Devil of the High Seas, page 5
“Seven years. My God . . .” Griffin rubbed a hand along his jaw in disbelief. He still stood in the doorway, and Josephine remained at his side, glancing anxiously between them.
“Griffin.” The name came out hoarse, as though he hadn’t spoken in a century.
His brother drew a step closer. “Why now?”
When they were no more than a couple of feet apart, Gavin felt that old familiar tug at his heart. The connection that tied him to his twin was still there, even after all the time that had passed between them.
“My ship was . . . ,” he started, but then swallowed the words that would have caused him shame to speak. “I needed a place to rest for a few days.”
Griffin’s eyes fell to Gavin’s stitched shoulder. “What happened?”
“I fell on a sword.” Gavin kept his answer simple. The less his brother knew of the matter, the better. “Josephine stitched it up.”
Griffin’s gaze darted between him and Josephine, his eyes narrowing.
“You should know better than to run with weapons. Father would have boxed your ears.”
“Aye, that he would,” Gavin agreed solemnly.
Josephine opened her mouth but then clamped it shut again, as if deciding not to interrupt their tense exchange. Griffin finally pulled his gaze away from Gavin and looked at the girl beside him.
“Thank you for telling me about my brother. Would you kindly leave us? I need a moment to speak to Gavin, and your father would be furious if he knew I let you stay in the presence of a half-dressed man.”
Josephine looked reluctant to leave, but Gavin gave her a nod.
“Go on, lass. It will be all right.”
Only then did she lift her skirts and quietly slip away from the room. Gavin missed her the moment she departed. She’d been a brief ray of sunlight in this dark room, and yet she hadn’t even said a word. Something about her silence bothered him. She hadn’t been herself just now, he knew that much after being around her for such a short time. She’d seemed . . . closed off, more like a proper lady respecting the position and wishes of the master of the house, which in this case was Griffin. Whereas last night and this morning she’d been fiery and talkative—alive.
So lost was he in his thoughts about Josephine’s behavior that he never saw Griffin’s blow coming, which struck him hard in the face.
“Where the bloody hell have you been?” Griffin growled, fury lighting his eyes.
Gavin staggered back. The pain was unexpected, and he cursed as the stitches in his shoulder pulled tight. He touched his lip, which had split, and tasted blood upon his tongue.
“I’ve been dead,” he shot back.
“No, Father is dead. Charity is dead. My . . .” His words broke with anguish, and he looked away, unable to continue.
“Your son is dead.” Gavin finished Griffin’s unspoken words with a heavy finality that held an echo of the grief that he knew Griffin must be feeling a thousand times over.
“I came back a year ago, hoping to make things up to you. I saw the tombstones in the churchyard.”
Griffin finally looked his way again. “So you were there. I thought myself mad for weeks, believing that I’d imagined feeling you’d come home.” Tears glinted in Griffin’s eyes. “You left me. You left us . . . I can’t forgive you for that.”
Invisible shards cut into Gavin’s throat as he tried to speak. “I’m . . . I’m not asking you to.” He felt like in that moment he was sailing his ship once more through a storm and praying to see light on a distant shore to guide him home. But all he saw in that moment were flashes, and then darkness fell again in his inner world.
A thousand words hung in the air between them, but neither brother dared to say them. They’d once shared everything, from the moment their lives sparked into being in their mother’s womb. But after all that had happened, something had broken between them, and Gavin feared it could never heal.
“I’ll see you well enough to leave,” Griffin said at last. “I’ll bring you some food and clothes. Do you need a doctor?”
Gavin studied his shoulder, intensely relieved at the change in subject. The skin wasn’t inflamed around the wound. The lass had done a fine job of tending to him.
“No doctor, but I will take the clothes and food,” he said quietly. He didn’t like to fall upon anyone’s mercy, not even his own brother’s, but he’d given all of his extra coin to Ronnie.
Griffin stood there a moment, a silent war playing out on his face.
