“I’m hungry,” she said, surprised to see him there. She had expected him to be on deck. She, in the meantime, was hungry for anything that was available.
He rose. He had shaved and the good side of his face looked incredibly handsome. He was wearing a white flowing shirt tucked into a pair of trousers that hung more loosely than usual around his long legs. Her own dress, one she’d brought from London, was equally as loose.
She felt dowdy with a dress that no longer fit and wet, albeit clean, hair that she had braided.
But when he looked at her, she knew immediately he saw another Jenna, a Jenna that was pretty and desired.
“Cards?” she asked as she looked down at his hands.
“Aye. A deck my brother-in-law gave me.”
There was a peculiar look in his eyes. One she had never seen before. He seemed to be working out a puzzle in his own mind.
He turned away from her. He placed a card faceup. A jack of spades.
He smiled in a strange way. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“Aye,” she said. “The Black Knave legend. The man who saved Jacobites and tormented the British. He disappeared, but then returned.” Then her eyes widened. “Not you …?”
“Nay. I was recuperating from wounds. But I knew of him.”
“My father feared him.”
“Like my brother-in-law, he fought with Cumberland and was sickened by it. He later married a Jacobite.”
“He still lives?”
“Aye.”
“Where?”
“In America.”
“I thought he had been killed.”
“That is what he wanted everyone to believe.”
The fact that he told her that much showed a trust she’d not felt before. She wanted to ask more. She wanted to ask why and how he knew what he did. She sensed there was far more to the story than he’d said, but there was also a reason he was telling her this now.
She held her breath.
“I’ll always be a fugitive.”
“I know.”
“I have a restless streak.”
“I know.”
“I like the sea.”
“So do I.”
He was arguing with himself, but something had happened on the deck of the fishing boat earlier. When he had clasped her, protecting her against iron cannonballs, his reserve had melted. He’d told her then—wordlessly—that she meant far more to him than he’d ever wanted her to know.
She had felt it in the way his lips pressed against her hair, in the grip with which he held her.
“I do not know if I can ever stay in one place.”
“Then I will go with you.”
“I have killed people.”
“I know.” She touched his hands. “But always in a good cause.”
“Nay. There was a time I just wanted to kill.”
She stepped closer to him. Her fingers touched his coal black hair, then ran down the scar. “Do you know how much you have given me?” she asked.
“Trouble. Fear. Danger.”
“Belief in myself. And that is far more important than anything else.”
She saw a muscle throb in his throat.
“Let me make my own decisions,” she whispered. “Until now, everyone has made them for me. The greatest thing you can do for me is let me make this one.”
He turned over the heart queen. “That was what my brother-in-law called my sister.”
Heart queen. It was oddly whimsical. Another story?
One day she might hear it all. But now all she wanted was a happy ending to her own story. She still wasn’t sure she had one.
She took the deck from him and thumbed through it. She finally placed the diamond king faceup.
“My sister called me that,” he said.
“I think I would like her.”
“You would. You both have heart.” He rose to his feet. “I would not like to harm that heart.”
“You can do that only by ignoring it.”
He looked down at her. The heart under discussion started beating rapidly.
He had looked at her with passion, with longing, with lust. He had never looked at her quite like this before. With love he did not try to disguise.
“I can promise you little, except that I will try.”
“That is all anyone can promise.”
He chuckled. “You always surprise me, Lady Jenna.”
“I’m not a lady any longer. I do not want to be.”
“You are always a lady, Jenna. Even when you dress in trousers and are half-drowned. The problem is I’m no gentleman.”
“I always thought gentlemen were overrated.”
His arm went around her and she leaned against him, her head against his heart. She thought it might be beating as loud as her own.
“I might be very bad for you.”
He was still arguing with himself. But at least he was doing that. It was promising.
She looked up at him, and his lips met hers. They were gentle at first, then demanding, and she met his kiss with all the passion and love and need that had been building during these months. She opened her mouth to his breath and it became hers. She listened to his heart and it beat in tandem with her own.
She felt his surrender.
Or was it his triumph?
The Ami neared New Orleans. It had taken nearly two weeks, but they had avoided the major shipping lanes.
