“I thought I wouldn’t reach you in time.”
“I thought perhaps after the way I spoke to you, you wouldn’t come at all. I should have stood by your side.” She drew a deep breath and Darius felt the whoosh of the exhalation into his filthy, torn shirt. “I should never have left you.”
He should step away. He knew it. There were questions to answer, a scandal to smother and children to whisk away from any more danger or talk of it. “We need to leave before anyone of import arrives,” he found himself saying into her ear. “We are not yet safe.”
Eliza pulled back slightly to meet his eyes. A shudder racked her body. “I killed him, Darius. I drove a knife into his neck and barely blinked. I didn’t feel sick about it at all. I’ve blamed Gabriella, railed at her in my head for what she did, but now I am as guilty as she is.”
“You rid this planet of a verminous evil, Eliza. When it comes down to kill or be killed, you did exactly what you should have done, my love. I’ll not hold it over your head.”
“You’ll still protect me? Us?”
“A fine job I did of that today.” He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see any recrimination in hers. She had every right to blame him for their near deaths if she wanted to, despite her own words and actions. What if he had been too late or died trying? His thirst for revenge had started this fight and kept it alive. They should have made for the ship the very day they’d exchanged their vows.
A warm hand pressed to his cheek made him look at her again. She smiled. Was she quite mad?
“You saved us, Darius. You could have given up and gone back to your ship and sailed away thinking us dead or beyond hope but you didn’t. I was wrong about you. I should have trusted you more. I should have listened to you.”
“I was afraid I would never see you again.”
Moisture gathered on Eliza’s long lashes. “I was afraid I would never get to tell you how wrong I was. How much you mean to us. To me.” Eliza lifted herself onto her bare tiptoes and kissed him right there in front of half of London. “I’m fairly sure I love you, Darius.”
He held her away from his body and it nearly killed him for real this time, the distance, when all he’d wanted to do was hold her in his arms again. “Don’t, Eliza, don’t do it to yourself. You weren’t entirely wrong about me. Everything you think I am, I am. It’s all there inside of me. The question is can you take me like this? The answer is no. After a few years you would hate me.” He raised a hand to halt her argument. “You can stay here with James and let him protect you and yours. You can have a semblance of the life you should have had. You can take back your declaration and pretend it was never spoken.” Although never for the rest of his days would he forget those six little words.
I’m fairly sure I love you.
He was more than sure he loved her too but it wasn’t enough. People changed; their feelings changed.
Her eyes went wide for a half a breath but then she smiled again. Mad. Utterly mad she was. Darius tucked her hair over her ear and wondered how hard she had hit her head, his dirty fingertips skating lightly over the bruise at her temple.
“You think you love me too,” she said slowly, her smile growing bigger and bigger.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter how I feel.”
“You know deep down how good you are. Your father and the world treated you one way and you set out to prove them all right for all those years but I’ve seen the real you, the dragon slayer, the gentleman. Daniella knows it is there. Deklin Montrose must have seen it also.”
A voice came from his left. Trelissick. “We were all wrong about you, Darius, and for that we apologise.”
“I wasn’t wrong.” Daniella grinned, coughed into her hand, and then grinned again. “I always knew there was a good man inside of you somewhere.”
Trelissick scoffed. “You said, and I quote, ‘There is absolutely nothing good or just about that devil.’”
Daniella playfully shoved her husband but then pulled him back to her side. “Perhaps I was a little upset that day,” she conceded with a grin and then sobered. “Of course you know we’ll help in whatever way we can. Nathanial is welcome to stay with us—you’re all welcome.”
Darius’s chest swelled at their words, at the friendship they offered with those few short statements. After a lifetime of avoiding attachments, he had taken on several in the last week. As he looked at each and every one of their faces, he couldn’t summon the weight of responsibility or the anxiety of caring for them along with Sarah, his ship and his crew, keeping them all fed, happy and safe. He couldn’t even find the argument he’d prepared to push them from his destructive life.
Elation filled him. Anticipation spurred him. For the first time ever, he could feel a family’s love encircle him and hold him tight for a change. It would be the most dysfunctional family in the history of relations but they were his and he was theirs.
The man formerly known as Jonathan Meddington had finally found a place of his own in the world, a place where he was accepted for the bastard and ex-pirate he was. He’d proven his father wrong. He’d proven all of London society wrong.
“You’ll probably regret this one day,” he said to his wife, his gaze fixed firmly on her happy, soot-stained face.
“Probably,” she conceded with a nod. “But
