Chapter 19 #3
“No. Say the rest. What would you do with me after you’d used me and my land to recover your friend?”
“Restore you to France?” he ventured weakly. “Honestly, I was going to simply ask you what you wanted—Paris, Bordeaux, wherever—and
to deliver you there. The marriage would be annulled and you’d be home. You could live as you pleased. The dowered lands would
be yours to enjoy or sell, as I’ve said. Please believe this. Never would you be taken anywhere you didn’t wish to go. Never
would you be . . .” he exhaled “. . . bound to me forever more.”
“God forbid,” she said. She barely heard herself over the sound of her heart cracking. “And what of you, Captain? Have you
no desire to marry? In earnest? To marry someone who’s not the key player in a revenge plot? Someone not furnished by the
prince because you won her for being so very heroic?”
“No,” he said. “I’d never intended to be anyone’s husband. Not until I discovered that marrying you would so thoroughly defeat
Surcouf.”
Why, she wondered, did this feel like a twist of the knife? From the beginning, he’d spoken in terms of their negotiation.
She repeated his words, trying to comprehend. “You never intended to marry.”
“Please remember,” he said lowly, “I’d not yet met you.
I did not know you. And if I had known you, I would have never, ever, believed you to be an attainable bride.
For me. Even if I wasn’t a bastard smuggler who’d never met a truly happily married couple in his life.
You are clever, and idealistic, and pure of heart; you are so beautiful and young.
No man should aspire to you, honestly, least of all me.
Not to mention, I’ve always made my living at sea. Sea captains make terrible husbands.”
“And you mean to return to the sea, do you? After you’ve dangled me, as it were, before this Frenchman?”
“I cannot think beyond recovering my friend,” he said.
It wasn’t a No, she thought. And what a fool she was. He’d called her clever and idealistic and pretty, but he did not prioritize her. She
was not clever or idealistic enough for him to bend his single-minded view and “think beyond.”
She forced her mind away from the What-Might-Bes. There were too many unanswered questions about the What-Weres. She wanted
to know every shred of detail about this plan of his. For too long, she’d been an unwitting accomplice to a recovery mission
that sounded very unlikely, indeed.
“And what if I didn’t wish to be dangled?” she asked, speaking through tears. “What if I had no wish to leave England at all?
Which, by the way, I do not.”
“Of course you don’t. This was my error—one of many, my largest miscalculation. I did not know you, as I’ve said. I’d studied
other French exiles like you. The prevailing attitude among them was to return home and to recover what they could of their lost status and fortune. I’d
convinced myself that when I found you in Kent, you would be hiding in sustained misery, pining for La Belle France. I told myself I would restore you to your preferred situation.”
“And what of the Prince Regent, speaking on my behalf?” She made a bitter laugh. “He simply went along with this?”
Bannock blinked. He cocked his head. “He did.”
“Oh my God,” she said, “no one has considered me to be a cogent person with independent thought. With agency and preferences.”
Bannock ran a hand through his hair and turned away. He stared up the path. He turned back. “I don’t deny that everything
done to you has been inexcusable. If I could undo the havoc I’ve wreaked, I would do it. My methods were terrible. I know
it counts for nothing, Danielle, but my motives were pure. My plan to recover Linus Welty thought of everything but you. This
admission comes far too late, I know. And it makes up for nothing. I also know—”
He exhaled and turned away again. When he turned back, he spoke to her in tones of entreaty. His hands were outstretched like
a man begging. “I could find almost no information on you. In that way, you seemed like a made-up person. The Dinwiddies all
but absconded with you after the adoption. They left no trace. You’ve deduced that you were, in a way, forgotten to exile.
Well, that is very close to the mark. When I spoke to Killian Crewes this afternoon, he told me your sister has been searching
for you for nearly twenty years. With no information on you in particular, I researched other French exiles—and as I said, they are a malcontented, homeward-looking
lot. After that, I researched royal princesses in general. What I learned there is that they are raised to serve their family
and country as a sort of . . . pawn.”
“A pawn?” Dani could but repeat the word.
“Yes, a pawn,” he admitted. “It sounds ridiculous and mercenary, saying it now, but even Fernsby agrees, the role of a princess is, largely, to be married for the benefit of King and Country. Considering this, I thought you’d understand that the Prince Regent had arranged a marriage for you.