As they neared the Mississippi and started up its mouth, Alex wrapped his arm around Jenna. Meg peered ahead while Robin helped with trimming the sails. “We can sell the Ami here, buy a smaller trading ship for the Portuguese trips,” he said. “The Comte de Rochemont should be pleased with his diamonds. I should have enough from my share to buy property and start a shipping company.”
He had mentioned New Orleans before, but he had not actually made a decision. He’d wanted these days with her. He’d wanted to make sure that once imminent danger was gone, she would feel the same.
That he would feel the same, that he could really give her a life, that his own fears would not destroy her.
But he’d let something go that afternoon when he’d looked at the cards. Other men had experienced the same demons he had, and had made something exceptional of their lives. Perhaps he could, too. At least, he could give it a chance. For both of them.
First, though, he would have to fulfill his obligation to Etienne, who had given him an opportunity to forge a life of his own. He would propose a partnership of sorts—a shipping company for trade between France and New Orleans with perhaps a few stops along the Brazilian coast. Claude had already said he would continue the smuggling. He, too, had developed a sense of adventure, and in a few trips, he could be a very wealthy man.
Alex’s share of their privateering and the diamonds would give him enough to build a company.
During the journey to New Orleans, he’d wondered whether he could be happy in one place. He hadn’t been even when Scotland was at peace before the ill-fated rebellion. But then perhaps he had been looking for what he had now found. A family.
It had taken him time to get used to the idea. He had given it up long ago, and it had taken that moment on the fishing boat when a cannon had nearly killed Jenna yet again that he realized love was worth taking the chance of loss. She had taken so many risks for him. How could he do less?
He wanted to protect her. He had to protect her. He loved her with every fiber of his being.
The Forbes cousins—Rory and Neil—had taken the gamble. They had risked everything to save others, then were still able to love and build futures. Had he less courage than them? Had he been wrong in depriving Jenna of deciding her own life?
Jenna looked up at him. It was the first of October and the air was cool and crisp. The wide river was lined with trees. No alligators or huge snakes anywhere.
His gaze met hers, saw the questions. They had made love the first night at sea again, the night after he had stared at the bloody cards for hours.
&nb
sp; It had been even more glorious, more passionate, more magical than the night in Martinique. Knowledge added a new depth of intimacy. The relief of certain safety after weeks of terror and anxiety had removed the desperation, giving them time to learn about each other in the sharing of love.
They had touched with wonder, and trembled with the depth of their need. He had not been able to slow his movements, not when she welcomed him so completely.
But the next time, it had been seductively slow and easy, their bodies moving together in a sensuous dance as they explored each other, and kissed lazily, and then exploded with passion.
From then on, they’d shared the same bed.…
And now she felt natural in his arms. She was his refuge.
His home.
She looked up at him with the excitement he’d come to recognize. She was ready to embrace this new life as much as she had embraced him in the night. Her face was rosy with the sun, her sea-colored eyes brimming with vitality, her body braced against the wind and any troubles that might confront her.
By the saints, but he loved her.
More wondrous still, she loved him.
“Will you marry me when we reach New Orleans?” he asked. “Meg and Robin need a family.”
“And you? Do you need a family?”
“Aye.”
“Is that all?”
He smiled slowly. “You are going to make me say it, aren’t you, lass?”
She waited, her brows raised in challenge.
He touched a curl that was blowing in the wind, then his fingers moved to her cheek.
“Nay, that is not all, lass. I love you. I love all that you are. I have for a long time. I just—”
She raised up on her toes and halted the sentence with her lips.
And answered him.
Epilogue
New Orleans, Nine Years Later
Her heart swelling, Jenna waited at the altar as Meg came down the aisle of the Catholic church, to stand beside her, then clasp hands with Robin.
Robin looked incredibly handsome in his wedding clothes with a tender yet beaming smile spread across his face.
Alex stood beside him, the perfect side of his face in her view. He looked magnificent, but then he always looked that way, no matter her view. The area around his eyes crinkled frequently now with humor rather than bitterness. It crinkled in that appealing way now as tenderness radiated from his face. He had waited for this day for a long time.
His family. Her family. Their family.
