Sea Siren — Veronica Ashley

CAPTAIN MARISA
"Neither you nor the Queen will stop me! " Marisa defied her stern father while the crew of her merchant sailing ship, Sea Siren, awaited orders for her next voyage. Newly returned from a profitable venture to the Azores, Marisa was determined to fulfill her lifelong dream: to sail Eastward to the distant shores of Constantinople. With only her jeweled dagger to protect her from sea battles and storms, pirates and seducers, mutinous sailors and conniving courtiers, she would set sail in search of something far more precious than gold and silver for Queen Elizabeth's coffers: her mother, captured by Turkish pirates while Marisa was still in her cradle.

CAPTIVE MARISA
But no dagger could protect the lovely Marisa from the bolt of passion she felt when she met the first man ever to stir her senses or to possess the power to bend her will -- dashing merchant adventurer Sir Morgan Kendall. As his ship, the Hercules traveled in Sea Siren's wake, his kisses lingered in Marisa's mind, until she knew in the depths of her being that her heart had been plundered by passion and her body must surrender to the siren call of love.

From the glitter, pomp, and intrigue of good Queen Bess's court to the stormy seas of the Barbary Coast and the lush, passion-drenched harems of Algiers and Constantinople, Marisa followed the truth she had somehow always known: that all the loot and bounty of the world's great empires could not compare to Morgan Kendall's embrace, and that her true destiny was to lie in the arms of her lover -- on land and on sea!