She returned a weak smile. “Perhaps you should toss me overboard now and put me out of my misery.”
“Don’t think I won’t, if you become too much of a burden.”
Kate managed a small laugh. Ribbing her was Deverill’s way of easing her fear, she knew. He was trying to buck up her courage, and for that she was grateful. She hated feeling so craven.
“Why don’t I tell you about my shipping company?” Deverill asked. “If you intend to wallow in your apprehension, the least I can do is attempt to distract you.”
“Yes, please do,” Kate said fervently.
“As you may know, my family owns a fleet of merchant ships, all built to our designs, headquartered in Virginia. Richmond, to be precise….”
For the next hour, Deverill entertained her with tales about his business endeavors. Surprisingly, Kate found herself diverted enough that she didn’t mind when the schooner tacked out of the sound into the wind-driven rollers of the Channel. She was even growing accustomed to the rhythmic pitch of the deck as the bow of the ship carved purposefully through each successive wave.
Holding on to the railing, Kate glanced overhead at the forest of masts and billowing white canvas. She could see two men in the rigging, swinging from the yards without any trace of uncertainty or fear.
Still, the motion reminded her of her aunt.
“I should go below and check on Aunt Rachel. I hope her nausea is not too severe.”
“I will have our cook make her some ginger tea.”
“You have ginger tea on board?”
“An ample supply,” he said dryly. “My mother is a poor sailor and insists on being well stocked.”
“I could help prepare it,” Kate offered. “I would like to stay busy.”
“I will take you to the galley, then.”
They left the foredeck for the waist of the ship. When they reached the galley, Deverill turned her over to the cook, who fired up the iron stove to boil water.
When eventually Kate carried a mug of steaming tea to her aunt’s cabin, Rachel still looked pale but not entirely indisposed. Instead, she was sitting up in her bunk, attempting to concentrate on reading a book.
“My seasickness is not as extreme as I feared,” she told Kate.
“Then perhaps you should return outside. The fresh air could do you good.”
“I am better off here, my dear. I believe you should have time alone with Lord Valmere.”
Kate’s instincts went on alert. “Should I? Are you trying to matchmake, Aunt?”
Her suspicions were confirmed when Rachel and Cornelius shared a guilty look. When Kate narrowed her gaze disapprovingly, her uncle cleared his throat and scurried from the cabin.
“Have you only been pretending to be ill?” Kate asked her aunt.
“Not in the least. Lying down truly helped relieve my nausea.” When Kate appeared skeptical, Rachel flushed. “You should not be put out if we wish to give you more privacy with Valmere, my dear. You know that we only want what is best for you. I can see the strong attachment between the two of you and think you should nurture it.”
Kate couldn’t repress a faint smile. “Your machinations are worthy of my own, although I would never have expected Uncle to act as your romantic accomplice.”
Rachel’s cheeks grew warmer. “In truth, he is just as eager as I to see Valmere’s suit prosper. Perhaps because we were separated for years. Cornelius and I wasted so much time, Kate. You don’t want to live with our same regrets.”
Kate gave a sober nod. Almost everyone believed longtime bachelor Lord Cornelius to be a boring, staid aberration in the Wilde family, and that, because he eschewed social interactions in favor of his ancient tomes, he hadn’t inherited the legacy of passion the rest of their clan claimed. But “almost everyone” was mistaken. Last year had come a startling revelation even for his family—that Cornelius and Rachel were former lovers and that Daphne Farnwell was their daughter, the product of their illicit affair two decades earlier.
Looking sad at the memory, Rachel searched Kate’s face intently. “If you think Valmere is your true mate, you should do everything in your power to make your union come to pass.”
Kate refrained from commenting. She wanted to trust that her long-held beliefs about love and passion and romance were real. That Deverill could someday feel as deeply for her as she could feel about him. That he could learn to let down his guard and open his heart to her.
For now, however, she simply wanted to survive the Channel crossing.
—
After keeping Rachel company for a time, Kate went above deck again. And once again, her uncle chose to flee rather than be taken to task.
Kate was reassured by Deverill’s presence, though, when he returned to her side. She felt safer when she was with him. When the ship rose and fell on a high swell, she gripped the railing. Deverill never budged, but instead braced his legs naturally and swayed to the ship’s roll. But of course, he was accustomed to life on the high seas, impervious to waves.
As the day wore on, they partook of a light luncheon in the galley. Afterward, Kate returned to her station near the bow to watch the gray waters of the Channel race past. She could see land in the distance. The schooner was heading south and west now, she knew. Tomorrow they would reach the even more dangerous seas of the Bay of Biscay. For now, though, her anxiety began to ease.
But then dusk started to fall, and her nerves returned, despite her best efforts to tamp them down. Her aunt and uncle joined her and Deverill in the galley for a simple dinner, but then retired to their cabin. Kate lingered, reluctant to be alone.
In fact, she wanted Deverill to take her mind off her fear of drowning. To her shame, her hands started to shake. Her hands never shook.
“You are cold,” he murmured. Rising from the table, he shed his coat and draped it around her shoulders.
