by Erinn Ellender Quinn
Touch the Wind Book Three
Michal Bethany Lovett has led a rather quiet life. As the vicar’s firstborn child, she is expected to care for her eleven younger siblings and help meet the needs of her father’s congregation. While sitting with a widower’s six children, Michal is mistaken for his wife and is kidnapped. Her abductors encounter a group of escaped prisoners and offer her up as a distraction that allows them get away. The arrival of a third group sees her rescued before her virtue is lost, but they take her back to their ship, where she lands half-naked in an Irish giant’s arms.
Tristan O’Dea sails for Justin Vallé and commands the Yseult. His orders are to eventually see the young woman home, after deeming it safe to return, or take her wherever she wishes to go. But first, they need to know why she was in the home of the prison guard who’d been bribed to allow the escape. Remembering the feel of her in his arms, not trusting himself around her, he leaves the questioning to Vallé’s lieutenant, Rafe Quintanal.
Rafael Antonio Santiago Quintanal is the bastard son of Spain’s greatest female spy. He was born. Trained. Instructed in weapons and martial arts. Taught to obey without question and do his duty without fail. To safely return the vicar’s daughter means learning who she is, but she is a distraction he does not need. An inconvenience at the least. A liability if he lets her be one.
He’s never before let a woman that close—another thing he can place at his madre’s door. He doesn’t intend to start now.
Rafe watches her from a distance, curious as to what makes her tick. Like the workings of a clock, what gear engages her hands to shape a subservient pose, clasped primly at her waist, head slightly bowed, even when one corner of her mouth is curved with secret humor? What wisdom makes her fair skin seek the shade, and what lures her out, to lift her face to the sun before retreating to the safety found in the shadows? What kind of woman is she, to be associated with a beast like Lewis Simon, the night guard at Port Royal prison who enjoys making men cry? Is she so innocent, to know nothing of the man’s nature?
Who is she?
And why does he care?
Return proves impossible when O’Dea and Quintanal learn that Michal is wanted for murder. When both men offer her a chance at a future, the vicar’s unconventional daughter must choose between a gentle giant and a man who sleeps with a dagger under his pillow and a pistol by his bed.
