Cassandra gripped the side of the table as the ship tilted. ‘What did you call me?’
He reached up and untied the strings of his mask, allowing the silk to slide down his face and drop to the floor.
‘Richard!’ It couldn’t be, but it was. ‘You’re alive!’
Hard work at sea had broadened his chest and arms and everything else about him. The sun had lightened his hair, making some strands near red, and turned his skin tawny. His eyes were almost the same except for the small lines about the corners and the steel of experience hardening them. She wouldn’t believe it was him if it weren’t for the small scar beneath his left eye formerly hidden by the mask. It was a reminder of a wherry accident from when he was a boy, a tale his father had laughingly recounted to her once when she and Uncle Walter had dined at Sutherland Place in the early days of their engagement. Tears blurred her vision. During too many lonely nights Richard’s memory had haunted her and made her wail over their lost future. She’d cursed the sea for luring him away and when the strangling weight of her marriage bonds had chafed, Richard’s memory had fed the faint hope she might some day find happiness again. It had all been a lie, like Giles’s love during 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
