Chapter Thirty
Thirty
I can’t move. My body aches to run to him, but I simply can’t move from where I stand, my hands still frozen on the buttons of my waistcoat.
The silence that follows lasts so long, I’m quite sure I hallucinated his voice altogether—and then my bed creaks, and I see the familiar worn leather of his boots emerge from the curtains to land almost silently on the plush fur rug that stretches under my bed.
A million different responses are born and die on my tongue as I stare across the room at the ghost of Captain Reggie Sharpe, back from the dead and here in my bedroom. In the end, my response to his astonishing reappearance into my life is, “You had your boots on in my bed?”
This startles a laugh out of him, and he steps towards me—but I beat him to it.
His single step forward unlocks my feet from the floor, and I run across the room and throw myself into his arms with such force that he stumbles back.
I hear him utter a breathless “oof” as his back collides with the solid oak post of my bed, but then his arms are around me, and I can’t hold in the tears for a moment longer.
I sob into his shirt, and he holds me against him, the familiar expanse of his hands sliding up and down my back.
He lets me take my time, and though it feels like forever before my breathing evens out to match his own, I’m sure it’s been only a matter of minutes.
He presses a kiss to my ear, and the rasp of stubble against my cheek sends hot chills sparking up my spine.
“I thought you were dead,” I whisper into his shirt.
“I’m far too stubborn to die,” he murmurs into my ear, and then he pushes me back just enough to get me to look up at him. He’s smiling, while I’m quite sure I have snot running down my face.
He touches my cheek, his thumb brushing away a few tears as he stares down at me.
“You’re all right, Kitten,” he murmurs, and I believe him.
I nod, because I can’t answer or I’ll start to cry all over again.
I wrap my arms around his neck, and he draws me close once more, tipping his head down—but not quite far enough.
I have to lean up to catch his mouth, but then we are kissing, and I know that I will be all right, because he is here, and he is alive, and he is in my arms.
And then he breaks the kiss and lifts me up. I don’t argue. He sets me onto my bed and sinks onto the mattress beside me, hands sliding down to settle on my hips.
“You look like a regular fop, Your Highness,” he says as his lips twist up into an amused smirk.
My face goes hot, and I reach up to pull the wig off. “I had to wear it,” I mutter, and he laughs softly as he takes the wig from my hands and drops it onto the floor.
“It suits you better than you think.”
“Don’t say that,” I whisper—because as much as I wanted it to suit me just a few hours ago, in this moment I want nothing more than to just be Kit again, making terrible decisions and waking up beside him every morning.
“Would you rather I lied to you?” he asks.
“Yes.”
He laughs again and shakes his head before leaning in to rest it against my shoulder. I wrap my arms around him once more and touch the familiar blue silk ribbon tying his locs back.
“How are you alive?” I ask.
“Captain Hale was more interested in you than us,” Sharpe explains softly, letting me stroke his hair as he rests his weight against me. “He crippled the ship so we couldn’t follow and left with his prize.”
“Tristan?” I whisper.
He lifts his head with a confused expression. “What about him?”
“He went up into the rigging and never came down.”
Sharpe blinks at me, and then his mouth spreads into a grin and he chuckles. “The little shit stayed up in the rigging until we were alone in the water. He’s all right, Kitten.”
I let out a trembling breath and reach up to cover my face with my hands. “I’ve thought… this whole time… I was so sure…”
Sharpe puts his hands over mine and pulls them down so he can see my face. “Everyone is all right. We were in Portsmouth assessing the damage to the ship when I heard the rumors about the king’s new bastard in the palace.”
“And you just assumed it was me?” I ask. What an insane scheme, to come sneaking into Kensington Palace on the off chance it might be me in these apartments.
“Is there another Christopher-Henry Davenport at court?”
I chuckle and shake my head. “It’s Stuart now,” I say.
He whistles. “Stuart,” he says. “You’ve certainly come up in the world, haven’t you, Kitten?”
His words, which were likely only meant as a jest, strike a chord in me. It wasn’t my intention to rise so high, nor my desire… but now that I have it, now that I have my father and he wants me, I don’t know what to do.
“How did you get in here?” I deflect.
“There isn’t much a bag of coin can’t get you, Kitten. And this helped a great deal.” He pulls out my father’s—no, Viscount Falmouth’s signet ring and places it in my palm.
I scoff and push the ring into my pocket. “But there are guards everywhere.”