Meg and Robin were as much a part of it as were eight-year-old Rory, six-year-old Sarah, and four-year-old Alexandria. There would be another addition in six months. Jenna hoped for another lad to balance their brood, but any bairn would make them happy.
Alex had been made for fatherhood. She’d known it almost from the first weeks of their meeting, but he’d perfected protecting his heart then. Once those walls had tumbled, he’d embraced life and love and family with the same fierceness he’d once used to deny them. Oh, he’d had a few setbacks—morose times when he’d feared life was too good and designed only to take back what it had given. But in the succeeding years, as one healthy child followed another, as laughter—and even tears—had filled their town house in New Orleans, those moments had faded while his smile broadened.
He’d been uncommonly successful. The diamonds had given them seed money, and subsequent voyages to Brazil—an effort financed by himself, Etienne in France, and Claude—had made them all rich. Alex had built a shipping company that now had seven ships trading throughout the world.
She had gone on one voyage with him, but that had been the one and only adventure they’d shared outside Louisiana. It was before they had children. Their adventures now were the children and the business. Someday, perhaps, when the children were grown, she and Alex would go adventuring again.
She turned and looked back. Rory Forbes and his wife, Bethia, were there. Jenna knew the stories now. How Rory Forbes had been the Black Knave in Scotland, a mysterious man who spirited Jacobites out of Scotland under Cumberland’s nose. How the legend had continued with Neil Forbes, who was still in Scotland and married to Alex’s sister. Neil had helped Alex, Meg, and Robin escape Scotland.
Neil had written Rory and Bethia about the connection to Alex and his new wife. They had become friends through letters, then the Forbes had decided to visit the Malfours, the name Alex and Jenna continued to use. Robin, in fact, had spent a year in Virginia, working with Rory’s stables; he’d wanted to raise horses himself, and Rory had been his mentor.
“We are gathered in the sight of God,” the priest began.
Alex looked at her and winked.
Memories flooded her. Their own quick wedding in New Orleans and the lovely night afterward. The house they had bought in Beinville. The wedding of Celia and Burke, who remained with them as companion and butler.
Then the birth of their children. The first had been hard and long, but Alex had never left her side despite the outrage of the doctor. Then the easier births of their two daughters. She would never forget the way Alex had looked at them, wonder in his eyes and tenderness in his touch.
And now there was another on the way, and he was ecstatic.
Her eyes moved from the older Rory—friend—to young Rory, who sat next to his namesake. The latter looked just as Alex probably had as a lad, except he had lighter eyes, more like her own. He had his father’s dark hair and crooked smile and sense of adventure.
His sister sat next to him. Sarah. Quiet and shy and bookish, just as her mother had been. She had a small birthmark of her own. A mark of great good fortune, Jenna told her. Her own birthmark, after all, had brought her Alex.
And young Alexandria. She had all of both her parents’ sense of adventure. Bold and bright, she was all energy and mischief.
Jenna loved them with all her heart, just as she loved Robin and Meg who were as much hers as the children she actually birthed.
And now she watched as the two made their vows and promises, and her heart sang.
The ceremony finished and they exchanged a kiss long enough that it drew arched eyebrows. Then they turned to Alex and her and gave them blinding smiles.
Meg mouthed the words “I love you both,” before sweeping down the aisle.
Alex took her hand. “Thank you,” he said softly.
His heart was in his eyes. It said so much. “We did well, didn’t we?” she replied.
“Aye,” he said, his eyes roaming over her figure, which was beginning to change. “Four more weddings to go.”
She grinned. “Are you sure only four?”
“Nay,” he said. “With you, anything is possible.”
“With us, anything is possible,” she corrected.
And then he kissed her and she knew it was true.
About the Author
Patricia Potter is a USA Today–bestselling author of more than fifty romantic novels. A seven-time RITA Award finalist and three-time Maggie Award winner, she was named Storyteller of the Year by Romantic Times and received the magazine’s Career Achievement Award for Western Romance. Potter is a past board member and president of Romance Writers of America. Prior to becoming a fiction author, she was a reporter for the Atlanta Journal and the president of a public relations firm in Atlanta. She lives in Memphis, Tennessee.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2002 by Patricia Potter
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0105-2
This edi
tion published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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The Diamond King Page 36