“Stand aside,” he ordered them.
“Who are you?” one asked as he crossed his arms over his chest.
“James Trelissick. Stand aside. I’ll not let you hurt her anymore.”
“You can’t stop it, nabob,” another chimed, standing shoulder to shoulder with the first.
This time James’s fingers curled into fists and he stepped forwards. “You will not stop me getting to her.”
“Are you sure you want to take us all on? One little gentleman against the five of us?”
Stepping from one foot to the other, James rolled his head and cracked his knuckles in front of his stomach. “I’ll give it my best shot.” He would never go down without a fight. Not when it came to Daniella.
“I’ll take him,” one offered as another said, “This should be diverting.”
He pulled his arm back, ready to let loose, when he was grabbed from behind. At such close quarters, and in the dark, he should have checked his back for more opponents. His arms were held at his sides as one of the sailors, a burly ginger-headed man with a full beard and huge hands, approached.
“Knock his teeth out, Lion!” one of the men yelled.
James thrashed with all his might, tried to kick out, to knock his captors off balance, but it was no use. He was outnumbered and unconscious of his surroundings. He’d charged into battle without any information, none of the facts. The Butcher was well and truly lost.
Just as he squeezed his eyes shut, tensing for the blow that would surely break his nose for good and loosen his teeth, a wail filled the air. This was no blood-stopping scream. It was the sound of a baby crying that reached his ears.
“Amelia?” He’d not stopped to think of his sister. He’d wanted only to find Daniella and tell her he loved her. Convince her the only place for her in the world was at his side.
Another cry from the other side of the door and his heart swelled with emotion.
The two men holding him suddenly let him go and he dropped to the floor with a thud as they surged towards the cries, all thoughts of fighting forgotten.
The door opened and another man filled the space. Questions fired off all at the same time. “What is it?”, “How is the lass?”, “What of the boy?”.
The only reply came with a toothless grin. “It’s a girl. A wee little red-faced lass with the palest hair you ever saw.”
A collective sigh reached his ears and the tension dissipated in smiles and pats on the back. The toothless stranger looked down at him, his brows raised. “Another one?”
“Too many strangers for my liking,” the first spoke again. “This one claims he’s Trelissick.”
“You’d better come in then and meet your niece.”
Dare he? Would it be easier for Amelia if he went back to London and told everyone she’d passed away? He could mourn her for a year and then start his life fresh.
On his own.
Alone.
With none of the people who made his life worth living. For so long war and the fight both inside him and for his reputation had ruled his every move. Now what did he have? The House of Lords? His clubs?
That was no way to live. He would not treat his sister as the rest of London would. He would tell everyone the child was his baby to a mistress. Amelia could settle in the country with the babe and no one would ever have to know.
He climbed to his feet and slowly approached. It was an effort but the ends of his lips lifted into a forced smile as he stepped over the threshold.
Amelia sat up in the huge bed, small, pale, tired. And Patrick? Patrick sat next to her with the bawling bundle cradled in two hands, staring down at the baby as though she was the greatest miracle he’d ever seen. Confusion set in.
Daniella stood by Patrick and smiled with undisguised happiness, moisture glistening on her eyelashes much like the last time he’d left her. Only this time, she was truly smiling. She was truly happy. Was it the baby or was it the ship?
James cleared his throat and they all looked up at once. They turned possessive, wary and—yes—afraid, respectively. Guilt greater than any before swamped him. Forget the Butcher’s deeds. He’d ruined Amelia’s life by being absent and unapproachable and he’d ruined Daniella’s by thinking he knew better than her. By thinking he could control everyone and everything. All he’d wanted was his family’s happiness.
“You came,” Amelia said with astonishment. Not happy astonishment though.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner,” he joked, trying his hardest to defuse some of the tension in the room.
“I…” his sister started but then her gaze dropped.
“You don’t have to tell me now, Amelia. Explanations can wait. Are you all right?”
“I think so,” she said with a nod.
Daniella stepped forwards, her gaze serious, all traces of her previous smile gone. “We should probably discuss some of the turns of events of the day.”
“What is Patrick doing here?”
“Patrick is exactly where he should be, with his child,” Daniella said.
James was even more confused than he had been before. It made his head ache. Again. “What?”
“That night on the beach, when you caught me sneaking about? Patrick told me why he was really with you. It was the night I discovered what your stolen items really were. Or rather, who.”
“He told you?” James switched his attention back to Patrick, who had yet to say a word.
He finally spoke. “I did tell her. After I tried to kidnap her away from you.”
“I beg your pardon?” Fingers of dread squeezed at his nape.
“Patrick had the same plan as you: roughly the same motivation as well as it turns out.”
His pulse raced and the room swayed ever so slightly. He should have known there was more to the Highlander’s sketchy story. Why had Daniella so completely blinded him? How had she so completely blinded him?