“She asked for you . . . in the end. She wished she could have seen you one last time.”
Those words, no doubt kindly meant, were like a dagger to Gavin’s heart. He sank onto the bed, still holding his ripped shirt in his hands. It seemed like a fitting metaphor for the state his heart was in.
“She regretted so much of what happened that night. We both did.” Griffin took a seat on one of the chairs at the table. The waning light of the oil lamp fought the shadows on his face as he stared at the burning flame.
“You never remarried?” Gavin asked.
“Charity was the only woman who will ever hold my heart. But I am to be married again soon.”
A sudden, terrible dread of that answer came rolling in around Gavin like fog.
“To whom?” he asked, his voice a little rough as he struggled not to betray any emotions.
“Josephine.”
Once again, that knife slashed through him. He needed to lash out at something to take his mind away from the agony, and his brother was the only one there to take his pain.
“That woman is too wild for you, brother. Even Charity was more tame than she. You will only make her miserable, and she you.” Josephine was not a woman who could be gentled. That much he knew, in just the short time he’d spent with her.
As if understanding Gavin’s intentions, a frown tugged at Griffin’s lips. “I’m well aware of Josephine’s spirit. Her parents chose me because they hope I will settle her down. Sometimes a gentle hand will soothe even the wildest creature.”
Gavin had a sudden flash of memory, of him and Griffin taming horses together. Griffin’s gentle touch almost always won the wild horses over, but there had been one stallion that couldn’t be tamed with gentleness. So Gavin had mounted up and let the horse loose on the land, and they rode together, wild and free, until the horse learned to trust him. That stallion had never been tamed, but Gavin had always been able to ride him. Not all creatures could be tamed, nor should they be. It would be a cruel thing to break the spirit of a woman like Josephine.
Gavin set aside his torn shirt. “When is the wedding?”
“Soon.”
Soon. Gavin’s jaw clenched.
“Don’t worry. I shall be long gone before you take your new bride.”
Griffin didn’t argue, but he did square his shoulders. “What the devil happened, Gavin? Do not hide the truth. ’Tis only me here—you can tell me.”
Gavin didn’t want to tell him, but somehow the words tumbled free of his lips as he told his brother of Beauchamp’s mutiny and his flight from his beloved ship.
“I will meet up with my shipmate soon and be gone once we find a vessel.”
“By find a vessel, you mean . . . ?”
“’Tis better if you don’t know,” Gavin replied. He had no money to buy a ship, assuming he could even find one for sale, but stealing a ship, that was something he could manage.
“Don’t be a fool, Gavin. The Royal Navy has vessels patrolling off the coast, and there are two docked in the nearest port. I hosted an admiral last week for dinner, along with several of his captains. They are hunting for pirates.” He let the word hang in the air, heavy with meaning, as he met Gavin’s eyes.
“You’re warning is heeded, but I can’t stay here.” Gavin curled his hands into fists where they rested on his thighs as he weighed the danger of the navy prowling around the coastline.
“Where will you go?” Griffin asked.
“I’ll go after my ship. I owe Beauchamp the taste of my steel. He’ll be headed for the West Indies again. After that, well, I have a life elsewhere.” He smiled a little as he thought of the tiny island off the coast of the Bahamas that he called home. The Isle of Song. It was the only place he felt was truly his anymore.
“I would give anything to have you stay . . . if things were different,” Griffin whispered.
“Things are what they are . . . and I could not stay even if they were,” Gavin replied just as quietly.
The two of them sat in long silence until Gavin dared to speak about their past again.
“Did Father ever forgive me for leaving?”
Griffin traced the edges of the handle of the oil lamp. “Of course he did. He loved you, and he understood that you couldn’t stay.”
Gavin’s throat tightened. He had a terrible sense that he was running out of time, like the sand in the hourglass of his life was pouring far too quickly.
“I’m sorry, brother.” He’d done it. He’d finally said the words that had driven him here in the storm.
