She tipped his head back to reach his throat. He steadied his breathing, fighting the urge to swallow as she scraped over his pulse. Grief changespeople. How could it not? He realized now how unfair he’d been to Joss, denying him the time to grieve, the space to change. It was only now that he could understand it, when the very idea of losing this woman forced beads of cold sweat to his brow.
Closing his eyes, he reached up to squeeze her free hand. “Let us speak of happier things.”
“Very well.” He heard the smile in her voice. “Where shall we honeymoon? Will you take me to Italy, to see the Botticellis?”
“I will take you anywhere you wish. Anywhere under the sky.”
A tender kiss landed on his eyelid. Then she fell silent, working toward the center of his chin, dipping the blade in a basin at his side between short, sure strokes. She was concentrating, he realized, working carefully around his scar. At last she set aside the razor, letting it sink into the basin with a soft splash, then dried his face with a cloth.
“Stay still.” Her fingers ran lightly over his face, as if testing for any rough spots she’d missed. She traced the thin scar from his chin to his mouth.
“So if this scar was self-inflicted, occasioned by vanity”—her hand slid down to the scar on his chest—“what of this? Not vanity, I think.”
He shook his head, laying one hand over hers. “Pure stupidity, that one. But self-inflicted, just the same.”
“It looks like a burn.”
“It is.”
Silence. His heart thumped against her palm.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she finally whispered.
“I want to,” he replied, surprised to find it was the truth. How could he expect her to share her own secrets, if he withheld his? “But it’s a long story.”
“We have all night.” He cocked his head and frowned up at her. “When I went to the galley, I told O’Shea you were ill,” she admitted through a grin.
“He’ll not disturb us until they sight land.”
He rolled onto his side and propped himself on one elbow, uncertain whether to scold or kiss her. She solved the dilemma by kissing him first, then nestling into the bed beside him.
“You need rest,” she whispered, drawing his head to her shoulder.
“Between keeping watch and keeping a mistress, you’ve scarcely slept in a week.”
“You’re not my mistress, you’re my future wife.”
“We’re not married yet. And don’t spoil my fun. It’s my last chance to be anyone’s mistress.”
A savage joy swelled his heart. He wrapped an arm about her waist. “Yes, it is.”
Gray held her in silence, considering the story he meant to tell. It was a story he scarcely understood himself, and he realized he would be relating it for his own benefit more than for hers. “You will have gathered that Joss’s mother was my father’s mistress. One of his mistresses, at any rate. She was a slave.”
“I see.” She stroked his hair.
“From the beginning, my father acknowledged Joss openly as his son. This was after my own mother’s death, and before his bastards numbered so many as to make acknowledging them impractical. We were raised as brothers, during the day. Played together, dined together, took our lessons together. By night I stayed in the house, and Joss went to his mother in her quarters.”
He frowned. “It’s so odd now, to remember how I envied him. He had all the same privileges I enjoyed, with none of the expectations. To me, Joss seemed at home everywhere. It was only much later that I realized the opposite was true.”
Pausing, he scrubbed a hand over his freshly shaven face. “It should not have been surprising, I suppose, that he grew to resent me. But it was. When my father talked of sending me back to England, to university—all I wished was to trade places with Joss and stay at home. All he wished was to have the chance to go. We argued all the time, and came to blows more than once.”
“But such is the way between siblings,” she interjected. “My sister and I quarreled constantly at that age.”
“I suppose you’re right. In the end, it was another fight that drew the line between us. On his way home from town one night, Joss found himself on the wrong side of some drunken louts. They decided it was time to put my brother in his place, so they beat and branded him.”
Her hand froze in his hair. “Branded him?”
“It was done to slaves at one time, burning the owner’s mark into their shoulder. A repulsive practice—not that slavery itself is not a repulsive practice in its own right. Branding has been out of favor on Tortola for generations, but Joss’s attackers decided to resurrect the tradition.” A wave of nausea rolled through him at the memory of his brother lying prostrate in his recovery bed for days on end. The odor of charred flesh giving way to the sickly smell of infection, then the sweet stench of laudanum overpowering all. These parts of the story, he would not share.
“Dear God.” She resumed stroking his hair.
“I was due to leave for England before he’d fully recovered. I sat by his sickbed and promised him, when I had my own money I would come back for him and Bel, and we would all have the same luxuries, the same opportunities. We would share everything.”
“Did that make him feel better?”
Gray smirked. “He told me to go to the devil. Mind, he was drugged and in pain, but it still killed me. I got roaring drunk, wildly sick, and then roaring drunk again. I didn’t know how to convince him and remind myself that despite everything, we were brothers.”
She gave a little gasp. Her hand left his hair and went to cover the scar.
“Oh, Gray. You did this to yourself?”
