LITMIR.BIZ

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of questions?” She knew her son.

      “Endless questions.” Royd followed Duncan in; his tone was long-suffering, but his face was alight—as alight as Duncan’s.

      The large desk was their table; Isobel sat at one end while Duncan took the place at the front of the desk, facing Royd, who settled in his accustomed chair.

      While she smiled at Bellamy and complimented him on the finely sliced corned beef he set before them, she wondered what tack Royd’s calculating mind was taking with respect to Duncan. And herself. In the instant Royd had set eyes on Duncan, their lives—Duncan’s, hers, and Royd’s—had irreversibly changed.

      What she didn’t yet know was where that change had landed them. While she would have infinitely preferred to control everything to do with Duncan, now Royd knew of his existence, there was no point imagining she could sit back and hope that Royd would grow bored with the demands of parenthood and lose interest in his son.

      She’d told him she would never let anyone take Duncan from her, but from what she’d seen of their interactions, of Royd’s protectiveness and the patience he displayed in dealing with Duncan’s incessant questions, Royd releasing Duncan to her sole care was not going to happen, either.

      They—she and Royd, and Duncan, too—were going to have to find common ground, but exactly what such ground might look like, at this stage, she couldn’t begin to guess.

      Duncan didn’t speak but applied himself assiduously to taking the edge from his ever-present hunger. Royd watched his son, studying Duncan while he, too, ate. Isobel watched them both, curious as to how they were getting on—curious to see how Royd managed. She’d definitely thrown him into deep water in terms of dealing with a son.

      Then again, in all contexts, Royd was an excellent swimmer.

      With the worst of his hunger assuaged, Duncan looked at Royd and started asking about ropes and knots.

      Royd answered easily.

      Isobel kept her attention on her plate.

      But eventually, Duncan looked at her. She felt his gaze, looked up, and, for once, couldn’t define the expression in his dark-brown eyes. Then he transferred his gaze to Royd. “You said you’re married to Mama. So what’s my name? My proper full name?”

      Royd’s gaze swung her way.

      She met it, but not knowing what he’d said to Duncan—and unable to dispute that, in a way, they were, indeed, married—she didn’t know what to say.

      Royd looked at Duncan and met his gaze levelly. “What name have you been going by?”

      “Duncan Carmody.”

      Royd nodded as if having expected that; he probably had. “Your full name is Duncan Carmody Carmichael Frobisher.” He glanced at her and arched a brow.

      When Duncan looked at her, she forced herself to nod. “Yes. That’s correct.” She met her son’s gaze. “That is your full name.”

      Silently, Duncan repeated the four words, then grinned. “Good.”

      He’d finished his meal; he set his cutlery down and reached for the apple Bellamy had left for him. Duncan crunched into the fruit, chewed, swallowed, then asked, “Can I go back on deck?”

      She’d eaten enough. Royd had cleaned his plate and was sitting back in his chair, observing. A touch unnerved by the apparent domesticity, she pointed to the glass in front of Duncan. “Finish your milk, and then we’ll go up.”

      Duncan seized the glass, drained it, then he grabbed his napkin and wiped off the resulting milky mustache. “I’m ready.”

      She rose; so, too, did Royd. She followed Duncan from the cabin, and Royd followed her.

      Once again, she retreated to the bench in the bow, and while watching Royd and Duncan, revisited the questions to which she still lacked answers.

      Royd opted to leave the wheel in Liam Stewart’s care and spent the next half hour teaching Duncan a set of basic nautical knots. Eventually consigning Duncan to the tutelage of his bosun, Jolley, to learn more about where and when the different knots were used, Royd strolled to the bow.

      On reaching Isobel, he met her dark gaze, then turned and sat by her feet. He rested his forearms on his thighs and clasped his hands. “Well?”

      He was perfectly sure she had questions.

      “The mission you were sent on after we handfasted. You originally expected it to last only for a month or so. Why did it take so long?”

      He knew what he’d written in his journal. He’d reread it many times over the years, whenever the question of whether he could have done anything other than what he had—and thus not lost her—became too insistent and had to be, once again, put to rest. “The original mission was to infiltrate the court of the Dey of Algiers and confirm that he was capturing, holding, and eventually selling Europeans as slaves. In order to do that, I had to pose as a half-French emissary of an Arabic slave trader. I succeeded in getting access to the Dey’s slave pens—where I discovered over three thousand Europeans. That was a far larger number than anyone had imagined. Originally, I was supposed to simply learn the number and then get out and report to Exmouth, who was supposed to be at Gibraltar. But Exmouth came in early and stood off the port of Algiers, thinking to intimidate the Dey into releasing his European captives.”

      “And instead, the Dey dug in his heels.”

      He nodded. “Rather than report to Exmouth in person, I sent Liam Stewart—I wasn’t all that sure I could keep a civil tongue in my head, but more importantly, I couldn’t risk being seen and recognized boarding Exmouth’s ship. And with Exmouth flying the flag in such a bellicose fashion, I couldn’t risk taking The Corsair—which was masquerading as a corsair’s vessel—out of the harbor. But sending Liam turned out to be a miscalculation. Unknown to me, Exmouth had demanded and been given command over my mission. I hadn’t expected that, but it was around the time Dalziel—my previous commander—was pulling back. Whitehall assumed Exmouth would deal with the Dey without any great problem, and I was, after all, a privateer—giving an admiral command over my mission seemed appropriate to them. By sending Liam, I missed our only chance to retake the reins of the mission, at least as related to me and The Corsair. Liam was in a position to receive orders, but he wasn’t in a position to refuse orders, as I might have done.”

      “So it was Exmouth’s orders that kept you in Algiers?”

      “Initially. But the longer the stalemate went on, the more essential it became that I remained in position in the Dey’s court. Without the intelligence I provided, Exmouth had no way of knowing what was going on inside the walls—what was happening to the slaves, and what the Dey was planning.” He paused, then added, “It became impossible for me to pull back.”

      She’d read his notes; now she had the broader context. He waited, knowing the most critical of her questions was yet to come.

      Eventually, she said, “You dithered over sending me a letter. You never dither.”

      He snorted. She was right. But over that... “Once I realized I was stuck, and the negotiations between the Dey and Exmouth looked set to drag on for months, I wanted to write, at least to let you know that I was unavoidably detained. But by then the blockade was increasingly tense. I couldn’t leave the city—by then, I couldn’t easily leave the palace. My men were running messages out to Exmouth. While The Corsair could slip out of the harbor—the fleet knew her and would have let her past—she wouldn’t have been able to sail in again, not without being marked as an enemy, along with all those on her.” He paused, remembering. “Several of my crew—Stewart, Bellamy, Jolley, and others—offered to take a letter and, using a rowboat, slide around the blockade in order to get the letter out to you. They would have had to go to Gibraltar. But the French were hanging off, beyond the fleet, looking to make mischief. They didn’t dare bother Exmouth, especially as he had the Dutch fleet at his back, but if the French had intercepted a letter from me,

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