His body heat was still in the fabric, which comforted Kate a measure, enough that her lips formed a wincing smile of self-ridicule. “Not cold exactly. More lily-livered.”
Deverill chuckled. “Clearly you require something stronger than tea. I have a fine brandy that I’ve been saving for a special occasion.”
Turning, he rummaged in a cupboard and brought out a bottle, then poured an ample amount into a mug for her and sat beside her on the bench once again.
“Here, drink up,” he ordered.
Swallowing a gulp, Kate felt the burn down her throat, then eyed the depth of the liquid with skepticism. “If I drink all this, I will get foxed.”
“Being a little foxed could be the best thing for you.”
Replying in his same spirit, she tried to jest. “See, this is another way we are incompatible. I wouldn’t make a good wife for a magnate whose company builds ships.”
“No, but you will make a much better baroness than I make a baron.”
“True.” She was an expert in ballrooms, while he was expert in bedrooms and at sea.
Deverill was contemplating her with sympathy. “I promise I won’t let anything happen to you, Kate.”
She appreciated that he was willing to indulge her irrational trepidation, but shook her head. “You know you can’t promise any such thing. You cannot command nature.”
Taking another swallow, Kate recalled a memory of her cousin Quinn. “I realize now how Quinn felt. He once told me he’d designed his steam-driven ship because he hated being powerless to control fate. For years we all believed that if the Zephyr had been a steamship, it could have outrun the storm that sank it. As it turned out, the culprit wasn’t a storm but an evil man bent on greed and revenge. I still suffer nightmares about my parents sinking,” she admitted in a low voice.
Deverill reached out to touch the back of her hand where it rested on the table. “You are not alone, Kate. I have bad dreams of the recent war.”
She looked up at him. All day she had been selfishly thinking only of herself. Giving herself a mental shake, she determined to do better. “I am sorry. What
kind of dreams trouble you?”
His jaw hardened, and he drew back his hand. “I dislike talking about it.”
“I cannot imagine what you went through,” she murmured.
For a moment, he made no reply. “Most people cannot. Particularly your British aristocracy.”
“It is your aristocracy now also,” Kate reminded him gently.
“True.” Deverill heaved a sigh. “Regrettably, I had loyalties to both sides but had to choose between them.”
“Why did you elect to fight when you could have safely remained in England?”
“My American countrymen needed me. It would have been cowardly to think only of my own safety.” His voice lowered an octave. “The worst part was visiting destruction on my own kin. Having to turn against my friends and colleagues like my cousin Trey and Macky and Hawk.”
Kate fell silent. She hadn’t often thought about the sacrifices Deverill had made, carrying out what he believed was his duty.
Looking down at the table before him, he became strangely introspective. “War is not glamorous or exciting. Indeed it’s often senseless and idiotic. But in this case it was necessary. Your navy was vastly in the wrong to make slaves out of our seamen.”
“They justified their actions by claiming the greater good. They needed to keep the navy strong to battle Boney.”
“It was still wrong.”
She felt his suppressed intensity. “Perhaps so,” she allowed.
“There was too much killing and blood and pain,” he added quietly.
Wanting to take his mind off his grisly memories, Kate steered the subject to his former service. “To hear Hawkhurst talk about it, serving in the British Foreign Office as you did was a noble calling. What did you do for the F.O.?”
“Many things. And I often supplied ships for our missions. There were always villains to vanquish—despots, local tyrants, Napoleon Bonaparte. We were able to make a real difference when Boney was threatening to take over the world.”
“You also aided Aunt Bella some years ago, didn’t you? She said a number of her Foreign Office friends mounted a rescue when she was abducted by a Berber sheik.”
He shook his head. “I was in America by then so I wasn’t part of the rescue.”
Kate thought back on Deverill’s reasons for leaving for America. She had to admire him for fighting and risking death for what he believed in, even if his choice had taken him away from her.
“I am very glad you weren’t injured, or worse,” she said softly.
Deverill shrugged. “I rarely talk about it. I dislike even thinking about it.” His smile was grim when he raised his gaze to hers. “See your influence? I’ve never before told anyone how I felt.”
“Not even your family?”
He gave a mirthless huff of laughter. “Especially not my family. They didn’t share my reservations, probably because they didn’t have the close ties to England that I did. My father mainly sought retaliation for the losses of our ships and crews. My mother was angry that it disrupted her social routine. My younger brother was far too eager to hear about my adventures.” Deverill smiled again, a bit sadly. “I once was adventurous. I loved the sea…until the war.”
At his confession, a deluge of thoughts and feelings swamped Kate. “I am glad you told me. It isn’t good to keep things like that bottled up inside you.”
His gaze was level. “If you care to know why I don’t let myself feel, it’s because of the war.”
It surprised her, Deverill letting her see this darker, hidden side of himself. The deeper, conflicted man inside. But she was grateful.
His confession tugged on her heartstrings and made her reconsider. She’d been wrong to pressure him to feel, Kate reflected. There were good reasons he was detached and dispassionate. She’d wondered what had shaped him into the man he was, and now she better understood. Warring against his former friends and colleagues had scarred him. And he had no loving family to confide in, as she did.
