“I won’t leave until I know for certain that you’re not with child.”
“I’m not. My courses began rather fortuitously this morning. I’d have not accepted Chetwyn’s offer otherwise.”
He didn’t understand the disappointment he experienced at her reassurance that she wasn’t carrying his child. He didn’t want children. His life wasn’t suited to them. He was completely unencumbered, free to do as he desired. And what he desired was to leave, to be back out on the water.
“I’ll never forget you,” he said as he lowered his mouth to hers to taste her for the final time. She was right, of course. Walking away from her was one of the most difficult things he’d ever done. But she wouldn’t be happy on his ship and he wouldn’t be happy off it. Nor would she be happy waiting for him to return. No matter how glorious the reunions might be, there would always be the bitter knowledge that they would come to an end.
W
ith Rafe’s assistance, Tristan was able to learn that Chetwyn’s favorite club was Dodger’s Drawing Room. With a letter of introduction from his brother, he was allowed into the hallowed gentlemen’s domain. With some well-placed coins in the proper palm, he quickly located Chetwyn in the smoking salon, sitting in a plush chair in a seating area near a fireplace. He was smoking a cigar and sipping brandy. He was also flanked by all four of Anne’s brothers. They were no doubt consoling him. Tristan was actually grateful for their presence. It would ensure they all heard what he had to say.
He could feel eyes coming to bear on him, attention being diverted to him. He’d always given the impression that he savored being the center of things, but the truth was that he abhorred it. Perhaps it was the remnants of having his uncle’s attentions focused on him and his brothers. When he was shivering in the tower, he’d wished that he’d been invisible, that his uncle had ignored him, that he was insignificant. Maybe that was part of the reason he hated being in London, where every aspect of a person was scrutinized and commented on. Anne relished this life and he couldn’t wait to leave it.
As he approached the seating area, Tristan watched as Anne’s brothers came menacingly to their feet while Chetwyn did little more than study him with a speculative gleam. It seemed the man was always observing, seeing things that Tristan rather wished he didn’t.
He came to a halt before Chetwyn. “Gentlemen.”
“You haven’t been to see my sister,” Jameson said.
“Actually I’ve just left her.”
“You bastard,” one of the younger pups groused, his hands balling into fists.
Tristan ignored him. “Chetwyn, I thought you should know that I’m not going to marry Anne because nothing happened between she and I.”
“She said—”
He cut Jameson off. “That she was with me. Yes. On my ship. On the deck with the smell of the sea around her and the wind blowing her hair. I did my best to convince her that she’d have a more enjoyable time below in my quarters, but she was having none of it. She simply wanted to be on the water for a bit. Fewer cares out there, she said. As a gentleman, I swear to you that nothing untoward happened, certainly nothing that demands she spend the remainder of her life shackled to a rogue such as myself. I’m not giving up the sea, not even for her.” He shrugged. “Which will leave her very lonely indeed.”
Chetwyn slowly came to his feet. “You did attempt to seduce her.”
“Without question. But she’s made of stern stuff, your Anne.” He nearly gagged on the last two words.
“I believe we need to take this conversation into the alleyway,” Jameson said, rage evident in his eyes.
Tristan held Chetwyn’s gaze. “Yes, I believe we do.”
The conversation was fairly brief, a few harsh curses uttered as fists were flailing. He had no doubt that the more brutal of the blows came from Jameson—not for Anne’s sake, but for Lady Hermione’s.
They left Tristan in a crumpled heap, with a battered face and a couple of broken ribs. He groaned as Rafe gently turned him over.
“Did you enjoy watching that?” he asked through a puffed-up tender mouth, tonguing a loose tooth.
“Not as much as I thought I would. How did you know that they’d want to pummel you?”
“It’s what I’d do if we’d had a sister and some blackguard treated her the way I treated Anne. Help me up.”
Oh, he hurt, dammit, as he staggered with a great deal of help to his feet. He couldn’t straighten, not completely. He wasn’t even certain he could walk.
Rafe slipped beneath Tristan’s arm to give him support. “They gave me hope.”
Through eyes half closed with swelling, Tristan squinted at his brother.
“What?”
“The globes. I collected them because they gave me hope that there was someplace out there better than where I was.”
“But you have new ones. You’re still collecting them.”
Rafe didn’t respond as he helped Tristan hobble to the waiting carriage, and Tristan couldn’t help but wonder if his brother was still searching for someplace better. It occurred to him that he and Rafe weren’t so very different after all. Wasn’t that the reason he stayed on the sea: searching for what he’d lost?
A
nne stood in the grand entry hallway waiting for the butler to inform Tristan that he had a caller. The London residence was one befitting a duke. She’d never visited before, but it was her understanding that it was during a ball held here that Tristan and his brothers had made their notorious entrance back into London Society.
