Amused in spite of the inference, Kit said, “No, angel. And you are wrong about my motives for helping the contessa. She is not my mistress, but my mother.”
For a long moment, Angela only looked at him. Then she said haltingly, “Your . . . mother?”
Releasing her arms, Kit raked a hand through his hair and began to pace the floor of her small room. “Yes. Contessa Villiers is Vivian St. Genevieve, formally the Duchess of Tremayne. It’s taken me years to catch up to her, years I wasted chasing her halfway around the globe and back—and when at last she decided to allow me to intercept her, it was in London.”
A heavy silence fell, and he turned to watch Angela absorb the information. There was a puzzled frown on her face, and he knew she wondered—as he always had—why a mother would avoid her only son. It was a question that had haunted him for years, so he could not expect her to understand quickly.
“On the voyage here,” he said, looking past Angela and into the dark night, “I asked the contessa why she had abandoned me. When I was very small, she left my father and took me with her. I won’t go into details now, but on the voyage, she had arranged to have the ship intercepted so our trail would be covered. But the man who agreed to help her escape London did not want a small child. He concocted a drama that ended with my mother thinking I had fallen overboard and drowned. Frightened to face my father with my fate, she spent the next few years in hiding. By the time she discovered I was still alive, I had been captured by pirates and was spending my youth in lively debauchery up and down the length of the Spanish Main. During this time, my father was also actively searching for me, having heard that she had abandoned me to my fate with pirates. After the first two years aboard a pirate ship, I knew no other life. I can recall being terrified at first, but being large for my age and agile, I learned quickly enough to keep from being abused. In time, I was comfortable with the pirates.”
When he paused, Angela asked timidly, “But didn’t you want to go home?”
“No.” Kit shrugged. “What boy would? I did what I pleased, as long as I followed the same rules as the others. I was well versed in corruption, remember.”
“But after you were returned to your father, surely you realized that you were suited for another life.” Her brow furrowed in a delicate frown, and he resisted the temptation to kiss the tiny crease between her knit brows. She looked up at him, her eyes troubled beneath the long sweep of her lashes. “Kit, I am certain the duke wanted you to conform to a more appropriate position in life. I know you attended Oxford.”
“Do you.” Amused, he fought against the growing desire to kiss her. It amazed him that he had been foolish enough to leave her behind. Dylan and Turk should be rewarded for their meddling, however angry it had made him at first. “I wasn’t a very good student,” he explained. “Too rowdy, they told me. I was constantly being caned for some infraction of the rules, and I was not very well liked by my contemporaries either.”
“But Turk liked you.”
“Ah, Turk was an outcast, too. Imagine, with his intellect, they had him cleaning out grates, carrying coal, and polishing fire dogs. I was appalled.” He rested his hands on her shoulders, relieved that she allowed his touch. “I would never have suspected his intelligence if I had not accidentally discovered him reading one of my most difficult lessons on chemistry. Before I knew it, he was making suggestions about my solutions and formulas, and to my immense surprise, my tutors complimented me on my ingenious ideas.” Laughing, he shook his head. “They were frankly disbelieving when I informed them who had really done the work. That is one time when my father supported me with great enthusiasm. I always wondered if it was because he believed in Turk, or was just grateful that I had found an interest that did not require vast sums of money to rescue me. Whatever, he sponsored Turk, and he was one of the most brilliant students there. Until we quit, anyway.”
“Turk quit because you did.”
“Yes. I tried to convince him to stay, but he was stubborn. You know how he can get.”
“Yes.” She fell silent a moment, a small smile hovering at the corners of her mouth. “I know very well how stubborn he can be when he believes in something.”
“Angela.” Kit took her hands in his, holding them. “Give me another chance. I know I’ve made mistakes. I’ll probably make more. It won’t be easy to change, but I’m willing to give it a try.”
He looked down at her small, delicate hands, rubbing the backs of them with his thumbs. His hands were so large and brown, with scars and calluses . . . her outer fragility humbled him in the face of her inner strength. Hardly realizing he was speaking aloud, he lifted his head and stared down into her upturned face.
“I guess I’ve been a coward. It didn’t seem like it. I thought I was just smart enough to keep a wall around me. But I’ve been running for most of my life. Here, I thought I could do anything, take ships and cargo, all for vengeance against my father. Against everyone who had ever betrayed me. But life isn’t that simple. You can’t hurt other people without hurting yourself. I should have seen that, should have understood. Or just listened to Turk. He loves to expound upon his rhetoric, but I dismissed him. He’s a lot smarter than I am. God. I’m standing here admitting that Turk is right and I’m wrong. He should be here. He would love this. Before you know it, he’ll have me eating his bloody macrobiotic diet.”
