He’d been wrong that time.
Feeling the catch and tear of cat-o’-nines being pulled across the skin of your sixteen-year-old back had been worse. But not the worst.
Even bobbing about in freezing waters hanging precariously onto the world’s smallest wine barrel—empty of all the rotten luck—while sharks circled curiously hadn’t opened the yawning chasm of despair inside the chest of a then hardened pirate. He’d betrayed even himself that day, the day of the failed mutiny. He’d wished for death but hadn’t the courage to let go.
The very darkest minutes of his life had been this day. He found once again that he hadn’t the courage to let go.
To his left, the old harbourmaster stood, all red in the face and sputtering as Trelissick told the man to shut up for a second so he could kiss his wife. To his right, Gabriella, Nathanial, Grace and Ethan were being tended to by Marcus and half a dozen more sailors, washing their hands and faces with clean water and inspecting them for injuries. Captain John MacBride, Deklin’s cousin and friend, sat on the timbers, the shackles still attached to the chains only an axe could shake loose, deep in thought or perhaps turmoil. Benny had run off to find a key or saw or blacksmith. Months of captivity haunted the man’s face and frame and would take many months more to leave behind.
At his back, the warmth of the flames as the Persephone burned, scores of men working to save the dock she leaned against, the ship beyond any hope of salvage.
But it was right in front of him, as it had been all along, the thing that consumed his attention, his senses, his very soul. His arms tightened a fraction more as he refused to let go, as he refused to find the courage he needed to ever let go again.
“I’m so sorry I lied to you,” he whispered for the tenth time.
“You’re crushing me,” Eliza complained softly but her words meant nothing as she also tightened her hold, burying her head further into Darius’s neck. “I lied to you also. Neither of us are blameless in this.”
“I thought I wouldn’t reach you in time.”
“I thought perhaps after the way I spoke to you, you wouldn’t come at all. I should have stood by your side.” She drew a deep breath and Darius felt the whoosh of the exhalation into his filthy, torn shirt. “I should never have left you.”
He should step away. He knew it. There were questions to answer, a scandal to smother and children to whisk away from any more danger or talk of it. “We need to leave before anyone of import arrives,” he found himself saying into her ear. “We are not yet safe.”
Eliza pulled back slightly to meet his eyes. A shudder racked her body. “I killed him, Darius. I drove a knife into his neck and barely blinked. I didn’t feel sick about it at all. I’ve blamed Gabriella, railed at her in my head for what she did, but now I am as guilty as she is.”
“You rid this planet of a verminous evil, Eliza. When it comes down to kill or be killed, you did exactly what you should have done, my love. I’ll not hold it over your head.”
“You’ll still protect me? Us?”
“A fine job I did of that today.” He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see any recrimination in hers. She had every right to blame him for their near deaths if she wanted to, despite her own words and actions. What if he had been too late or died trying? His thirst for revenge had started this fight and kept it alive. They should have made for the ship the very day they’d exchanged their vows.
A warm hand pressed to his cheek made him look at her again. She smiled. Was she quite mad?
“You saved us, Darius. You could have given up and gone back to your ship and sailed away thinking us dead or beyond hope but you didn’t. I was wrong about you. I should have trusted you more. I should have listened to you.”
“I was afraid I would never see you again.”
Moisture gathered on Eliza’s long lashes. “I was afraid I would never get to tell you how wrong I was. How much you mean to us. To me.” Eliza lifted herself onto her bare tiptoes and kissed him right there in front of half of London. “I’m fairly sure I love you, Darius.”
He held her away from his body and it nearly killed him for real this time, the distance, when all he’d wanted to do was hold her in his arms again. “Don’t, Eliza, don’t do it to yourself. You weren’t entirely wrong about me. Everything you think I am, I am. It’s all there inside of me. The question is can you take me like this? The answer is no. After a few years you would hate me.” He raised a hand to halt her argument. “You can stay here with James and let him protect you and yours. You can have a semblance of the life you should have had. You can take back your declaration and pretend it was never spoken.” Although never for the rest of his days would he forget those six little words.
I’m fairly sure I love you.
He was more than sure he loved her too but it wasn’t enough. People changed; their feelings changed.
Her eyes went wide for a half a breath but then she smiled again. Mad. Utterly mad she was. Darius tucked her hair over her ear and wondered how hard she had hit her head, his dirty fingertips skating lightly over the bruise at her temple.
“You think you love me too,” she said slowly, her smile growing bigger and bigger.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter how I feel.”
“You know deep down how good you are. Your father and the world treated you one way and you set out to prove them all right for all those years but I’ve seen the real you, the dragon slayer, the gentleman. Daniella knows it is there. Deklin Montrose must have seen it also.”
A voice came from his left. Trelissick. “We were all wrong about you, Darius, and for that we apologise.”
“I wasn’t wrong.” Daniella grinned, coughed into her hand, and then grinned again. “I always knew there was a good man inside of you somewhere.”
Trelissick scoffed. “You said, and I quote, ‘There is absolutely nothing good or just about that devil.’”
