“I do feel it,” she freely admitted. “The connection. But I also know it will not last. It cannot last. If I return to London with you, the ton will crucify you—you know they will.”
“My brother killed my father and then himself. My unwed sister just gave birth to an illegitimate child. I am the Butcher, for God’s sake. We will do what the other scandalous members of the ton do: we’ll ignore those who cut us and we’ll waltz the night away and kiss on the dance floor as fodder for the gossips. I want you as you are right now, secrets, schemes, exactly as you are, minus the only thing holding you back. Look at what you fight for. Your ship is in pieces. You are wrong to want solitude on the sea. As I was wrong to want society’s approbation. I see it now, all of it. All I care about is you. If the only way I can have you is to stay, then I’m staying. We can live on your damned ship.”
“For how long?” she asked. Why couldn’t he just leave her be? Her heart was splitting in two and every word he shouted at her only made it that much worse. “How long until your responsibilities come to find you? What about your mother and Amelia? Your tenants and your House of Lords?”
“Your idea. I can have someone declare me dead so the title can pass to yet another distant cousin. It will not be easy but it can be done. Mother is staying with your father if I had to guess. Amelia… Well, I don’t know what will happen there.”
“Amelia will go with Patrick. Her husband.” She waited for his reaction.
“Impossible.” Not what she had expected.
“Just now. Before the birth of the child. The same words we spoke to one another. They are married.”
“As are we.”
“Not for long,” she reminded him.
“What a mess,” James muttered beneath his breath.
“Indeed.”
But then he said the last thing she ever thought he would. “I want you to give me one year.”
This was the conversation they had started earlier and she didn’t want to revisit it again. “What good will that do?”
He shook his head but then came close, crowded her again, put his hands on her arms again. This time his grip was soft, reassuring. He stood too close and her walls began to crumble. “Give me one year to change your mind. To show you what kind of future I could give you. We’ll retire to the country in wedded bliss, gossip be damned, and I can show you a life with me will be just as rewarding as a life on the ocean.”
“I can’t. You know I can’t do that. I won’t be bound to the land.”
“My estate is on the coast.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I live by the sea, you beautiful fool. A short trot down the cliffs and you are standing in the water.”
She stared at him, angry, hopeful. “And you didn’t think to share this information with me before now?”
He looked sheepish. “Yes, well, I didn’t think it would help, being an estate and not an actual pirate ship. It will be difficult and I’ll have to spend some time in the city—and you might even find the place sufficiently pleasant for the occasional visit, being a married woman—but I think we can make it work. If at the end of the twelve months you are still miserable and yearning, I will go with you. We will find a new home—buy an island plantation for ourselves and leave an agent running things here. I’ll not leave you now I’ve found you.”
“You’re impossible. It’s impossible.” But once again hope bloomed in her mind and in her chest.
“I want you to be mine, Daniella. Only mine, for the rest of our lives.”
The hope deflated. “You can’t own me, James. I won’t belong to you. I have been fighting my whole life. Fighting to be better, to do better, to be worthy of my place on this ship. What if I don’t know how to stop fighting?”
He shook his head but in his eyes his smile radiated his own hope. “You already belong to me in the same way I belong to you, heart to heart, no chains. Tell me you aren’t my equal in every way and if we disagree over this or that, we’ll fight each other. But then we’ll kiss and make up. Tell me you don’t want me to kiss you and love you and make you feel whole. That’s what you do to me every second of the day, Daniella. You made me feel again.”
Heat flushed her cheeks and tears burned her eyes. Words lodged in her throat. Was he right?
She was scared. More than that. She was terrified. If she said yes and it was awful, how would she survive? But if she sent him away, regret would take over her life and tarnish everything she did. Of course she loved him. He offered her the world and she hesitated. She was an idiot.
Her lips curved and she closed the distance between their bodies. “I do love you, James. You’re everything I’d never thought to wish for. I don’t know how you’re going to make this work, but I’ll give you your twelve months.”
He cradled her face in his hands and bent his forehead to hers. “I’ll be having more than that, but it’s a good place to start, my love.”
Epilogue
Four very short months later
“I made a mistake,” Daniella said as James held her hair and she cradled a bucket on her lap.
“Oh?” he said. She hated the way he answered her with those two little letters. He knew