“Perhaps we should start at the beginning?” Amelia offered.
But James suddenly found he just didn’t care enough. Not now. Not yet. He wanted to take Daniella away from there and say what he’d come to say. Amelia was safe. Patrick was at her side, where he assumed the young man had been at some other stage in the last nine months. He’d seen his sister as a girl, fragile and innocent, for so many years, but there she was, pale with exertions only a woman could survive. She and Patrick could look after their own. Right now, he needed to concentrate on his wife—make amends for all the ways he’d fucked everything up.
He moved closer to Daniella and whispered in her ear, “Perhaps we should leave these two to their moment?”
“You aren’t angry?” she asked.
He was furious. Beyond furious, but it wasn’t at the top of his list of current anxieties.
*
Emerging above decks into the sunshine, Daniella almost fell under the weight of it all. She was exhausted. Her chest was so tight she could hardly breathe. But she had to make him listen. “I’ll sign your papers. I’ll absolve you from the marriage and you can go back to London with a clear conscience. You can find a proper wife and start over.”
She watched the ocean to avoid his eyes. On a day where her thoughts and emotions were in absolute turmoil, the sea was calm and soothing—just as it had always been. This was why she could never leave the water. It was her home.
James took her by the shoulder and turned her, crowding her against what was left of the railing at the backs of her legs. His eyes were fierce, his grip bruising. “I won’t have it. I’ll not let you ignore what is between us.”
“You were the one who wanted an end to it. You were the one who talked incessantly of pure wives and blue-blooded babies!” The rage she’d thought spent burst back to life. She shoved him in the chest so hard he staggered. “You can’t have it every way, James. You can’t have everything you want!”
“Yes I can,” he objected. “We can make this work, but you are so scared you won’t even give it a chance.”
“I don’t want you to be scared of me, damn it. I want you to see me. See that I love you and know that I will fight for you. What do I have to do to convince you I can make you happy?”
“You don’t love me. You do this out of honour and call it love so you can sleep at night.”
The bluster left him then and his shoulders dropped. “Why are you fighting me, Daniella? You already know how I sleep at night. I don’t. Yes, I’d pictured for myself a pure wife, but I also pictured one who wouldn’t argue when I left her bed to barricade myself in my room. I never imagined meeting a woman who would knock me on my arse over and over.”
“I do feel it,” she freely admitted. “The connection. But I also know it will not last. It cannot last. If I return to London with you, the ton will crucify you—you know they will.”
“My brother killed my father and then himself. My unwed sister just gave birth to an illegitimate child. I am the Butcher, for God’s sake. We will do what the other scandalous members of the ton do: we’ll ignore those who cut us and we’ll waltz the night away and kiss on the dance floor as fodder for the gossips. I want you as you are right now, secrets, schemes, exactly as you are, minus the only thing holding you back. Look at what you fight for. Your ship is in pieces. You are wrong to want solitude on the sea. As I was wrong to want society’s approbation. I see it now, all of it. All I care about is you. If the only way I can have you is to stay, then I’m staying. We can live on your damned ship.”
“For how long?” she asked. Why couldn’t he just leave her be? Her heart was splitting in two and every word he shouted at her only made it that much worse. “How long until your responsibilities come to find you? What about your mother and Amelia? Your tenants and your House of Lords?”
“Your idea. I can have someone declare me dead so the title can pass to yet another distant cousin. It will not be easy but it can be done. Mother is staying with your father if I had to guess. Amelia… Well, I don’t know what will happen there.”
“Amelia will go with Patrick. Her husband.” She waited for his reaction.
“Impossible.” Not what she had expected.
“Just now. Before the birth of the child. The same words we spoke to one another. They are married.”
“As are we.”
“Not for long,” she reminded him.
“What a mess,” James muttered beneath his breath.
“Indeed.”
But then he said the last thing she ever thought he would. “I want you to give me one year.”
This was the conversation they had started earlier and she didn’t want to revisit it again. “What good will that do?”
He shook his head but then came close, crowded her again, put his hands on her arms again. This time his grip was soft, reassuring. He stood too close and her walls began to crumble. “Give me one year to change your mind. To show you what kind of future I could give you. We’ll retire to the country in wedded bliss, gossip be damned, and I can show you a life with me will be just as rewarding as a life on the ocean.”
“I can’t. You know I can’t do that. I won’t be bound to the land.”
“My estate is on the coast.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I live by the sea, you beautiful fool. A short trot down the cliffs and you are standing in the water.”
She stared at him, angry, hopeful. “And you didn’t think to share this information with me before now?”
