LITMIR.BIZ

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life, my crew’s lives, and the lives of over three thousand captives—that was what hung in the balance.” He wasn’t overstating the matter. “I had to let all notion of contacting you go.”

      And he’d believed she’d loved him enough to overlook his silence.

      In retrospect, that had been his biggest miscalculation, but even now, he couldn’t imagine doing anything other than what he’d done.

      “Exmouth bombarded Algiers in late August.” He may as well give her the complete picture. “All the targets in the city that were hit were ones I’d identified—the armory, the magazine, the barracks. The Dey capitulated and surrendered the European slaves. But he sent out only just over a thousand—those from one set of pens. So I had to remain until we got all the Europeans released. It took until March the following year. Only once that was done was I free to drop my disguise, reboard The Corsair, and sail home.”

      In what had turned into a very bitter victory.

      Minutes ticked past. Neither of them spoke. The bow rose and fell; water susurrated against the sides as the prow cleaved through the waves.

      She stirred. “Looking back at what happened...it was inevitable in the circumstances. It was no one’s fault.”

      A few days ago, he wouldn’t have agreed, but after hearing her version of events... “Inevitable because you didn’t know why I’d stayed away.”

      “Yes.” Isobel hesitated, but she’d always wondered about what had happened next. “And you didn’t try to explain. After I told you to go away, you walked away and left it at that.”

      “No.” For the first time since he’d sat by her feet, he turned his head and, frowning, met her gaze. “I tried twice to see you—precisely to explain.”

      She frowned back. “When?”

      “The first time was two days after. It took me that long to...convince myself I had to speak to you.” He faced forward. “That I needed to make you understand.” He paused, then said, “I was met at the door by one of your older cousins. She told me in no uncertain terms that you didn’t want to see me.”

      A chill touched her heart. In a low voice, she said, “I never knew you’d come.”

      He looked down at his clasped hands. “I thought perhaps you were still in a snit—I tried again a week later. Another cousin turned me away with a flea in my ear.”

      She looked at Duncan, sitting cross-legged beside Jolley and busily knotting rope. “They were trying to protect me—they knew about Duncan.”

      A shudder ran through Royd’s large frame. She glanced at him; he was staring at his linked hands. His fingers were gripping hard, then abruptly they eased. In a low, almost tortured voice, he said, “I’d been the central cog in a long and difficult mission—I’d saved three thousand lives and got away with my crew and myself unharmed. I was...a hero by anyone’s standards, yet you didn’t want to know. That’s how I saw it.”

      His chest swelled.

      Her gaze locked on his profile, she didn’t expect him to say more, yet she waited, breath bated...

      “I was so damned hurt! No, worse—it felt like a wound, a stab wound more deadly than any I’d ever taken.” His voice was raw, his tone harsh. “You were the only one I’d ever let so close—you were the only one who could ever have hurt me like that. And you did.”

      The sounds of the sea—of the wind, the waves, the sails, and the gulls—surrounded them and held them in a cocoon of remembered pain.

      Then he drew a huge breath and, raising his head, exhaled. “So yes, I walked away. From you, from us. From everything we’d been to each other.” More evenly, he stated, “There was no other way for me to go on.”

      She didn’t need to think to know that everything he’d said had been the literal truth. His expression might be unreadable, impenetrable, but this was Royd; she’d always been attuned to his moods, his emotions. His feelings rippled over her awareness; she sensed them in the same way a blind person used touch to read.

      “I thought then,” he went on, once again gazing at his clasped hands, “that while I’d been away fighting for king and country, you’d fallen out of love with me. That you’d changed your mind. That whatever had been between us, it hadn’t been love, the sort that never died—that that hadn’t been a part of our equation at all.” He lifted one shoulder. “What else was I to think?”

      Rocked by the intensity of his feelings—she’d forgotten how powerful his emotions were—she felt as if, once again, she was reeling.

      Then he turned his head and looked at her. The unshielded emotions in his gray gaze sliced effortlessly through her defenses; they might as well not have been there. Then he said, his tone hard but even, “You didn’t fight for us, either.”

      She held his piercing gaze. “I didn’t know there was an ‘us’ worth fighting for.”

      Royd held to the contact, to the steadiness in her dark-brown eyes; she’d ever been his anchor, his safe harbor through any storm. But this storm raged between them, created of them, yet it seemed they now stood at the eye, with the past behind them, but no clear view of what might lie ahead. Of what future they might have.

      Your future will be what you make of it.

      His father’s words. Oh, so true.

      “Now we both know the truth of what happened eight years ago, is there an ‘us’ worth fighting for now?”

      The critical question.

      She didn’t look away; she felt the weight of the moment as acutely as he.

      After several silent seconds, she drew breath and simply said, “I don’t know, but there might be.” Her gaze flicked past him, down the deck. “And then there’s Duncan.”

      He followed her gaze to where their son was diving headfirst into his heritage.

      He considered the sight, then replied, “As there is, indeed, Duncan, I suggest ‘might be’ is a possibility you and I need to explore.”

      She returned her gaze to his face.

      He turned his head and met her eyes.

      Her gaze was steady and unwavering.

      He realized he was holding his breath.

      Then she nodded. “To confirm or eliminate—we can’t go forward without knowing...what might be.”

      * * *

      Royd spent the rest of the afternoon with William Kelly, going over charts and plotting the fastest route from Southampton to Freetown. He made no attempt to advance his position with respect to his de facto wife and his son until, seated about his desk in the main cabin, the three of them had dined, and after having cleared their plates, Bellamy produced a blancmange for Duncan.

      How his steward had managed to concoct such a thing while at sea, Royd couldn’t imagine, but as he watched Duncan’s eyes light, he couldn’t help but smile. Duncan babbled his thanks, then attacked the treat. Satisfied, Bellamy withdrew.

      Duncan glanced at Royd and—predictably—posed another question; having learned of knots and ropes to his immediate satisfaction, his interest had shifted to sails.

      Royd dutifully listed the sails The Corsair flew, expounding on when each set was deployed and what weather conditions limited their use.

      Throughout, his senses remained trained on Isobel.

      The task of rewinning her was going to be a great deal more demanding than winning over Duncan, even though he suspected that more of what she’d once felt for him remained in her heart than she’d yet let him see. As far as he could tell, he had reason enough to hope that, under her prickly carapace, she still loved him.

      God knew, he still loved her.

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