Chapter 15
“Wherein a pirate reminisces and reveals the truth.”
“Your brother!” she exclaimed. His face had become watchful, and she wondered what he was thinking because she didn’t know what to think. “Your brother is the Earl of Falmouth?” she said, her voice faint.
“Yes, my brother ... and your fiancé,” he said.
She couldn’t gauge what he thought about that. His expression was a careful blank and there was no tone to his voice.
“Here,” he said, pouring a measure from the bottle into a small glass and sliding it across the desk to her. “Try not to drop it,” he added, smiling.
She took it and sipped, wincing at the strong taste but needing the warm burn as it slid down her throat.
“I don’t understand why you are so desperate not to marry him,” he asked.
He wasn’t looking at her anymore but had returned to drawing patterns on the glass bottle.
“He is the very model of a nobleman, honourable and true ... not to mention wealthy,” he added, laughing, though that time she was certain there had been a bitter tone beneath the sound.
“I think,” she said, choosing her words with care. “That it has been some years since you have seen your brother.”
“What the devil do you mean by that?” he demanded, shifting and leaning forward, his arms crossed on the desk in front of him.
She hesitated, she didn’t want to destroy the noble memory he may have cherished of a loving brother, but the man she had known, even so little as she had known him, had not lived up to that description.
“Speak your mind,” he shouted, and she jumped in her seat. Anger rose that he would speak to her so, that the soft intimacy of such a short time before had been so easily forgotten.
“Your brother is a rake,” she said with disgust. “He is notorious for his womanising, his drinking and cold behaviour and I have seen nothing in him to believe those rumours to be based on anything but the truth.”
He stood so suddenly the chair he’d been sat on crashed to the floor, but he didn’t seem to notice. “You will take that back!” he shouted.
Henri gasped. “I will not!” she replied as his anger fired hers to greater heights.
“Why do you think I would run away from a match to such an honourable man?” she demanded of him, slamming the glass down on the desk top in her anger.
“I’d wager that you, a pirate, have more honour than that man has ever possessed. ”
“You don’t know a damned thing about him!
” he raged. He stared at her, apparently too furious to speak, but eventually he shook his head, holding her gaze.
“You don’t know him, Henri,” he said, and she felt her anger dissolve at the soft way he said her name.
“He was ever thus. Alex is older than me, you see, by almost ten years. He would always find a way to take the blame for my endless stupidity and carelessness. I was forever in trouble of one kind or another and he was forever pulling me out of it by my ears. Somehow he always managed to arrange it so they considered him the guilty party and I was the golden son who could do no wrong. Until I made such a mess that even he couldn’t save me . .. though he almost died trying.”
She saw the guilt in his eyes and realised this had been a burden he’d carried for many years.
“I thought I’d killed him,” he blurted. “I thought I’d killed him.” He leaned against the desk, one hand covering his eyes and Henri ran to him. She righted the chair and moved him to it, making him sit down.
Henri knelt in front of him, as she had earlier that day, and covered his hand with hers.
“That’s why I came back.” His voice was quiet, and he wouldn’t look at her, his head bent, his eyes trained on some memory it pained him to recall.
“Only Mousy knows who I am, and I have avoided asking of those I once cared about ever since. They were as dead to me as I was to them, better for them that way. But then, by chance, Mousy heard my father, the earl had died, he’d been ill a long time it seems. I assumed the title would go to our cousin, and then we heard Alex lived. It was like a miracle.”
He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I came back then. Not because I could change anything. Not to apologise or explain for there are no words for that, and not to try to return to my old life. I knew that was long gone.”
Lawrence gave a bitter laugh and her chest ached at the pain in his eyes.
“I just wanted to see him with my own eyes, you see. To know he truly lived. All these years I’ve borne the guilt of it.
The knowledge I’d killed that good man, my brother, the one who had always looked out for me.
I would have done anything if I could only change that.
But I was badly injured that night too, and by the time I was recovered enough to understand what had happened I was half way across the world.
There was nothing I could do. I thought I was damned,” he whispered.
“So what did it matter what I did? How I lived was of no consequence, I didn’t intend to do it for long in any case. ”
She squeezed his hand, willing him to look up.
“You are not damned, Lawrence, and I imagine you never were, but your brother ... he is not the man you remember.”
He shook his head, and she could see her words had angered him again.
“Maybe I wasn’t damned that night but for all that followed .
.. I have not spent the last ten years of my life well, Henri.
I have robbed and held men and women to ransom, for the fun of it as much as for the money,” he raged.
“I enjoyed the thrill of it, you see, the danger, but it is not the kind of life that goes unpunished.” He sighed, and the anger seemed to drain away from him. “And nor should it,” he added.
“Lawrence, listen to me. I do not believe the man aboard that ship will help you, brother or no. He’s not like you, he’s certainly not the man you remember.
” She drew to mind the brief interviews she had been subjected to before the earl would deign to take her as his wife.
She shuddered at the memory. “He’s a cold and dangerous man, Lawrence, and he’s known for shredding his enemies.
Look how he destroyed Lord Heywood two years ago.
The man shot himself after your brother took everything from him in a game of cards! He’s even rumoured to ....”
She came to a sudden halt as she realised what she was saying.
“To have killed his own brother?” he supplied for her, his voice quiet.
“Yes, I heard that one. And now you see how you misjudge him. Alex did believe I was dead after that awful night, and he allowed people to believe he was responsible for it so my father wouldn’t bear the shame of knowing his son was killed by the militia for smuggling, for that was what I was about that night.
As it was, it broke my father’s heart.” He swallowed and looked up at her.
“I don’t know what happened to Lord Heywood, but I do know the man was a fool, a bigger one if he tried to gamble against Alex. He never loses.”
Henri sat with her mind spinning out of control. Could she really have misjudged the man so badly?
“So, you believe he’ll try to save you?” she asked at last.
He frowned, and for a moment he seemed at a loss for an answer.
“I truly don’t know. The Alex I knew would have done most anything to save me, but he believed in honour too, and I think the man I have become .
..” He shook his head. “I think he will believe I have earned my fate, Henri. I hope perhaps that will sadden him, but truly, after what I did, I would expect him to send me to the gallows with no regrets.”
“No!” she shouted, reaching out and grabbing hold of his arms. She wanted to shake him. “I won’t let them hang you, I won’t!”
He looked so surprised by her outburst she almost laughed, but his smile when it came took her breath away. He lifted her chin with his knuckle and his eyes on her were so full of warmth she felt the heat as though she was sat by a fire.
“It is good to know there is one who will mourn me a little.”
“Oh, Lawrence!” she said, her voice thick, and then she couldn’t look at him anymore for her eyes filled with tears. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.