Chapter 1
“You’re related to an earl? We’re going to visit an
earl
?”
Kit winced as Alex’s voice dropped to an awestruck whisper. “He’s just a man like any other man, only more arrogant,” returned Kit, working hard to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
Far from being impressed by Michael’s and Lily’s elevated positions as the Countess and Earl of Thornedale, Kit was feeling anxious about his reaction to the pair. It had been seven years since they had thrown him—against his will—onto a ship bound for the colonies. He’d been about to marry an actress, and they’d decided that wasn’t acceptable. It wasn’t their fault that the boat had been taken by Barbary pirates and his life became one horror after another. But they were responsible for starting the whole thing in motion.
What did one say to the people responsible for such a thing? He’d spent years despising them with a darkness that consumed him. But he was home now, Venboer was dead, and what was done was done. His anger was gone, but in its place was an emptiness that he couldn’t fill. And he sure as hell didn’t know what to
say
. Sadly, there wasn’t any more time to figure it out. They had arrived at Michael’s elite London residence.
Alex tumbled out first, all gangly limbs and uncontrolled movements. The boy was too thin for his large frame, but months at sea had made him strong. A month or two of his mother’s good food would see that he filled out nicely, though the scars would last a lifetime.
Kit stepped out second, wincing as his thigh pulled painfully through his back. Sadly, a month, a year, or a decade of good food would do nothing for him. His wound had become infected and he’d spent much of the trip to England in a feverish haze. He’d survived, but his days at sea were at an end. Walking was painful, climbing the rigging was impossible. His leg would no longer lift as it needed to, and Kit had seen enough injuries to know that he would never again use his leg as fully as God intended.
“We should have bought new clothes,” Alex said as he tugged at his coarse seaman’s shirt.
Kit shrugged. “This is the best we own. He should respect that.”
Alex wasn’t satisfied but knew better than to comment. Instead, the boy grabbed his seamen bag from the cabbie and began walking up the path to Michael’s door. Kit followed slowly, carrying his own satchel while using all his senses to find something familiar. He failed. Birds chirped rather than squawked or honked. The air tasted bitter with coal dust but without the smell of fear and sweat. The ground was solid beneath his feet, and that alone made him nervous. But most of all, even in this exclusive neighborhood of the very elite, buildings and trees seemed much too crammed together. There was no ocean expanse and no gentle rock of waves.
He was still struggling to orient to that when the front door opened. Owen stood there, his face craggy with an extra seven years’ age, but his uniform and his expression remained as haughty as ever.
“Hello, Owen,” Kit said. “Do you remember me?”
The man narrowed his gaze over his pointy nose. His brow furrowed, but there was no mistaking the moment his eyes widened in shock. “Master Kit? Master Kit! It can’t be. You’re dead!”
Kit quirked his lips. “I’m not a ghost.”
Owen stared at him, his eyes watering from emotion. Kit could see his hands twitch as if the man wanted to embrace him but knew it wasn’t his place. Kit didn’t stand on ceremony, finding a well of emotion he hadn’t expected. Owen remembered him. And Owen was the first positive breath of his past he’d felt since returning to England. Stepping forward, he embraced the man, startled to find his own eyes moist with tears.
“Oh, Master Kit, they said you were dead,” Owen breathed in his ear. Then he pulled back, wiping his eyes as he gestured inside. “Come inside, come inside.”
Kit stepped into the foyer, moving with an odd sort of disassociation. His body stepped into the house and went about the usual routine of stripping off his gloves and handing over his hat. Except he had no gloves or hat and hadn’t for seven years. So he stood there awkwardly gripping nothing while he looked at his surroundings. Had it always been this clean? Had the footmen always sneered so clearly, their faces pasty white without so much as a smudge or beard to mar their pale skin? He had seen opulent palaces in the last seven years, displays literally dripping with jewels, but this dark wood that gleamed golden brown even as it absorbed every sound was distinctly English.
Kit rubbed at his dirty face, realizing now how filthy he appeared compared to everything here. Even the butler’s clothing was pristine. Perhaps Alex was right and they should have bought new clothes. He’d forgotten how much refinement was possible in fabric and style. Even his shoes appeared a horror against the elegant wood.