At her new awareness, something sharp pierced her chest. If Deverill couldn’t feel tender emotions such as love, it was for his own self-protection.
She ought not try so hard to change him, Kate realized. Instead she should try to help him forget his violent past. She still believed if he was to learn to love, he had to open himself to healing emotions, not grim ones of war and death. But for now, he seemed to have had enough of introspection.
“The hour is late. You should get some sleep.”
“I suppose so,” Kate said reluctantly.
He had succeeded in distracting her from her own dark thoughts, but now they returned full force. Taking up a lantern, Deverill walked her to her cabin and preceded her inside.
After showing her how to properly secure the lantern on a shelf, he accepted the return of his coat and hung it on his arm.
As he turned to leave, though, a panicky feeling gripped Kate. “Deverill?”
“Yes?”
“Would you…would you please hold me for a moment?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You are the one who set the rules about no embracing.”
“I know, but…this would not be an embrace exactly.”
He hesitated, then crossed the small cabin and slid his arms around her, taking her in a light but protective grasp.
Gratefully, Kate buried her face in his chest. She could feel the steel warmth beneath the cambric fabric of his shirt.
When a short while later he reached up to smooth her hair tenderly, she let out a sigh. She felt safe with Deverill; she always had. She wished he could stay here with her all night long. She needed the sense of security he gave her. But of course they couldn’t spend the night together without the benefit of marriage.
For a time he simply held her. Then pressing a light, chaste kiss on her forehead, Deverill stepped back.
When she looked up at him regretfully, he reached up and gave a featherlight blow to her chin with his knuckles. “Buck up, sweetheart. If you need me, I will be close by. Only two doors down from yours.”
The calm timbre of his voice was reassuring, so Kate forced herself to let him go. When the door closed behind him, she took a shaky breath.
She had to be brave. Even a fraction as brave as Deverill had been when he went off to fight a war he had never wanted.
Still, she knew it would be a very long night.
Leaving Kate in distress like that was hard, but protecting her reputation was more important, Brandon decided.
Falling asleep was also hard, he shortly discovered. The moment he shut his eyes, memories assaulted him—brutal recollections of hostilities against various British warships. The explosions of cannon fire. The stench of gunpowder and smoke and blood. The agonized cries of wounded, dying men.
All dredged up during his confessions to Kate this evening.
Confessions that were unfamiliar and foreign to him in their intimacy. Merely the fact that he’d disclosed his own nightmares to her was frankly remarkable.
He hadn’t always been so closed off. The change had begun with his homecoming after his first successful battle at sea. With blood on his hands, he hadn’t wanted or deserved the hero’s welcome he’d received. Neither had he expected his family’s macabre relish at his defeating the enemy so soundly. His father had been triumphant, his mother gleeful, his younger brother excited.
At least his brother’s naïveté came from being fed tall tales of glorious naval victories during his sheltered and pampered youth. But, Brandon acknowledged, he should have predicted his parents’ responses. His father had always been reserved and dictatorial, his mother proud and aloof. Both were possessive and vengeful when it came to preserving their dynasty and business investments.
Locking his jaw, Brandon rolled over in the narrow bunk and punched his pillow. For certain, he never wanted to become like his father, nor would he ever want a wife like his mother.
An image of Kate leapt into his mind. The contrast between the two women was so stark. His mother was cold
and selfish while Kate was warm and generous and passionate.
Kate reveled in emotions—and was trying her damnedest to draw them out of him, despite his resistance.
Since the war, he’d forcibly constrained his emotions. Deliberately focused on forgetting the dark memories. Purposely avoided the pain that any sort of feeling brought. Yet tonight, for the first time in years, he had truly lowered his defenses.
Just as astonishing, sharing his feelings with Kate had felt…good. Strange but good.
Tonight Kate had also made him aware of something else: For a long time he had felt alone. Alone and incomplete and empty. As if a part of him was missing.
His heart, perhaps?
If so, could she help him find that missing organ?
It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. Kate invoked his protective instincts—mightily—yet he sensed she had something he badly needed: That comforting feeling of sharing. Of togetherness. Of completeness.
Even more profound, the elusive prospect of joy that was genuinely alien to him.
He would never be the kind of man to let his emotions rule, Brandon knew, but more and more of late, he felt sensations bubbling up from the dark crater where he had long ago buried them. Something resembling hope.
Another realization struck him: He could try to become the man Kate wanted him to be. Not only to win her hand in marriage, but for his own sake as well.
If he could let himself feel, perhaps he could banish the emptiness inside of him. More crucially, perhaps he could fulfill the promise of a future with Kate that even now seemed maddeningly out of reach.
—
Kate passed a restless night, starting awake every time the schooner sank in a deep trough. When she dragged herself out of bed the following morning, she dressed and immediately went topside, preferring to be in the open air rather than trapped in the bowels of the ship.
The sight that greeted her, however, made her temporarily forget her own phobia: High above her head, Deverill was clinging to a yardarm, apparently securing a sail. Braced against the wind and rock of the ship, he looked as much at home challenging death as she did confronting a haughty society matron in her own drawing room.
My Fair Lover Page 14