their courtship and Lord and Lady Chatham’s concern for her. ‘When they said you’d turned from privateer to pirate, I thought they were mistaken. I told everyone you were innocent. I lost friends and was ridiculed because of my faith in you and all along they were right.’
‘No, they weren’t.’ He banged his fist against the table, overturning a bowl and sending the oranges inside it rolling across the table and on to the floor. ‘I was innocent. I am innocent.’
‘You aren’t. Look at you. I wish you had died, then I could remember the man who loved me and not this...’ she flapped her hand at him, no name black enough to describe what he’d become ‘...pirate.’
‘I didn’t choose this life,’ he hissed with a fierceness to make her shift further behind the chair. ‘I and my crew were forced into it by Vincent Fitzwilliam and I have no choice but to live it until either he’s ruined or I’m dead.’
‘How can that be?’
‘The ship we attacked was a Virginia Trading Company sloop shipping cargo under Dutch colours and a forged Dutch pass. We attacked it because the Dutch had joined the war and their ships were fair prizes. I didn’t realise what Vincent was doing until I saw the Captain’s papers. By then it was too late. The Captain escaped in a launch and made it to Virginia before I could. To protect himself, Vincent had me and my men declared pirates and bounties placed on our heads. His company was foundering under the weight of his father’s gambling debts and when the embargo was issued against the French, shipping cargo illegally under a Dutch flag was the only way he could maintain his business. He sank me, his oldest friend, to save himself.’
‘If you had the fake papers, then why didn’t you fight the charges?’
‘Vincent had the Governor’s ear—he still does—and his Captain’s testimony. I had nothing except my ship, my men and my disgraced word.’ He pressed his fist into his hips, his fury easing, but not the tightness along his shoulders. ‘I renamed the Maiden’s Veil the Devil’s Rose and we’ve plundered Virginia Trading Company ships in search of evidence and to destroy Vincent’s business ever since. What little evidence I’ve found I’ve sent to your uncle, hoping it would one day be enough for him to take to Lord Spotswood and see the man convicted and me and my men pardoned of all charges, but it hasn’t been enough.’
He bent his head in a frustration she could feel because like him, she knew what it was to fight and struggle and to keep failing. But she couldn’t comfort him, not with the realisation of the truth behind his words cruelly dawning on her.
‘Uncle Walter knew you were alive? He lied to me about your death?’ She dropped into the chair, her legs no longer able to support her and the grief weighing her down. Uncle Walter had been a steady rock for her to cling to in the midst of the storms of her life in Williamsburg after her parents’ deaths and again in London when his letters had offered advice and affection when no one else would. All the while he’d been lying to her, and in the cruellest of ways, like almost everyone she’d ever cared for including Richard, Giles and the Chathams.
Why am I not worthy of love and honesty? She longed to bury her face in her hands and cry, but she couldn’t. All she could do was continue on, as she always did, adding this new grief to the old ones already bruising her.
‘He lied to you and to my father because I didn’t want either of you to see what I was forced to become in order to destroy Vincent.’ He righted the bowl, his fingers lingering to trace the engraving on the edge of it. ‘I was aware of the dangers when I went to sea, how it could kill a man. I didn’t think it could destroy the very essence of who he is, or was.’
The pain of his strained words made her heartache slide away. The man she’d once loved was suffering in a way she understood and longed to ease. She laid a comforting hand on his and curled her fingertips to press against his palm. His muscles tensed, but he didn’t pull away. He clutched her hand in a firm embrace which reached deep into her soul. ‘Then leave this life. Take the money you’ve made from it and go to the islands and establish yourself as a planter. Many have done it before.’ And I could come with you. London, Williamsburg and all the torment of her past and the uncertainty of starting over at Belle View could be set aside. She would no longer be alone and he no longer a faded dream.
He brushed the back of her hand with his thumb, as tender as he’d been during all the evenings they’d spent together in the garden. She wasn’t foolish enough to think he would walk away from his ship and crew at her mere suggestion, but still she wished it might happen, as she’d done so many times since he’d first set sail, until she’d learned he was dead.
Then, he slid his hand out from under hers, drawing away like he used to when he’d tire of her arguments against his becoming a privateer. ‘Not until Vincent is ruined.’
She stepped back, fighting the urge to sweep the dishes from the table. He was choosing the sea over her again and not caring whether it destroyed them both. This wasn’t the Richard she used to cherish and, for the first time since she’d seen him come up the walk at her uncle’s house, she wondered if she’d been as wrong about him as she’d been about Giles. ‘It’s just like when you left before. All you care about is what you want and you don’t care who it hurts, not innocent travellers, yourself or me.’
He snatched the mask off the floor and gripped it hard in his fist, holding it out to her. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be accused of something you didn’t do and to have everything, your family, your property, your life, your very identity, stolen from you because of it.’
‘Yes, I do,’ she shot back, twisting the gold band on her finger. ‘Giles stole almost everything from me, my meagre dowry, my good name, my belief in his affection for me. He even tried to take Dinah away before he killed himself riding home drunk from his mistress’s house in the rain, but not even his death spared me from more pain and humiliation. Without a son to inherit, the estate went to a cousin and I was turned out and left with nothing except a reputation blackened by his mistress and her catty London friends. I’d never done anything wrong and it didn’t matter because he still ruined my life.’
Tears stung her eyes, and she wiped them away with the backs of her hands, refusing to appear more desperate and lonely than she already did. She still had her pride and the chance to rebuild her life. She had to believe in that for there was nothing else. She raised her chin to Richard in defiance, but her stiffness eased at the change in him.
His fury dimmed and he lowered his hand, opening his fist to let the silk drop to the floor. The man who’d stood beside her at her parents’ graves and listened to her wail over their loss and how it had irrevocably changed everything stood before her again. The life of a brigand had altered him almost beyond recognition, yet echoes of the old Richard remained in the softness of his expression while he studied her.
‘Your husband was a fool. He should have loved you and worshipped you, not cast you aside. He should have been faithful to you, not left you to be torn down by society.’ He brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers, the delicate touch burning her skin. She should knock his hand away, take up the knife beside her plate and stab him for what he’d done to her and countless others, but she didn’t, she couldn’t. His caress disturbed places long forgotten in her marriage and widowhood. It had been too many years since anyone had spoken to her of love and here it was on Richard’s lips, just as it had been in the Williamsburg garden a lifetime ago. They’d both been wounded, their innocence torn from them by the machinations of others and their own mistakes, but with his warm skin caressing hers, she could almost believe that if she pressed her lips to his she might regain everything they’d once meant to one another. She wouldn’t have to face the trials of life by herself and he wouldn’t
