Between them, there could only be this—this island of time, the strange stolen interlude at The Grand Palace on the Thames.
And they only had it because they were pretending to be what they were not.
She knew this, and so did he.
She could not regret it.
For the next two days, as the sun rose and shone and the water drew back and the clouds gave way to watery-pale blue skies, they asked each other no questions about the future. No “what if” scenarios were introduced. Nobody used the word that began with “L.”
It would have been redundant, anyway.
But they did spend an inordinate time in the suite behind closed doors. Daphne felt nearly permanently drunk with lust, distantly aware of the recklessness of all the abandoned lovemaking. She didn’t care. She, like Lorcan, had begun to understand “take what you can get while you can get it.”
“Good heavens. Like newlyweds,” Delilah whispered to Angelique, observing the sultry aura that suddenly seemed to surround Daphne and Lorcan in the sitting room for the next two nights.
Then came word, via Delacorte, that water had receded from the bridge at the end of Barking Road. Carriages could get through now.
Lorcan grew quieter and quieter as the moment came for them to part. The weight of his silence spoke of the gravity of what they felt for each other and what they were going to lose. The density of it was love itself.
She had told him once before, clearly, what sort of life she wanted. She’d meant it.
She could not imagine a life on a ship. She could not bear the loneliness of waiting, and worrying and wondering whether he would return safely.
He had said he never intended to take a wife. Regardless of what there was now between them, there was no reason not to believe him. He knew who he was.
She did not know how to make a wild rogue into a husband, or an interlude into forever.
Regardless, he made no demands or promises.
Neither did she.
They didn’t discuss her impending engagement to an earl with five children, which was the reason she urgently needed to be home before month’s end. In three days’ time.
The reason she would be on the first mail coach available when the roads cleared.
He merely loved her body with his.
The day they were to part dawned clear. They dressed, separately, and packed their belongings, separately. The mail coach that would bring Daphne back to Hampshire, to her father, and to ultimately the man she would marry, would depart at just past eight in the morning.
And Lorcan was expected at the docks before then. He planned to row out to his ship with his crew to begin the process of provisioning it. They would sail by the end of the week.
Lorcan had told everyone in the sitting room that Daphne would be leaving to stay with her father while Lorcan was at sea for the next six months. Daphne was so silent and pale, such a study in grief, that everyone treated the two of them with tender solicitousness.
And as the hour for her to depart drew closer, she wept in his arms.
Quietly, but with abandon. The glorious freedom of surrendering what she felt, knowing he understood and that it mattered profoundly to him, that he suffered when she suffered and rejoiced when she did—she had never before known it, and knew she might never know it again. Sadness poured from her, much the way the sky had split and the rain torrented down the night they’d met.
She could feel the ragged pattern of his breathing, and the hammer-hard beat of his heart against hers, and the heat and press of him as he held her, tightly, as if he could brand himself with the shape of her. As he promised, he was strong enough for both of them. She knew it stormed inside him, too.
They had always known there would be one last kiss, and one last time he saw her face.
He kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her mouth.
“Look up at the stars if you miss me, Daphne.” His voice was graveled. “I’ll be with you. Always.”
He seized his hat. And for the last time, the door shut hard behind him.
The weather was paradoxically brilliant and beautiful, given that internally Lorcan felt barren as a desert as he walked to the docks. Water had finally stopped falling, but everything was sheened in it. The eaves dripped diamonds, and cobblestones glinted like silver. Huge pearly clouds had moved aside just enough to remind the humans below that the color of the sky was actually blue. The Thames was a shining ribbon. The air remained cold enough so that his breath made white puffs.
The roads would likely be hard going for a few days, and he thought of Daphne stuffed in a mail carriage, jostling her way through the mud and ruts, to get back home again.
She would be a countess by the time his ship reached the waters of Spain again.
At that thought, the sheen was off the day entirely.
The streets near the docks were once more teeming with humans. Somehow he threaded through them, somehow he managed to put one foot in front of another. Reflexively, he returned subtle nods from people who recognized him.
Finally he stopped right where, a mere few days ago, he’d saved a life and nearly lost his. He saw his own bonnie ship anchored, and his heart lifted just a very little.
Suddenly he froze.
He shielded his eyes to peer at a ship that seemed to be all but limping toward port. He swiftly retrieved from his pocket a spyglass and trained it, twisting into focus.