I thought you would consent because he’s harbored your family all of these years.
Then I thought—admittedly, a grave error—that I would simply .
. . take you. Home. To France. That is what I thought.
I know it’s foolhardy, and shortsighted, and—honestly—highly outrageous, but my mind has been consumed with recovering my surrogate father.
“If nothing else,” he said, beseeching, “can you understand that? To what lengths would you go to recover your surrogate parents, if they were rotting in a French dungeon? He has been my priority. I thought only to determine some way—any way—to bring Linus home alive. I put so much thought into
how I might extract him, I neglected to think about how I might respectfully engage you. Or compensate you. And see you situated in the end.”
“And you felt you could not share this with me? That you couldn’t tell me about your father or your need to rescue him?”
Bannock nodded, agreeing, but he turned away. “I . . . I meant— Damn it, there is no excuse except cowardice. From the alleged
war hero. Oh the irony.”
“We were on the little beach after I fell into the pond,” she said, “and you showed me the fossil that is your keepsake in
honor of your surrogate father. Was that real?”
“Of course it was real,” he said, spinning back. He patted his waistcoat, searching for the pocket. He pulled the fossil out.
“I lied by omission, Princess, I did not misrepresent facts about myself. I revealed things to you I’ve never before told
anyone else.”
“If the facts are true and you shared them with only me, why not tell me the whole story? On the beach, why not say everything?”
Now he shook his head. “No. I couldn’t. The timing was wrong. You’d absorbed so much that morning.”
“What is timing when there are truths to be revealed?”
“I couldn’t bear more unhappiness for you, Danielle,” he said, his voice forceful. “I didn’t want to lose—”
He stopped. He shook his head. Heart pounding, Danielle waited.
“I didn’t want to lose the accord that we had,” he finally said. “And I didn’t think you should absorb more secrets that day.
Not after you’d just learned of your own long-lost bloody royal family. I used my best judgment in the moment. Please believe
me. Right or wrong. I meant to protect you.”
“You meant to protect me,” she repeated quietly, hoping they both could hear the wrong-mindedness, the unfairness.
He took a deep breath. He held his hands high like a man in surrender. “I can promise you now, there is nothing more to say—no
more secrets. For what it’s worth. That is the entire tale, the complete lie; every player and motivation revealed. I’ve bungled
it terribly. And my handling of it only got worse, the longer I remained in Kent. My God, you cannot imagine the relief in
saying it. Do your worst, Princess. I deserve it. Whatever it is.”
Dani regarded him, flushed, hatless, with grass stuck to his boots. He was pulling off his gloves. Well, she thought, she
was not not sympathetic. She understood that a parent in danger would be horrifying—but Captain Luke Bannock was a large, capable man;
rich; a sea captain; he’d eviscerated Mr. Stinchcomb in a thirty-second conversation. Was she to believe the only way to recover this father figure was to marry her?
She would not be distracted by his obvious distress. Because, honestly, what of her distress? What of . . . what of . . .
Dani turned her emotions over in her mind, looking for raw spots that still seethed and burned. Her anger would not be cooled
by this eleventh-hour admission nor his heart-wrenching facts. He’d made her his wife, for God’s sake. Married.
And he’d made no declaration. Most hurtful of all. His only stated regard for her was regret. For a moment, she’d thought
he would say he didn’t want to lose her, but he’d stopped himself. He’d said he did not want to lose their “accord.” It was
no declaration at all.
Well, any accord was now in shambles. And she couldn’t stay here and witness his incredible regret. It tempted her compassion,
and any compassion toward him in this moment made her doubt her own sanity. She shoved past him and blazed up the path, kicking
his hat out of the way.
“I was going to tell you before the wedding,” she heard him call. She kept walking.
“Truly,” he went on, striding behind her. “I meant to give you the crown and tell you everything. When you knew what was at
stake—that I needed this favor to recover my old friend—I meant to give you the choice: Marry me in name only, help me with
Surcouf, and then we would annul the thing. I would go, and you could carry on with your life. Untouched. With Eastwell Park
as payment. Or, you could do nothing, not marry me, and still I would’ve given you Eastwell Park. That is what I meant to do.”
He never really wanted to marry me at all. This thought popped in her mind like the break of a bone. A broken bone was not deadly, but it still hurt. And the affected
arm or leg was never the same.