put down the snifter and got to his feet, turned his back to the man. “You make it sound as if I was in love with her.”
“Weren’t you? With all the ardor of a seventeen-year-old boy? That’s nothing to be ashamed of. She was only two years your elder.”
“And your wife,” Chance said. “You let Edmund—”
“I did, yes,” Ainsley said, also getting to his feet. “Look at me. Look at me, Chance. No more running, no more hiding from the truth. I accept all blame. None of it is yours. I had everything. At last, I had everything. But I wanted more, and that’s what destroyed us. Not Edmund. Edmund was what he was. I am responsible. For her, for all of them.”
“God. Oh my God.” Chance collapsed into the chair, pushed his fingers through his hair, not even aware that the ribbon holding it in place had slipped off so that his darkly blond hair now was thick and loose to his shoulders.
The years fell away.
Ainsley felt a stab of regret, once again seeing Chance as he had been. Young, strong, unafraid. Before pain and loss had turned him inward, before civilization had smothered all his fire. The Chance he’d watched grow to young manhood could climb the rigging like a monkey, a knife between his teeth to slice away sail in a storm, then triumphantly yell into the wind, dare it to blow him into the sea. The Chance he’d known had loved life, every moment of it. Ainsley felt the loss of that boy, he felt it keenly.
But now the past was here with them, in the open at last. Now, maybe, they could finally make their peace.
Ainsley sat down again, folded his hands in front of him or else he knew he’d be unable to restrain from leaning forward, stroking the boy’s hair. “What’s wrong, Chance?”
Chance turned troubled eyes to Ainsley. “I didn’t know you knew. Did she know?”
Ainsley didn’t make the mistake of thinking Chance was referring to his last statement, his acceptance of his own guilt. “Yes, Isabella knew you loved her. She loved you, too. She loved you all. But she was my wife. That sort of love is different, the love of a woman for her husband, a husband for his wife. You know that, you’ve been married.”
Then Ainsley watched for Chance’s reaction. He saw a tic begin in Chance’s left cheek, a sure sign that the boy—no, the man—was holding his emotions in check only with great difficulty.
“I failed Beatrice,” Chance said at last, quietly. “We married for mutual convenience. Her family needed money—even the London residence they gave us was heavily mortgaged—and I wanted her family’s name to get me into society, through the right doors. Even to the War Office.”
He pushed his hair away from his face again, sighed. This was hard, so very hard to say, so he’d say it quickly. Not because he’d loved Beatrice, because he hadn’t. But he had failed her. “My wife took a lover shortly after Alice was born, and we never shared a bed again. She…she died a few days after some back-alley drab got rid of his baby for her.”
Chance picked up his snifter. “There. Now you know. I wanted to leave it all behind. The island, you, everyone. I wanted to find a new life, a calm, ordered life. A normal life. I wanted to forget who I was, what I was. But it seems we have more in common than you think, Ainsley. We both let our wives die to feed our own ambition.”
Ainsley remained quiet, and for some time the only sound in the room was the crack and sizzle of the fire.
“You have Alice. I have Cassandra and all of you. We live for them, Chance. We can only hope to live long enough to make up for our mistakes.”
Chance’s head shot up and he glared at Ainsley. The past was the past. They’d talked. They’d even discussed. Now it was time to move on. More than time. They were both grown men now and at last on an equal footing.
“How, Ainsley? How do you make up for past mistakes? By making the same mistakes again? What happened to all your fine plans to come here, keep the girls safe, at the very least? Bury the past, you said, let the past lie, let it die. Did you become bored stuck out here in your self-imposed exile? Did you feel the need for another adventure? Don’t tell me you need money.”
Ainsley put down his snifter. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Really? I’m supposed to believe that?” Chance drew his hands into tight fists, as if to rein in his temper. “Then explain to me, please, why one of the boys I dragged here with me tonight talked about the Black Ghost Gang.”
“What?”
Chance sat back, stunned. No one could fake that look of complete shock, not even Ainsley. “You…you don’t know? Billy didn’t tell you?”
Ainsley stood up slowly, suddenly feeling very old, very tired. “He told me what happened on the Marsh, about this Miss Carruthers of yours whom Billy seems to have cast in the role of heroine. But that’s all.”
Chance also got to his feet, his mind racing, racing toward one particular name. “Then you’re not riding out as the Black Ghost, you’re not running a gang of smugglers here on the Marsh? I know that’s what you were about in Cornwall, before you had to run or be hanged. I assumed you—”
“Excuse me,” Ainsley said coolly, already headed for the door.
Chance followed all the way to the second floor and down the hallway, until Ainsley stopped in front of the door to Courtland’s bedchamber.
So they’d both had the same thought.
Ainsley tried the latch, but the door was locked. He pulled out his timepiece. Nearly midnight. “The young fool,” he said, brushing past Chance and back down the hallway, down the staircase, not even breathing hard as he pushed open the double doors to the main drawing room. “Jacko? Damn you to hell. You knew, didn’t you?”
Chance watched, reduced to no more than a spectator, as Jacko leaned over the low table in front of the couch, throwing dice one hand against the other one more time before pocketing the dice in his coat.
“Well, look who’s come up for air. Maybe it’s a good thing you came back, boy, shake things up a bit here in the backside of beyond. What’s the matter with you, old friend, you couldn’t find a way to bury yourself tonight? No taste for Milton’s dreary poetry? No interest in Greek primers? No sackcloth and ashes to be found?”
“Point taken, Jacko, thank you,” Ainsley said, folding his arms across his chest. “I’m a dull stick who has spent too many years grieving, sulking and turning my face from the world. I’ll grant you that. But, by God, man, how could I be so blind? How long has this been going on? Courtland’s out there, isn’t he? Are the others with him? Spencer? Rian?”
Jacko nodded, his great head all but touching his chest. “Rian and Spence are gathering up some babes and their mama, to bring them here before they’re sent out of the Marsh. But that’s all, I swear it. Court? Nobody knows what Court does and nobody asks. He’s his own man and has been for years. Or would you rather they were all kept in leading strings? Or run away, like that one there did, turn his back on every one of us.”
“Feel better now, Jacko, with that off your chest?” Chance asked silkily.
Ainsley began to rock slightly on his heels as he tapped his hands against his folded arms. “I’m an idiot.
