Chapter 16 A Lifetime of Revenge
Chapter sixteen
A Lifetime of Revenge
Bash
If yer thinkin’ o’ gettin’ revenge, take a nap instead. Most bad ideas die in their sleep.
— Billy
Iwas the short fuse of a cannon, ready to unleash destruction if someone so much as blinked wrong.
Rosamund fucking Bailey.
“What was the cost, Rosamund?” I asked, grabbing her arm and pulling her into me.
Gasps and murmurs broke out, but fuck them.
The smile that had played on her beautiful face moments ago fell.
“The price still stands if you ruin everything I’ve done to get us here, so get it together and play the role,” she said.
There it was. The captain she’d become while I rotted in Newgate.
There wasn’t even the hint of indecision in her, only cool command and confidence.
I’d once told her that I hoped I was there to see the moment she figured out who she was, and here we were.
This was Rosamund Bailey as she was always meant to be.
Pride warred with anger in my chest, and I willed myself to step back and release her.
She was fucking beautiful. With her finery and her ball gown, she was made for this world.
I loved the way she looked in her form-fitting pants and loose blouses, but this version of her was- she was intoxicating.
“A year ago, Lord Smith tasked me with finding his nephew, Edward Smith. I was pleased to find him in Paris and convince him that his Uncle was eager to see him back in England as his sole heir.” Edmonds said.
Exclamations erupted, and in the chaos of the revelation, I should have looked at my father’s face, but I needed to know what Rose had given for this.
“What was the price, Rose?” I asked.
“This is insane, he is a goddamn pirate.” James hissed.
“I’ll tell you after, but it isn’t so bad. I promise. All of it was worth it.” Rose whispered, reaching for my hand.
“Do not touch him.” James Allan ground out, grabbing Rose and pulling her back to him.
I reached for my pistol, but of course it wasn’t there. Not having a weapon was a mistake. Though I was sure I could end him with my bare hand.
“Who do you think you are? I will not name you my heir.” My father said, stepping forward.
Rose ripped her arm from James, and I was reminded that she didn’t need saving. She was a force all on her own. Killing James Allan would be solely for me, though.
“You already did,” she said, “Or maybe you want to tell them who he actually is.”
James Allan’s mouth opened and closed, reminding me of a fish.
My father, though, the man who’d beat me and demeaned me until I thought myself no better than the dirt on his sill, was ashen.
There was no arrogant man who’d hit me when I didn’t enunciate a word correctly.
All that was here was an old man, scared.
“I’m sure you are all eager to meet Mr. Smith, but I believe a dance is in order. It’s Christmas after all.” Edmonds said, raising his glass.
The music restarted, a gentle waltz filled with violins that carried across the hall. Rose beamed up at me.
“Ask me to dance,” she ordered.
“You will not-” James said, but she stepped closer to me.
“Ask me,” she repeated, eyes beating into mine like a strong gale.
“Better do what she says, she’s scary these days,” Oscar said with a snort.
Hell, if I knew what was happening and it’d been over a decade since I learned to dance to music like this, but if it meant touching her and hearing her, I’d do it all on my knees.
I held out my hand and dipped my head.
A girlish giggle erupted from her as she placed her hand in mine.
“I will tell them who you are in an instant.” James Allan spat.
I raised my eyes to my father’s. “Please do.”
His lower lip quivered, and a cold sort of satisfaction ran through me. That was what fear looked like, and I could practically smell it on him. This was the price of his obsession, and I hoped it stung like a thousand knives.
“Do not make a scene, James,” my father whispered.
I was fairly certain James Allan was one step away from needing smelling salts. Sweat dripped down his greasy forehead, and he was slipping. Slipping into a slow chaos of insanity.
A tug on my hand, and I was following Rosamund Bailey into a sea of vipers more frightening than anything in the Mysterious Deep.
Every eye was on us, watching, questioning.
I placed my wooden hand at the small of her back and hated that I couldn’t feel her.
It made me want to take the whole thing off and slam it to the ground, but Rose’s hand tightened on my waist.
“It’s just you and me,” she whispered.
“It is most certainly not,” I murmured.
Though the truth was, I was already lost in her.
Her crimson dress drew out her eyes like a forest lit by a midday sun.
The soft line of her jaw smooth, and a warm flush to her cheeks.
All complemented by her slightly upturned nose.
