1. Jonto #3
Knowing he was right, Luc stared at the circling sharks.
Her mind wasn’t working the way it should.
It felt sluggish, like her thoughts were straining to push through a thick haze of grief and sorrow.
Without realizing her feet had begun moving on their own, she found herself standing in front of the stateroom’s door.
She slowly opened it, lowered herself onto the bed, and, exhausted from all that had happened, cried herself to an uneasy, restless sleep.
Nico sailed them away from where his best friend, Tadeu, and his master had gone under.
He pointed the Nymph toward home but, after careful consideration, when he judged they were halfway to the opening of the bay, heaved to once again and furled the sails.
He’d had plenty of time to think and realized that if they were to survive this tragedy, he’d need to have a long talk with his mistress.
The big man’s knuckles boomed against the stateroom door, and when he didn’t receive an answer, he knocked several more times before doing something he’d normally never do. Pulling in a deep breath, he opened the door and stepped inside.
Startled, Luc sat bolt upright in her bed. “What are you doing? How dare you come into my room uninvited?”
Even though Nico was larger than most men, he could move like a gentle giant. He strode to the cabin’s lone chair that had been tossed around during the storm and set it carefully next to the bed. “I’m sorry, but we need to talk before we head into the bay.”
“Talk? What’s there to talk about? My brother’s dead, and we have no body to bring home to bury.”
Nico pulled in a long breath, knowing what he had to say would probably be received with anger if not outright hostility and rage. “My Lady.” He lowered himself onto the chair and lifted his gaze to meet hers. “Luc. What happens if your brother dies?”
“If?” Ghastly laughter bubbled up from her chest. “If? You saw what was left of his body. There’s no ‘if’ about it.”
Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees to bring himself that much closer. He repeated her name if only to get her full attention. “Luc. If Lord Jontoreaux dies, what happens to your lands and your estates? To everything he inherited today?”
Another bitter laugh escaped. “Everything goes to that drunkard. Our cousin who drank away half of his own inheritance and gambled away the rest.” She snarled her next word. “Everything.”
He nodded. “And that affects me just like you. For both our sakes, listen to what I have to say. Your lord brother, your twin brother, cannot die.”
The way he emphasized the word twin had Luc narrowing her eyes. “What are you saying?”
Nico shrugged. “I’m saying that you and Lord Jontoreaux look so much alike as to be the same person. Yes?”
The understanding of what he was suggesting wormed its way through her exhausted mind.
The words echoed in her head, bouncing slightly out of reach before coming close enough that she plucked at them with a barely functioning intellect.
She blankly repeated his words as their meaning skittered out of reach once again. “We’re twins, yes.”
He rested his fingers on her arm and waited for her to look into his eyes. “I’m saying that it has to be you who went overboard and Jonto grieving the loss. It’s the only way, My Lady. Otherwise, you’re dependent on your cousin, and I’m an unattached foreigner in a kingdom that despises my kind.”
She’d been looking down at her boots, but when her gaze slowly lifted, he could tell she was coming around to the idea. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the ring and held it on his flattened palm.
Luc stared at it for a long, horrified moment. Nausea roiled in her belly. She needed to breathe. Leaping to her feet, she ran onto the deck, gulping in huge lungfuls of the brisk sea air as she bent over the gunwale, expecting to be sick. She couldn’t wear his signet ring. She couldn’t.
Staring out over the open sea, Luc saw nothing except the face of her beloved brother as he’d been…
was it really mere hours before? She thought again about joining him.
How easy it would be to slip into the water and disappear without a trace.
She had no desire to live without him. He was the second half of her soul, the better half, and she wouldn’t survive without him by her side.
Her head jerked up. Was she going insane?
As clearly as she’d heard Nico’s voice in the cabin, Jonto’s voice carried to her on the breeze, admonishing her to live a life he no longer could.
And then, on that same breeze, laughter.
His laughter. Her gaze traveled to the water where, in the light shining off the open sea, she saw the sparkle in his eyes as he said, “Do it, my lovely Lucrèce. Do it for me. Live the life that you know I would have wanted.”
Her laughter joined his, making it difficult to distinguish between the two.
Still laughing as tears of terrible, heart-wrenching grief rolled down her cheeks, she opened her arms wide and beamed at the face in the waves.
By the goddess, she’d do it. When she turned, she found Nico standing behind her with a hesitant, wary look on his face.
Once more, almost shyly, he held the ring out to her.
This time, she took it and slipped it on. It was as though the silver lovingly wrapped itself around her finger. The fit was perfect, and she knew it was Jonto telling her she was doing the right thing for them both.
When they docked late that evening, to Luc’s astonishment, no one questioned their story, and no one looked twice as a freshly shorn, grieving Lord Jonto and his Portuguese servant sadly walked down the road to her estates.
A fortnight later, they held a private funeral for Lady Lucrèce Jontoreaux in the family cemetery nestled within the woods of the estate.
Two days after the funeral, Lord Jontoreaux leased out the caretaker’s cottage to a family she’d known her entire life.
The husband and wife and five children would become caretakers to the Jontoreaux estate.
Soon after, Lord Jonto and her man boarded the merchant vessel she’d purchased earlier in the week and began the adventure of a lifetime.