by Gaelen Foley
Jack gazed into her eyes as she came and leaned in the doorway opposite him. “It’s kind of you to look after him.”
“Pish. One’s got to pass the time somehow.”
“What do you make of his abilities?” he inquired. “Stockwell tutors the boy from time to time, but on the whole, his education is sadly neglected.”
She shrugged. “He seems very clever to me. You do realize, by the way, that this child idolizes you?”
“Well, everyone does, hadn’t you noticed?”
She laughed at his droll remark.
Jack smiled, scoring himself one point for the old Irish charm. “I try to be a good example for him,” he admitted in a more serious tone. “Give a little guidance now and then. Teach him how to be a man.”
“Where’s his real father?”
“Nobody knows, poor little mite. He was abandoned as an infant. Left on the front steps of a church with nothing but the blanket he was wrapped in. Not even a name. An older lady I employ, the housekeeper at my property in Ireland, Mrs. Moynahan, she took him in,” he explained. “But the boy’s rambunctious, as you’ve no doubt noticed, and as he got bigger, he became too much for her. The lady likes things orderly.”
“Ah. So, you took him next?”
He nodded. “At least he knew who I was from my occasional visits to the property. I made him my cabin boy so I could keep an eye on him and make sure he was learning a trade. He’ll make a fine sailor one day. Still, it’s a damned hard thing for a helpless youngster, being abandoned like that. Not wanted.” Jack frowned in the direction the Nipper had gone. “Honestly, in your…feminine opinion, do you think he’s all right?”
A softness crept into her green eyes, a tender smile for his worry. “I think he’s just fine. But—a little lonely, perhaps. Contact with other children would do the boy a world of good.”
“Yes, but—” He looked out to sea in vague distress. “Don’t you think they’d be cruel to him, push him away, on account of his having no father? No name?”
She stared at him for a long moment with a compassionate gaze that seemed to see right into his soul. “I suppose a few might. But why would he want to be friends with those children anyway, when others will be happy to accept him for exactly who he is? It isn’t as though his origins are the boy’s fault,” she added. “He has nothing to be ashamed of.”
“No.” Jack fell silent, lowering his gaze. “What about you, Miss Farraday?” he murmured after a moment. “Do you want to have children?”
“What, with you?”
He looked at her in surprise and found a teasing twinkle in her eyes and a saucy smile on her lips.
He arched an eyebrow, shooting her a droll look. “Yes, actually. Right now. Shall we get started?”
“Jack!” she scolded, blushing crimson.
“I’m jesting,” he lied in a husky murmur, gazing at her with a heated glow in his eyes and a pulsing in his groin. “You are good with him, though.”
“So are you,” she said softly.
“You didn’t answer my question. Do you ever intend to have children someday?”
“Oh, loads!” she exclaimed, lightening the mood again with her airy manner. “A dozen, at least.”
“Really? A litter?”
“My aunt Cecily has eleven. One of her friends has got sixteen.”
He let out a low whistle.
“The more the merrier, I say.”
“Sounds painful for the ladies.”
“Not if you’re healthy. Besides, it’s what my mother would have wanted. A brood of grandchildren. She was always so disappointed she could have only one child—me—though she swore on her life that I was so wonderful in every imaginable way that no other child in the world could ever have compared, so it was just as well, or she’d have forgotten to feed it.”
He grinned, wondering what it was like to be adored like that by one’s parents.
“For all that,” she added, “I can’t help but feel that if Papa had a few grandchildren, it might draw him back out into the world again instead of hiding away like a hermit.”
“Or he might try to drag the lot of you into the jungle. Ever think of that?”
“Won’t work. I survived, and it wasn’t all bad, but I would never allow my child to be raised the way I was.”
“Nor would I,” he agreed quietly. As her probing gaze homed in on him much too shrewdly, Jack felt the sudden need for a change of subject. “You look very pretty today, Miss Farraday.” He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed them both.
“You like my new gown?”