He drew in a deep, aching breath, and saw with a faint spurt of surprise that Angela was laughing and crying at the same time. Tears silvered her cheeks, and he put up a hand to track a drop as it slipped down her face.
“Don’t cry, angel,” he murmured, folding her into his arms. “Please don’t cry. I can’t bear it when you do. It tears my heart out.”
“Kit,” she said against his shirt, her voice muffled by the bunched linen, “I’m not certain what you want me to say.”
His embrace tightened. “Say what you feel. Anything but the truth would be unjust.” Feeling open and vulnerable, he realized that he was quivering inside. What if she refused him? What if it was too late? He’d opened himself for her, laid bare his heart and his secrets—God, what would he do if he had already ruined it all?
Curling his hand in her loose hair where it tumbled down her back, he slowly drew her head back so that she looked up at him. Her eyes were still silvered with tears, but she was smiling.
“I love you,” she whispered, and the world reeled abruptly before righting again.
“God,” he said fervently, “I love you, too. Angela—will you marry me?”
“That depends,” she said, tilting her head to one side. “Will I be the wife of a lord, or a pirate?”
“Which do you prefer?”
She thought a moment, then said so earnestly he knew she was telling the truth, “A pirate, I think.”
Laughing, he pulled her up to her toes and kissed her, the deep, satisfying kiss of a man long-starved. “Why,” he finally whispered when he broke the kiss, his breathing harsh and irregular, “do you prefer a pirate?”
Lightly touching his ear with one finger, exploring it with deliciously slow circles, she drew her fingertip down his jaw line in a leisurely glide as she murmured, “It has something to do with the way you wield your sword, I think.”
“Ah.” He took another hard breath as her hand moved to caress his throat. “My sword. I see. Do you mind? It’s hard to concentrate with your hands . . . Jesus.” The last was heartfelt as her hand dipped to the buckle of his belt. His stomach muscles contracted violently beneath the feathery pressure of her fingers. “Angela . . .” This time his voice was a hoarse croak, embarrassing him.
She gave him an arch glance. “You have had things your way much too long, sir. I’m familiar with pirates, and the way they ravish their victims. Now you,” she said, quickly drawing the dagger he always had tucked into his belt, “are my captive.”
Rather edgy about the dagger, but willing to take chances, he slowly held out his arms to the sides. “I am at your mercy,” he
said, and Angela laughed.
“I’ll be gentle . . .”
“Love, be anything you like. Just be mine.”
As his shirt cascaded to the floor in a white drift, she looked up at him with love shining from her eyes. “Always, Kit. Always and forever.”
They were, he thought hazily as he followed her to the bed, the sweetest words he’d ever heard uttered.
Epilogue
The Caribbean, 1803
A warm, tropical breeze drifted through palm fronds and blew sand in tiny eddies across the beach. Angela shifted and put a hand over her eyes, shading them as she scanned the shoreline for Kit. He was due back any day now. With rumbles of war again in Europe—the duke, as usual, had been right about Napoleon and the treaty—Kit was being called upon much more frequently. Under the guise of piracy, he had managed to gather a great deal of information.
A faint smile curved her mouth. It was still amusing to recall her parents’ shock when she’d returned home and informed them that she was now a countess. She had married Kit in a tiny Greek fishing village, with Emily as her best maid and Turk and Dylan and a host of pirates attending. Even Kit’s mother had participated, with a languid indifference that characterized most of her reactions.
Unless it pertained to her beloved France.
While they were still in Greece, word had come that Colonel Despard and three dozen of his confederates had been arrested for a plot to kill the king. The colonel had been executed, and his followers imprisoned. Soon after, Contessa Villiers departed the island with a careless farewell.
“Does it bother you for your mother to be so indifferent?” Angela had asked Kit, and he’d shrugged.
“At times. It might be nice to have a mother who doted on me.” Grinning, he’d added, “But I have a wife who dotes on me enough to satisfy me.”
It was true. She doted. Grimacing at the word, Angela went back into the whitewashed stone house that nestled in pristine comfort on the side of a hill. Rollo scuttled across the floor, a scarlet arrow of noisy complaints.
