The Road to Ruin

by Bronwyn Stuart

  “Very well,” Germaine agreed. He gave Daniella one long hard look before he ushered James’s family away. Out of his sight. God, he thought he might actually be sick. He’d spent so long searching for them and they were walking away.

  “You have two hours,” James called after them. “After that, I cannot be held responsible for what follows.”

  He waited a few moments until they all piled into a carriage farther down the street and were off before he turned to the woman he held in his hand. Expecting another fight, he was surprised to see fresh tears.

  “He hates me,” she whispered before crumpling into him, a woman who had nothing left in the world.

  *

  The only thing that hurt more than seeing his sister pregnant and distressed was hearing Daniella’s gut-wrenching sobs. He’d tried to hold her, but she’d lashed out at him until he was forced to take her to their room and have Patrick watch over her.

  She’d said it was all his fault. He was beginning to think maybe it was. Why did his mother look so healthy and happy? Why did his disgraced sister have colour on her skin and a happy glow about her? Had he been wrong? They looked as far from prisoners as Daniella had earlier that morning.

  In his mind he recalled the wording of his mother’s letter, the part about not looking for them. He’d thought her forced to write the letter but perhaps she had been merely coached about the wording?

  “Another drink, Major?” Hobson held a bottle of scotch in the air but James shook his head. One was enough to revive his senses after the shock he’d had.

  “What do you think just happened out there?”

  “Unclear,” came Hobson’s single-word reply.

  “But they actually looked happy, did they not? I wasn’t imagining it?”

  “Perhaps they were just happy for the moment? Maybe a rare visit to town for something? Jumping to conclusions isn’t going to help.”

  “And Amelia? What of her?” He lifted his gaze to his friend’s. “Did you see her?”

  “Aye. Baby will be along any day by the looks.”

  But whose baby? He wasn’t very good at the arithmetic behind reproduction but it didn’t take a scientific man to figure it out. His grip tightened on the empty glass while he raked his other hand through his hair. She must have had her innocence ripped from her within days of being taken from the sinking ship. He would demand blood for this. Nothing less would cease the howling in his veins. Not even Daniella would be able to stop him avenging his sister’s honour.

  “God, Daniella…” The devastation in her eyes when her father just walked away from her was almost too much to bear on top of everything else.

  “No coming back from that,” Hobson pointed out before emptying his glass down his throat.

  “If this were the battlefield, I would have killed him on the spot. He deserves no less.”

  “This isn’t war, Major. It’s people’s lives. The Butcher in you was never able to make the distinction. You can’t put a ball in someone here and not suffer consequences.”

  “I suffer consequences every time I close my eyes,” James pointed out.

  Hobson went on. “As do I. Always when I took a life, I knew it for what it was. Before the boy in the fire, did you ever think about the people behind the faces?”

  “They were our enemy, Hobson. It was kill or be killed.” She’d said it so many times—Daniella. He’d thought it an excuse to absolve her of her guilt but he’d said the same words. Exercised the same excuses.

  “Yes. But you are no Butcher now: you can choose a different path. One that doesn’t end with one less body on this planet.”

  James stared at him. Hobson was right, as he was always right. He was hearing the whisper he’d been listening for all these months: the ghosts were leaving. He took the first real breath he had since Marie came for him in Egypt.

  Oblivious, Hobson continued. “Anyway, let’s see what the captain has to say for himself first. Then we’ll decide on our course. The father of that baby will need his reckoning at the very least. That should help ease that temper of yours.”

  They were interrupted then, as Germaine and his mother entered the room. No propriety, no knock, just solemn faces and a tension to make them all buckle under the pressure.

  James stood as the captain saw his mother into a chair and then he sat and faced her. All he wanted to do was squeeze her tight but he doubted she would welcome his embrace. She held the same expression Daniella’s father had. Was it shame? Indifference? He didn’t like it no matter what it was. Foreboding settled with the chill in the room.

  “Mother, will you tell me what is going on?”

  “You should never have come here, James.”

  Not the words he’d expected and he took each one as if a blow to his chest. “Did you honestly think I would just let you go? You had been captured by a pirate.”

  She raised her brow but ignored his words and went on. “Now half this town will think Amelia’s baby a bastard.”

  “Unless she married in the last six months, that baby is a bastard, Mother.”

  “That’s not the story we put around, though.” Her fingers twisted in her lap until the skin on her knuckles went white.

  “We?” he asked, trying to have a care for her obvious nerves but frustration was tipping him to intense anger.

  “’Twas my idea, lad,” Germaine told him. “How about we start at the beginning rather than at the end, though, before you get all red in the face and think to knock me down again. Won’t happen a second time.”

  “Richard,” his mother warned him in a low tone. “We need him to listen.”

  “You are the woman he is going to marry. Aren’t you?” One of the pieces fell into place. He nearly vomited. Right there on the toes of her shoes. His stomach was a whirling storm and little beads of sweat coated his palms.

  His mother nodded. “We have spoken of vows, yes.”

  “I don’t believe this.” James stood and resumed his pacing. He only stopped to get Hobson to fill him another glass.