He blew out a sigh. “Never underestimate the power of liquor and maudlin sentiment on an adolescent boy. I was so stupid. Botched the whole business. It had to be my chest, since I couldn’t very well reach my own shoulder. Didn’t heat the iron long enough, and of course my hand shook like a palm frond in a hurricane.” He pushed her hand aside and traced the blurred, irregular pattern with his own fingertips. “God, did it hurt. Hurt all the way to England. It reminded me, all right. Reminded me that I should never have left. I felt so damned guilty for leaving him behind, I couldn’t even bring myself to go to Oxford when we arrived. Stayed on that ship for more than a year.
“When I did finally go to England, it only made matters worse. I saw the life my father’s family should have had. Society, wealth, rank, privilege. Not some nigh-on-biblical exile in a land of slavery and pestilence. I wanted—needed—to rebuild the fortune our father squandered. I hadn’t a clue how to atone for his moral failings, much less correct my own. But I knew how to make a profit, and that’s what I did. I wanted to give my brother and sister all the comforts and security they’d been denied.”
His hand curled into a fist over his heart. “And how did I go about it? By breaking every promise I’d ever made. By denying my brother, taking his inheritance, selling his family’s home out from under them, and dragging Joss out on the sea with me.”
“To become privateers.”
“We did have an unholy good time.” Gray’s lips curved in a cold smile.
“We were like boys again, only armed with men’s weapons: cannons, cynicism, anger at the world. France and England and America could blow one another to bits. We were there to collect the spoils. Toward the end of the war, we started planning Grayson Brothers Shipping. We’d set up offices in England, build more ships—bring Bel to London for her schooling and debut. We were supposed to be equal partners.”
“So what happened?”
“Love, inconvenient thing that it is. Joss married Mara, got her with child. They didn’t want to travel, so I went ahead to England and started building the business, gathering investors. Came back just in time to witness Jacob’s birth, then Mara’s death. Suddenly, Joss wanted nothing to do with the shipping business. Demanded his share of the prize to buy land on Tortola, of all places, and then just give it away.”
Sophia frowned. “Give it away?”
“It was Bel’s idea, a sugar cooperative. This is what happens when a girl’s only friends are missionaries. The Quakers and Methodists have been buying up plantations and dividing them into smaller farms, for freedmen to make their own livelihood. The cooperative bit was Joss’s notion—by sharing the cost and labor of refining the sugar, they might be able to eke out a profit.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea.”
“No, it doesn’t. It sounds like a bloody saintly idea. But in practice … it’s a tremendous risk. And the farming life—it’s hard, it’s poor. It’s less than they deserve.” Gray swore into the night. “After all that time, all that work and sacrifice—to end right back where we’d started? I couldn’t let Joss do it. I left.”
“And took the money with you.”
“He’ll thank me eventually. Mara’s death made my brother too cautious, that’s all. Once he’s been out on the sea long enough, he’ll come around.”
He sat up in bed. “And I don’t care if my sister claims she’s happy dressing in rags and playing ministering Quaker. She is going to London for the most extravagant debut the ton has ever seen, and she will wear silk in every damned color of the rainbow. I didn’t spend the past ten years lying, cheating, and stealing just so my brother and sister could continue on in the same miserable exile our father gave us. Damn it, I sold my soul for this.”
“Shhh.” She sat up behind him, draping her arms around his shoulders. “It
’s all right.”
“It’s not. Nothing’s right. I’ve never done a right thing in my life, it seems.”
“That makes a pair of us then.” Her lips pressed against the spot under his ear. “But I believe we are right together, don’t you? People like us … we have no talent for following rules. We can only follow our hearts. I’ve wronged people as well, but is it horribly wicked that I can’t bring myself to regret it? It brought me to you.”
He took one of her hands and kissed it. “You’re so young, you can’t know the meaning of true regret. It’s never what you’ve done, love, it’s what you’ve left undone.”
He leaned against her, sighing into the comforting heat of her breasts. “I’ll take you to Italy, sweetheart, I promise it. To Egypt and India, too, if you like. But it will have to wait until after Bel’s season. I’ve put aside a dowry for her, enough to offset our provenance. We do come from gentry, and her mother was my father’s second wife, so Bel isn’t illegitimate. My aunt’s agreed to help bring her out. And if being the well-dowered niece of a duchess isn’t enough to turn heads, there is the fact that she’s the second-most beautiful lady in the world.”
Sliding from her embrace, Gray turned to face her. His compliment seemed to have bounced off her puzzled expression.
“Your aunt is a duchess?” she asked, her brow creasing. “Which one?”
“Oh, not a royal one. Camille Marie Augusta Glaston D’Hiver, Her Grace, the Duchess of Aldonbury. You’re forgiven for never having heard of her.”
He leaned forward to kiss her neck. “Talent or no, it’s time for me to follow the rules. I’ll go to London and play their little game, attend their balls and parties, host a few of my own. Dress head to toe in the latest fashions, whether they suit me or not.”
“What about me?”
“Oh, I’ll be unfashionably faithful to you.” He brushed her elegantly sloped nose with one fingertip. “Don’t vex yourself, sweet. We’ll tell everyone you’re the daughter of a West Indian planter. I don’t suppose you’ll have much difficulty adopting the role.”
