Chapter 29
Tremaine stood at the stern of his newly constructed ship, Triton’s Mistress II, renamed before he’d set sail as the Lady Linnie, and looked out at the newly darkened night sky.
What must have been millions of stars studded the smooth black canvas as vast and wide as the sea. The collective of diamond-like flickering joined by the quarter moon overhead lent a light brighter than any day upon the crashing waves.
Restless, Tremaine passed his gaze out over the calm sea.
When Triton’s Mistress sank, he’d been disconsolate. There couldn’t have been a greater, more gripping loss than having one’s best friend side against him in a decision that’d cost Tremaine his vessel.
And maybe thinking that was what made it so damned easy for him to run from Linnie. Only to break her heart, abandon her, and head back to the ocean to find absolutely nothing came remotely close to the absolute void of losing his wife. Like a perpetual stake being driven into his heart.
His former love and once great mistress, the sea had failed him in a way she never had before. She’d failed to make him forget. Her steady, sometimes turbulent, and always unpredictable waves failed to ease the ache inside. The sea air hadn’t cleared Tremaine’s head.
He missed his wife.
He missed Linnie more than he’d missed the sea or any goddamned thing or person in his whole miserable life.
Tremaine curled his fingers into the shining mahogany surface of the taffrails.
He loved her.
He loved her in ways he’d not known were possible to love a woman. He loved her smile. He loved her banter. He loved the way she balled up on her side while she slept and backed herself against him, like even in rest, she couldn’t get close enough to him.
And the worst of it all? It’d taken losing her and leaving her for him to find out his life was nothing without Linnie. His queen. His goddess. His friend. His best friend.
What he’d done couldn’t be undone. The hurt he’d caused, the way he’d left her—
A sharp ache throbbed just below his breastbone. It was an all-too-familiar, tight clenching. It’d taken him two or three days to realize what he’d been feeling wasn’t, in fact, a heart attack, but his heart breaking.
Maybe if he’d remained and fought for her, if he’d told her he loved her. Told her that his life was forfeit without her in it and then begged forgiveness and asked for an opportunity to spend the rest of their lives together being the man she deserved.
Instead, he’d left her behind, weeping and pleading and broken as he’d never before seen.
And it was because of me . . .
Tremaine squeezed his eyes shut so hard his temples ached.
It hadn’t been some stranger Tremaine could hunt down and kill for making her cry. It’d been him.
He, the man who’d vowed to care for her and keep her safe, was responsible for her sorrow.
Keep me safe? Jeremy, you are the one who hurt me most.
Tremaine felt a pulse in his throat.
Ah, Christ. He breathed shakily.
“Seas are calm, Captain.”
Tremaine looked over as Kilmartin joined him at the stern. “Aye.” The same restlessness that’d plagued him the minute they’d set out on the journey persisted. That uneasy feeling only a fool of a sailor would fail to heed.
Tremaine scanned the horizon.
“We caught sight of him,” his first mate said, mistaking the reason for Tremaine’s reticence. “We’ll catch him again.”
He felt his friend looking at him—and yes, that’s what Kilmartin was. Hart, his brother. Povey. Beaton. Just because McQuoid had hurt Tremaine, it didn’t darken the other good, loyal relationships he did have.
Linnie. She’d been the bloody best friend he’d ever had in his miserable life. No one made him smile the way she did.
Or the way she had.
His throat moved painfully.
“You know, Captain,” Kilmartin said quietly, “it is all right if you find you’re more of a land-lover these days. The sea has been here since the beginning of time, and she’ll be here if or when she beckons.”
Tremaine caught his jaw in his right hand and briefly squeezed. “There’s nothing for me back there.”
“Aye, there is. You know that. We both know that.”
Tremaine knew nothing of the sort. “When I burn her cousin’s ship at sea, there’ll be even less than nothing between us.”
From the beginning of his feud with McQuoid, seeing the other man’s vessel sunk the same as Tremaine’s was always the plan.
“Well, you haven’t burnt his ship yet.”
Tremaine swung a turbulent gaze on his first mate. “Are you suggesting I default on the mission?”
Kilmartin took his time answering. “Maybe, Captain, you have a different mission instead.”
Linnie.
He knew what the other man implied. He pretended not to.
How trusting she’d been. Her purity of soul and heart were a bloody gift, and he’d taken it and slayed all that gorgeous innocence.
“I should be drawn and quartered for what I did to her,” he said hoarsely.
“What you did, Tremaine?” Kilmartin asked incredulously, slipping into their role first as friends.