“Indeed, I’m entirely pleased with my investment. However—” Still holding her hands, he tugged her toward him gently. “I should like to collect my dividends, if you don’t mind. Whatever small sum you see fit to return to me at this time.”
“Hmm,” she purred as he took her gently into his arms. “I suppose the board could agree to a modest dispensation.” She slid her hands up his chest and clasped them behind his neck with an arch and slightly flirtatious smile.
“Ah, Eden,” he murmured as she tilted her head back, offering her lips. “You captivate me.” The words escaped him before he could stop them.
“Why, Jack!” she whispered in a breathy tone full of pleasure. “For that, I shall pay you back with interest.”
And she did, cupping the back of his head as she kissed him for all she was worth. Her artless passion took his breath away. It was a kiss that a fortune in gold could not buy, a kiss like those in the fairy stories with the power to break curses. Jack did not think he had ever been kissed like this before, with her whole heart in it. All the women before her faded into mere phantoms, so many dissolving wisps of smoke.
Ah, heaven. Gathering her closer, it would have been absurd to deny that this girl was already connected to him more deeply than any previous involvement—even Maura, in the farthest reaches of his past.
The first love who had sold him down the river. No, this was nothing like that. And Eden was nothing like her.
On a sudden wild impulse, he was teetering—actually teetering on the verge of asking Eden to marry him—but ending her earth-shaking kiss, she spoke first.
“Jack?”
“Mmm?” he murmured, a little drunk from her sweetness.
She took his hands in hers and held them as she retreated a step and leaned back against the doorframe, mirroring his stance.
Gazing at her, he was amused to see her cheeks flushed and rosy, her moist, shiny lips still aglow. She spoke slowly, dreamily. “When we get to London…”
“Yes?” Her words jarred him a bit out of desire’s haze with the guilty reminder that she still did not suspect his true plans for her.
“Do you expect to visit your family during your stay?”
“My family?” Ah, his favorite subject. His faint smile tensed.
“You do have family, don’t you?”
“What makes you think that they’d like to see me?” He slipped his hands out of hers and put them in his pockets. “Did I mention I’ve got that ache in my knee that always means bad weather’s on the way?”
“Jack, don’t change the subject.”
He rolled his eyes. “Eden—”
“There’s something that I have to tell you.” Her face was set; desire’s blush had dimmed in her cheeks. “I read your sister’s letters.”
He froze. “What?”
“That first day you found me on the ship, when you locked me up in your cabin. I was bored, Jack. There was nothing to do. I found them and I-I got engrossed,” she said with a penitent shrug.
He stared at her, appalled.
“I know it was wrong, and I’m sorry—but the point is this. From everything your sister wrote, I’m sure your family loves you. You should see them again when we reach London. Try to make things right.”
“Make…things right?” he echoed in utter shock, which promptly turned to fury. “You are unbelievable! And for your information, I am not the one w
ho made things wrong!”
“I never assumed that you were!” she assured him. “Jack, I’m only trying to help. Whatever bad blood lies between you and your siblings, I don’t want to see you let it ruin your life.”
“Ruin my life? Don’t be absurd!” He scoffed. “My life, it so happens, is better than most people’s wildest fantasies. Do you know how much I’m worth?”
“I’m not talking about your money, I’m talking about you. I think I know what you’re worth, Jack. The question is, do you?”
He turned away with a low curse, but she persisted, tenacious as ever.
“Is that why you work so hard, because you think you are worth nothing without all your wealth and power?”
“Leave me alone. This conversation is tedious.” His tone was merely irked, but inside he was trembling. “I can’t believe you read my private correspondence.” He pinned her with an angry glance. “I trusted you.”
“I wanted to know more about you, that’s all. Jack, I could have concealed what I did, you know, but look how I told you flat out. You can trust me. I’m concerned about you. You have a problem and I want to help.”
“I don’t have a problem and I don’t need your help. I don’t need anybody’s help. Never have.” He glared at her. “Never will.”
