Chapter 14
Calchas was the busiest he had been since his life at sea and at war.
As a captain, he had always been ready to be called to action, especially as a captain at war. There had been very little time when he had not been ready to jump up from his sleeping arrangements in his cabin and make his way to the top decks to take command.
The stakes of his circumstance were much lower in many ways, though they were still vital. Still, it wasn’t easy for him to live without the intensity of the life he’d experienced for a decade.
More than a decade, really.
There was something about living on the edge of a knife that had shaped him. When one wanted to be a captain, one often went to sea as a boy. Much to the surprise of many, given how close Briarwoods kept their children, his parents had allowed him to go.
He knew how incredibly hard it had been for his mother and father to allow him to pursue his passion and his dream of defending the nation, setting forth across the globe on a small structure made of wood with a crew that came from walks of life he’d never known.
But his mother and father had done it because they were brave people too, and they understood that some were born with a drive inside them that could not be shaken.
And it was that drive that was now making Calchas half mad. He’d known it was there. It had been there his entire life. He’d felt it in his veins, in his bones, in his soul.
And he knew his parents had felt it too. He was certain that was why they had let him go so young. So that he could use that drive in a good way, rather than being driven out of his wits and into risky action.
During the late afternoon, much to his horror, he stood in his room, staring out the window, uncertain what to do next. His whole life, he’d always known what to do next. But not now. Not with this feeling burning through him. A feeling that had only been growing worse.
He had many things he could do. His projects took up a great deal of his time. He had purposefully filled his days so that he could not easily be distracted by the churning sensation that urged him to drop everything, turn his back, and flee from society, from life, from restriction.
But he could not flee. His wife needed him.
He loved her. They wanted a family. He wanted to be here in Heron House.
He wanted to do good things. He wanted to be a rock for Hester when so many others had let her down.
Surely, he could do that. He grimaced and dug his nails into his palms as he balled his hands into fists.
He didn’t understand what was amiss inside of him.
Unable to bear it any longer, he strode out of the room.
With each step, he felt more at a loss. The sensations had been building and twisting and pushing him.
The only contentment he ever experienced was when he was with Hester.
She soothed that fearsome compulsion in him.
But lately, even in the dead of the night, he had been waking beside her, staring up at the ceiling and having to get out of bed and head to the windows, like something was calling his name. Like something was haunting him…whispering his name in an ever-growing command.
It was growing undeniable.
The call to leave, the call to adventure, the call for more than just a life like this, and he hated himself for it. For it was a very good life.
He strode farther into the hallway, pacing, trying to get the energy out of his system. Maybe Hartigan Mulvaney, his father’s fighting instructor, could help. Perhaps a good beating would do it.
Maybe his cousins could circle him, and he could fight every single one of them, and that might change this sensation pulsing through him, leaving him so on edge that he wanted to beg for it to stop.
But he didn’t know if it would. And what kind of way was that to live? Through punishment? Through pain? But he was going to have to do it because he needed to get over this.
He needed to be strong and stay here for Hester. She needed him. Their children would need him. He could not obey this urge that made him feel like he had no control over himself.
He strode the many halls of Heron House, which were largely empty because everyone was out doing things. He had come back this day whilst Hester was at the tea shop because he’d needed to be alone, to try to sort through his thoughts. But he wasn’t completely alone.
Without thinking, his feet drew him to his father. He crossed by the duke’s study and stopped, his father’s deep voice drifting through the door as he practiced a speech.
He stopped, closed his eyes for a moment, then willed himself to take the door handle, twist it, and head into the office. It was a beautiful room full of books and maps and his father’s presence.
His father paused, placed his hand on the fireplace mantel, and turned to face him. “You all right, my boy?”
“Yes, Papa,” he said immediately, hating the idea of worrying his father, who already had the worries of a nation on his shoulders.
It was so funny when his father called him “boy.” He had not been a boy in many, many years, but he loved the fact that his father still sometimes saw him as the child he had long ago been. It made him feel secure.
They were more like equals now, even with his father’s great power. But his father still could make him feel…safe.
His father cocked his head to the side. “Why don’t I quite believe you?” he ventured.
Calchas frowned. “I have no idea.”
His father lowered the many sheets of parchment that contained his speech and placed it on his desk. “Come on then. Out with it. Is something amiss with Hester?”
“No, she’s perfect.”
“No one’s perfect, except me,” his father teased. Then he arched a brow. “Well, only because your mother has taken great trials with me.”
“Mama is quite a force,” he agreed. No one could handle Leander better than Mercy, and he did need to be handled. Sometimes Calchas wondered if he had inherited whatever plagued his father. It was true that plague made his father a great man, but it didn’t change the fact that he was plagued.
And then suddenly Calchas blurted, “Papa, is there something wrong with me?”
