Duke by Day, Rogue by Night by Katherine Bone

She leaned into him, completely lost in the moment, eager to absorb his strength. Desperate to taste his lips before she collapsed weakly to the floor, she turned her head toward his. But she met empty space. No sooner had she given up fighting his seduction, she found herself indelicately propped against the desk. Gathering her wits, trying to understand what had just occurred, she heard the cabin door slam shut. Angered that she had just betrayed herself, she ran toward the door, latched onto the knob and threw it open to spin his head with her insults. But instead of catching the man who’d just humiliated her, she came face to face with a dirty scoundrel bearing a toothless grin, sporting eyes as round as glass beads.
    â€œWell. Well. Look at the cat what’s jumped in my lap,” the strange man yapped like a gutter dog.
    Constance backed into the room, desperate to escape the filthy man. With a sudden boost of courage, she slammed the door in the jackal’s face. Then, leaning back on the portal, she berated herself for coming so close to giving in to her enemy against her own better judgment. It was apparent, now more than ever, that she had to find a way to regain her freedom. For all intents and purposes, she’d been compromised. The only hope she had for rectifying her father’s downfall was making it to Spain and begging for Aunt Lydia’s help. London held no future for her now. Things as they were, Constance would rather die trying to help her father, then return home in disgrace, and be forced to marry Lord Burton and spend a lifetime of misery in his household.
    Yet how was it her body ignited beneath her enemy’s caress when Burton’s touch filled her with horrible misgivings? Surely the opposite should be true. Burton was a member of the ton, the pirate wasn’t. Was she doomed to end up on the streets, cast out of society? She couldn’t allow it to happen. She needed a plan.
    First, it was imperative that she contact Mrs. Mortimer. She’d been told her childhood governess was in another cabin. But with a guard posted at her door, how would she be able to find her? Her gaze scanned the captain’s cabin until a thought sparked her into motion. Hurrying over to the captain’s desk, she pored over the various papers there, hoping to find a blueprint of the ship. Once found and researched, she was sure it would provide information she needed to locate Morty and collect her. From there, she and Mrs. Mortimer could escape using one of the gigs above deck.
    Yes, it was a sound plan. Once she arrived in Spain, she would locate Aunt Lydia and use her connections to report the Striker ’s activities, to include turn in the pirate who was a threat to more than her life.
    â€¢ • •
    Constance Danbury was going to be the death of him. Percy strolled out onto the Striker ’s deck and inhaled a lung’s breath of salty air, letting the stinging breeze fill his nostrils and cool his ardor. He loved the sea, had felt a kinship to it since he’d enlisted in the navy as a young man — against his father’s wishes and rules of the peerage — using a name that would not bring his father shame. It had taken years to mend the rift his rebellious act had caused within his family.
    Percy wanted nothing more than to please his father, to make life right again for the old man. For many years, he’d consigned his soul to Simon Danbury, director of a secretive group of patriots bound to do anything within their power to protect England’s shores and the country from within. No sacrifice had been too great. No deprivation too weighty. He’d willingly cast the mold of foppish Percival Avery in order to maintain his secret identity. The creation of his alter ego was his complete opposite in every way. Underneath his mask of disguise, nothing mattered but revenge. To members of society, publicly to his father and his many acquaintances,