Chapter 25
Later that night, with the servants retired for the night and Linnie naked and soundly slumbering in his bed, Jeremy stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the modest grounds below and stared out.
The full moon’s glow played off the matching marble pedestal garden fountains. Water hung suspended, now frozen slabs of ice, trapped in time.
How many times could Tremaine have commiserated with that water, meant to be freely flowing?
Even if the only path it took was a perpetual circle that led those falling drops away, and then back again.
For wasn’t that the existence of a sailor?
A man sailed the seas and inevitably was forced to return for some while, but then the ocean beckoned and off he traveled.
He’d stood in this very room, at this very window, the same way too many times to remember. Restless. Overstrung.
Always, it’d been wanderlust setting in and the sea calling to free Tremaine from the prison walls of life on land. In London.
“Do you want the truth, Linnie?”
She worried at her lower lip. “Is it a bad truth? Or a good truth?”
“Would you ever want me to withhold bad truths from you?”
Linnie wrinkled her delicate nose. “Never. I’m just hoping this one in particular is a good—”
He scrubbed a hand over his face.
Bloody hell, he hated that he’d lied to her, and that he continued to live a lie.
The world of make-believe she’d lived in since he found her in Lord Rutland’s was the same one he’d found himself inhabiting—against his knowing. Against logic. Against all that was sane. He’d convinced himself she never had to know.
There came a faint, barely discernible rap at the door. Just one.
Tremaine tensed.
Naked, he strode across the room before that fist could fall again and drew the panel open a fraction, careful to conceal his wife’s naked body.
Kilmartin stood outside wearing a grin, and it was all Tremaine needed to know about this late- night summons in his own household.
His first mate, cognizant of the woman sleeping in Tremaine’s bed, spoke in hushed tones. “His Grace awaits.”
He nodded once. “I’ll be along shortly.”
Tremaine carefully pushed the door shut but didn’t close it all the way.
Heading over to his armoire, he snatched a shirt and trousers.
He seated himself in the white satin gilded chair where he’d made love to Linnie at least a dozen times since they’d married—tonight having been one of those times—and watched her as she slept. This time, as he did, he pulled his garments on.
He loved to watch her sleep. Her body always found the same position—curled on her side with her knees drawn tight to her chest and one fist propped under her chin.
Like her always swirling thoughts continued on through the lady’s sleep.
She curved in just the right way that she nestled against him like their bodies were the wooden Shichi-fuku-jin, built as a perfect fit.
The longer he studied her, the more he realized his future sailing was for the best. He’d let her get too close, closer than he’d ever allowed another soul. He’d let himself forget what truly mattered. No, the only thing that mattered.
He’d been landlocked too long. Of a certain, this was the longest he’d been in Mother England since his boyhood days.
Never had he wanted to run away from himself and the absolute mess he’d made of absolutely everything.
Tremaine froze. A mess?
What in blazes was this madness? A mess?
Since his last voyage aboard Triton’s Mistress, every little thing that could go wrong had.
At bloody last, life had swung back his way, where everything was now right.
He’d triumphed over Captain Arran McQuoid and Lord Culross.
In doing so, he’d thwarted a seafaring alliance between the McQuoids, Ellsbys, and Archdales in a time increasingly fraught—financially and otherwise—for privateers.
He had Linnie as his wife and in his bed, every single night.
And now he had a brand-new, goddamned ship ready to sail, and he stood here bemoaning his life?
He gritted his teeth. His life was bloody fantastic. The bloody best it’d ever been.
The separation would be good for the both of them. She’d become even more starry-eyed for Tremaine, professing her love with such passion, he . . . rather . . . believed she might. But what she loved was the lie.
When he left, he’d be able to clear his head. She’d realize his career came before all else, and she? She would find her own passion, her reason for being. Yes, as a married woman, she’d at last have the freedom she sought and had long been denied by her family and societal strictures.
That was at least something of value he’d given her.
Steadier than he’d been in longer than he could remember, Tremaine headed downstairs, where he found his brother, Kilmartin, and Beaton standing around his desk, bent over papers strewn out.
Hart glanced up first and grinned. “Hullo, little brother. I am happy to announce this time I’ve come with glad tidings.” Taking an envelope from his jacket pocket, he gave it an eager slap across his opposite palm and then waved the ivory scrap Tremaine’s way.
Padding over on stockinged feet, he collected the envelope. Unfolding the page, he skimmed the contents.
