ou're too late, my friend," said Zach as he dropped onto the wooden bench, kicking his boots disconsolately out before him in the dust. "The rumors we'd heard weren't rumors at all, but the truth. Miriam told me herself. She's going to marry that flap-eared schoolmaster in a fortnight, and nothing's going to change her mind."

"Nothing, that is, but me." Jack Wilder leaned back against the oak tree's trunk, holding his tankard of ale steady on his knee. "I've come too far for Mirry to lose her now."

He beckoned for the barkeep in the doorway to bring Zach a tankard of his own, and the man hurried to obey. Though the night was too warm to sit indoors, the owner of Hickey's ale shop was happy enough to cater to his customers in the yard outside, here beneath the oak tree with a fine view of the harbor. Hickey must be beside himself with joy, thought Jack cynically as he held up the coin for Zach's ale, with a customer—even one with a cutthroat's reputation—who was willing to pay in hard money with the king's likeness. Coins like that usually ended up in the till of Westham's other, more respectable tavern, the Green Lion. But the Green Lion belonged to Miriam's father, and Jack wasn't ready for that meeting just yet.

But Miriam herself—Lord, he couldn't wait to see her again.

"Tell me everything about her," he demanded as Zach took a long swallow of ale. "How she looks, what she said—I want to know it all."

Zach hesitated, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "She's changed, Jack. She's turned more serious, more sober, and telling me over and over about how she wasn't a girl any longer until it seemed like an echo."

"She's right," said Jack. "Her twentieth birthday was three weeks past."

Zach groaned. "Oh, aye,you go ahead and remind me, too, for I'd clean forgotten. How the devil did you remember, anyway?"

Jack remembered because he'd never forgotten. It had been on Miriam's sixteenth birthday, four summers ago, that he'd coaxed her out alone to walk on the beach. She'd been woman enough for him then, even if her brother had been blind to the difference. Of course she'd laughed and skipped ahead on the sand, and tried to pretend that this was no different from all the other times, when Zach had been there, too. But it had been different, as different as sunshine is from the moonlight that turned her hair to spun silver, and when, in the shadows of her father's dock, he'd drawn her gently into his arms and kissed her and told her she was the only woman in the world for him, they'd both felt the magic of that moonlight in the promises they made and the passion they shared.

And then he'd returned home to find the circle of vultures that had been his pirate father's oldest friends, his crewmates, waiting to carry him off to claim a legacy he hadn't wanted. Too late he'd realized their rum was as poisoned as their lives, and when he'd awakened he was on their ship, far from home and gone without making any kind of decent good-bye to Miriam. Instead he'd begun the journey that had carried him to the far side of hell, and only now, four years later, brought him back to where he'd begun.

His Mirry's sixteenth birthday: no wonder he'd never forgotten it. How could she possibly not feel the same?

"You disremember your own birthday, Zach," he scoffed. "Why should your sister's be any different? As for this new soberness in her, why, most likely her pitiful schoolmaster has given her no reason to smile."

But Zach only shook his head glumly. "I tell you she has changed, and not for the better, either. She fancies this Chuff because he's respectable and dull and because he's learned enough to spout Greek like a—well, like a very Greek. Everything you're not, Jack. I said that to her outright. 'Because he's not Jack,' I said, and she agreed."

Jack stared at him in disbelief. "She agreed? Just like that?"

Zach nodded vigorously. "Aye, aye, just like that. I tell you, she's a whole different Miriam."

"Hah." Jack scowled down at the last of his ale, his own mood turning equally flat. He'd considered it a sign of great good luck that his return to Westham had coincided with Zach's as well, but now he wasn't as certain. How could his Mirry be eager to marry another man? Even though Zachariah Fairbourne was his oldest friend, one whose word he'd trust with his life, he refused to believe that Miriam would be so faithless, and so willing to squander her sweet self upon a schoolmaster at that. Zach might be his oldest friend, but Miriam was the one he loved best.

"Yet I'll wager she's still the fairest lass in Westham," he said firmly. "I'll wager there's still no other that can hold a candle to her."

"You would know her," said Zach with such blunt and unpoetic brotherly honesty that Jack could have throttled him. "She's not changed that way."

She wouldn't have changed at all, not to Jack. For four endless years, as he'd been forced to become harder, tougher, stronger to survive, he'd held tight to the memory of Miriam as she'd been: of the taste of her kiss and the scent of her skin and feel of her, soft and yielding, in his arms, of the round, high curve of her breasts, the pouting ripeness of her lower lip, the teasing, throaty laughter that lit her eyes from within, and how her petticoats pulled taut over her hip when she held them clear of the rocks and sand, her little bare feet pink in the cold seawater.

"She said she was done with running in the sand," said Zachariah mournfully, echoing Jack's own thoughts, "and that she was too old for playing princess with us, hunting treasure on the island. As if we'd still expect her to, the silly muffin!"

"I would," said Jack. "And I will."

Yet instantly Zach's jaw tensed, his whole body on guard, enough to make Jack mutter a half-hearted, disgusted oath to himself. What the devil had made him mention piracy and Miriam together like that, anyway, as if Zach needed one more reminder? Likely there wasn't a man, woman, or child in Westham that didn't suspect the wicked, lawless nature of his former ship and crew, and the rest would pretend they did.