“We should have waited,” he murmured and was about to turn around when a cascade of feminine laughter flowed from the drawing room. Multiple women, multiple laughs, all musically delightful. His memory conjured up ladies in ball gowns, elegant jewels, the rustle of expensive fabrics. He remembered the laughter, remembered what it had been like to wander among them. He moved toward the sound as a man toward a dream. He had to see women again.
“Sir! Master Kit!”
Kit heard Owen’s voice, but only distantly. He needed to walk among English girls again, see their bright colors and laugh at their silly banter. In this way, he would know he was finally home.
He crossed through the long parlor, through the dining area, and into the back patio that overlooked a small manicured garden. And there they were: ladies in beautiful gowns. White skin, winking jewels, ringlets of curls. English ladies all frozen in shock as they stared at him. Were they even real? They all sat so still!
His gaze roved from one to another, memorizing the curve of this one’s nose, the color of that one’s eyes. She had teeth that were in disarray, and this other one was like an English doll: blond and blue eyed in a beautiful confection of white lace.
One woman moved. She stepped forward, her movements smooth and her lip curled in disgust. “Owen!” she snapped.
Owen rushed forward. “My apologies, my lady, but it is Master Kit. Kit Frazier, my lady, returned from the dead!”
It took a moment for Kit to place the woman. She was his cousin’s wife, Lily, her body softened from age. Had she always looked so unhealthy? Pale, powdered, and with grooves on her forehead as she forever lifted her brows above the crowd. He had seen ladies just like her, come for the spectacle of the slave markets. This was Lily?
She stared at him, her brows narrowed in thought. He watched her scan him from head to toe, her mouth pinched tight. He caught himself straightening under her regard, squaring his shoulders and curling his own lips in feral challenge. Silently, he dared her to fight him. Doubt my strength, he projected, and die.
He watched her eyes widen. She swallowed reflexively and backed away. Too late he realized that this type of silent power struggle was not the way of the civilized world. And certainly not with the fairer sex.
Meanwhile another man came rushing in. His steps were heavy and erratic with an extra thump to his bizarre gait. Kit turned automatically to the sound, gripping his bag tighter in his fist as he prepared to wield it as a weapon. The man was older, but his face was the same. Even with the extra weight around the jowls, Kit knew his cousin Michael.
“My God!” the man breathed as he leaned heavily against his cane. “Oh my God!” he said again. Then he threw his arms around Kit. “Oh God!”
Kit froze, his mind stuttered with disconnected thoughts. This was Michael hugging him in a weak embrace. Unlike with Owen, Kit had not chosen this touch but had been surprised. And with that surprise came a flood of emotions that he could not sort through. But his body understood, even if his mind did not. One of his hands still gripped his bag, holding it ready as a weapon. His other hand, however, raised of its own accord, returning Michael’s hug without Kit even realizing what he was doing.
Then Michael released him, stepping back far enough to look at him. He was still young, Kit realized, but wealth had made him fat. His eyes watered with unshed tears. His arm shook slightly as he leaned on his cane and stared.
“How, Kit? How did you escape?”
Kit swallowed, the words too crowded against his lips to answer. And in the pause, his mind leaped through fact and situation to arrive at a conclusion. Michael asked about his escape. That meant he knew Kit had been captured.
“You knew,” he said. “You knew I was a prisoner.”
Michael nodded. “The ransom was outrageous. My agents negotiated but we couldn’t make headway. I thought if I waited, they would accept less money.”
They. Had. Negotiated. While Kit sweated in the bowels of a pirate ship, Michael had tried to barter. While Kit daily fought like a beast for food and water, while he had second by miserable second become an animal to survive, Michael had bargained and dithered.
“Do you know what I did as a slave?” he asked, his words flowing without conscious decision. “Do you know what it means to fight for every breath, every morsel, and to not know if the next moment will be your last?”
Michael’s brows lifted at Kit’s tone. “Well, I’m sure it was all very terrible, but that’s hardly reason to give in to the heathens.”