Construction of Triton’s Mistress II is complete. The two-masted schooner is outfitted for battle and sail.
After more than a year of suffering and simmering and loss, he’d been delivered the news he’d been waiting for.
There should have been an expanding in his chest.
He glanced up to find his brother holding a new, embroidered ditty bag.
Silence rang in the room.
Hart lowered his gift and released it next to Tremaine’s desk.
Around him, his brother and crewmates exchanged tense looks.
Hart’s hesitant question broke through the quiet. “This is good news, right, brother?”
“Of course it is,” Tremaine said between clenched teeth. “Bloody great news.”
Why would it be anything other than fabulous?
Bending his head, he turned his focus on all the work the industrious trio had seen to. They’d covered everything: Supplies and provisions. A schedule of the tides. An optimal sailing mission. And most importantly, they’d marked McQuoid’s next sailing.
Tremaine stared unblinkingly so long at the numbers and words scattered around him the pages all blurred.
I am not what you’ve chosen. You chose the s-sea . . .
He’d chosen her.
Just because women are so often denied one doesn’t mean we don’t yearn for it just the same as any man . . . You, Jeremy, were my choice. I chose you.
No. He’d chosen her, and not for any of the reasons she believed.
His eyes burnt—from his staring so long, was all it was.
When she found out that the one decision she’d believed to be her own was, in fact, another lie, the truth would break her, and coward that he was, Tremaine wanted to be seabound when she learned the extent of his treachery.
Hart said something to Kilmartin and Beaton. Both men nodded and eased away to let the brothers have space to talk.
Tremaine headed him off. “I don’t need to speak.”
His brother hitched a hip onto the corner of the desk. “You’re certain?”
He ignored him.
Nonetheless, as a duke, Hart wasn’t a man inclined to allow a person a choice—aside from the one he’d have them make. “Why do I suspect your less-than-thrilled reaction has something to do with the woman sleeping in your bed now?”
“The woman is my wife,” he snapped.
Hart’s eyes glittered knowingly.
Fuck.
His brother’s amusement faded. “I know what this is about.”
Jeremy’s muscles coiled like a bowline about to snap.
“You married the lady to thwart Culross and have vengeance on McQuoid, Tremaine.”
Hearing it stated so clearly, when it’d been the objective all along, hit him full force in the chest, trapping the air in his constricted lungs.
“As someone who’s known you the entirety of your life, I say with confidence you are an honorable gentleman, little brother.”
Aye, as honorable as Caesar’s betrayer, Brutus.
A sharp, bitter laugh burst out of Tremaine before he registered his brother’s very serious expression.
Tremaine’s harsh grin died. By God, Hart wasn’t jesting. He’d gone as mad as Tremaine himself.
“You are,” Hart insisted with an adamancy only a loyal older brother would or could.
Nay, that isn’t true. There is one other person who believes wholeheartedly in you, who sees good in you—when there was none.
“In fact, if you weren’t an honorable man—”
“For the love of God, would you stop,” Tremaine hissed. “Just stop saying that.”
Hart acquiesced . . . and opted for a different choice of wording.
“If you were the terrible person you take yourself for, you wouldn’t be so focused on getting your business here with your wife in order.
No. You’d be out celebrating the good news that you sail tomorrow with spirits and bawdy whores and certainly not worrying about Lady Tremaine’s safety when you are gone. ”
Hart waved a hand at the pair conversing across the room; Kilmartin and Beaton heeded the ducal command. They collected snifters and a bottle of spirits from Tremaine’s sideboard and carried the bounty over.
Hart slapped Tremaine hard between the shoulder blades. “Now, stop looking so damned glum. I’ll watch over Lady Tremaine.”
His mind blanked. Tremaine couldn’t form words. He couldn’t get his brain to make his mouth move and tell his damned brother that he was more than capable of watching over his own damned wife.
But he couldn’t form the words or even say them.
Tremaine wouldn’t be here.
He’d be gone, and she’d be here, newly wed and alone for the upcoming London Season. That was, she’d be alone but for the impudent, unscrupulous rakes eager for a newly unhappily married beauty to seduce.
Tremaine knew.
He’d been one of those blackguards.
A thick, black curtain of rage blanketed his eyes.
His brother would be here for Linnie. Why wasn’t it the comfort it ought to be?
Kilmartin set the glasses down in a row, and Tremaine jumped.