He looked sheepish. “Yes, well, I didn’t think it would help, being an estate and not an actual pirate ship. It will be difficult and I’ll have to spend some time in the city—and you might even find the place sufficiently pleasant for the occasional visit, being a married woman—but I think we can make it work. If at the end of the twelve months you are still miserable and yearning, I will go with you. We will find a new home—buy an island plantation for ourselves and leave an agent running things here. I’ll not leave you now I’ve found you.”
“You’re impossible. It’s impossible.” But once again hope bloomed in her mind and in her chest.
“I want you to be mine, Daniella. Only mine, for the rest of our lives.”
The hope deflated. “You can’t own me, James. I won’t belong to you. I have been fighting my whole life. Fighting to be better, to do better, to be worthy of my place on this ship. What if I don’t know how to stop fighting?”
He shook his head but in his eyes his smile radiated his own hope. “You already belong to me in the same way I belong to you, heart to heart, no chains. Tell me you aren’t my equal in every way and if we disagree over this or that, we’ll fight each other. But then we’ll kiss and make up. Tell me you don’t want me to kiss you and love you and make you feel whole. That’s what you do to me every second of the day, Daniella. You made me feel again.”
Heat flushed her cheeks and tears burned her eyes. Words lodged in her throat. Was he right?
She was scared. More than that. She was terrified. If she said yes and it was awful, how would she survive? But if she sent him away, regret would take over her life and tarnish everything she did. Of course she loved him. He offered her the world and she hesitated. She was an idiot.
Her lips curved and she closed the distance between their bodies. “I do love you, James. You’re everything I’d never thought to wish for. I don’t know how you’re going to make this work, but I’ll give you your twelve months.”
He cradled her face in his hands and bent his forehead to hers. “I’ll be having more than that, but it’s a good place to start, my love.”
Epilogue
Four very short months later
“I made a mistake,” Daniella said as James held her hair and she cradled a bucket on her lap.
“Oh?” he said. She hated the way he answered her with those two little letters. He knew he was right and was attempting very poorly to hold back the smugness.
“I think it’s time to move back to the house.”
“But you love this ship. You swam naked in the moonlight and sold your fictional virginity for a life on the seas.”
She’d thought the boat the perfect romantic gesture, docked a short way from the main house, their bedroom for all intents and purposes, James’s attempt to keep her happy. Something in which they could escape, every year or two, so she could show him the islands and waters he’d dreamed of as a child; so they could both relish the sun and the wind and the enormous ocean that fed her very soul. But now? “You just want me to say you were right and I was wrong.” The wind howled all around them, each gust causing the ship to pitch and the lantern light to tremble. It wasn’t the only thing pitching and trembling.
“Indeed I do, Lady Trelissick.”
“I won’t do it,” she said, right before the retching started again. The constant rocking of the little ship set her stomach to heaving. Never in her life had she imagined suffering seasickness.
“The sickness will pass. Amelia said hers lasted for around nine weeks at the beginning of her pregnancy. She also said she fared far better on land.”
“She would say that.” Her sister-in-law didn’t share Daniella’s love of the sea. But then she didn’t have to now that she spent her days in the Scottish Highlands in a drafty castle, the only water in sight a loch too cold and deep to enjoy.
“Your father also said your mother spent far too much time vomiting when she was on the ship carrying you.”
“He exaggerates because he wants me in the house and not out here. He’s worried about the gossip.”
“There won’t be any gossip. My staff don’t talk to others about the inner workings of the house.”
“What about the girls?” They’d both quite forgotten about the virgins she had purchased while they gadded about the countryside getting kidnapped. Until they’d arrived home. James’s butler was still having conniptions over it all.
“They still aren�
�t speaking to anyone but you. Each time I enter a room, they flee.”
“You do have an awful reputation,” she reminded him with a grin, as she leaned back in his arms and let his warmth flow through her. He rarely dreamed of war anymore. Not when he was in bed with her, anyway.
“I do?” He laughed. “What about your reputation?”
“Apparently the rumours about me are wildly unfounded. Not one person seems to be able to find a single witness to any of my supposed scandals. For some reason I am being celebrated as a rescuer of slaves and a matchmaker above reproach.”
“Hmmm,” he murmured in agreement as he placed a kiss on her collarbone. “Not sure how they all came to that conclusion.”
“I think your riches may have had something to do with it.”
“Never,” he said into her hair. She heard the grin in his voice and couldn’t help but grin in reply. Though she had been as sick as a dog for days, he always managed to lift her spirits. His baby in her belly also made her smile every time she thought about it, sick or not. She would live anywhere, in a cave, in a house, on a boat, in a field in the open, as long as he was there with her. As long as he loved her then, as he did now, she knew they could overcome anything they faced. Together.
The End
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If you enjoyed The Road to Ruin, you’ll love the next book in….
The Daughters of Disgrace series
Book 1: The Road to Ruin
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Book 2: The Slide into Ruin
Coming September 2020!
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