“As am I,” Griffin replied and then stood. “I’ll be back with clothes and food. You’ll need more lamps to see properly until you leave. It’s too bloody dark in here.”
With one last look of bittersweet ache at his twin, Griffin left Gavin alone in the secret chamber. As he sat in silence, Gavin swore he could hear the pouring sand of that invisible hourglass growing louder and louder. What was he supposed to do before the sand ran out?
Josephine reluctantly returned to the dining room after Griffin effectively dismissed her from the secret passage. She hadn’t really eaten much during breakfast, and now some of the guests were seated for an early lunch.
“Cheer up, Josie.” Her twin, Adrian, set down a plate of food next to her at the table and joined her. “You look thoroughly put out, darling sister.” His gray eyes twinkled with mischief, and his good mood almost managed to make her smile.
“You’re not the one about to be married off to a stranger,” she said, her tone more waspish than she’d intended. Adrian’s brows rose at that. It wasn’t often she and her brother quarreled, but her temper was up and her pride had been pricked by the events of this morning.
He reached over and covered one of her hands with his. “I tried to convince Father not to pursue this marriage, but he lectured me on my own duties regarding marriage.” Adrian’s tone hardened slightly. “It’s as if the moment Dominic returned to England, they wanted us both gone.”
“You know that isn’t true. It’s just . . . well, Dominic will be the Earl of Camden someday. He and Roberta will have a house full of children, and you and I will be in the way, won’t we?” She and Adrian had given a lot of thought to the new dynamics of their household now that their elder brother, who’d been gone for fourteen years, had resumed his role in the family.
“Father suggested I join the navy. Can you believe that? Thank God Nicholas Flynn talked him out of such nonsense. I’d be lashed to death for rebellion within the first hour.”
“You in the navy would be nonsense indeed,” Josephine agreed. Many fraternal twins were opposites to each other, but she and Adrian were more like mirror images. Adrian would no sooner take orders than she would had she been in his position and facing life on a naval vessel. Life in the navy would be a disaster for him.
“I have been thinking, though. Dom said he will be needing masters to captain his new fleet of merchant vessels, and I thought I could join one of his crews and work my way up to captaincy in a few years. I wouldn’t mind the work, knowing I could advance with hard work and not have to pay for a commission.”
“I don’t suppose I could go with you? Dress up like a lad, like in those stories Roberta told us about when she played Dom’s cabin boy,” she said, half teasing. Josephine briefly indulged in a fantasy of donning men’s breeches and scaling the rigging of a ship with a knife between her teeth while the guns fired upon an enemy ship.
“Your husband might notice you missing,” Adrian chuckled. At his comment, however, she flinched. “He seems like a good fellow, Josie,” her brother quickly added.
“He is, and I suppose that’s rather the problem. What sort of life would I have with a kind and gentle man?”
“A safe life?” Adrian countered. “Surely anyone would want that?” Yet even he didn’t sound that certain. The siren’s lure of adventure was irresistible to everyone in their family.
“I want to sail to the West Indies like Dominic. I wish—” She stopped herself before she voiced any more foolish wishes.
“What do you wish?” Her brother’s gaze turned serious as he pushed away a plate of half-eaten food.
“It’s silly . . .”
“Nothing you say is silly,” Adrian replied. “Now, what’s the matter? I’ve felt you’ve been different since last night. I saw you leave dinner, and Dominic went after you. Did he say something?”
Adrian had no idea how right he was. Dominic had said something . . . about lost men and the sea, and then Gavin had washed up on shore and found his way to her. And everything about her life felt changed on some elemental level that she couldn’t quite explain, not even to her twin.
“I don’t want a normal life.”
“Does anyone?” Adrian’s tone was teasing, but she shook her head at him.
“I am not meant to sit around and sew silly needlepoint until my fingers bleed and act as if I can’t offer the world something more.”