“Oh, aye,” he says with a nod. “But the servants of the gentry are especially good at espionage. The richer the patron, the more devious they are.”
I see truth in what he says, and I laugh softly. “You’re insane.”
“I’ve had worse said about me.”
“You’re insane, and you’re daft.”
“Both are very true,” he agrees, brushing a lock of my hair behind my ear. “I’m so sorry, Kitten,” he whispers.
I gaze up at him, my heart wrenching at the tone of his voice. “For what?”
“For not coming sooner,” he says. “For letting you think we were dead. I always planned to come for you, but I had to see to my ship first. I wasn’t sure where to look until I heard the rumors, and I came as soon as I did. I’ve been in London for days, bribing the servants and trying to get in.”
I smile and bring his hand to my lips to kiss his knuckles. “I’m just glad you’re alive,” I say.
“We should go,” he says, getting to his feet and taking my hand in his. “I still need to acquire a new ship. We can catch up once we’re away from here.”
“Go?” I ask, letting him pull me up.
“What did you think?” Sharpe asks with a rueful smile. “That the king would let you keep a pirate for a paramour?”
I flush at the suggestion but pull my hand from his. “I… I can’t just go.”
“Why not?”
“He’s my family.”
He frowns at that. “Kitten… we are your family. He only wants you because he thinks you’re useful now.”
That hurts, and I don’t hide that as I stare up at him. “You’re wrong.”
“Am I?” he asks. “You think he would have come for you had he legitimate children to secure his throne? There’s talk of an uprising against the Stuarts, Kitten. He had to secure the throne somehow, to keep someone else from laying claim to it.”
“No,” I say, stepping away from him. “You’re wrong about him.
He wants me.” Whom am I trying to convince—him or me?
Henry said himself that he never intended to tell me the truth.
Still, I can’t bring myself to face it. “He loves me. He loved my mother.” I pull her miniature from my waistcoat pocket and hold it out to him.
“Look at her,” I say. “She was beautiful.”
He studies me, then steps forward to take the miniature from my hands.
I watch as he crosses the room to study it in the firelight, and slowly his features soften.
“She was beautiful, Kitten,” he says—but there’s an odd strain to his voice.
Maybe he understands now. I have to give this a shot, don’t I? I have to try.
I slowly make my way to the fireplace, watching him. “Her father was a merchant from the Ottoman Empire. She and my father had an affair… I’m sure he would have married her if he hadn’t already been married to Eleanor.”
He lifts his gaze to mine, frowning. “You think a king would have taken your mother, a foreign commoner, as his wife?”
“She wasn’t…” I set my jaw. I hate the thought of someone calling my mother a commoner, but I know that’s the old Christopher-Henry thinking. Mr. Kit would never have thought of “commoner” as a dirty word. My face burns with shame. “Why are you doing this?”
“Kitten… I’m not trying to hurt you,” he says softly. “But why would a woman—especially one in a strange land—take such risks by having a public affair with a married man? And a prince at that?”
“You don’t know that she wouldn’t.” It’s a stupid thing to say. Deep down I know he’s probably right.
“No?” he asks. “You think all women are so eager to fuck royalty that they would give up everything for one night with a man?”
I shouldn’t be shocked by his crass turn of phrase—but I am. It genuinely shocks me, and I snatch the miniature from his hands and clutch it to my chest. “What are you trying to say?”
“That men like Henry take what they want.” The look in his eyes is cold, and some part of me whispers that he’s speaking from experience. But a louder part of me is desperate to be loved by my father.
“Stop it,” I whisper.
“You’d prefer to call your mother a whore than to even consider the possibility that your father is a—”
“Stop!” I snap. I can’t listen to this anymore. I can’t hear him say these things about my parents—about Henry. Not now that I have finally felt the tender touch of my father’s loving kiss on my brow, after nineteen years of longing for it. “Get out.”
“Kitten, you—”
“Get out, or I’ll call the guard.”
His face shutters when I say that, and whether or not he thinks I really will, I see that he won’t argue further.
He walks over to my bed to pick up his hat from where it must have been sitting on my pillows.
I turn away from him to stare down at the miniature of my mother in my hands, watching the beautiful melancholy of her eyes as the firelight flickers over them.
I should stop him. I should apologize. Something inside me knows he is right, but my pride is hurt, and I am so desperate for my father to be the sort of man who loves his son that I say nothing.
After a short eternity I hear his footsteps fade from the room, then the scrape of the door to the servants’ entrance by the fireplace as he leaves me to my turmoil and grief.