A Captain For Clarissa

She trusted an old friend. He sold her to slavers. And the only man who can save her is one the world says she can never have.

Lady Clarissa Creighton has never been the kind of woman who sits still. With two gloriously eccentric chaperones, the ruins of Athens at her feet, and a parade of unsuitable suitors she has no intention of accepting, her adventurous heart has everything it craves. Then Edward Dalton appears — a charming old family friend whose warmth and wit feel like a safe harbour in a sea of strangers. She almost trusts him. She should not have.

Snatched from her bed and sold to corsairs by a man drowning in gambling debts, Clarissa wakes in chains aboard a ship bound for the slave markets of Algiers. Her rescue comes at the hands of Captain Rafael de Silva, a Portuguese naval officer whose quiet honour and sea-green eyes are nothing like the polished charm that betrayed her. Rafael is the son of a noble family shattered by the Peninsular Wars — his father and brothers dead, his clifftop estate half in ruins, his fortune spent keeping his mother and sister comfortable. He has nothing to offer an earl's daughter but a damaged name and a heart he is trying very hard not to lose.

From Malta to Florence and on to the wild Portuguese coast, what begins as gratitude becomes something far more dangerous. But Rafael cannot believe a woman like Clarissa would choose a life with him over the glittering world she was born to — and when he lets her go back to England, he may have made the worst mistake of his life. Because Edward Dalton is waiting, debts paid with the price he got for her, ready to claim the dowry he was always after — and Clarissa has no idea what he did.

Can Clarissa uncover the betrayal hiding behind a familiar smile before it's too late — and will Rafael find the courage to fight for her, even when every drawing room in London says she deserves better?