“Good God.” Nick came ashen-faced around the table, gaping as though James had just emerged from the tomb in his burial linens. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.
James inhaled deeply past the tightness of his throat, taking in Honoria’s tears and Nick’s damp eyes. Their mourning clothes. Their grief was part of the equation he hadn’t factored in.
The moment he set Honoria aside, Nick hugged him fiercely despite the onlookers. “My God!” Nick said, nearly squeezing the breath from James’s lungs. “It can’t be!”
“I say!” one of the guests exclaimed. “Extraordinary!”
So this was what resurrection felt like.
Nick stepped back, and Honoria quickly took his arm. “Sit! Eat! La, you look an absolute fright. Tell me you didn’t sail all the way home on some awful merchant ship—”
A jumble of speculation went up as everyone began to fire questions at once. James held up his hand. “Enough!” Under his breath to Nick, he said, “I need to speak with you privately.” And then, to Honoria, “I have business to take care of, Ree. As soon as it’s done, I shall be entirely yours. I promise.” He offered a slight bow to the guests. “My apologies. If you’ll excuse me.” On his way out, he paused to whisper to Bates. “Tell Lord Pennington not to let Mr. Holliswell leave.”
In the library, Nick gave him another rough embrace. When they broke apart, James felt a stab of raw emotion that matched the look on Nick’s face. It was a face much like his own—hard mouth, sharp cheekbones, dark brows over Mother’s green eyes. Nick’s wig hid whether the Croston gray had begun to plague him, and there was no trace of the dimple Mother said Nick had inherited from her paternal grandmother. They were all so fragmented now—James at sea, Nick and Ree here, none of them with children. For a moment his throat was too tight to speak.
The slightest change in events, and he might have perished and never seen Nick again.
“By what miracle did you survive the wreck?” Nick asked thickly.
By the miracle of Captain Katherine Kinloch. James inhaled deeply, shoving away thoughts of waves and wreckage.
“The reason I survived,” he said carefully, watching for Nick’s reaction, “the only reason, is because I was pulled half-dead from the water by Katherine Kinloch.”
Nick’s eyes widened, then narrowed as he made the connections. “Bloody hell.”
James stared at him. He tried to keep his voice calm. “It was an amazing coincidence of timing, really. I had been drifting for days on a piece of decking, you see, and she happened to be sailing for Britain to defend her estate against a bill of pains and penalties.”
“Bloody hell.” Nick turned away, bracing his hip with one hand and his forehead with the other.
“I would have thought ‘It’s a miracle’ would be the more appropriate phrase,” James said sharply.
“You think I don’t know that? Bloody hell!” He raked his fingers into his hair and came away looking as if he were the one who had just spent weeks at sea. “Katherine Kinloch? Are you certain?”
James raised a brow. “After four weeks—”
“Christ, never mind.” Nicholas gestured away the inanity of his question. “And so now I have her to thank for your return. This gets more bloody entertaining by the day.” He gave a mirthless laugh.
“Explain to me what ‘this’ is. A debt to Holliswell, I presume.”
This time Nick’s laugh sounded more like a strangle. “A hurricane in the West Indies, pirates off the horn of Africa, an entire cargo’s worth of repairs paid on bottomry to some opportunistic Boston shipwright—the value of nigh on our entire operation and investment, gone in one perfect coalescence of disaster.”
James stared at him in disbelief. “And in the time you’ve believed you had the title you haven’t paid him off?”
“You know me better than that,” Nick snapped.
“Sometimes I wonder if I know you at all. You’re part of the Croston lineage, Nick—not some yeoman’s son. Christ. Solving a problem in the most convoluted way possible—never mind throwing an innocent to the dogs in the meantime.”
“An innocent!” Nick stalked up to him. “Look here, James. If Katherine Kinloch made a successful escape from Barbary, why did she not go to our consulate? Why did she not write her father? Come home to Dunscore? Not only are her escapades in the Mediterranean disloyal to the Crown, they’re disgraceful to society and a downright bad example to our young ladies.”
James barked a laugh and hoped it was enough to hide his sudden urge to grab Nick by the throat. So much for the maudlin homecoming. “I hardly think captaining a ship will become society’s next vogue for young ladies. Are you trying to repay a debt, or have you launched a crusade for female propriety?” He cut to the chase. “I want you to end this business you’ve brought up with the Lords. Withdraw your support for the bill and find another way to repay Holliswell.”
“Drop my support for the bill?” Nick’s eyes darkened with raw emotion, then hardened. “Very well. Just as soon as you find another way to convince Holliswell to allow me to marry Clarissa.”
“That had bloody well better be a joke.”
“I’d planned to talk to him tonight—” He broke off. The rest of the sentence, before I learned I didn’t hold the title, hung in the air. But it was clear the cold single-mindedness in Nick’s eyes had nothing to do with the title and everything to do with Clarissa Holliswell.
“If Holliswell’s consent depends upon you being an earl, then there’s little I can do. I’ll not snuff myself out to further Miss Holliswell’s cause.” He went to the door and called Bates. “Send Holliswell here,” he ordered.
“Don’t be an ass. Damn it all, James, I don’t want to fight with you. Ten minutes ago I thought you were lost forever, and now—” He closed his eyes and cursed again. “If it’s a choice between Miss Holliswell’s future or Katherine Kinloch’s, I don’t have to tell you which I’ll choose.”
“The Dunscore title in exchange for Miss Holliswell’s hand and forgiveness of the debt you owe. Is that the arrangement?”
Nick stared at him. “Unlike Katherine Kinloch, Clarissa actually is an innocent. And fragile. It would be the easiest thing in the world for a man to crush her.” His jaw worked, and his eyes looked coldly through James to some imagined horror beyond. “I always thought men were fools to be taken in by blue eyes and pretty faces, but God—I can’t even look at her without wanting to do everything in my power to keep her safe and make her happy, which she bloody well won’t be if Holliswell marries her off to someone like Oakley.” Nick’s lip curled. “I can see you understand my predicament.”
Yes. But Katherine was in a predicament, as well. “You really imagine that once Holliswell has the title, he’s going to—”
“Uphold the bargain? Perhaps not. But I know for a fact he won’t allow the marriage without it.”
James went to pour brandy from what he would always think of as Father’s snifter. Maybe Nick was right about Clarissa. Probably he wasn’t. The effect was the same for Katherine either way. “I could loan you the money,” he said.
Nick laughed bitterly. “Exchange one creditor for another?”
“Give it to you, then.” Hell. If that was the cost of his debt to Captain Kinloch, it was a small price to pay.
“Even if my pride would allow me to accept, it would avail nothing. Holliswell wants the title.”
There