* * *
KATHERINE WAITED UNTIL William had retired to his cabin that evening and knocked once on his door. Captain Warre was not the only one who would have regrets.
“A word, please,” she said tightly when William opened. He’d removed his turban, and his golden hair glinted in the lamplight. She stepped into his cabin and waited until he shut the door. An atlas lay open on the desk against the wall.
“Thought I’d see where I might go after you’ve claimed your title,” he said. “What do you think of Madagascar?”
“You betrayed me,” she said. William was her best friend in the entire world, and he’d lied to her. Was still lying to her. Her chest felt tight and hot as though she’d been speared.
William studied her for a long, quiet moment. Everything in his cabin glittered—the gold in his ears, the gilded scrollwork on the bedstead and dressing table he’d purchased in the Levant, the bejeweled waterpipe he’d taken from a ship bound from Tangier. “I would fall on my sword before I would betray you, Katherine.” There was no trace of his usual humor. His blue eyes glittered, too—hard, like sapphires. “Protect you, yes. Betray? Never.”
“Explain how lying to me is protecting me.”
“I suspect the punishment for mistreating the captain of a first-rate ship of the line would be most unpleasant.”
“You think me so stupid?”
“I think anger could blind you to the consequences of revenge, and I think you’ve spent your entire adult life in a world where the rules are nothing like those where we’re headed. It would be easy for you to underestimate the value of our latest cargo.”
“I assure you, I fully appreciate Captain Warre’s value.”
“That is precisely what I’m afraid of.”
“He’s got two hands like everyone else on board,” she said harshly, “and a strong back.” An image of that strong back leaped unhelpfully to mind, rippling with muscles beneath white linen.
“Katherine, you cannot—”
“Cannot what?” She rounded on him. “Cannot put him to work? Demand that he earn his passage?”
“You cannot mistreat him.”
“Beginning tomorrow, he will be under Rafik’s supervision. He will receive the same mistreatment as any other member of the crew. If the good captain perceives honest work as mistreatment, then I will gladly stand accused.”
William exhaled and rubbed the back of his neck. “Did he disclose himself to you?”
“Hardly. A loyal crew member recognized him and saw fit to inform me. But you—” She swallowed past the tightness in her throat. “You would have let me play the fool the entire voyage.”
“I have far too much respect for you to play you for a fool,” William said, his voice low and harsh in a tone he rarely used. He stepped close, framing her face in his hands. “You know that.”
“It was your duty to tell me his identity.” Because his identity changed everything.
Not everything.
Yes. Everything. Whatever misguided attraction she’d felt for Lieutenant Barclay—good God, for Captain Warre—was at this moment shriveling in her bosom.
William brushed her cheek and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s my duty to protect you, pet, and everyone aboard this ship. Can’t think of a worse time for you to finally come face-to-face with him. Too many uncertainties.”
When you are countess of Dunscore, Katie, men will bow at your feet like pagans before Isis.
Papa’s declaration reached out from a past she’d long since abandoned. If the Lords had their way, she would never be countess of Dunscore at all—never mind see anyone bow at her feet. Not that it mattered, except for Anne. She was doing this for Anne’s future, not her own.
“I never thought I would count you as one of those uncertainties,” she said.
“Couldn’t risk you dealing with him irrationally. Regardless of what you think, he knew from the first where my loyalties lie.”
Bah. “And now I know, as well,” she said, even though it wasn’t true.
“You don’t believe that.”
The touch of her dear friend made her want to lean into him as she’d done during those early days after their escape, when she’d been pregnant with Anne and terrified by an unknown future. Returning to Britain with a half-Moor child in her belly had been out of the question. So had been staying in Algiers. But William had found their solution. He had been her rock—at least, until she had learned to be her own rock, thanks to him. It was William who’d suggested she act as captain. William who’d stood to the side, teaching her everything he knew, knowing the independence it would give her. She owed him her life for that.
She stepped away from him. “If you ever lie to me again, I’ll run you through and toss your carcass to the gulls.”
“Agreed.” He watched her through eyes that knew her too well. “We were both captives, Katherine. I know only too well how badly the finger itches to point at someone other than the true culprits.” He paused. “I also know how easily old resentments can be intensified by more recent aggravations.”
The slightest tick of one dark gold brow told her exactly what he was thinking. “I assure you, my resentment toward Captain Warre needs no intensification,” she said. It was her own fault that William suspected she’d found Captain Warre attractive. She’d been too unguarded, too seduced by broad shoulders and sea-colored eyes.
She would have no trouble resisting them now.
HENRY’S CROSS WRECKED.
Nicholas Warre, Lord Taggart, stared numbly at the printed words. A fire crackled in the fireplace, but a chill shivered across his skin.
All hands lost...
The news screamed at him from the paper. He’d stared at it all afternoon. He’d stared until a cavern of emptiness hollowed out his body and sucked his mind dry.
First Robert, now James. His only brothers, dead.
Nick felt dead, too.
He leaned over James’s desk—his desk, now, though he didn’t deserve it—and cradled his head in his hands, fighting to breathe through a throat that felt swollen shut. Images darted through his mind—dark imaginings too easy to conjure of gigantic waves, splintering wood and the screams of drowning men. He squeezed his eyes shut, then pushed back suddenly from the desk, springing to his feet, turning toward the fire.
Bates’s knock sounded at the door.
Nick stared into the flames. “Come in,” he said woodenly.
“Lady Ramsey has arrived, your lordship.”
“Send her in.”
The rustle of yards of fabric and lace preceded Honoria into the study. “Snuffboxes, Nicholas!” his sister declared as she entered the room. “They’re hawking snuffboxes with his likeness on the lid!”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” He gripped the mantel and dropped his head to his forearm. There would be no such thing as a private mourning.
“Is there nothing we can do to preserve the family’s dignity?”
“I’m little match for