It was clear that the ship had been dismasted—perhaps in some storm well out to sea. Some effort had been made to jury-rig a usable mizzen. He whistled to himself—that would have been extraordinarily hard going, particularly in rough seas, unless they’d made it to another port. A rent in one of the sails was visible. The crew ought to have been able to repair it. Something had clearly prevented them from doing that.
As it drew closer, he thought he noted some damage to the quarterdeck, hastily repaired. Perhaps a burn, or a cannonball strike.
The ship had been through quite a drama. And yet here she still was.
And then suddenly goose bumps rose along his arms when he realized exactly what he was looking at. Even before he saw the name on the prow.
And he turned and ran like hell for The Grand Palace on the Thames.
“Hardy! Bolt! Delacorte!” He burst into the foyer bellowing. “She’s in!”
He heard footsteps running from all directions in the house, thundering down the stairs.
Hardy was the first to appear on the landing, followed by Bolt, who nearly crashed into him.
“She’s in! The Zephyr is in! She’s been dismasted. She might have some more damage to the quarterdeck. But she’s sailing in right now.”
Both Hardy and Bolt froze in place.
“Are you sure?” Hardy managed a moment later. His voice was hoarse.
“Sure as I’ve got eyes.”
Hardy closed his eyes and a long breath left him. Then his mouth shaped what looked like a silent prayer or an oath. Bolt slung an arm around his shoulders. For a moment they ducked their heads, and appeared to be holding each other up in relief.
Lorcan was fiercely, truly glad for him. For both of them.
“My thanks, St. Leger,” Hardy said.
And then they were out the door at a run.
Lorcan remained in the empty foyer for a moment. The return of the sun meant the crystals on the chandelier were able to scatter little rainbows at his feet. And though his plans to row out to his ship hadn’t changed, he found instead his feet were carrying him to the passage to the annex.
He wanted to see if he could feel Daphne there.
With some trepidation, he turned the key in the door.
Without her presence, the silence in the suite seemed to whine.
There was an answering echo in his scraped-raw soul.
He found himself pacing, like a bear emerging from hibernation to discover the forest has been burned to the ground.
He fancied he met the ghost of the scent of orange near the settee. He hovered there a moment, closed his eyes and remembered. And an ache for her started up. He breathed in, against the wanting.
He went to her room and gingerly sat down on her bed.
And then he dragged her pillow to him and held it to his face to breathe her in.
He sat like that, pulsing with love and loss and furiously, furiously thinking.
Now he knew why he’d returned to this suite. It resounded with her absence. It looked cheap, unreal, like set dressing—and he understood that even if he carried her love about like hidden miser’s gold, this was how the rest of his life would feel without her.
And therein lay an epiphany. That fancy beautiful word she had taught to him.
Who was he now? Not a coward. That much he knew. He didn’t know how much of his courage was innate, or how much he could attribute to experience building his courage up like muscle, the way he’d claimed. He did know nothing in his life had prepared him for what he was considering doing.
Unless it was loving and being loved.
And he burned with the near holy knowledge that she loved him.
The epiphany was this: in loving him, he was only now realizing she’d shown him he had something of value he hadn’t yet offered her. Maybe, just maybe, it was what she’d wanted from him along.
What a miracle that would be.
But damned if it was going to be the only thing he brought to her.
He thought of Hardy’s and Bolt’s ship limping into port. An idea was taking shape on the periphery of his awareness; he aimed the spyglass of his mind at it, and he could feel a thrill stirring in the pit of his stomach when it expanded fully into view. Seconds later, he nearly shouted “Hosanna.”
What he was considering was a risk. He was used to risk.
Bloody hell. He was going to do it.
This realization left him genuinely terrified.
And thoroughly exhilarated.
But he felt powerful again.
And he didn’t know if he was mad, brave, delusional, or brilliant, or all four.
It was going to be up to Daphne to decide.
It was quiet in the smoking room that evening, as Mr. McDonald and St. John Vaughn, after thanking their hostesses, had bolted from The Grand Palace on the Thames like hares set free from traps, and Hans, Otto, and Friedreich had been engaged to play at a previously arranged small soiree at the home of a wealthy merchant.
They expected never to see poor Mr. McDonald again, but they all sincerely hoped he continued his violin lessons.
Which left Hardy, Bolt, Delacorte, and Lorcan to wearily enjoy cheroots and much-needed brandies alone in the smoking room.
Bolt and Hardy looked exhausted but more at peace. At least they knew what they were up against: repairs to the masts and quarterdecks. Financial losses from partially damaged cargo. New crew members to hire, and injured crew to compensate—their crew had valiantly gotten their ship into port, but two members had been injured in the rigging when the mast snapped. They would be unable to work for quite some time.