Daniella playfully shoved her husband but then pulled him back to her side. “Perhaps I was a little upset that day,” she conceded with a grin and then sobered. “Of course you know we’ll help in whatever way we can. Nathanial is welcome to stay with us—you’re all welcome.”
Darius’s chest swelled at their words, at the friendship they offered with those few short statements. After a lifetime of avoiding attachments, he had taken on several in the last week. As he looked at each and every one of their faces, he couldn’t summon the weight of responsibility or the anxiety of caring for them along with Sarah, his ship and his crew, keeping them all fed, happy and safe. He couldn’t even find the argument he’d prepared to push them from his destructive life.
Elation filled him. Anticipation spurred him. For the first time ever, he could feel a family’s love encircle him and hold him tight for a change. It would be the most dysfunctional family in the history of relations but they were his and he was theirs.
The man formerly known as Jonathan Meddington had finally found a place of his own in the world, a place where he was accepted for the bastard and ex-pirate he was. He’d proven his father wrong. He’d proven all of London society wrong.
“You’ll probably regret this one day,” he said to his wife, his gaze fixed firmly on her happy, soot-stained face.
“Probably,” she conceded with a nod. “But if you tell me you love me too, then I’m sure we’ll get along just fine.”
As he pulled Eliza into his arms, he whispered, “I love you, my dragon-slaying queen.” And then he kissed her with everything he had inside of him, a new feeling coursing unchecked through his veins.
He really was loved for who he was, for what he was, and every dark shadow in between.
He didn’t need his father’s attention, his brother’s affection or England’s acceptance. He only needed Eliza and her siblings, and Sarah and his friends to be at peace.
His family. His future.
Epilogue
Silverware tinked against delicate china and wine glasses seemed bottomless as the eveni
ng meal was enjoyed by all. Never had there been a more ragtag bunch beneath the roof of a marquis enjoying a formal dinner in the formal dining room with the serving ware one usually only pulled out for kings and queens.
Anthony Germaine had almost declined the invitation. What would rubbing elbows with this lot—sailors, ruffians and bastards—do to his reputation and would it matter now that his hoyden of a sister was married to a titled man who was about to take on the schooling of a young duke?
He rubbed his brow with a clenched fist and in his mind sent them all to hell for their camaraderie and happiness. Mr Smith, who they all now knew to be Mrs Smith, was missing and news had spread quickly that an earl had been murdered in the fire that had claimed a good portion of docks. What was there to be so bloody jovial about?
“You look as though someone soured your wine,” Darius commented, his own glass halfway to a mouth that wore a grin most all of the time.
Anthony huffed a sigh, knowing the frown lines he wore ran deep. “It’s all right for some. You’ll flee this place with your pretty bride and not have to be the butt of cruel gossip for the coming months.”
His brows high, Darius looked for a second to have regretted saying anything at all but then he began to laugh. “Cheer up, Germaine! There are worse things in this world than marrying strangers.”
It was uncharitable of him to poke fun at a man who had lived his life so far under the mantle of bastard but Anthony wasn’t in the mood. How could he toast Eliza and her siblings travelling to a new world when his own teetered on a knife’s edge? He should go with them. Daniella had never needed his name or protection. He could run from the parson’s trap, from the scandal, all the way to the Americas, start again, be his own man for once in his damned life.
But that had never been his style. To run. From anything.
He was merely exhausted. That was all.
Daniella called to him from the other side of the table and said, “You’re bringing everyone’s mood down with your sullenness. You compromised a chit and now you have to make good. Deal with it, brother mine.”
Eliza joined the conversation with, “What was her name again? Perhaps I have heard of her?”
He shook his head. “She hasn’t even had a proper season yet. I doubt any of you would have heard of her.”
Trelissick added, “We’ve all heard of her father, and the incident. Terrible timing, terrible luck.”
He had to change the subject before misery dragged him down any further. “A toast!” He couldn’t stand because of his damned broken ankle, but he straightened in his chair, cleared his throat and said, “To changing your destiny and to new beginnings!”
Darius and Eliza would sail in less than a week with two of her three siblings and a baby they would tell the new world was their own. They would be this happy and more for the rest of their lives travelling between his land and hers, making a family out of the ashes of scandal and ruin.
At the very best, he could hope to have that with Miss Clairmont, who by all accounts was herself a social nobody without her name, a stranger to London. Of all the people he could have landed on in the darkened garden, why did it have to be a woman whose father would rather see him dead than wed?
As the echoes of his toast died down and everyone went back to their own conversations around the table, he drank until he was numb.
There’d be no escaping his destiny…
The End
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About the Author
Bronwyn Stuart is a multi-published, award-winning author of both contemporary and historical romantic fiction. Her latest Regency series, Daughters of Disgrace, will be released July 2020 by Tule Publishing. She and her shoe collection share a house in the Adelaide Hills with her husband, kids, dogs and cat. She’s a sucker for a love story and a bad boy. You can find out more at www.bronwynstuart.com
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