She took an impatient step toward him. “I want you to hear what I have to say: Stop wasting time.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They’re your family, Jack. If I had one more day with my mother, I would pay a king’s ransom for that, but I can’t. She’s gone. And someday, you’re going to know how that feels.”
“Well, I was never adored by my family as you were, and you’re never going to know how that feels!”
She dropped her gaze and let out a low exhalation eloquent of a feminine struggle for patience. “I just don’t want to see you end up alone.”
He let out a rude bark of a laugh and turned away from her. “Why not? I’m used to it! Gets a little dull sometimes, perhaps, but at least this way no one can stab me in the back.”
“Is that what happened?” she asked softly. “Did someone betray you?”
“Stay out of it, Eden. It’s none of your affair.”
“Maybe you’re afraid that I’ll betray you, too. But I won’t, Jack, I promise. I can prove it, if you’ll give me a chance. Talk to me.”
No, he realized in reluctance, he did not feel that Eden would stab him in the back. But he still didn’t want to tell her anything.
Did he?
He swallowed hard, his heart pounding violently. He closed his eyes with a faint wince. He never explained himself to anyone. Certainly, he had never attempted to explicate how he had sacrificed himself for his brothers and his little sister. To this day, nobody even realized. To hell with them.
“Jack?”
“In a family at war,” he said slowly, his back to her, “the rest can make peace if one becomes the scapegoat. A common enemy against whom the others can rally.” His face was stony. “I became their villain. A damned lightning rod for all the wrath and anger under that roof—it all came down on me. I was the only one strong enough to bear it. But after a time, I got lost in the role.” With his back to her, she could not see his taut grimace. She could never know how alone he had been in that house. Nay, in that world. Shunned by all. “Finally, I knew I had to leave.” He thought of Maura. Her petty betrayal. “There was no reason left for me to stay.”
He heard the rustle of her skirts as she edged closer. “But that’s just it, Jack. You’re not a villain. You may have convinced the world of that and even yourself by now, but you never fooled me. Not for a second.” He felt her light touch on his back—so gentle it made him flinch. A blow would have been easier to take. “I felt drawn to you from the first moment I saw you at the ball in Jamaica. I think Papa sensed the way I noticed you. That’s why he pulled me away. He didn’t want to lose me to you. You see, Jack, I’ve got very good instincts. Maybe I don’t know much about the way of the world, but I know my own heart. And it tells me that behind these dark fictions you’ve raised up around yourself, you are one of the…the kindest, noblest human beings I’ve ever known.”
He pulled away and whirled around with a glower. “The hell I am!”
“It’s true.” Her eyes were huge and full of light; her youthful face was somber.
He backed away from her. “And you’ve met a total of, what—eight, nine human beings in your entire life, hidden away out there in the jungle?” he bit out sarcastically. “Don’t tell me about instincts. It’s experience that counts, and the more experience you gain, my love, the more you’ll see the jungle’s everywhere.” He shook his head. “This life is nothing but a struggle to survive. Well, guess what? Surviving is the one damned thing I’m good at. And you, you don’t know bad when you see it, because all you’ve got in you is good. That’s all you’re able to see because you’re looking at everything through the crystal-clear prism of who you are, Eden. But all of your purity cannot make me good.”
She was staring at him with tears in her eyes. “You learned to believe in a lie a long time ago, Jack, a lie you still believe to this day.”
“Ah, so I am deceived?”
“In a sense, yes.” She blinked her tears away. “Everything that you just said is rubbish. You are good. What kind of a man risks his freedom and his whole life’s work to help the cause of freedom? A villain? Who sends twelve shiploads of food and water to a city ravaged by an earthquake? Who takes a naive stowaway under his wing and protects her instead of treating her as she deserves? You are no villain, and I will not tolerate you speaking about yourself that way again.”
“Oh, well, pardon me.”
“I know now why you steer clear of humanity—”
“Have you looked at humanity lately?”