She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and she’d sold her soul for me.
“I missed you,” she said, her voice a siren song.
My hand itched to caress her cheek, and if I didn’t kiss her soon, my heart was likely to implode. Obsession. I was as sick as the man watching us with poison in his eyes.
The spell of hers was enough to keep my feet in time with hers, though she was leading me more than I her. Somehow, that felt justified. Two years ago, she waltzed into my life, and I’d been following her ever since.
“Tell me the price, Rosamund.”
More than I needed her, I needed to know what I’d cost her. It was killing me, strangling my heart in my chest till pain inked out of it.
She bit her bottom lip, considering.
“Edmonds needs something in the Atlantic Sea. He agreed to release you and back your claim if I agreed to get it for him.”
Of course he did.
“What is it?” My voice was ash.
“A shell,” she said simply.
A shell. This reeked of something that should stay buried. When it came to the Mysterious Deep and ambitious men, a shell was not simply a shell.
“Did you ever stop to consider why he wouldn’t just get it himself?” I asked, frustration roaring in my mind.
Rose wrinkled her nose and squinted her eyes. “Not really. I think I would have agreed to anything to get you away from there.”
I sighed. Some pathetic part of me wanted to relish in the fact that she was willing to cross any line for me, but that was the sickness because if I truly loved her, I would have only wanted her safe.
“How do you think this ends?” I asked.
My heart stuttered as she tilted her head upwards, stepping a little closer to me with the next twirl of her body, red skirts spread out like a fan of fire.
She was incredible, and all of this was like some twisted dream I’d concocted.
I was probably still in Newgate, dehydrated and slowly dying to the point of hallucination.
The only flaw in that theory was that I wouldn’t have been somewhere with so many watchful eyes.
“Well, right now my family is circulating and feeding the gossip with the truth that I never renewed my engagement with James,” she said. “Oscar will already be informing everyone that he met you in Paris, and as such, our paths have crossed a few times.”
I wanted to appreciate her well-thought-out plan, which was, all in all, clever, but it had one glaring flaw.
“You cannot be associated with me,” I said.
She made a show of looking at our entwined hands and the distance between us.
“I feel like it's a smidge late for that,” she said.
The urge to throw her over my shoulder and drag her out of here was an inferno in my blood, boiling over.
Her eyes heated and lowered to my lips. I watched as she licked her bottom lip, and need stirred deep in me. She was the rock in the night, and I was a ship crashing into her, helpless against her power.
“It’s not enough to be his heir, Rose; he needs to be ruined,” I said.
It was a painful truth, and my throat felt tight after I released it, but she deserved to know. That the need for vengeance in me was more than my obsession for her. I was closer now than I’d ever been before.
I expected hurt to play over her beautiful face, but instead, she nodded once, her lips pressing together.
“I know you, Edward Smith. I didn’t expect you to be suddenly inspired to lay down your sword.
I know what the end goal is. All I’m asking is that we do it together.
If that means revealing you as Sebastian, then so be it, but come with me to get the net.
When we get back, we will decide,” she said.
“No,” I ground out even though my chest ached with the force of the word. “What I should do is tell them now and say you didn’t know.”
She tilted her head and shrugged her shoulders. The music was picking up in speed, the rise and fall of her chest smothering me.
“You could, but Edmonds will refute it, and everyone knows he’s the one who captured Flynn.
All you would do is appear a bit mad, and given the way your father didn’t give you a warm welcome, the effect would be lost. So come away with me on one more adventure.
When we get back, you can scream it to the heavens, and Edmonds will admit he lied. ”
“Why would he do that?” I asked.
Her dark hair was longer than when I last saw it.
After she’d cut it just to spite me. All I wanted was to thread my hand through her hair and breathe her in.
Fresh lavender already drifting off her.
It was strange not to have the sea salt mixed in, but this was her world. A world devoid of the sea.
“Don’t get mad,” she said.
Irritation climbed up the veins in my neck.
“Rosamund,”
Despite the way she bit her lip, she laughed, a light sound amidst infinite heaviness.
“I missed hearing you say my name like that. Like you aren’t sure if you want to kill me or fuck me.”
My feet lost their rhythm, and I tripped, but she quickly corrected for us, another laugh breaking loose from her. Seas, she was everything. Infuriating and intelligent, beautiful and dangerous, she was everything that mattered.