23. Home #3
Marching her into a lady’s bedroom and being unimpressed. Calling it small, showing her riches—Jack wasn’t an obvious man, but she might have listened a little closer to his offhanded remarks and thought more of them.
“My family’s not destitute,” he said. “I’ve been at sea for years, with nothing and nobody to spend my money on.” He shrugged. “It accumulates.”
Her blood rushed, pulse quickening for excitement or trepidation, a swirl of feelings that moved too fast for her sloshing mind to grasp one, let alone the many.
Was he offering something? Was he promising or showing off? Her smile flickered, unsure. When his face offered no answers, she set her palm against his chest to feel his heart beating only slightly slower than her own.
“Alright,” she said. “So you could get me a home. What about you? Where would you be if I were in this house you can afford?”
“I’d be wherever you want me.” He laid his hand over hers, his calluses rough against her skin. “I could be with you in your house. Or you could be in mine, if you really wanted.”
Her brows lifted. “Your house?”
“It’s my family’s house, where I lived before all this piracy business. I still live there when I’m not sailing.” He smirked at the shock on her face. “Does that surprise you?”
Was it wrong to assume he always lived on a ship? She didn’t know where else pirates were supposed to go when their livelihoods depended on constant travel. “Where do you live?”
“London,” he said. “Usually we’re only gone for two or three months at a time, but winter complicated our plans and has kept us away for seven.”
She rolled her lips between her teeth as she tried to imagine Jack living in London—of him having any life outside of this one she knew.
“What,” he said.
“I’m trying to imagine it. You, in London.”
He tipped his head back against the rock. “Picture the most disgusting house you can think of,” he said with a note of sarcasm. “Gaudy, practically a palace, full of treasure and velvet.”
“Anything but velvet,” she said absently.
She thought of the Stintons’ estate and their country home that was several times larger than Cecily’s humble cottage.
It was a gorgeous home, if subdued compared to the homes of other wealthy families.
She thought of Jack in a house like that, and it was all too easy to imagine him strolling the halls, speaking with his fine diction.
If she managed to have as much gold as she did after only a few weeks aboard the Fortuna Royale, how much more would Jack have?
And if pirates were hiding in plain sight in London, perhaps as merchants…how funny that would be. How clever, too, if that was how they managed their loot.
Thinking of Jack in such a situation, in such a home, she began to picture herself there too.
A home. She could have a home—a space all her own where no one would tell her what to do, where to go, or who she was. A thrill ran through her at the idea, sparkling in her blood and lighting her heart.
Jack reached for the rum. “I’ll take you there. Maybe you’ll love it enough to stay.” He drank, then held out the bottle. “Or maybe you’ll hate it and want a different one. I’ll give you anything you want.”
She took the rum. “I don’t know what you’re offering. Or why. I’m…” At a loss for words, she sipped. The alcohol burned through her, stoking the whirlwind of her thoughts. “I could get my own house.”
“I’m sure you could. I won’t tell you not to.”
She tilted her head. “I don’t understand why you’d want to get me a house.” That wasn’t the entire truth. She understood, but she wanted him to say it. After all his declarations last night and his questions at the governor’s house, he was considering her permanence in his life.
Even with the alcohol coursing through her, she could see his intention written plainly in his eyes. She wanted to run to it, run to him, this future, and the idea of them that he offered in the gentlest terms.
His finger skimmed down the length of her jaw, from her ear to her chin.
“You don’t know how long I’ve searched for you—exactly you—or how many times I’ve lost hope that you’d actually exist. If a house will make you happy, I’ll buy you one.
If it’s jewels, I’ll give you all of them—I’ll even buy them honestly. Everything short of letting you go.”
“A house,” she whispered.
“A home.” His fingers found their way to her hair again, toying with the loose strands. He seemed so content with her and all he’d said to make her heart palpitate as violently as it did now.
“Don’t you dare tease me, Jack Copson. If you’re inclined to make such nice offers, I’ll hold you to them.”
“Hold me to them, Cecily Shoard.” Then he leaned in to kiss her.
He tasted different now—like promises and forever, front doors and gardens, safety and wholeness. She sank into him with a peace she hadn’t felt in a very, very long time.
“You are my home,” she heard herself say, and she knew it was true. “I only wish to be wherever you are.”
“Then be mine,” Jack whispered, “for good.”
Tucked against his chest, she promised she would. As the moon slowly rose across the sky, they whispered, kissed, and made promises encouraged by rum while church bells chimed in the distance.