of the fabulously wealthy and powerful Ermano Grattiano. He was also now nineteen, of an age to marry, to take on the responsibilities of a patrician gentleman. Yet he did not seem inclined to do any such thing, preferring to spend his time with courtesans, gambling, drinking, or, most shocking of all, watching the ships being built at the Arsenal.

Bianca heard all this, heard the whispers of his great “inventiveness” in bed, his mystery and elusiveness. Heard the blushing pleas—would he one day marry her? Make her his exclusive mistress?