“You sound like Papa.”
“Except that I’m sane.”
“I can only imagine what you were subjected to when you were the Nipper’s age that made you believe these things, but I would never treat you that way. You must know that.”
“I could comment if I had any idea what in Lucifer’s name you were talking about.”
“Jack—I know about your father.”
His next sarcastic comment withered on his tongue.
He felt as though he had just been run through with a lancer’s pike, but while his face drained of every drop of color, she charged on.
“I understand now why you think everyone’s against you, why you’re so angry. Why you keep to yourself and don’t trust anyone. All those locks on your door, oh, my darling…”
He backed away from her, shocked and rather horrified that she’d heard of his mongrel origins. Reading the letters was one thing. But this was something else. He knew what came next.
He knew.
From experience.
“Don’t be angry. I’m on your side, Jack. It doesn’t matter to me, your parentage. Please, I only want to help. Is that the reason you weren’t allowed to wed Lady Maura?”
At that traitor’s name, the one person he had believed for a while had really cared about him back in those days, the past rushed back like a swarm of bats, flapping around him with tittering ghoulish laughter at all he’d accomplished for the past twenty years, reducing it to nothing. Negating in the blink of an eye all his efforts to show them he’d make something of himself, after all.
No, these memories could only remind him that he’d always be the Irish bastard, nothing more, not fit to associate with his own brothers. A bad influence. No good.
No good to the core.
“Jack?” Eden whispered, and through the wave of pain, he was dimly aware of her staring at him in alarm.
All of a sudden, he let out a deafening roar that shook the glass in the stern windows. With a violent motion, he swept the contents off his desk—charts and papers, pencils and ledger books crashed chaotically onto the floor.
Eden watched them fall, then looked at him in
wide-eyed fright.
Her fear grounded him once more in what he was. Why should he fight it? The darkness in him was always there. It made him good at what he did.
The crew above must have heard his howl, too, for the usual beat of footsteps across the deck halted.
Jack prowled toward her, his expression black.
Eden looked terrified, but his little jungle redhead held her ground even when he leaned down to glare in her face.
“Who told you?”
She gulped, bending back a bit. “He didn’t mean to, Jack. I—it just slipped out.”
His eyes narrowed to angry slashes. “Brody.”
“He spoke of you only in pride, I swear! Jack—” She touched his cheek, but he knocked her hand away.
“Don’t touch me.”
Without another word, he pulled away and walked out.
CHAPTER
TEN
More days passed.
If there was any way to make the ship go faster, Jack would have left Eden at his Irish estate and simply let her drop out of his life, sailing away on his mission.
But there was not.
He was stuck with her in a cramped cell in the middle of an endless ocean. There was nowhere to escape from her, and nowhere to escape from his bleak certainty that no one was ever going to love him, no matter how rich he got or how many companies he owned; and no matter how many times he told himself that he didn’t give a damn, it was always going to hurt.
As The Winds of Fortune crept higher into the north latitudes, autumnal temperatures above the equator gave way to winter, cold and gray.
They’d be there soon.
Eden was having a terrible time with her sewing. As night descended, the winter’s early twilight encroaching, she worked by candlelight in the stateroom, seated on the red leather window bench. Her hands were wobbly with the needle until she even pricked her finger.
“Ow!” She threw her work down, popped her finger in her mouth, and noticed herself feeling seasick.
She assumed at first that the ill, shaky feeling in her stomach was due entirely to being upset over her fight with Jack, who had barely spoken to her since his explosion. Without his friendship, the sea had become a very desolate place. He had taken to sleeping in a hammock in the stateroom, leaving Eden to lie awake alone in his berth, fearing to contemplate what could happen to her in this elemental shipboard world with her protector angry at her. But when she heard the low whistling of a draft blowing in through the cracks around the closed jib door, and noticed the fine brandy sloshing about in its crystal decanter atop the mahogany cabinet, she realized there might be another explanation for her touch of mal de mer.
