Catching Captain Nash

by Campbell, Anna

  Published by Anna Campbell

  Copyright 2017 Anna Campbell

  Cover Design: © Hang Le

  ISBN: 978-1-947414-00-6

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems - except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews - without permission in writing from the author, Anna Campbell. This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Pursuing Lord Pascal

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements:

  To Nicola Cornick, a truly excellent writer and a good friend.

  Chapter One

  * * *

  October 1829, Nash House, Berkeley Square, London

  The man stood in the shadows, watching the house across the square.

  It was late, almost midnight, but the tall, white mansion was brightly lit, and lilting music from inside drifted across to him on the sharp autumn air. Carriages lined the square, waiting for the guests to make their way home after the party.

  The night was bitterly cold, with a breeze that whistled around him and cut like a knife. His eyes never leaving the house, he huddled into his rough coat and stamped his booted feet to restore circulation.

  He had a right to enter and join the fashionable throng, however unsuitably he was dressed. But something—diffidence, reluctance, perhaps even fear—made him hesitate before he stepped forward.

  He’d rushed up to London the moment he disembarked at Gravesend. Now, shivering outside a house he hadn’t seen in nearly five years, he couldn’t bring himself to cross the threshold.

  But he’d loitered so long in the empty square, he started to feel absurd. As if to signal it was time to reclaim his life, the music stopped. After a pause, he heard applause. Some celebration must take place inside.

  Straightening, he strode ahead to the short flight of stairs. As he reached the open front door, he heard warm laughter and more applause from the back of the house.

  He’d prepared to announce himself to a butler or footman, but it seemed even the servants deserted their posts to witness whatever took place here tonight.

  Robert stepped into a familiar marble hall, bright with candlelight. The luxurious décor in Lord Stone’s London home struck him like a punch to the solar plexus. Over the last years, for days on end, any light at all would have been a blessing. This shining gilt and glass overwhelmed his senses.

  He paused to suck in an unsteady breath and find his balance. How ludicrous that he’d kept his courage—sometimes by a mere thread—through all his tribulations. Yet walking into this beautiful, much-loved house, he wanted to cry like an abandoned baby.

  He followed the distant rumble of a deep voice. The high double doors to the ballroom, inlaid with twin family crests of crowned swans, stood open as if to welcome the prodigal son’s return, but nobody turned to observe him come in.

  The huge room was crowded. Everyone had their backs to the entrance and watched the people standing in front of the orchestra.

  Robert was tall enough to look over the sea of heads. His eyes glanced across the group holding the floor. His brother Silas, his sister-in-law Caroline, his sister Amy. The famously handsome Lord Pascal. Another big brute of a fellow, whose name he couldn’t immediately remember.

  All his attention arrowed onto the woman standing beside Silas. His heart slammed against his ribs. His blood surged with possessiveness. Briefly the tears he’d fought in the hall rose again to blur his vision. He’d crossed oceans to find her, and now, by God, he had.

  Feverishly he drank in the details of her appearance. Five years apart, and she looked just the same. Shining dark hair tied up in some folderol, although in his memory, it always cascaded around her bare white shoulders in ebony disarray.

  Delicate and slender. When he’d first met her, he’d feared some misstep born of clumsy masculinity might mar her perfection. Only leaving her for the last time had he started to appreciate the strength she concealed beneath her beauty.

  The rest of the room faded to nothing, while his hungry eyes fed on the sight of her. His heart swelled to fill his chest, making breathing impossible. He’d spent an eternity convinced he’d never see her again.

  Yet here she was. And so miraculously unchanged.

  How the devil had she stayed so unchanged? That flaring, dark beauty remained as vivid as his memories. While he felt like he’d aged a hundred years.

  Still nobody looked back to see who ventured unannounced into this happy gathering. Because it was a happy gathering. Goodwill practically dripped from the elegant light green walls with their moldings of festive garlands and ribbons.

  His disorientation faded enough for him to realize that Silas, Lord Stone, was giving a formal speech to his guests. Stupidly, Robert had noticed little beyond the lovely black-haired woman wearing peacock blue silk.

  Silas’s words hardly penetrated the waves of bewildered emotion engulfing him. Robert had always imagined that if this moment ever arrived, he’d be in transports of joy. But this felt too much like a confused dream to allow for anything as uncomplicated as mere happiness.

  Then the dream turned dark and cold.

  Disbelieving, he watched Silas take Morwenna’s hand, gloved in dark blue to match her sumptuous gown, and offer it to the big cove.

  Garson. That was his name. At last Robert remembered.

  Rich as Croesus. Old school friend of Silas’s.

  And he made sense of what until now had been little more than a muffled babble over the deafening roar of his heartbeat.

