Chapter 17
Tremaine’s always steady heart thumped in a most peculiar way, and from nothing more than holding this woman in his arms.
He’d known she’d be here. He knew this was the day the McQuoid-Smiths made their jaunt to Hyde Park. Just as he’d known somewhere inside him that Linnie would find her way here, to this place where they’d once met.
Tremaine pressed a kiss against Linnie’s temple. “Why, this is quite a welcome, love,” he said huskily, clasping her slender body close. “To what do I owe this—?”
She edged away to look up at him. Her eyes shone with tears, shame, and anger.
His grin dipped into a frown. “What—?”
“Arran told me.”
All his nerves went on alert. Bloody hell. Had she confided in McQuoid about their meetings? Tremaine weighed his words. More importantly, did she finally realize the true reason for his sudden interest in her?
“He told you?” he asked carefully.
Linnie nodded.
Several tears slipped down her cheeks.
The sight of them hit like a kick to the chest and made breathing hard.
Oh, shite. It’d already been an uphill battle before the lady’s beloved, trusted cousin watered those seeds of her suspicions about Tremaine’s intentions for her.
“I see,” Tremaine said flatly. Carefully, he set her from him.
“Don’t do that, J-Jeremy,” she chided, her voice breaking.
That sick sensation in his stomach grew. Unquestionably, his response had everything to do with the ramifications of losing Linnie’s trust, and surely nothing to do with the sight of her suffering.
“Do what?” he gritted out, abhorring that he should feel this way, despising he should feel anything at all.
“Don’t pull away from m-me, Jeremy.” Her lower lip quivered. “Please. Arran told me about the battle at sea and how he . . . how h-he . . .” A fresh sheen glazed over Linnie’s big green eyes. “He left you.”
Tremaine’s body went whipcord straight. It took a moment for her words to hit him.
What the hell . . . ?
Linnie propelled herself into his arms a second time and nearly knocked him off balance.
The tension went out of him and he held her. His mind raced. Of all the things he’d anticipated Linnie saying, that certainly hadn’t been one.
“What, exactly, did he tell you?” he asked in guarded tones.
“All of it.” Rage lent a glitter to her mesmerizingly expressive green eyes. “He told me of the battle you were caught in, and the fate your ship suffered, and . . .” Linnie’s tears shone bright. “And . . .” Her voice broke. “A-all of it.”
For reasons he couldn’t understand, Linnie’s despondent recitation didn’t resurrect in him the customary incensed response to thoughts about that day.
Tremaine frowned.
“I’m sorry,” she rasped against his chest.
She’d apologize to him?
His gut clenched.
And perhaps he wasn’t as dead inside as he’d believed—or hoped—for a sharp stab of something feeling deuced like guilt pricked the place where his cold heart beat.
She wasn’t done twisting the blade.
“It is no w-wonder you hate me.” The anguish bleeding from her voice pulled Tremaine out of his head.
He didn’t want her feeling guilt. “McQuoid’s crimes aren’t yours, Linnie,” he said gruffly.
She’d just pay the price for them.
That detail hadn’t seemed to matter very much before. Why, then, did more of those needles of guilt continue to stab at him?
A sad, bitter laugh spilled from her lips, that forlorn expression muted and muffled in his greatcoat. “It does not escape me that you did not deny hating me.”
He frowned. “Of course I don’t hate you.”
Linnie gave him an incredulous look.
Fair enough. There’d been nothing warm or tender in his assurance. Nor were the words any sort of endorsement of his affection she’d clearly sought.
“Linnie . . .” Tremaine smoothed his gloved knuckles along the high curve of her cheek. “Do you truly believe, between our past . . . and now our present, that I can hate you?”
Another tear slipped free. “I would certainly understand why you would.”
Just as he would understand when all her affection and feelings for him eventually died a swift death.
His mind balked from that inevitable ending; it had no bearing on the now. She served a purpose. That was it.
For that matter, it wasn’t as though she wouldn’t receive anything when she found herself married to him. He’d still keep her bed warm and her body sated. Sweet, innocent Linnie would believe she wanted more.
The jaded woman she’d certainly become after learning she’d been nothing more than a pawn would discover sex was sex, and there were no emotions attached.
Why did none of those assurances he sought to give himself bring even the slightest hint of comfort? Why did his chest hurt in this debilitating way?
“He should have stayed with you,” Linnie exclaimed with a full-throated loyalty for him, twisting his guilt all the more. “He should have climbed into the sea himself and hauled you back in to save you, regardless of whether you wanted to go down with your ship or not. I would have.”