“So the Triton Group needs a ship,” Lorcan said thoughtfully.
“Yes,” Bolt said.
Lorcan’s heart was suddenly a bass drum in his chest. He waited a moment, strategically. He understood the value of a bit of theater, especially when it came to a high-stakes wager.
And then he exhaled smoke. “I have a ship.”
It sounded as offhand as “would you kindly pass the peas?”
Almost as if the rest of his life didn’t hinge on what happened next.
Bolt, Hardy, and Delacorte stared at Lorcan.
After a long, taut, fascinating silence, Lorcan added, entirely neutrally, “a large and fast ship.”
He saw a hard, almost mordant amusement and respect flicker across Hardy’s face. And a suppressed excitement. He knew that Lorcan more or less had them in the palm of his hand.
Finally Hardy said, very casually, “What are you proposing, St. Leger?”
Lorcan’s palms were actually a bit damp as he reached into his coat for the sheets of foolscap covered with notes and figures he’d prepared that afternoon.
And he showed them.
And told them.
And when he was done speaking there was a different silence.
The quality of hope had entered the room. And it was fast evolving into excitement.
“I suppose my question is . . . why do you want to do this?” Hardy finally said. “When privateering is so profitable?”
When we have been more or less enemies, was the unspoken question.
Pride was Lorcan’s very spine.
“I want Daphne to be happy. I want her to have everything out of life she desires, because in truth, that’s really all I want. And . . .”
Damn. It was never going to be easy to say this next thing aloud to Hardy. But he knew it was the one thing that would convince him of his sincerity. He took a breath. “I want a life a lot like this one.”
He gestured with his smoldering cheroot at the smoking room. His mouth dented at the corner, just a very little. Ruefully.
The faces around him were riveted. Bolt’s reflected compassion. Delacorte’s, pleasure—he loved it when other people admired The Grand Palace on the Thames.
Hardy remained interested and otherwise unreadable.
“All of this, mind you, hinges on whether it’s what Daphne wants. I will need to make sure she approves of it first. Because I want Daphne to always be able to hold her head high. I want to be proud of my work, and I want her to be proud of me. And mostly I . . . I just don’t want to ever leave her again.”
Lorcan delivered all of this in a steady voice. But by the time he’d reached those last words it had turned to gravel.
He schooled his features to stillness. Inwardly, every particle of his being was screaming to get to Daphne before she accepted the earl’s proposal.
Another wordless interval ensued. Lorcan maintained his game face in the face of three wondering, speculative expressions.
“Those sound like the best motivations in the world to do anything,” Hardy said quietly, finally.
He thrust out his hand.
Bolt and Delacorte followed suit.
And negotiations got underway.
Daphne was almost blackly amused at how quickly life returned to aggressively ordinary once outside the magical confines of the cozy Grand Palace on the Thames. After two days (which really ought to have been one day; a stuck wheel had kept them all overnight at a coaching inn, where passengers were fed a few careworn shreds of beef and assigned indifferently cleaned rooms) of somewhat shambolic traveling over rutted muddy roads, she finally arrived at the caretaker’s cottage where they lived in the shadow of her real home.
Exhausted, sweaty, still somewhat sore between her legs from wantonly rolling about with Lorcan, still numb and grieving and inwardly glowing from knowing she was loved, she tumbled out of the cart that had taken her from where the mail coach stopped, and walked the rest of the still somewhat muddy road to her door, carrying her portmanteau.
She paused. Suddenly reluctant to go in, as if the house was quicksand and the past, and duty, would engulf her once she stepped over the threshold.
The door was flung open and there in the doorway stood her brothers, Charles and Montague.
She gasped and flung herself at the nearest brother, and was scooped up and swung about.
“Daph, you look wonderful and . . . you need a bath!” Charles said.
She swatted him. “It was a rough trip home! Put me down.”
It was Monty’s turn to hug and give her a quick, critical inspection.
“Is that your sister finally returned from London?” her father called from inside.
She hesitated.
“Here, Papa,” she called. Quietly.
For the first time in her life, she was conscious of a profound reluctance to see him. Around her heart there settled a coolness composed of sadness and resignation.
She’d been given new eyes with which to see her father. She did not think things could ever be the same.
Charles seized her portmanteau for her and they filed through the door. He lowered his voice. “We’re so relieved to see you, actually. Father has offered his own already unnerving explanation about funds, but I want to hear from you why we’re in the caretaker’s cottage.”
