The Tide Watchers

by Lisa Chaplin

  Looking at her, he knew how much it had taken for her to break Fulton’s confidence. How much it meant to her to have Fulton feel that way. He chose his words with care. “I’m certain you do. As certain as I am that Fulton would wish his wife to feel that way for him,” he said bluntly. “But you love me. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have come straight from him to me.”

  In the warm firelight, she paled. “Damn you.”

  He waited for the rest.

  “Damn you,” she said again. “He’s willing to wait. Once we’re in America—”

  Sudden fury took hold of him. “No, damn you. Damn you for running off instead of waiting to meet me. Damn you for a wasted year of my life searching for you, worried for your safety.” He jerked to his feet and paced the room, refusing to look at her. “You’re the best bloody team member I’ve had the privilege of working with. Despite being injured or ill, your brilliance and your insight have taught me to depend on you, and to miss your clarity when you’re not with me. Now you’re leaving me when I’ve carried your bloody portrait around like a lovelorn youth for a year. You think it’s just you who hurts?” he said softly, even now remembering her illness, her need for gentle treatment. “All my life I’ve been alone. Is it so wrong to want my own family?”

  “No, it isn’t,” she said quietly, her gaze back on her lap. “Nor is it wrong for me to want a husband who won’t resent me later for the children I couldn’t give him.” She lifted a hand when he would have spoken. “You want a family of your own. I respect that. I want a quiet life with my son far from Alain’s reach. Robert can provide that. So I’m here to say thank you—thank you for everything—and farewell.”

  Vicious words escaped his mouth, but he snapped it shut when he saw her flinch. “I seem to beg your pardon on a regular basis,” he said, dropping to his haunches in front of her. “I’m sorry, Lisbeth. It seems neither of us is wrong to cling to our wishes, and though we love each other, it’s not going to work.”

  She didn’t look up. “I need to go.”

  When she stood, he rose with her, looking at her averted face. He could smell the lavender on her skin, the rosemary in her hair; he saw the pain he’d caused her. “Damn you,” he whispered fiercely, but his fingers on her cheek were tender. “Even now, all I can think is that if I lose you to Fulton I’ll never meet another woman like you.”

  “You will,” she said softly. “I’m not so unique.”

  Something snapped in him. “Marry me, Lizzy.” He took her hands in his.

  She looked up then, her eyes filled with that same turbulent confusion. “Why?”

  The sadness in Lisbeth’s voice caught him off guard. He watched her, puzzled.

  “Why are you asking me again now, when you’ve barely been near me in weeks? Is it to destroy the only prospect I’ll ever have to be respectable, to have a good life with a man who values me beyond the bearing of children? Haven’t I done everything you’ve asked of me? I—I don’t understand.”

  He frowned. “You knew I couldn’t come. I told you why. With the double agent on board, Carlsberg working with Fulton, my trusted sailors manning the outside of the Martello towers, and only Alec and Flynn to trust, I had to man the semaphore. Didn’t Alec tell you his visits were to reassure me of your health? Did you not read the notes I wrote to you every day? You didn’t answer once.”

  She frowned, staring at her twiddling fingers; she always did that when she was hiding something. “It hurt too much,” she said eventually. “I found the illness left me weak and tearful.”

  “Did you read them?” he asked, gentle with her again. “I came to you, Lizzy. You refused to see me.”

  She didn’t answer that. “You want children, a woman who can give you a family. So why are you doing this? Can’t you just be glad to have me off your conscience?”

  What did he say to that?

  A man who values me beyond the bearing of children.

  Fulton’s clear vision humbled him. Any woman could bear children, but there was only one Lisbeth. Dreams could change, but his feelings wouldn’t. “Edmond will be my heir,” he said curtly. Within seconds he cursed himself, waiting for the fury to come.

  “I could never subject my son to being an heir, Duncan.” She took him aback again with her sadness, so much stronger than anger, and harder to fight. “You of all men know how it feels to be that boy.”