  “I’m delighted to announce the betrothal of my dear sister-in-law Morwenna to one of the finest men I know. Hugh Rutherford, Baron Garson. Morwenna and Garson, I couldn’t be happier for both of you. I wish you many years of joy ahead.” Silas faced the crowd with a beaming smile. “Now it is my great pleasure to ask you all to raise your glasses in a toast to the happy couple.”

  “No...” But nobody heard Robert’s low growl of denial.

  Through a red haze, he watched Garson lift Morwenna’s hand and place a kiss on the knuckles.

  “No,” he said more loudly.

  This time, a few heads turned toward him. But he had no thought for other people.

  Clumsily, on legs that felt as unwieldy as blocks of wood, he shoved his way forward. Every cell in his body burned to rip Garson’s handsome head from those wide, straight shoulders. He hardly cared that he knocked aside the nation’
s most powerful men and their wives in his battle to reach the front. All he cared about was ending this abomination.

  “No.”

  This time his strangled cry rose to reach his family. Silas, tall like him, frowned across at the disturbance, then turned as white as parchment and staggered back. His wife Caro was slower to notice, as was Amy. Morwenna, damn her, still stared entranced at the man who held her hand.

  Robert stumbled to the front as a couple of brawny footmen rushed in his direction, clearly intent on ejecting this disreputable interloper.

  Silas waved his hand to them and spoke in a choked voice. “Stop.”

  The footmen halted in their tracks, as the crowd receded to leave Robert standing in isolation. His chest was heaving, and that agonizing feeling of unreality compounded as he watched Morwenna step closer to Garson.

  “Let her go,” he said unsteadily to the big bastard. “She’s not yours. She’s mine.”

  At the sound of his voice, Morwenna stiffened, then turned in his direction in a swirl of rich blue. She ripped her hand away from Garson, but Robert was too far gone in rage and disbelief to find any satisfaction in that.

  For one blazing moment, he read transcendent happiness in her face. Then the blue eyes, clear and changeable as the Cornish seas that lapped around her birthplace, dulled, and he saw unmistakable shame.

  And dear Lord above, fear.

  “Robert?” she whispered, although he heard his name as clearly as if she’d shouted.

  “Of course,” he said coldly.

  To do his wife justice, she’d always been brave. While the blood drained from her face, leaving her like a ghost, she stood her ground before him and didn’t fall into a faint.

  No, it was his sister Amy who stared at him with glassy eyes, then collapsed into the arms of the golden-haired Adonis beside her.

  Chapter Two

  * * *

  The room receded from Morwenna in an alarming rush, and the loud buzz of curiosity and concern that rose from the crowd reached her from a long way away. The only real thing in the room was her husband’s face.

  His beloved face.

  But so changed. When she looked into that face that had filled her dreams, she didn’t see the light-hearted, laughing man she’d married, but a stranger.

  Her first, dazed glance told her that he’d been through hell on earth to reach her. He looked pale and ill, with the skin stretched tight over his cheekbones. A long scar divided his cheek from temple to jaw. She flinched as she imagined a sword slicing down to inflict that cruel cut. An inch higher, and he’d have lost an eye.

  Yet he remained the most compelling man she’d ever seen. Even worn and hurt and bristling with hostility.

  Those striking features had been carved on her heart from the moment six years ago, when she’d first seen him in the Truro assembly rooms. He was dark, dark enough to be a Cornishman, with the same snapping black eyes as his sister Helena.

  Robert had been tall and elegant when they met, dashing in his naval uniform. Just promoted to captain, the youngest in the navy, a mark of his brilliance as a navigator, and his heroic deeds along the Barbary Coast.

  All the Truro girls were mad for him, but he’d had eyes only for the local belle, Morwenna St. Leger. Their courtship had been quick and passionate. It had been a near thing that she’d arrived in her marriage bed a virgin.

  But life as a sailor’s wife meant long stretches alone. In their year together, they spent mere weeks under one roof. Enough time for Robert to leave her carrying their daughter Kerenza, when he sailed away to map the coast of South America, the voyage from which he’d never returned.

  Morwenna had spent the years since lost in a fog of grief, consoled only by her love for her daughter and the kindness of Robert’s grand relations. The brother of a peer had been a catch for a girl from an obscure family and an isolated, hard-scrabble corner of the kingdom. Except none of the Nashes had been grand at all. And through their profound sorrow, they’d found room for Robert’s bride, and later Robert’s pretty, quirky, stubborn daughter. It was both a comfort and an excruciating reminder of her loss that Kerenza could be nobody else’s daughter but Robert Nash’s.

  Morwenna’s immediate reaction was to fling herself into his arms. She could hardly believe this miracle. The missing, bleeding half of her heart was at last restored to her. She’d felt barely alive since that devastating day when his lieutenant came to Woodley Park with news that Captain Robert Nash, R.N., was dead. He’d gone overboard after being shot in an engagement with pirates in the South Atlantic.