It would be common knowledge, just as everyone knew Jack's father had sailed with the infamous pirate Henry Avery in the Fancy. Not that Jack would be blamed, or even scorned, for what he'd done. As most Westham folk would be quick to point out, Jack Wilder had never harmed any Englishmen, choosing instead to plunder the richer ships in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean with heathen owners and crews, who all likely deserved whatever they'd gotten. Besides, what else could be expected? Such things ran in the blood, didn't they? Everyone knew; but obviously Jack himself had been foolish to hope that his oldest friend wouldn't have been among them.

"I didn't mean it like that, Zach," he said wearily. "I told you before: I'm done with pirating."

"Aye," said Zach with none of the conviction Jack had wanted to hear from a friend. "That you did."

Jack sighed. "Then for God's sake, at least pretend that you heard me."

Zach took a long swallow of ale. "Honest men don't rely on deceit, Jack," he said earnestly, "or on words alone. You'll have to show me you've changed. I know you can sail anything that floats. I can get you a place in a Fairbourne vessel by noon tomorrow, if you wish it. But you have to be the one to make that decision, not I."

Jack's smile held more bitterness than humor. He'd come back for Miriam, not charity from her brother and his righteously perfect Fairbourne cousins, and he'd no intention of accepting it. He did have his pride.

Yet he'd often considered how differently their lives might have run if they'd each been born into the other's family. God knows they'd both started out the same, both fatherless boys who loved the sea. But would Zach have been better able to resist the legacy of a dashing pirate father? Or would Jack himself be wearing that elegant gray gentleman's coat instead of gold hoops in his ears if he'd had the power and the wealth of the Fairbournes to steer his choices?

"I'm considering it," he said lightly. "Now you didn't tell Mirry that I'd come here with you to Westham, did you?"

"After I'd sworn to you I wouldn't?" Zach's expression was carefully impassive. "I told you I'd help you for Miriam's sake, not yours. But if you don't love her true the way you claim, or if you make her suffer in any way, why would you then—"

"Why what?" demanded Jack automatically, unable, even with Zach, to keep the reflexive challenge from his tone.

"Why?" With the single word, Zach tossed the challenge back in his face. "Damnation, because she's my sister, that's why, and you're a—"

"A what?" Jack smiled bitterly. "A thief, a scoundrel, a murderer, a black-hearted devil born only to be hung? Do you think I'd have dared come back for Miriam if even half the stories were true? I told you before, Zach, and I'll swear to it in whatever way will make you believe: I'm done with that trade, done for good and the sake of my own tattered soul. And for Miriam."

"For Miriam?" repeated Zach with patent disbelief.

"Aye, for Miriam, and what other reason would be better?" Impatiently Jack struck his fist to his knee. "I've come back to make her happy, Zach, and I'd have thought you'd want the same for her."

"I do, but—"

"Wouldn't you rather see her with your oldest mate, the one man who would put her life and joy before his own? Or would you prefer she tossed herself away on this puling schoolmaster, and see her swallowed up into dull old Cambridge, away from the sea and away from us?"

With obvious reluctance, Zach shook his head, and Jack, to his sorrow, could understand. He could wax on endlessly about old acquaintance, but the cold truth was that he wasn't the same man who'd left Westham, and he and Zach both knew it. He'd seen the change himself in every looking glass. Four years of bloodshed and mayhem, typhoons and hurricanes, living with one eye on the hangman's noose and the other on the knives of his crewmates, all of it had left its mark on his face. His pale eyes in particular now held a dangerous, almost wolfish look that made other men keep their distance. It was not the face of an honest New England gentleman, and it was most definitely not a face to trust with a favorite sister.

"Your word of honor, Jack," Zach was now saying. "Give me your word of honor that you'll treat her well."

"Given," said Jack with an impatient sweep of his hand. Of course he only wanted the best for Miriam, as long as that best included him.

"And that you love her," continued Zach. "The dear little fool still loves you well enough, though she's too stubborn to admit it. God knows that's the only reason I'm even considering acting like some blasted matchmaker on your behalf."

Jack strived to look properly lovesick. It wasn't hard, considering how he really did feel about Miriam. "I do love her, Zach. Always have, and always will."

"Then you'll give me your word that you'll wed her?"

Jack hesitated as the icy finger of respectability traced down his spine. Miriam was the one good thing in his entire misspent life, and what he felt for her went well beyond love the way other people seemed to mean it. In the years they'd been apart, the sharp ache of separation had never lessened. He'd missed her more than if he'd lost an arm or a leg, she was that much a part of him, and he'd no intention of ever leaving her again.

He wanted her back, wanted her more than anything else in this life or the next, yet somehow that wanting had never quite translated itself in his mind into marriage. Marriage was grim and doleful and cheerless, a cold, black pit of duty that swallowed up all the joy and spice between men and women. He wouldn't wish that on his Mirry, any more than he would on himself, but he wasn't about to abandon his chances by confessing as much to her brother, either.

"I told you I'd treat her honorably, didn't I, Zach?" he declared heartily, and that much he meant.

"In every way," said Zach firmly. "Else I'll see you hung myself, friend or no friend."

Jack nodded impatiently. The fine points could be worked out later, once he had Miriam by his side where she belonged. "You did make her a present of the seashell?"

"Aye," said Zach, still eyeing him warily, "though she thought the part about finding her true love on the third morning was a bit daft."

"In three days it will seem to her the most logical notion under the sun," said Jack with a confident smile as he settled back against the oak's trunk. "And best of all, there won't be a word of that schoolmaster's Greek to any of it."