  “You’re right.” He sighed and made a rueful face. “I’m putting this badly, but Fulton was right. Your worth is far beyond the bearing of children. You know I love you. If you’ll be my wife, I swear I’ll love Edmond as if he was my own.”

  “I won’t give my son into the control of a man who’ll resent him one day for not being his own son.” Her words weren’t a challenge. She meant it.

  “If there’s anyone who understands that, it’s me.” Her brows rose in silent challenge, and he sought the right words to convince her. “I wish my mother had loved me the way you love Edmond. No”—he shook his head as her eyes flashed—“this isn’t some stupid plea for sympathy. I’m telling you I’ve never had a family. I’m making one mistake after the other. I love you, but I don’t know what it means, or what to do.”

  She stilled.

  “I never had a mother, or sisters.” The words tumbled out. “The only kindness I had as a child was from servants. The only father I’ve known is yours. The women I’ve known only wanted me in bed. But from the start you’ve challenged me, shown me new ways to do things, and taught me how to treat a lady. I’ve failed you over and over, but you’re still here now. I want”—his lips pressed together, but seeing her chin lift, he knew he had to say it—“I see Alec and Fulton saying things to you that make you laugh or smile. I never learned how to flatter and charm.” He shook his head in frustration. “Show me how to be the man you want.”

  Her expression softened, then turned questioning. “You’ve said nice things to me before.”

  “I practiced. I listened to other men to work out what women like to hear. What you would like to hear—but it rarely worked.” He knew his frustration showed in his tone. Lord, how he hated admitting to any weakness. Too much like a soldier going into battle without weapons.

  A pensive look crossed her expressive face, and then a little chuckle came. “That’s why they never felt real to me.”

  Her adorable expression invited shared laughter, but the moment was too serious. “Does this feel real?”

  She blinked, bit her lip, and nodded. “And you’ve made me laugh many times, Duncan, just being yourself. I—I do like you.”

  Relief flooded him. “I’m sailing in uncharted waters here—but you make me more than I am, better than I was. I want that for the rest of my life.”

  “That doesn’t mean you won’t regret your decision later.”

  “You don’t trust me.” She only shrugged in response, just as he did when protecting himself at her expense, and he wanted to smile. “I don’t deserve your trust. Despite working together all these months, you barely know me.”

  “No—because you don’t trust me, either. I don’t think you trust anyone.”

  “I trusted you with my past. I’ve never told anyone about that, not even Eddie.”

  He saw her mouth tilt up in a half smile she soon smothered, but something in her expression was a lantern leading him on a path he hadn’t known was there. She’d had an idyllic childhood compared to his—yet her experiences with Delacorte, and in France, had given her no reason to trust any man.

  Still, she’d come to him. Because of his advent in her life she’d nearly died—twice—yet she was still here, giving him the chance to prove himself.

  He returned to his chair, but leaned forward, taking her hands in his. “I’m not saying all this because I want to win some game with Fulton, Lisbeth. You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted to marry, and I don’t think that’s going to change. If you’ll accept me, I’ll never give you or Edmond cause to regret it.”

  Her gaze was so ful
l of doubt. Pretty words weren’t the way. He wished to God he did know the way. If Eddie was here—

  Eddie. “You’ve said things about your father I can’t understand. I think he’s made mistakes with you—and with me—but I can’t see them. Help me, so I don’t repeat them.”

  After a few moments, she said, “You said Papa wanted to whip me, that Annersley whipped you.”

  It was only now he saw how bad it was to have made that joke. “He wouldn’t have done it, Lizzy. He said all you ever had to do was smile at him and he’d forget why he was angry.”

  Her smile was still pale, wintry. “But you were raised on whippings.”

  He got the point. “If you’ll make me Edmond’s father, I swear I’ll never whip him.” The promise might be harder to keep at times than she knew, but he’d do it. “I have more reason than most to know how it damages a child. I wouldn’t want my son to grow up terrified of me.”

  She tilted her chin up, her eyes glittering. Even before she spoke he felt the stakes rising, a desperate woman putting her whole fortune down on one throw. “You will not raise my son to be a King’s Man. Edmond will choose his own path.”