That, he believed. In fact, he’d have staked his future in seafaring that Poseidon was no match for his obstinate, spirited, fearless Linnie Smith.
Tremaine scraped a hand over his forehead.
He forced himself to look at her when he told her the truth he hadn’t shared with anyone. “Linnie, McQuoid did.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand,” she said haltingly. “He did what?”
Tremaine, too, hesitated. Linnie was all that was good, and to bring his sins and the ugliness of war to her threatened to smear his darkness onto her soul.
Linnie slipped her fingers into his, drawing him in . . . just as she’d done in every way since Rutland’s masquerade.
“Jeremy.” Her lips barely moved, but her words found him. “I want to share this with you.”
And even as he yearned to protect her, he wanted to tell her; he needed to tell her, and he didn’t know why. Just that he did.
“The harsh conditions of sea travel require frequent repairs. Some of it—patching sails, fixing rigging, scrubbing the hull . . .” He waved his hand.
“All that can be done at sea. But the toll left during battles requires more intensive work. New caulking. It’s one of the reasons alliances are made; it’s why alternatingly there’d be times I’d sail with McQuoid and he with me. ”
At some point while he spoke, a small crease formed between Linnie’s pale-blond eyebrows; it drew attention to her eyes, as vast and wide as the ocean, and it harkened him back to the young girl she’d been who’d hung on his every word.
Now, she was a trusting, hope-filled, starry-eyed young woman.
How? How could he hurt her? How, when it’d seemed so simple before, did it suddenly seem and feel impossible?
She blinked slowly. “Jeremy?”
He cleared his throat and tried to recall where he’d left off.
“Arran’s vessel was in the dock for routine repairs.
Some splicing and replacing broken ropes.
Reinforcing masts. When we sail, we do so with an understanding.
We always split the bounty evenly, fight to the death, and as captains, go down with our ship.
It was a contract we developed and operated under. ”
“I hate that contract, Jeremy,” Linnie whispered. Her eyes radiated a blend of horror and sorrow.
Touched by the depth of her distress, he offered her a gentle smile. “I’m a sailor, Linnie.”
“That isn’t enough, Jeremy!” she said with such vehemence her bonnet went flying back. “I don’t want you going down with any ship for any reason.”
Devoutly, Tremaine caught the gift he’d given and drew it back into place.
Unfastening the loose ribbons of her bonnet, he began to retie them.
While he did, he spoke. “Your cousin and I were pursuing a French merchant liner. The Vengeur. She was sailing from the Americas, bringing back a valuable grain fleet, amongst other treasures. Her bounty was so great the French intended to escort her back to France.”
Linnie’s teeth worried her lower lip. “I’d always believed any fighting you encountered at sea involved just one other privateer ship. But that isn’t the case. You squared off not just against the Vengeur, but the French navy.”
He nodded. “We encountered Culross’s flags. We knew Culross from our days at Eton. Got on fine at Oxford. Enough that McQuoid and I agreed to partner with him instead of fighting against him that day. Triton’s Mistress is . . . was smaller than Culross’s vessel.”
Heat splotched his cheeks and he hurried to explain. “The size of my ship was by design. Being smaller makes her faster, nimbler.”
Linnie pressed two fingertips against his lips. “Jeremy, I don’t believe your ship to be inferior to any man’s. That night at Lord Rutland’s, when I said there was no one else whom I’d rather sail with than you, I meant it.”
Time slowed in that instant, and despite recounting the single worst, most tragic experience in his life, warmth pervaded his body.
Rattled, Tremaine rubbed his gloved hands together. “Yes, I, well . . . Thank you.”
Linnie’s lips twitched up in an affectionate smile. “You needn’t thank me.”
He’d humbled himself too much already this morning for him to explain he didn’t know what else to say, how to convey whatever he was feeling over her ardent devotion.
Increasingly overwhelmed, he hurried out the remainder of his telling.
“Given the size of mine and Culross’s vessels, he should have led the advance.
I knew it. Arran knew it. Culross . . . It is a basic understanding of battlefield maneuvers.
Culross had sustained some minor damage to his sails.
Not significant, but enough that the conversation became which vessel should lead the attack.
We were at odds. We put it to a vote.” The muscle in his jaw moved.
“Oh, God,” Linnie whispered. “Arran voted with Culross.”
Her voice trembled with fury on Tremaine’s behalf, a loyalty that touched places inside him he hadn’t known existed.
He gave a tight nod.
Linnie unleashed a stream of inventive curses, and damned if he didn’t find himself grinning at her display.