The Wild Wellingham Brothers: High Seas To High Society / One Unashamed Night / One Illicit Night / The Dissolute Duke

Emerald regained full consciousness just before the morning and lay very still, not wanting to waken the servant who sat dozing in a chair to one side of the bed.

Everything ached, but the mist that had consumed her was lessened.

They knew now. Knew who she was, knew who she had been. Asher. His mother. Taris. Lucinda. Her eyes fell to her hands. Gloveless. Exposed. Like she was. The scars red against the white of the sheet. She didn’t even curl them up to hide them but turned her head to the window and watched the first pink blush of dawn on the high clouds outside.

Thus far she was safe. They had not taken her to Newgate. Or sent her to the poorhouse. No, she was still at Falder. In her room.

A portrait of Asher graced the far wall, his eyes watching with velvet gravity and their unexpected dance of gold. Behind him the house was caught in the last rays of a summer sun, the ocean sparkling to his left.

Falder.

As much as she might have liked to, she didn’t belong here—she was a dangerous interloper from another world. A harsher world where the price of a life was measured in less than honour and where integrity and tradition were words other people used. I love you. She had said it again last night and wished that she hadn’t even as the door opened and he walked in.

He had been riding. His clothes were splattered with dust and when he shut the door behind the departing servant she smiled. His manners were far better than her own. Another difference.

‘I think we should talk.’

She nodded and looked directly at him. Beneath the façade of politeness she glimpsed a steely anger, held in check.

‘You are Emerald Sandford, are you not?’

She nodded.

‘Beau Sandford’s daughter?’

Again she nodded.

‘Who was it that taught you to fight?’

‘My father. Azziz. Toro. Anyone with a bit of time to waste between watches on the Mariposa.’

‘It was you on the boat, then? The girl who hit me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘If you had stayed aboard, my father would have killed you. There were fifty men from the Mariposa and less than a dozen still fighting from the Caroline.’ She stopped and looked away. ‘He always killed those who were left and I thought, since you had given me a chance, that I should return the favour.’

‘The favour?’ Anger resonated around the room. ‘The favour? Better to have lopped my head off then and there than the slow death you sentenced me to.’

‘I did not know—’

He didn’t let her finish.

‘You are a pirate, Emerald.’ The name came from his lips as if he did not even like the sound of it. ‘You have killed people for your own gain.’

The horror in his words was palpable and, turning her head, she faced him, squarely. The past was the past and she could not change it. ‘Believe what you will of me. I came here only for the map.’ Her words were flat and she hated the sound of defeat in them, but she had no more to fight with.

‘And that is all you want from me? Nothing else?’

Question quivered between them.

I want you to love me. I want you to take me in your arms and hold me safe. For ever.

She almost said it, but at the last second pinched the underside of her left arm to stop herself. When she looked down the red crescent left by her nail on the skin was easily noticeable.

‘The map,’ she repeated with more conviction this time, ‘is all that I want from you.’

He nodded and stood, hands in the pocket of his coat and feet apart, as a sailor might have stood on the deck in a storm. Distant. Lonely. Distracted. ‘I have instructed everyone here to keep the secret of your identity. For the moment you are safe. But when you feel better, I would rather that you did not venture outside this room without somebody at your side.’

‘Because you feel I might be a risk to your family?’ A hollow ache pierced her as he looked up and the blank indifference in his eyes broke her heart.

‘I will provide passage to Jamaica for you when you want it. On my ship out of Thornfield.’

She could only nod this time, the thick sadness in her throat rendering speech difficult.

‘And if you should need money—’

She stopped him. ‘No. Just the map.’

As he turned for the door, the dizzy whorl of relief hit her. Another moment and she would have caught at his hand and begged him for even the scraps of love.

Like. Friendship. Esteem.

Even they might have been enough.

Outside Asher laid his head back against the oak door and took in his breath. Lord, Beau Sandford’s daughter. What the hell was he to do with her? She had countered the McIlverray threat with a bravery that had stunned him and had slept with him as a repayment for the hurt done to his family. His teeth ground together as he thought of the hurt he had done to her family.

An equal revenge?

For the first time in days, anger loosened its hold. Perhaps all was not lost. Perhaps in the last threshold of truth something could be salvaged. He imagined Emma…no, Emerald, in satin and silk dancing, candlelight in her hair and the hint of laughter on her lips.

Laughter.

When had she had that in her life? When had she had frivolity or joy or easiness? Not with her mother or Beau. Not since coming to England either, that much was sure.

His eyes flickered to his right hand and he flexed it. Today he felt no movement or sensation in his ghost fingers, another passing reminder of change. Five years since the Mariposa had overcome his ship. He did a quick calculation. She must have been, what…all of sixteen, perhaps? Younger than Lucinda and expected to fight a man? More than one man? The scars on her hand and face and thigh told him that.

By God, if Sandford was here right now he would kill him again just for the hurt he had done his daughter—she had never stood a chance against the greedy underbelly of that world.

And yet somewhere in the darkness of her upbringing she had discovered and fostered integrity and responsibility. Servants and an aunt she would not abandon and a handful of others to whom she felt allegiance. And when she had seen him at risk she had jumped in to the rescue without a thought for her own well-being.

If it was only the map she truly wanted, why would she do that? Better to let McIlverray do his worst and head by herself for Falder and the map.

I love you.

Perhaps she had truly meant it. Not just atonement, but something deeper. More lasting. True. He flattened his fingers out against the wall at his back and tried to take stock of the whole situation, tried to stop the heavy throb in his loins from clouding reason.