37. The Worst of Him
THE WORST OF HIM
Jack woke.
It struck him as odd, this awakening, because it felt wrong, like he’d slept through something important. Usually Jack was very careful, always mindful of his duties and the people who relied on him, like his father, his family, his crew, Cecily—
He bolted upright, heart pounding. Cecily.
His gaze snapped to the porthole. The sky was near afternoon, and hours had passed since he’d spoken to her last. He’d waited for her, but he’d fallen asleep.
Hours.
Where was Cecily? Surely she’d come, found him asleep, and simply chosen not to wake him. But she’d looked as tired as he was and would have come to bed long before noon. As he wasn’t a particularly deep sleeper, he wouldn’t have missed her climbing into bed with him.
Maybe she’d forced herself to stay awake with the day crew, but even as the thought came, his gut roiled with disagreement, telling him with a sickening plunge that he was wrong.
Throwing himself out of bed, he left the room, moving quickly through the ship while his stomach churned. He wouldn’t panic yet, or even worry. It was simply mild concern over his missing wife. She’d been known to curl up in odd places.
That was it. She had fallen asleep in a bucket or perched on a mast, and he’d find her somewhere ridiculous and scold her for forsaking the perfectly good pillow next to his.
Cecily was not around the galley, neither was she in the crew’s quarters or the gun deck. When he’d finished looking through all the decks, he made his way to the brig and swept the entire ship again.
She wasn’t there.
Greyson and Hester were on the main deck, lounging and talking with some of the newer pirates. Apprehension appeared in the sailors’ eyes at his approach, and he assumed he must look hellish. By now he was beginning to worry, and worry made him mean.
Really, everything made him mean, but Greyson was used to it.
“Jack,” he said with nonchalance.
“Where’s Cecily?” The question was as sharp as a demand, even though he hadn’t meant it that way.
Greyson scanned the deck as though he might find her, then frowned. “I dunno.”
Jack’s attention snapped to Hester. “Have you seen her?”
Lips pursed into a frown, Hester shook her head. “I assumed she was with you. Did you search for her?” Hester looked around, the worry in her expression enough to make his stomach drop to his feet.
“Of course I searched for her,” he said, a surge of panic turning his voice to steel.
“Jack,” Greyson warned, and Jack knew he’d been too sharp. An apology—probably also to be delivered harshly—rose to his lips, but Hester cut him off.
“Last I saw her was this morning. She apologized for letting Jonah take the tide stones.”
Jack spun on his heel, the world tilting as he scanned every face, every silhouette on deck. None of them were her. He took a deep breath and tried to sense her presence like a trail of ice down his neck.
Nothing.
She had to be here. If she was upset with him, she wouldn’t hide—she would have come to him and made it his problem, as she should.
And if she wouldn’t come to him, he’d comb every inch of this godforsaken ship until he found her just to ensure she hadn’t made some rash decision and thrown herself to some fish or sea monster or tripped off the gangplank because she certainly wasn’t gone.
The only other explanation niggled into the back of his mind like the tip of a blade, and he ignored it because it didn’t make sense.
“Jack.”
Copson stood at the threshold to his quarters with a peculiar look on his face—like he knew what Jack already felt, and he’d be the only one kind enough to tell him outright.
Jack was walking to him before he even realized he’d started to move. Then he was standing inside the room with the door shut, and his father faced him with pity in his eyes.
His heart thundered in his ears, but he managed to hear the answer to a question he hadn’t wanted to ask.
“She’s gone.”
Softly spoken, meant to break and soothe all at once.
They were the same words he’d said when Jack was eight and his mother’s body lay on a bed behind a door that only his father and a doctor had walked through.
Jack hadn’t wanted to look at her—he’d been too afraid to see death on his own mother, and his father had known that and gently whispered those terrible words.
She’s gone.
Jack closed his eyes and shook his head. He could no longer hear his pulse against the ringing in his ears.
“Where?” he asked, because Cecily wasn’t dead. He knew that, at the very least.
“She left, Jack.” Again, those words were horribly tender. “When we met with the other ship this morning, she boarded it.”
He met his father’s solemn gaze, his eyes the color of a storm. When it was only the two of them, he was no longer the dreadful Captain Copson. He was merely a father.
“Why?” Jack whispered.
“I’m sorry, son.”
“Tell me,” Jack said, his voice wavering.
Copson sighed heavily, and his voice turned pained. “She decided long ago what was best for her. We spoke before she left. I tried to convince her to change her mind, but she refused to listen.”
Jack glared at the buttons on his father’s coat as he turned the words over, setting them against the weeks he’d spent with Cecily.
He refused to accept it. She had tried so hard to convince him that she was wicked, but he’d never believed it. He wouldn’t believe it now—that she’d be so conniving and unfeeling as to let him hold her one minute only to leave him the next.
“She wouldn’t do that,” he said. “And if she did, there was surely some other reason.”
But what reason? He could think of nothing that would tempt her away from him. She’d been so sure of their life together—both halves of it, despite what he had yet to tell her. But everything else was mere detail, just decoration and pomp beyond what she already knew.
Or so he hoped.
His father spoke reservedly, like every word was a hook pulled free from his tongue.
“After all she’s endured, even before she met you and again these past weeks…
what makes you think she would stay? She may love you, but she’s also a young woman who has been burdened with far more than she ever asked for.
She wants a life of peace.” His chin dipped. “We are not peaceful, Jack.”
Jack swallowed. It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make any damn sense.
Unless…unless it was her baron’s boy.