  “It isn’t what you think, Lasterton. None of it.”

  “He’s right, son. I don’t know how it went so far as it did. I thought I would write you a letter and you would forget about us for a time.”

  He stopped dead in his tracks, incredulous, injured. “Forget you? The only family I have left in this world? What kind of man do you take me for?”

  Germaine stood and wobbled on one leg; James’s mother reached her hand out to support him. James looked away before he could see if the older man took it.

  His mother went on with her story. “Amelia came to me and confessed she was with child—”

  He stopped pacing again, fell into his chair. “Before you left?”

  “It’s the reason we left. Neither one of us could face the scandal. Not after your brother and your father… You’d worked so hard to lift us out and she was too afraid and ashamed to plunge you back in.”

  “You should have come to me. She should have come to me.”

  “She barely knows you, James. You were gone for so many years and when you came back, you were changed. Even I didn’t know you anymore.”

  But… But… He loved his sister. They had been so close. She had to know he would do anything for her. Had the Butcher nonsense scared her or had it indeed been his manner, his nightmares, his grumpiness?

  “So your option was to run away? Where does he come into the story?”

  “It seems the ship we paid for passage on was not as she seemed. Only two days out and she began to sink. If Richard hadn’t come across us, we would have been lost.”

  James emptied his glass again. He breathed hard for a few moments as the liquid burned all the way to his soul and then he asked, “So you rescued them? You didn’t take them to get at me?”

  “Get at you for what, lad? I don’t even know you.”

  James looked into the captain’s eyes, saw the confusion there, the blankness. “I was the one who took your leg.”<
br />
  “You were?” they both said at the same time, the rough pirate captain and his genteel mother as one. He cringed.

  “It was my men on the ship that day, the one you tried to take in the Channel. We fought, I stabbed you.”

  “I killed that man,” Germaine said with a shake of his head. “My sword cleaved him in two before I pushed him into the water.”

  “A flesh wound. I figured my odds were better in the water than on the ship.”

  Germaine sank back into his seat with another shake of his head. “I don’t believe it. So you thought I took the women as what? Revenge?”

  “To punish me, perhaps, for your lost ransoms. When Daniella told me about your leg—” he winced but went on “—then yes, it did seem as though you might wish for revenge.”

  His mother spoke next. “Why do you travel with Daniella? You said she was your wife.”

  “I’ll bet she trapped you in one of those schemes of hers.”

  “You’ve heard about them?” James couldn’t believe it. Her father had known all along but never put a stop to them?

  “Of course I have. I bet you came here to get out of it? To give her back?”

  “Would you take her?” It wasn’t the best question but after the look the captain had given her earlier, he wanted to know what her fate would be if he did decide to let her go. As if he even had any say in it anymore.

  “I’d have to now, I suppose.” He sighed. “I wanted better for her. I thought together with my money and Anthony’s title, it would be enough to make some forget her past.”

  “Why not let Daniella live here with you, in retirement? You could have found her a nice husband and seen her happy.”

  Germaine shook his head. “It was never my plan to live here at all. The men and I were to disappear, to live in isolation and only sail for the pleasure of it. I wanted Daniella to have the glittering balls and the privilege. I wanted her to be safe from further persecution.”

  “Let me understand,” James said, trying as hard as he could to keep his temper in check. “You knew Daniella was ruining her chances at a match, but you did nothing? I don’t understand.”

  “I knew she would rebel, but I thought she would settle. I would have sent word to her but the storm rolled through and the ships were all too damaged to sail. And as Amelia nears her time, I can’t leave them. Daniella is a woman in charge of her own life but your sister is a scared girl.”

  “No one of any worth was going to offer for her,” James said in a fury. “No one. Do you know the men your son was considering as suitable matches to be rid of her? Doddering ancients and ambitious commoners.”

  Germaine frowned. “No. I did not know of them. I can see—I should have—”

  “James,” his mother said hurriedly. “I want to stay here. We both do, Amelia and I. Not as pirates—Richard gave all of that up. He is…” she looked down, pink staining her décolletage and cheeks “…a good man. I am happy for the first time in—well, a good while. And in any case, Amelia can’t possibly return to London with a baby and no husband. Even if the ton believes the stories we could make up, the truth will come out eventually.”

  “What am I supposed to tell them then, Mother? You’ve given it all up for a ship’s life? Or should I tell everyone you died at sea without an explanation of how you got there?”

  “Tell them we died at sea on a voyage to escape the grief and scandal: it’s the only way. By next season, a new scandal involving a different family will top the gossip. They will forget about us. We’ve taken on new names. No one here knows who we were.”

  James couldn’t believe his ears. He wanted to scream and shake her and ask What about me? Was he simply to forget them too? All alone in that big house with only the servants to fill the empty rooms? Had she no thought at all to how he might fare if they’d actually died at sea? He willed his voice to calm, to convey the disappointment he could no longer conceal. “I know who you are. I know where you are. Asking me to forget is selfish and beyond anything anyone has ever asked of me.”

