The Captain's Enemy

He is a King's officer with a spotless record, a lieutenant who reports on him weekly, and precisely no authority to do the one thing he actually came out here to do. A brass spyglass, warm from his palm, presses against Alistair's eye as he scans the blue-grey line where sea meets sky. Nothing yet. Just dawn rolling over the island's eastern shore and the Vengeance creaking under his boots like a tired animal woken too early. *Signal from the schooner. She's been spotted. Running south-southeast, hugging the reef line. The Viper.* Carver says the name like he is spitting out spoiled meat. He stands too straight, coat immaculate despite the hour, thin fingers already worrying the signet ring on his right hand. Twelve gunports. Sloop-rigged. Flying no colours. *She's got my brother*, Alistair says. Not to Carver. To the sea, and the empty sky. *She's got a pirate captain who's taken three merchantmen in as many months. The Admiralty wants her hull on the bottom of the harbour.* Aboard the Viper, Isaura Delacroix presses her palm flat against the oak of her cabin table while twelve senior crew argue about whether to cut her prisoner's throat and put him over the side before the Navy works out where they are anchored. What follows: a lie sworn on his father's name, salt and lime, an emperor's borrowed grief, a wound that refuses to close, a favour he has no means of repaying, a mother's prayer, and a second traitor nobody has accounted for. *I was just afraid to let you be my harbour.* *You can stop being afraid now.* *I'll try. But I'll probably fail.* *Then I'll remind you.* A historical enemies-to-lovers romance on the Caribbean station, between a naval captain who has already decided to hang and a pirate who has spent her whole life refusing to be anybody's mercy. He has her word, her ship's position and, eventually, her trust. What remains is convincing her that he is worth the thing she would have to give up to keep him.