Jack nearly scoffed at the idea. The untitled son of a baron. And there—oh, there was anger. Not tears or disappointment, just raw…anger.
At her. At the Stinton twit she’d nearly married. At this whole situation that he didn’t understand because how could he not be better than a baron?
She hadn’t known yet that Jack was the son of an earl, with an inheritance and lands far more prestigious than whatever a Stinton could offer—without even considering his love for her.
He’d killed for her, saved her, offered her a family and a home and everything else besides.
Even his very heart, which he’d never given anyone.
He’d never wanted to give it to anyone until she came along and cut his face and challenged him, and suddenly he was desperate for her to have every wicked piece of him.
Copson frowned. “If this is all she has of you, perhaps it’s best you move on. Let her go, and leave this mistake in the past.”
It wasn’t a mistake. But they’d had this argument so many times already, and neither were willing to back down.
Biting the insides of his lips to keep from swearing, Jack shook his head. “I can’t.”
His father began to protest, but stopped when Jack reached into his pocket and withdrew the certificate he’d carried since the night he married Cecily.
He tossed it on the desk where it fell open, the creases tired and worn from how often he’d read it.
One name, on the bottom, was hers. He liked her signature because even though they’d been drunk, she’d signed her name with the same confidence that was so inherent to who she was.
But above it, where the husband was meant to sign, it did not say Jack Copson.
No, he’d been so drunk that he’d written a different name, one he hadn’t spoken in eight months. Like so many things, his true name was forbidden at sea, so he treated it like it didn’t exist.
But now, lying face up on the desk was evidence of how badly he’d broken that rule.
Copson’s face drained. “Alexander Kingswood,” he breathed.
Jack cringed at the sound of it. That name was so out of place on this ship that it chaffed down his spine as though his father had cursed him.
“What have you done?” Copson demanded. He looked up from the certificate. “Does she know about this?”
“I…” His breaths were shaky, like his father reading his true name made this even worse. “Not about my name. But our life…I told her about that, though she suspected it already.”
“But your title,” his father said. “My title—she doesn’t know, does she?” His inflection went down, like he already suspected what he said was correct. “She doesn’t know we are nobility.”
Jack shook his head. Cecily had called him a gentleman, and he was, by matter of conduct. At least, he knew how to be a gentleman when he wasn’t being a rogue. But regarding his station, he was an aristocrat, which came with far more scrutiny and responsibility than a mere gentleman.
She’d known he was lofty and privileged, but she’d underestimated the true extent of it. It had plagued him these weeks since her siren sickness.
“I didn’t tell her that,” Jack said. “She wouldn’t have known what to make of the Kingswood name. Not unless I explained it, and I didn’t feel I could do that yet.”
Not safely, at least. While the Kingswoods were lofty in their own right, the earldom had only existed for two generations, and Jack would be the third. The longevity of their line was not so impressive that commoners would be overly aware of them.
But society was. Unfortunately, Jack—as Alexander—was making the family even more popular as his marriage prospects became the talk of the town.
And oh, how he hated it.
He hated the doting mothers and their preening daughters. He despised the invitations and vapid conversations. He could not stand the manners and the batting eyes, the fans and feathers and ribbons, the gossip, the games, or the fact that he was only desired for his money, his face, and his title.
For the last three years, it had only gotten worse.
He was often rude and curt, but not even that could dissuade them. His father had urged him to select a bride. He could have his pick of the lot, but he wanted none of them. None.
And then came Cecily.
She had marred his face, matched his poor manners, and taken his insults and sharpened them before flinging them back. She told him he was handsome, but neither that nor his money had tempted her to choose him until he offered his awful heart.
He loved her so damn much for it, and he was furious.
“If she has no idea who you are, then we have nothing to fear,” his father said, and there was no pity in his tone. He was fixing a problem, ensuring his family was safe.
The pit in Jack’s stomach deepened. His name didn’t matter. Cecily knew him in every way that counted.
And yet she’d left. She’d left.
Jack snatched the certificate off the desk. He didn’t think his father would go so far as to destroy it, but he wanted it with him because it was proof that she was his and he was hers. He was taken, off the marriage mart, no longer available to be looked at like a prize horse.
No one else would have her. He’d make sure of it.
If he had to resort to his legal claim to her, he would ensure her name was cleared enough to pursue it without injuring either of them.
He’d get her back in any way he could, and even if they risked a public scandal, he’d quash that too.
Because according to his father, Alexander Kingswood could not marry a former prisoner.
According to Alexander, however, he would do whatever he damn well pleased—even if he had to use his power to exonerate his wife, now a lady by every right, and legally resurrect her after her country had claimed she was dead.
He could do it. He would do it. He’d do everything for her.
Jack turned on his heel and began to leave. “I’m going to find her.”
“No, Jack,” his father commanded.
Before Jack reached the door, he paused and turned, his brows raised. “No?” He laughed once. “What would you have me do? Burn this and pretend I’m not bound to her? Shall I marry some other poor girl and have two wives?”
Copson’s expression crumpled into annoyance. “That girl never suited this family, and she doesn’t want to.”
“I don’t care if she suits our family.” Jack opened the door and walked out, saying over his shoulder, “She suits me.”
It was two days before they docked, during which Jack made his plan with Greyson and Hester.
They left the Fortuna Royale and stayed at an inn that wouldn’t look too closely at their patrons so that the next morning, when the man who arrived as a pirate suddenly left as a viscount with a footman and a maid, no one was any the wiser.
Alexander Kingswood would find his wife, even if he had to tear the world apart. And unbeknownst to her, he had the power to do it.
To be continued.