“Wrong?” his father echoed carefully. He pushed himself away from the desk and crossed to his son, looking him in the eyes. His father stared at him for a good long moment, studying him like a physician might, or an anthropologist examining someone out in the wilds. “Wrong?” he repeated again.
Calchas closed his eyes and gestured to his frame, even as he felt like rattling apart. “This can’t be normal, Papa.”
His father let out an exhalation. “It is normal…for men like us.”
Calchas snapped his eyes open and sucked in a sharp gasp. “You know? You’ve always known it about it me?”
His father gave a tight nod.
Calchas’s whole world swung. “It’s why you let me go to sea.”
Leander blew out a heavy breath. “Yes, I have known all your life that you were like me. Your mother and I saw it when you were little, how much you mirrored my own behaviors, but you hid it well from the world. But it’s only because you were allowed to be so wild away from society that you have thrived.
In England, everyone sees the Calchas who’s witty and intelligent and controlled, but we knew. ”
His father paused, his eyes dark with love and conflict, as if he’d hoped this moment would never come, and yet it was clear that he had been expecting it.
“It was there almost from the moment you opened your eyes when you entered this world. It became ever clearer to us as you aged that something inside you had an intensity to it that matched mine, and you would need to be able to do something with it. The sea was an excellent answer.”
“What is wrong with us?” Calchas demanded.
“Wrong? There is nothing wrong,” his father stated. “There’s only different.”
Calchas winced. “But that difference is making my life a misery now.”
“You are miserable?” his father echoed, his heart clearly broken to hear it.
He nodded, though it was painful to admit. To burden his father. “I am. I feel as if I am being torn apart by two sides of myself.”
His father blew out a heavy breath. “You’ve felt that before, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” he said honestly.
“When?”
“Sometimes when I’ve been home, when I wanted to be back at sea.
” A muscle tightened in Calchas’s jaw and he drove a hand through his hair.
“Sometimes even at sea, but rarely, when nothing was happening. I would wait. I would wait to finally get to come alive when a battle was coming or we were hunting enemy ships, but I feel half dead here, Papa, in London, and I don’t know what to do.
I feel as if I am both completely and totally empty and also completely and totally pushed to lunacy by the need to go. ”
“I see,” his father said softly and without judgement. “I had hoped that this would not come for you so entirely, but I see it has. And so there’s only one thing for you to do.”
“What?” he demanded, praying his father would have an answer for him that would make all his troubles vanish.
“You have to go. You have to go, or you will have to find a way to make peace with feeling like this. It is that simple.”
“There’s nothing simple about this,” Calchas bit out.
“And there’s nothing wrong with you,” his father replied simply. “You were made this way, as was I. Others are too, and we cannot question it. All we can do is use our skills.”
“Is this what I’m to use mine for then?” He gestured around him to Heron House, referencing the power of the family.
“It could be,” his father ventured.
“My skills are best served with a sword and cannon,” he gritted. “I should join the East India Company, though I cannot bear them. At least then I would be…”
“You’re going to be a father one day,” his father cut in. “So you should consider that. Are you already ready to leave a child without a parent?”
“Most sailors do,” he returned.
“You are not most sailors,” his father returned. “You’re a Briarwood.”
“Papa,’ he began, his voice taught and his panic rising, “I cannot keep doing this. It’s getting worse. I thought I could control it. I can’t. I—”
His father crossed to him and grabbed him. As his father pulled him into his embrace, he said, “It’s going to be all right, my boy. I promise you it’s going to be all right.”
But he shook his head, resisting the embrace he usually so welcomed. “How, Papa? How?”
“I don’t know yet,” the duke said honestly.
“But I do know this. In all my life, even in the darkest, most terrible times, the times where I almost couldn’t be reached, somehow your mother managed to stay by my side and helped me out of those times.
And she also helps me with the times when I am frantic and wild and no one can bear to be around me, and I have to isolate myself.
Your mother still helps me. And everything has always worked out. It always will.”
Calchas wanted to believe.
“Hester is stronger than you think,” his father declared.
“She has suffered too much,” Calchas bit out. “I can’t add to that.”
“Everyone has suffered too much,” his father said. “Do not insult her by thinking so little of her that she cannot help you.”
“How do I tell her that I want to leave?” Calchas all but begged. “Isn’t that the cruelest thing in the entire world?”
“No,” his father said tightly.
“No?” he growled. “How?”
His father leveled him with a compassionate but unyielding look.
“The cruelest thing in the entire world is to live a lie and not tell her what’s truly going on.
Because if I had to wager, Hester already knows.
Hester is one of the wisest women I have ever met, and I think it best if you talk to her now. ”
Calchas sucked in a heavy breath. “I don’t know if I can do it, Papa.”
“You can because you’re a Briarwood and you’re my son. And you have faced flotillas of ships. You can face your wife.”
But why, he wanted to know, did this feel harder than any battle, any barrage of shot? Any storming of a ship? Why did this feel like it was going to be the hardest thing he had ever done?