“You’re not going to like it,” she said frankly. But sympathetically. She was relieved to know that someone else was taking an interest. “When did the two of you get here? How did you get here?” she asked him.
“Just two days ago. The channel crossing was one I’ll never forget,” Monty said.
“He was green the entire time,” Charles said. “It was a bad one. I must say, however, it was tremendously odd how your friend was able to track us down.”
“My friend?” She was puzzled.
“We were given a message from him saying our sister urgently needs us to come home at once,” Montague said. “Who the devil is this Lorcan St. Leger and what the devil does he mean by—”
“I am Lorcan St. Leger.”
Daphne spun.
She froze.
She made a sound of stifled, wild joy. Of almost pain. Her hand flew to her mouth.
Lorcan filled the doorway.
There fell an absolute silence.
Daphne didn’t think she would ever tire of witnessing people experience Lorcan for the first time.
Her brothers and her father had gone absolutely still and mute. A bit the way little furry animals in the forest might when the wolf strolls into view. But their expressions were very nearly comical. They could not quite reconcile the presence of such a man in their house.
They slid sidelong glances at her.
And then back at him.
Lorcan bowed. Low and beautifully.
They watched this warily, too.
Monty’s hand went up to absently finger his earlobe. Probably imagining how he would look with an earring.
“The Honorables Montague and Charles Worth, I presume?” Lorcan said pleasantly.
“Ah, yes,” Charles said. They bowed, because they had good manners.
He turned toward Daphne’s father. “And Lord Worth, I presume,” Lorcan said neutrally. He bowed to him, too. Lorcan was generally polite. Until he wasn’t.
Her father said nothing. Nor did he bow, and this rudeness embarrassed Daphne. His face was, in fact, nearly scarlet with anger.
Which was really about not liking at all that his will was countermanded. Things had gone his way for most of his life, after all.
Charles cleared his throat. “Mr. St. Leger . . . I’m a trifle confused about what connection you might have to our family . . . and to my sister.”
“Your sister and I were introduced when your father saw fit to allow her to take a paying job. She was fleeing for her virtue from one of the people with whom she was employed.”
To their credit, her brothers both visibly recoiled as this appalling sentence registered.
Their heads pivoted between her and her father.
“What on earth . . . ? Father? Daphne? Is this true?” Charles was bewildered.
“She wanted to help your third cousin, Mrs. Leggett, who offered to pay her,” her father said tersely. “I could see no reason to deny her the wish to help. She would have been paid. Daphne, were you paid?”
Daphne couldn’t speak. Her heart broke a little that this was the first question her father chose to ask.
“How . . . how . . . did you find us?” Montague asked Lorcan.
“I have friends everywhere, in all walks of life,” Lorcan said. “Many in London, Calais, Dover. I gave my message and your names to the right people and merely asked that it be passed on. It seems it was.”
This was not a sentence calculated to make anyone comfortable. It rather made him sound omnipotent, and he was unnerving enough as it was.
“I did this on the same day I found an orange.” He turned to Daphne.
“What an efficient day that was,” she teased softly.
He smiled at her.
Her brothers’ eyes had gone huge, witnessing the two of them smiling at each other.
“Daphne . . .” Her father’s voice was trembling with outrage. “Who is this man? What the devil is going on?”
This man is the heart of my heart, she wanted to tell him. An outrageously demanding, skilled lover who took my virginity and made me scream with pleasure, then cradled me in his arms as though I was treasure. My rescuer. A peeker into my soul. This man is possessive and vulnerable and brutal and brilliant and funny and he’s mine. He’s mine.
She longed to say it.
Her voice was lost.
“Daphne,” Lorcan said softly.
And suddenly they were the only two in the room.
She smiled softly at him.
She wished she wasn’t so weary, and sweaty, and a trifle disheveled, but the night they’d met her hair had stood up fuzzy as a pussycat and he’d fallen in love with her anyway. He was looking at her as if she were an angel sent down from heaven, with that mixture of bemusement, wonder, affection, and frank desire.
He cleared his throat. “I should like to speak privately with you, if you are amenable,” he said quietly.
For a moment she couldn’t speak.
“Of course,” she finally managed on a whisper.
“Now, see here, Daphne . . .” Her father sounded nervous. And incensed.
Lorcan turned to her father and said very politely, “If you would be so kind as to excuse us for a moment, Lord Worth.”
It was not a question.
Her father, whether out of astonishment or outrage—or fear—wisely said nothing at all.
She led Lorcan into a tiny sitting room and shut the door. And locked it.