  Then she remembered that Robert had returned to find her pledging herself to another man.

  She forced air into starved lungs. She locked her knees against collapsing and struggled to clear her head. A few feet away, Pascal tried to revive his wife, Robert’s sister Amy.

  Of course Robert wouldn’t know about Amy’s recent marriage. With the force of a blow, she realized that it was likely Robert didn’t know he had a child.

  The room whirled around her. Reaching to hold onto something, anything, she curled her hand over Lord Garson’s arm.

  Then was sorry she had when she saw Robert’s eyes flare with temper. The man she’d married had been slow to anger and quick to forgive. She could already tell this formidable creature wasn’t nearly so tolerant.

  She snatched her hand away and blushed with guilt, even as she reminded herself she’d done nothing wrong. But when she met condemning black eyes, any small power that reassurance had held drained away to nothing.

  Around them, a deathly hush had fallen. Logic told Morwenna that the silence lasted a few seconds, but she felt like she tumbled into an endless, soundless cavern, where nothing existed beyond Robert’s burning, angry glare.

  Silas, thank God, ended the ghastly stasis.

  “Robert...Robert, old man...” His broken words vibrated with joy. He strode forward and hauled his brother into a fervent embrace.

  Morwenna watched Robert stiffen as if expecting violence. Then her heart cramped with wordless compassion when he hesitantly slid his arms around his brother’s back.

  Where on earth had Robert been all this time? Everyone on his ship had seen him dragged under the waves, and he hadn’t resurfaced. She knew this was true because she and Silas had tracked down all the surviving crew, from the cabin boy to the first lieutenant. Anyone who might have offered a shred of hope that the man she loved still lived.

  Because if he didn’t live, how could she continue in a world without him? Even as she grew large with his child inside her.

  She’d taken years to accept that Robert really was dead. He’d seemed too vital and powerful to fall victim to common mortality.

  It turned out that she’d been right to doubt his demise. Even now, when he glowered at her like he hated her, her soul expanded to fill her for the first time since he’d gone.

  He was alive. He was alive.

  That was all that mattered. He might never speak another kind word to her, but he breathed the same air she did.

  She sucked in another breath, and this time had no trouble standing on her own two feet. And with the action, her reeling shock receded a little and she became aware of her surroundings. Pascal had carried Amy to a chair, but she looked wan and shaky. Brief, distant curiosity sparked in Morwenna’s mind. Was her sister-in-law with child?

  Caro was crying, unashamed tears pouring down her lovely face. “If only Helena was here,” she said in a thick voice.

  Around her, Morwenna heard the gale of whispers. The curiosity. The hint of spiteful enjoyment. She saw the bright, malicious glances directed at her, and Lord Garson beside her.

  With horror, she recalled the man she’d agreed to marry next Christmas. She turned to Garson, then almost wished she hadn’t.

  He watched her with that steady gaze that had become so familiar over recent months. But at last she recognized the depth of love behind his eyes.

  Remorse stabbed her. She’d known he cared a
bout her. Of course, she did. But only now when there could be nothing more between them did she see that he loved her perhaps almost as much as she loved Robert.

  Morwenna realized that in accepting his proposal out of pure self-interest, she’d done him a disservice. She’d been honest enough to tell him she still loved her husband. But as their eyes met, she read his dashed hopes that time would loosen Robert’s hold on her.

  His level, gray gaze told her something else. He now understood that even without Robert’s return, no man had ever had a chance of gaining her heart.

  And the knowledge cut him to the bone.

  Morwenna wanted to say she was sorry—and she was—but her regret was a tiny shadow in the huge, spinning universe of gratitude that Robert had come back to her.

  Despite everything, she found a moment’s astonished admiration when Garson bowed and stepped back. It was an acknowledgment that in this particular competition, there could only be one winner.

  And it wasn’t him.

  All of this filled the time it took Silas and Robert to shift apart.

  “How the devil has this happened?” Silas’s voice still cracked with emotion. “The Admiralty gave us no hope that you’d survived.”

  Robert shook his head, as Pascal tore himself from Amy’s side. “Silas, I think the family should hear this story first, before it becomes generally known.”

  Silas looked around, and Morwenna saw that he’d forgotten the room full of people. He’d only seen his brother, returned from the dead. “Yes. Of course.”

  After nodding to the servants to return to their places, Pascal raised his voice. “My friends, you came here tonight to witness a joyous event. And so you have, if not the one you expected. We beg your indulgence in giving us a little privacy to welcome Captain Nash back to his home and family and find out the story behind his return.”

  People began moving toward the entrance. Without looking, Silas reached out to find Caro’s hand. She, with that unspoken communication built over eight years of marriage, was already there at his side.