Kit gaped at his cousin. He felt his hands clench in fury, and yet his mind felt strangely apart. Good God, he thought, the man was an idiot! A bloody moron! How had he not realized that years ago?
He forced himself to take a deep breath, to slow his erratic heartbeat, and to find that place of calm that had served him so well. The past was gone. Kit had survived. He had long ago come to terms with his capture. And now he was a captain with a boat in the harbor and a crew loyal to him alone. So Michael’s stupidity was unimportant. Certainly the man was an arrogant ass, but that was Michael. Only a fool would expect anything different. And in this way, Kit wrestled his emotions under control.
But he had forgotten Alex. The boy had trailed along behind him, no doubt as lured by the women as he had been. But whereas Kit had had years to recover from being a slave, Alex’s trauma was fresh, the wounds barely healed. And worse, the boy was smart, brilliant even. It took him less than a second to understand Michael’s crimes, and just like that, the boy found a target for all of his pain.
With a growl of fury, the boy launched himself at Michael, who went down like the soft dough he was. While Kit was just starting to reach forward, Alex began a rain of blows that sounded like a man pounding a sack of flour.
Thud, thud, thudthud.
But there was bone underneath, and within a second, Kit heard the telltale sound of ribs snapping like twigs.
Madeline Wilson winced at her cousin’s scream. Lady Rose screamed as only a twenty-year-old girl can, and she wasn’t the only one. Every other woman at the countess’s tea party had gasped, squealed, screamed, or pretended to faint. Really, from the excitement of the reaction, you would think they had never seen men roll around in the dirt before, even if one was an earl and the other a pirate.
“Calm yourself,” she said to Rose, as she gently pushed her cousin out of the way of the men. “It will be over in a moment.” The footmen were already rushing forward, ready to pull the pirates away. Personally, she thought the boy had ample reason to pummel the earl, though it was hardly a fair fight. The older man obviously was not up to defending himself. It wasn’t the gout or the man’s age, it was that he clearly didn’t know what to do when someone was straddling him and raining down blows to his face and torso.
The older pirate was trying to help. He had one arm wrapped around the boy’s shoulder and was hauling him off. He’d have the boy under control in a moment if only the footmen would let him. But men could not resist a brawl, and three idiots were scrambling forward, obviously getting in the way.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” she snapped. She could see the problem well enough. The two seamen’s bags were blocking the path. If they could be pulled backward, then the man would have enough room to haul the boy off the earl, and everything would be set to rights. With a grimace of disgust, Maddy stepped forward to pull the bag out of the way.
Sadly, it turned out that there was a reason the others had hesitated to do this. The moment she grabbed hold of the sturdy canvas, both pirates—boy and man—whirled around to glare at her, teeth bared like dogs. She froze right as she was: half bent over with two hands gripping the bags. The pirates didn’t say anything. Neither even moved. Whereas a moment ago everything had been flying fists and blood, now all was completely still and absurdly focused on her. At least the butler had pulled the footmen back and away, but that did nothing to help her.
“Hello, sirs,” she said, her voice coming out rather rough. Behind her, Rose released a high-pitched whimper of fear, but Maddy had no time to shoot the girl a be-silent glare. Her mind was completely absorbed by the oddly pale blue color to the older pirate’s eyes.
“I know this is your bag,” she continued, “but it is rather in the way, don’t you think? We should set it over there under the table. That way you can continue, um, with whatever you intend without damaging its contents.”
The countess released a puff of disgust at her words. Presumably the woman didn’t want her husband bloodied any further, but the goal right then was to bring rational thought back to the men. Just as she’d hoped, the man’s expression lightened with humor. Excellent. But it was the boy who was the problem. His eyes were still wild with fury.
“It’s an excellent suggestion, don’t you think, Alex?” said the man, his voice coming out in a congenial tone. “Getting the bags out of the way and all?”
The boy didn’t respond except to raise his fists. Thankfully, the man had him restrained in a kind of head-lock, but he didn’t have the room to pull the boy off the earl. Which left it to Maddy to try to keep things calm while the boy regained his senses.