She knew everyone outside that door would press an ear against it. She didn’t care.
The settee wasn’t nearly as comfortable as the one in their suite at The Grand Palace on the Thames, but it was smaller, which meant they really had no choice but to sit very, very close. Her thigh right up against his hard one.
He took both of her hands in his.
His expression when he touched her nearly did her in. The relief in it. She nearly crumbled.
His thumbs moved in a slow, wondering caress over the back of her hands. As if he cherished every damned thing about her. As if he found everything about her a soft and lovely miracle.
“Daphne . . .” His voice was soft. A little gruff. “You love me, aye?”
She nearly laughed. She loved that he did not present this with any doubt.
She exulted that he knew her heart, and her most precious secret.
Her eyes filled with tears. “I love you. Aye,” she said thickly.
She watched these words transform him before her eyes. He was at once radiant and peaceful and certain.
He took a slow breath, accommodating the inrush of joy.
“I love you,” he confided to her.
He said it as though these were the secret words that rolled back the stone of a tomb. Like a vow. As though they were irrevocable law.
Her heart was wild with joy. She felt at one with the sun, she was so ablaze with it. How she’d wanted to be loved this way her entire life.
He cleared his throat.
“Daphne, I am here to tell you I am not going back to sea. I have joined Bolt, Hardy, and Delacorte as a member of the Triton Group, and when our agreement is made binding, I will officially be a land-bound merchant. Here is the draft of our partnership agreement.”
Not to be outdone by an earl, he’d brought documents.
She was astounded.
He released her hands, reached into his coat, and laid the documents on the table.
“I know you like an exquisite budget, Daphne. So if you’d like to peruse it, here is our proposed budget. And here are our projected earnings. And here is my expected share of them.” He pointed them out.
With a sense of unreality, hilarity, and genuine, delicious fascination, she did indeed take a little time to look at all of them. The numbers were practical yet heady.
“If we continue on this trajectory, we anticipate having a fleet of three to five ships within the next five years. I will be unbearably respectable. I might even run for Parliament.”
She gave a breathless laugh.
“I have twenty thousand five hundred and fifty-two pounds and a gold and ruby earring worth seven hundred and fifty pounds to my name. I have countless friends, some with titles and orangeries, some who slink through alleys at night. I doubtless have many enemies.”
He claimed one of her hands again.
“And I love you. I love you. I will lay down my body to keep you safe. I will pay your father’s debts—but one time only. I will buy you a home in London, lavish you with oranges and stockings, and with laughter and challenge. And I will spend the whole of my days making sure you understand the beauty of your own body and heart. No children will be more loved than ours. At night I will claim you, and make you mine again and again.”
He paused. “The pleasure I have known with you, lass . . .”
His voice cracked.
And just like that, Daphne’s body was on fire from head to toe.
“These are the terms of my offer, Daphne, and that is the nature of your risk. My fortune. My body. My heart.” He paused, and took in a long, steadying breath. “Me. I am offering me.” He waited, and what he saw in her face apparently gave him courage to continue. “I have come to ask you to marry me, and they are yours, if you would do me the extraordinary honor of being my wife.”
And once again, there it was. The choice to leap from a crate into the dark into his safe arms.
She was already soaring. Her eyes filled and tears fell in little rivers. Words were impossible.
“And I know I am a mad, mad bastard to ask it of you, when you could wed an earl and be a countess and be wealthy and titled. Mark my words, we will be rich. And my vow is this: you will not be a countess, but I will treat you like a queen the whole of your life. I will love you as though we invented love. And I will understand if the life I offer is not the one you wish to lead, and I will leave you with gratitude, and deep regret, and with my heart. For I will not give it to another. You will not see me again.”
She brushed her hand across her eyes. “Lorcan . . . never seeing you again . . . is the very worst thing I can imagine. Yes. Yes, I want you. All I want is you. I want to be your wife. And I cannot imagine a greater honor than to marry you.”
He closed his eyes briefly and his head dropped to his chest. His shoulders rose and fell in a great sigh.
“Oh, luv. We are going to be so happy.”
To belong forever to the person who had introduced her to herself. Who loved her for herself. Who was oranges, black coffee, whiskey, and sex personified. To be given this fierce, precious man to tend for the rest of her days. She’d endure all of it again—the broken heart and window escape, all of it—if it led to him.
He gathered her gently in his arms, which was where she belonged, after all. They had felt like her true home from the moment she’d leaped into them.
He kissed her like a man who knew he’d won the wager of a lifetime.