His first mate scoffed. “Never tell me you actually think your plans for revenge and motives and intentions for Lady Tremaine didn’t change from almost the very start?
That you haven’t been stark, staring mad in love with the lady from almost the start?
” He snorted. “My God, you even snapped off His Grace’s head at the wedding for remarking on the lady’s beauty. ”
Tremaine drew back.
I am mad for you, Linnie. You are a siren who has lured me, and I do not understand any of it, but I know I will kill for you as easily as I would die for you . . .
Shock went through him.
He’d known all along. The signs had been there from the very beginning; he’d just not seen them. He’d been too afraid to acknowledge them, and too scared to admit to himself that he feared anything, especially the swell of emotions Linnie stirred inside.
Why? Why had he been so damned scared? Why hadn’t he celebrated the treasure he’d discovered in Linnie?
“What do you want to do, Captain?” Kilmartin urged. “It is your call. The men will follow you to hell if you lead them.”
For the first time since that first fortnight of Tremaine’s marriage, a small, easy smile formed on his lips. “I—”
The watchman Alwyn’s cry rang from the crow’s nest. “Avast ye! The chase is four nautical miles ahead!”
Jeremy and his crew swung into motion. “All hands on deck,” he thundered.
The skilled sailors were already rushing into position.
Jeremy, along with his first mate, looked to the crow’s nest. Charnock, the second wiry sailor, scrambled down the rigging while Alwyn kept his spyglass up, peering at the danger ahead.
Walking in quickstep with Kilmartin and Charnock, Jeremy strode to the helm of the Lady Linnie. “Do we have eyes on—”
Charnock correctly anticipated the question from his captain. “Two ships engaged.”
Beaton, with instruments in hand, sprinted over. “The chase gun is primed and loaded.”
Kilmartin stared through the long golden spyglass. “It appears you will have to first battle another ship to get to McQuoid.” He handed the telescope over for Tremaine.
Tremaine took the instrument. Squinting, he made several adjustments to the viewer until he could clearly see.
A flagless ship had just pulled alongside McQuoid’s. Smoke had begun to billow.
“Battle’s just begun. With them positioned at their current coordinates”—Beaton pointed off on the horizon—“we’ll have the advantage. And with them already thick in the fight, we can take both by surprise.”
Tremaine peered through the glass.
Sure enough, as Beaton indicated, men began streaming from the larger ship and clambered to board the Painted Dragon.
McQuoid’s crew was still getting into position.
“They were taken by complete surprise,” Tremaine murmured more to himself. Which suggested McQuoid’s wasn’t a privateering mission. Or it hadn’t been.
“They’re outnumbered,” Kilmartin noted. “Outgunned.”
The enemy ship’s cannon blasted in a punctuation point.
“What do you want to do, Captain?” Kilmartin asked quietly.
“What does he want to do?” An incredulous Beaton looked between captain and first mate like they’d gone mad.
And he had—Tremaine anyway. He’d lost his wits and logic and goddamned heart in the process because of the slip of a woman whom he’d left behind.
“Captain?” Kilmartin prodded.
“McQuoid has it.” Tremaine lowered the glass. “He’s an excellent fighter. I won’t bring the attack that ends him, but neither will I intervene to help him.”
His friend might believe there was hope for a future between Tremaine and Linnie.
Tremaine wasn’t so delusional to believe she would forgive him or want anything to do with him, but there still existed a sliver of a chance, and if he killed one of her beloved family members, there’d be absolutely none whatsoever.
That was nothing aside from her loathing.
Kilmartin frowned. “Are you . . . ?” Flushing, the first mate stopped himself from questioning his captain.
Tremaine narrowed his eyes.
His loyal second-in-command bowed his head in deference. “And the crew who are expecting a fight?” There was no recrimination there, just a query as to how to deal with the fallout.
Tremaine’s men had taken their cues from him. Having also lost friends and shipmates, they were spoiling to fight and kill McQuoid.
It also didn’t help that the Lady Linnie’s men earned their coin from their actions at sea. If they turned around when they were this close, to not only one but two bounties, they’d be out a sizable sum.
“They’ll fight,” Tremaine finally said. “Just not this day.”
Stone-faced, he handed the spyglass to his pilot, who trained his focus on McQuoid’s skirmish.
If Tremaine’s crew mutinied, they mutinied.
In his days aboard Lord St. Vincent’s ship, he’d witnessed his first—a short-lived coup, ended before it even truly began with the earl’s masterful command.
Having learned from the finest, Tremaine went on to put down multiple aboard his own ships and only emerged more powerful.