Her brother squeezed her hand again. “I rather doubt that will be your fate. You’re a Greyville, Josie. Like me, like Dominic, like Mother and Father. We’re bound for adventure. Give it time, and you’ll see that the world is waiting for you.”
“Promise me this marriage will be a good one…” she begged her brother.
Her brother’s face was solemn. “I promise, Josie. You will marry Castleton and have a life you’ve always dreamed of. You’ll sail the seas and have adventures and all the things you could ever dream of.”
She wanted to believe him, but Adrian had always been such a positive believer in one’s dreams. But as a woman, Josephine didn’t have the same luxury to let her dreams be catch the wind and sail her away toward adventure.
She finished her small luncheon, and allowed her mind to wander back to the subject she had been carefully avoiding. Had it been a mistake to tell Griffin that his brother was alive? Surely Griffin wouldn’t betray his brother to the authorities. She pushed her plate away and stood.
“Where are you off to?” Adrian asked her.
“Nowhere.” When her brother raised a brow at her, she rolled her eyes. “Nowhere,” she said again and left him to finish his meal.
She was halfway up the stairs when Griffin came flying down the steps. They met in the middle of the grand staircase.
“Ah, there you are, Josephine.” He smoothly took one of her arms in his and escorted her back up the stairs the way he’d come. His sudden forwardness confused her. Mere hours before, his touch had been hesitant. Now there was an urgency to him that confused her. Had something happened to Gavin? Had his injury worsened? Josephine expected them to stop before the tapestry cloaking the secret passageway, but Griffin continued on to another room farther down the hall.
“My lord—”
“Griffin,” he corrected automatically as he pulled her into an empty drawing room and closed the door.
“What’s the matter?”
“Have you . . . ?” He cleared his throat. “Did my brother . . . ?”
“Did he what?”
“He didn’t seduce you last night, did he?” Griffin finally asked, his back straight and stiff as he waited for an answer.
“Seduce me? Griffin, no, he was badly injured. I tended to his wounds and only stayed the night to make sure he was all right.” She felt her anger coming out at Griffin’s presumption. “Is that my only value to you? That my virtue remains intact?”
Griffin’s cheeks turned red. “No,” he said. “But my brother is more assertive in his desires than I am, and I know how charming he can be. I feared he might have taken advantage . . .”
“I am more than capable of handling an injured man’s advances should he have made any, but he didn’t.” Josephine wanted to tell Griffin she also knew her way around rapiers and pistols and was perfectly capable of caring for herself, but she thought better of it.
“Good, good. I’m simply saying it’s best you stay away from him.” He took her hands in his and raised them to his lips for a kiss. “I also wanted to tell you that I shall be speaking to your parents today about the wedding. I believe we should wed sooner than planned.”
“Sooner?” Her heart slammed against her ribs as dread settled over her.
“Yes. Two days from now.”
Two days . . . and she would be married. Two days and the shackles of wifely enslavement would be around her wrists.
“Gavin will be gone by then, and you and I can resume our lives.” He kissed her hands again, his eyes studying her face as she struggled not to let him see her terror at the thought.
She wanted to scream that she wasn’t ready, that she needed a decade or more before she’d even consider marriage. But she held those protests in as she had been taught.
“You need not worry about my brother. He will be all right. I have seen that he has food and clothing, and I will continue to provide for his welfare until he leaves. Why don’t you join the other ladies downstairs? I believe there was talk of a tour of the gardens before taking tea in the drawing room.” He stroked a finger down her cheek and then bowed to her before he left her alone.
“A tour of the gardens?” She had no desire to walk around and gossip among the rosebushes with the other women. In that instant, she could see her life with Griffin playing out before her. Tours of gardens, gossiping behind fans with other ladies, hours of endless needlepoint, the occasional child born and taken away from her to be raised by nurses, and gentle kisses in the dark at night as Griffin made tender love to her. A dull ringing started in her ears as she felt that future rising toward her like an inescapable tide.