  Then what the hell can I teach him? About to say it, he saw his youth, his years with Eddie, Leo, and Andrew. Like a plant, Eddie had fed and watered the three boys a steady diet of loyalty to king and country until they’d bent in that direction as to the sun, leaving Caroline with no husband or sons, Lisbeth with no father or brothers.

  “Edmond will be his own man,” he vowed, hating the words as he said them.

  There was a visible hesitation before she spoke, and again he saw the image of the crazed gambler, throwing down all he had. “You won’t leave us when we need you. You won’t disappear for months on end and reappear, expecting a welcome home.”

  He frowned, opened his mouth, and closed it. There went another of his cherished dreams—but now he knew why. She’d spent her entire childhood without her father.

  “Swear to me,” she said fiercely.

  “I will be a husband and father first.”

  Her shoulders relaxed a fraction, yet her defiance grew. “You once said, needs must when duty drives. I won’t tolerate that, Duncan. I am not my mother.”

  His eyes widened. “Your father was never unfaithful to your mother to my knowledge, and neither will I be to you.”

  She nodded, but closed her eyes, and he knew this was it, the final challenge. “Tell me why you flinched when I mentioned Mama.”

  Cold sweat broke out fast as a lightning strike. If he told the whole truth—that he’d written to Eddie dozens of times during the past six months asking after Caroline’s health, and received nothing—no, he couldn’t do it to her. “Eddie asked me to bring you home once the mission’s done. He said your mother’s pining for you. It’s all I know for certain.”

  She frowned. “But you suspect more.”

  “I heard she was ill from a man who’d never met her. That’s all I know. I don’t even know if it’s serious illness or not.”

  “Mama is ill, and Papa didn’t send for me.” Her gaze dropped to her hands, twisting.

  The words came out, King’s Man to the end. “As my wife . . . as the person who helped save Britain, he’ll be so—” He couldn’t go on. “Eddie will welcome you home now, no matter what, Lisbeth.” She deserved to know that.

  She shook her head. “No.” It was all she said, but as fierce and heartfelt as anything else she’d said today. So strongly she believed Eddie would never forgive her, that he simply didn’t love her.

  What kind of father had he been? What had he done to her?

  Send her home now, before it’s too late. But again, the equation was simple: Lisbeth or his country. Hundreds of thousands of lives against one young woman’s happiness—the woman he loved. “He loves you, Lizzy. He just doesn’t know how to talk to women.”

  Her eyes still closed, she shook her head. “I want to see my mother as soon as this mission ends.” Closing the door on her personal house of ghosts, all with her father’s face.

  “We’ll leave for Norfolk the hour it ends.”

  The doubt in her eyes flashed up to him like a semaphore flag, bright red with warning. “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it. If I ever discover you’ve put nation above family, I’ll be gone by the next day—and that’s my vow to you.”

  She knew him so well. The shame and the resentment mixed in a toxic potion. He loved his life as a King’s Man—and he loved her. How many compromises did she expect?

  Unwilling to make a vow he didn’t know even now if he’d break, he lifted her hands to his lips. “These weeks since we left Boulogne have been—hard. This is the most important mission I’ll ever take part in. I can’t leave the ship until the double agent is found, but I’ve resented that the whole time. Next time you’re ill or in need, I want to be the man with the right to care for you.”

  Her head drooped again. “I’m afraid to love you, Duncan. I’m afraid Edmond will love you, will need his father, and you’ll leave us over and over when duty calls. Robert will be there for Edmond, I have no doubt of that.”

  “You’re right.” He felt her trying to tug her hands free. “Lizzy, I can’t guarantee I’ll never go if something dire comes up. But until now, I’ve never had a reason to say no, never had anything or anyone that needed me more. Give me that reason, Lizzy. Give me a family.”

  “Like Mama did with Papa?”

  That was a facer. “Eddie always had the luxury of taking family for granted. I’m not Eddie.”