“Bloody hell!” the bird screeched, and fluttered indignantly when Angela shooed him from her path. During a bad storm, he had broken a wing, and Kit had left him behind for Angela to nurse. Despite his bad habits and vulgar language, Rollo was a reminder of Kit and a comfort to her. The lory had even taken to riding on her shoulder at times, though he had a tendency to break into ribald songs and shock the occasional visitor.
Emily claimed that she and Dylan could hear the bird’s high-pitched chatter in their cozy house a half-mile away when the wind was just right. Swelling with Dylan’s child, Emily had blossomed into a beautiful woman, serene and confident and very much in love with her pirate husband. Even Turk had found a form of domesticity to his liking, though he had yet to wed the lovely native girl who shared his home.
“I find the notion of familial subsistence faintly abhorrent, though I admit it does have its rewards,” Turk had observed one evening when they were all gathered around a fire on the beach. His devoted companion only smiled shyly up at him, her black eyes holding secrets that Turk seemed not to see. It was evident to everyone else that he was in love, proving, Kit had said with a sardonic smile, that Turk was not infallible after all.
Life on the dot of land in the Caribbean had been idyllic and lazy, and Angela’s life in England remote. She didn’t miss it at all.
It was Rollo that heralded Kit’s return. Night shadows blanketed the island in velvet-soft shrouds and familiar sounds. Angela was lying in her bed when she heard the bird shriek, “Heave to, mates! Ship to starboard!”
Sitting up, she just had time to gasp before a shadow was at her side. “It’s me, angel. Sorry about Rollo.” Silently, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held him, her cheek against his shoulder. He was home. God, it felt so right to have him hold her again; the fresh scent of wind and sea clung to him in tantalizing familiarity.
“Angel,” he murmured, nuzzling her cheek. “I brought you a surprise.”
She smiled into the soft shadows. “You being here is gift enough.”
Laughter rumbled in his chest, and he squeezed her gently before pulling away. “I’m certain it is. This gift, however, is multipurposeful.”
“So are you.” She drew her hand down his bare chest. He wore only a supple leather vest, trousers, and knee-high boots. Her hand bumped against the hilt of his dagger as she slid her fingers around the corded muscles of his stomach to the belt buckle. He caught her hand in his and lifted it to his mouth.
“Are you sure,” he asked in a husky murmur, “that you don’t want to see your surprise now?”
“Quite sure.” Her mouth found his in the dark and clung, her lips moving softly against his, tasting sea tang and traces of wine. Beard stubble scratched lightly against her cheek as she brushed against his jaw. She had to gasp a little when his hand cupped the swell of her breast, his thumb raking in erotic circles around her nipple. Arching her back into his hand, she shivered.
It was several minutes before Kit’s attention strayed to another area, and Angela was flushed and aching, her entire body aflame with need. Somehow—it always amazed her how he could manage it so skillfully—they were both naked, bare skin sliding in delicious glides of muscle and bone and sensitive nerve endings.
Holding him, Angela knew that nothing was as important as the man in her arms. He was all that mattered. In the past nine months, their love had grown strong and deep, and all the past secrets had been explored and reconciled. Oh, life was not perfect by any means. Napoleon was still a threat and Kit was committed to doing his patriotic best for England. There were times she was terrified that she would lose him. But she had faith in him, in his ability to survive. He’d conquered overwhelming odds to become the man he was now, and all the past adversity had been met with a courage and determination that had forged him into the man she loved.
“I love you,” she whispered in his ear as he slipped inside her, and she felt him shiver beneath her palms.
“Angel,” he muttered thickly, lifting his head to stare down at her, cupping her face between his palms, “I love you more than I ever thought it possible to love anyone.”
It was much later before Angela remembered drowsily that she had not discovered Kit’s surprise. He laughed in sleepy satisfaction when she asked him and tightened his arm around her.
“I brought home a duke as your new pet. He’s eager to show you how to organize your household . . . as if he doesn’t have enough to do in England tending both our business holdings while I’m off playing patriot.”
Twisting, she asked, “You brought your father?”
“And Filbert. He insisted.” Kit nuzzled the curve of her shoulder. “You know how insistent he can be.”
“Like father,” she murmured, “like son.”
“Something like that.”
Silent, Angela wondered if it was the right time to tell Kit that she had a surprise of her own. Should she tell him now that he would soon have a son or daughter of his own? No, he was tired from his journey and their lovemaking. It could wait until the morning. After all, they had the rest of their life together.
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