Anne was not prone to snooping and while she knew she should wait where the butler had left her, she found herself drawn to the portrait depicting two boys that was hanging above a table adorned with flowers at the edge of the entryway. The boys couldn’t have been any older than twelve. They were of the same height with the same build and matching features, and yet they were remarkably different. They stood with their backs to each other, looking out, one incredibly serious, the other with a bit of deviltry in his eyes and the start of a smile that promised mischief.
“Can you tell them apart?” a soft voice asked.
Anne spun around and curtsied. “Your Grace, my apologies. I didn’t mean to pry—”
“Don’t be silly. I’d have not placed the portrait there if I didn’t mean for it to be viewed.” She wore a pale green dress that made her upswept red hair seem more vibrant. But her emerald eyes spoke of harsh wisdom. “I wanted people who came here to see them as they were, to perhaps understand how life changed them. For a while we thought the portrait had been destroyed, but a servant recently discovered it hidden behind some furniture in an attic. It’s been here for only a couple of weeks. But I digress. You didn’t answer my question, Lady Anne. Can you tell them apart?”
Nibbling on her lower lip, Anne looked back at the portrait that represented youth lost. “The one on the left is Lord Tristan.”
“You know few could ever see the difference in them. I never understood that. It seemed easy to me, but I thought perhaps it was because I always loved Sebastian.”
Anne jerked her head around, met the duchess’s speculative look. She didn’t love Tristan. “The artist managed to capture Lord Tristan’s teasing nature, I think. That’s all.”
“He did have a bit of the devil in him. Still does, truth be told, but it’s not quite as innocent as it once was.”
“Are any of us as we grow up?”
“I suppose not. I understand you’ve come to see Lord Tristan, but unfortunately, he’s not here.”
“Do you know when he might be returning?”
The duchess shook her head. “They set sail last night, from what I understand. My husband saw them off at the docks.”
“I see. It could be years then.”
“I suspect it will be, yes.” She studied Anne, and Anne wondered what her face revealed. “Will you join me for a spot of tea in the garden?”
“I would be delighted.” And perhaps, just perhaps, some of her melancholy would lift. As she followed the duchess through the house and into the garden, she wished now that she and Sarah had come to call as they’d spoken of doing.
Anne sat at the lace-covered table that the duchess indicated. As they sipped tea, Anne glanced around. The garden was awash in color and fragrances. “You have a very talented gardener.”
“I stole him from my father, but is it really my roses you wish to discuss?”
Anne set aside her cup. The duchess waited patiently, her expression open and inviting. Anne thought under different circumstances that they might have been friends. She released a small self-conscious laugh. “I’m not quite sure what I’m doing here. As I understand it, Tristan announced at my brother’s club that our involvement was quite innocent. To staunch any further gossip, Lord Chetwyn and I are to be married in two weeks. I thought he should know that all is right with the world again.”
“Is it?” the duchess asked.
Anne nodded, because the affirmation wouldn’t pass her lips. If all was right with the world, why was she so remarkably sad? “He needs the sea . . . Lord Tristan.”
“I’m not sure he knows what he needs.”
“He told me that you rescued him.”
“I’m not quite certain of that. I helped him and his brothers escape but that’s not quite the same as rescuing, is it?”
“You were incredibly brave to do what you did.”
“Unlock a door? Hardly. They were much braver—to ride off into the unknown.”
She made her part seem insignificant, but Anne didn’t see how it could have been. It seemed everyone in this family fought to make light of an event that had changed all their lives.
“You should come to Pembrook sometime,” the duchess said. “I think it would help you to understand Lord Tristan better. The original Pembrook was a castle, with a dungeon where people were tortured and a tower where prisoners awaited their fate. After our marriage, Keswick spent many an hour pounding a hammer against the walls of the tower, striving to destroy it. But it still stands. He decided to leave it in case his brothers needed to take part in its destruction. But his brothers haven’t returned there since they laid their uncle to rest.”
“Do
you
think he meant to kill them as they believe?”
“Without a doubt. I heard him plotting their murders. I try to imagine how terrifying it must have been for them in the tower—without light, warmth, or comfort. Waiting. Waiting to be murdered, by their own blood. You would think having shared the same experience in the tower that they would be very similar. It shaped them. There can be no denying that. But it is what happened after they left the tower that made them the men they are today.”
Anne couldn’t help but wonder if Tristan needed the sea because he was still trying to escape the horror of what he’d learned in that tower: that someone he may have loved would kill him, that the brothers he loved would be ripped from him, that the only one he could ever truly rely on was himself.