  Her chin lifted and her mouth curled down. “If you’re not my father, I’m not my mother, waving her husband off with a smile and crying for weeks, watching the window for hours every day for his return.”

  Her words took a half lifetime of blinkered vision from his eyes. Eddie’s portrait of a happy wife and charming rebel daughter, so proud of his duty and awaiting his return, had been painted in all the wrong colors. “Is that why you took all those mad risks as a child, behaving like a boy? To get Caroline to bring Eddie and the boys home?”

  She shrugged and turned her gaze to the fire. “She was happier when they were home.”

  “When you were twelve,” he said slowly, remembering a story Eddie had told him, “you rode your horse in a hard frost, fell and broke your wrist and ankle, and had a concussion.”

  She shrugged and grinned. “A little too extreme, you think? But Mama wrote to Papa, asking him to come home.”

  He felt no urge to laugh. “But he didn’t.” He knew, because the Sunderland men had all been with him in Paris until summer.

  Another shrug. “They wrote to me, telling me to stop being such a hoyden.”

  “And your mother—?”

  “Cried for weeks while I was laid up in bed.”

  Another wave lapped the ship; a log crackled in the fire as the cabin grew into darkness, hand into glove. “Did you have friends in your childhood?”

  She smiled. “Grand-mère, who taught me all the French accents.”

  Again, he couldn’t smile with her. “No girls your age?”

  “During my Season, I became quite friendly with Lady Georgiana Gordon, until her almost-fiancé died, and the duchess took them home. Then a month later I ran off with Alain, and that was that.”

  “No friends at all, until you were seventeen?” he asked, stifling the incredulity. “No wonder you thought you loved Delacorte.”

  “And the dancing master. Never forget poor Ludwig,” she giggled, and for the first time since they met, she looked and sounded like the girl she still was. “I probably would have loved the local blacksmith’s son if he hadn’t been married. I spent some of the happiest hours of my childhood at the smithy’s forge.”

  Moved by the sadness she didn’t see in her life, Duncan took her hands in his. “I am not your father,” he said again, and for the first time, he meant it. “If circumstances ever force me to go on a mission, just write if either you or Edmond needs me. I’ll be home wit
hin days.”

  The smile faded from her face. She turned to the fire, her hands limp in his. In the silence, the disbelief and a hundred fears screamed all the louder.

  “Do you want me to stop trying to convince you?” he asked softly. “If that’s what you want—if Fulton will make you more secure . . .”

  The fire crackled; a log popped, sparks danced like fireflies, lighting her sadness and confusion. “He kissed me. Robert kissed me.”

  “Is that why you came to me?” he asked, when she said no more. Her head shook and her shoulders shrugged before she frowned and nodded at last, the distress plain to read in her eyes. An eloquent silence indeed, and he read a three-volume novel into them.

  She’d come to him.

  In the warm firelight, whispered echoes of the night they met returned, and he knew why she was here. “I was shot because I refused to leave you to Delacorte and the Jacobins. I broke the first rule of a team leader: leave injured members to die if it endangers the mission. I should have let you die then. I should have left you alone with Fulton. Instead I slept in a tent in the bushes, close enough to hear you scream if you needed me.” After a few moments, he went on. “If my duty came first, I would have let you have your say today and leave. I’ve been fighting it for months, but since you were hurt I factor what you would think, what you’d want me to do, in every decision I make. I’m asking you to marry me because I like the man I am when you’re in my life. You make me more than I was, better than I ever thought I could be.”

  He thought he saw a faint glimmer of her lopsided smile, but it faded. “No more missions for me. I will never charm another man, no matter what Britain’s need may be.”

  He closed his eyes. Behind his lids he saw the man he’d been taught to be through her eyes. “After you ran off with Delacorte, I was convinced you’d never want me. When I found you, I believed I couldn’t fulfill my desires at the risk of others. I thought I was making the sacrifice. I told myself Fulton would propose when he knew your father’s name, and you’d be safe and happy in America. I refused to look at what damage could be done to you because I’d have to see what I’d become.”