  Germaine thumped his meaty fist on the table again. “Tell me about Daniella. How did she come to embroil you in her mess?”

  “Did you not get any of the missives I sent ahead?”

  “If I knew the extent of it, would I be taking a leisurely stroll through town, boy? How did you get her here?”

  “We came by road some of the way, but actually, a man named Darius delivered us this morning.”

  “Darius? I don’t understand. What was that cur doing anywhere near my daughter?”

  Now he cared? “He did get my message and thought he was saving her.”

  “From what?”

  “Not what,” James explained. “Who. He thought he was saving her from me. I kidnapped her so I could trade mother and Amelia away from you, and Darius thought he was rescuing her.”

  “Were you already married at that stage or not?”

  “Not. That happened this morning as well.”

  “My head hurts,” his mother complained, looking between James and Germaine. “This is all too much for one afternoon.”

  James had to agree with her completely.

  “I would like a moment alone with my daughter,” Germaine asked. “Please.”

  “You can speak to her but I won’t let you take her with you. Not yet.”

  “So you do want me to take her back with me?” he asked, green eyes only a shade lighter than Daniella’s flooding with concern.

  James had fully expected a bloodthirsty pirate but in his place stood an old man with only his daughter’s best interests in mind. Every day must have been a battle for Germaine, to watch her amongst his crew. Eventually something would have gone wrong. If James were in his position, he would have offloaded Daniella after the first mutiny with Darius. A ship was no place for a woman.

  And London was no place for her. She’d wither and die a little inside every day there. He could no more watch that happen than he could watch her walk away from him. She kept talking about not having choices and being driven to desperation but now she did. She could leave with her father, forget he’d ever come into her life. Or he could fight for her. Show her he could make her happy. He just needed a grand, crazy gesture to convince her.

  “I’m not giving her to you or anyone else. Daniella is mine. I just need to convince her.” He just needed to persuade her he was the one man in her life who might be able to give her everything her heart wanted. Now that he’d realized he could.

  “Excuse me,” he said and rose from the table, from his mother and her new and very unsuitable beau.

  He took the stairs three at a time even though it hurt his entire face with the jolting. He had to talk to Daniella, to find out if the damage he’d done to her, hell the damage they’d all done to her, was irreparable. If he begged for her forgiveness, would she give it to him?

  He burst into the room with no finesse at all, his chest full of words he wanted her to hear before she got it into her stubborn head to ignore him, but then he choked, coughed, swore. She was gone. The room was empty.

  He was too late.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  For a woman who never cried, Daniella had given the practice some decent exercise. The skin of her face was tight and hot, her neck hurt, her eyes were scratchy and her whole body ached. She cursed her father and her brother and life itself for the rough ride given to her.

  “Come now, lass, ’tis not the end of the world.”

  “Piss off,” she retaliated. She was done with kindness, with propriety, with men, even if Patrick had helped her escape the inn. They rode the last miles to The Aurora even now. She tried not to wonder how her father and her husband were getting along.

  “You know I can’t do that,” he called back over the jingle of their mounts’ harnesses.

  “Fine. You helped me. What do you want in return?”

  “When we get back to your ship, will you give me Amelia?”

  “Give you Amelia? She’s n
ot a toy. James has searched for her for months. Did you see her today?”

  He nodded and gulped, steadying his mare over a rough bit of ground. “Aye. I saw her. She needs to be somewhere safe for the birth of the child, not a ship surrounded by strange men in a foreign place.”

  “It’s your baby then?” she asked.

  Patrick actually blushed and turned his face away. “I didn’t believe her when she came to me. I told her to try her tricks on another man and as good as threw her out.”

  “But you and she obviously…” She trailed off, thinking the actual words unnecessary.

  “Aye, just the once. ’Twas silly and brash and exactly the stunt my father said would land me in a pot of boiling water.”

  “It’s landed you in more than that. When James finds out it was you, he’ll skin you and leave you for carrion.”

  “He isn’t going to find out. Not yet. Not until I’ve had the chance to make it right with Amelia.”

  “Do you love her?” Daniella asked, fresh tears burning her eyes; she shook them clear and focused on her horse’s path. Love was a silly notion for fools and debs.

  Patrick said, “If she’ll have me, I’ll make an honest woman of her.”

  “And if she won’t?”

  “I’ll fight until she does.”

  It was good enough for Daniella. “I’ll speak to Amelia. I won’t make her go with you but I can try to make her see what is in store for her and the child aboard a ship.”

  It had been too much for her mother. One hundred and forty-eight pounds her father had paid her to leave Daniella with him. It was one of her earliest memories. Her mother had had enough of life on the seas, of living with men and the constant rock of the vessel. No parties to attend, no friends, no fine things and sometimes no food or fresh water. She wanted to leave and was going to take Daniella with her. Her father forbade it. Her mother said he would have to kill her then.

  The captain had gone to his little chest beneath the bed, unlocked it and poured out its contents. A pearl necklace, an amethyst ring and one hundred and forty-eight pounds. Her mother disappeared at the next port.