She wanted to weep for the lad he’d been when an artist had painted his portrait. She wanted to weep for the man who, she was beginning to realize, would never return home because it had been stolen from him when he was a lad, and he no longer knew how to find it.
I
t was sometime after midnight when Tristan brought his horse to a halt near Pembrook. He had a bright moon. In the distance he could see the silhouette of the manor house that Sebastian had built on a rise. He had yet to visit there. He wondered if it would feel like home. He doubted it.
Home had always been the looming castlelike structure that cast night shadows over him now.
Two days earlier he’d docked his ship in the port from which he’d escaped when he was a terrified lad on his own, running for his life. Twice he’d returned to Pembrook, but neither time had he come by water. He was a man now, fearful of nothing, yet he hadn’t relished the notion of docking his ship in the same harbor from which he’d escaped. Still he had given the order and watched from the quarterdeck as the
Revenge
glided silently into place. From Marlow, he learned many of the skills that made him a good captain.
But there had been no one to teach him how to be a lord. Not teach him perhaps—so much as remind him. His father had certainly drilled particular behaviors into him. He pressed a gloved fist to his tightening chest as another memory with his father took hold. They’d all been banished until lately. He’d had so little time to think of anything beyond surviving and revenge.
God forgive him, but he’d actually initially resented Sebastian because he’d handled their uncle’s demise single-handedly. Tristan had been denied any satisfaction in it. By the time he received word from Sebastian, and made his way with Rafe to Pembrook, the vicious swine was already cold and closed in his coffin. Twelve years of plotting revenge—stolen from Tristan.
With every strike of the lash against his back he’d wished his uncle dead. With every storm, with every bout of hunger when food was scarce, with every absence of wind, with every mile that separated him from his brothers and left him feeling so wretchedly alone—
Reaching into his pocket, stroking the kidskin glove he’d acquired the night he met Anne, he acknowledged that was the reason that he’d been blessedly relieved she hadn’t wanted to marry him, the reason he hadn’t fought her on it. He understood her loneliness. He hadn’t wanted to admit it, but he did. He knew the abstract sense of it, the concrete pain of it. He would leave her and forget her. Go on with his life. He wouldn’t love because love tied one down. Love bound. Love and everything that accompanied it terrified him.
Dismounting from his horse, he tethered it to a small scraggly bush and walked through the abandoned courtyard. He knew that Sebastian had plans to destroy this monstrosity, but he had yet to carry through on them. He was too busy striving to keep his wife happy. Love altered a man’s course. It was as unpredictable as a storm.
He strode to the tower. As a lad he’d always thought it so damned tall. Even now it dwarfed him. Wrapping his hand around the latch, he pulled open the door, listened to the hideous screeching of hinges. They’d squealed that night when their uncle’s henchman had escorted them to the tower.
“We didn’t fight,” he whispered. They went like trusting lambs. It was only once they were locked inside the uppermost room that they’d realized something was amiss.
Why would they suspect anything? No one had ever hurt them. They were the lords of Pembrook, idolized and protected by their father.
In the grayness, Tristan made out the lantern hanging on the wall. Taking the matches from his pocket, he struck one and lit the lantern. The shadows wavered around him. He began trudging up the stairs. The old wood moaned. He could smell the must and the odor of disuse.
Finally he reached it. The room. The heavy wooden door stood ajar. Inside was the small table and two stools, one of them overturned. He considered righting it but his attention was arrested by the huge hole on the other side of the room. He set the lantern on the table and examined what remained of the wall.
He remembered Sebastian telling him that he’d taken a sledgehammer to it, that he’d vented his anger there. Through that hole their uncle had eventually fallen to his death.
“Damn you,” he rasped. “Damn you! You stole everything of importance. I don’t care about the titles or the properties. You stole my brothers from me. You stole the opportunity for me to be the sort of man who was content to live in one place, the sort of man who would be worthy of Anne until the day he died.”
He spotted the sledgehammer in the corner, hefted it up, and slammed it into the stone. “Damn you! You made me what I am. My own needs, my own desires, they always come first. There is a wall around my heart as thick—”
He hit the wall again.
“—as formidable—”
Slam.
“—as strong—”
A portion of the wall crumbled, broke apart, went flying away from him and into the darkened abyss of the night. Breathing heavily he stared at the damage he’d done. He could tear down the wall. It had been strong enough to hold them when they were boys, but it wasn’t strong enough now to hurt him.
Dropping to his knees he did what he’d wanted to do that long-ago dreadful night, but feared that once he started, he’d be unable to stop.
He wept.
For the boy he’d been.
For the man he was.
For the lord he wished he might have become.
And he screamed out because in the end, his uncle had won. He’d destroyed Lord Tristan Easton. And Captain Crimson Jack didn’t know how to find him again.