Kasey Michaels - Regency Vows

He stared at her back. Something had changed. “Magnificent.”

“This is where I always came to think. Or sometimes, just to look at the stars.” She tipped her head back and looked up. “Sometimes I would talk to my mother and imagine she was up there somewhere, listening.”

Her mother. James’s pulse ticked hard in his throat. There was only one reason she might be telling him this. Wasn’t there?

“I have no doubt that she was,” he said, and joined her at the rampart wall. His tongue was thick with the need to ask about her visit to Lord Deal. Perhaps—God. Perhaps this was her way of turning to him now that Deal had ended things. He took a drink of brandy and swallowed his questions, keeping his eyes fixed on the sea.

“Do you ever watch the stars?” she asked him.

He didn’t give a rat’s arse about the bloody stars. Not right now. “At sea,” he told her. “On the night watch.”

“Mmm. The stars are beautiful at sea.”

Marry me, Katherine. He would have to say it sometime.

“Sometimes we watched the stars in Algiers,” she said quietly. “Mejdan’s fourth daughter had a small telescope that she would set up in the courtyard, and we would take turns viewing the stars and planets.”

Every muscle tensed. She noticed, and he felt her tense, too. “You don’t wish me to speak of that,” she said.

“You may speak of whatever you damn well please.” Sick apprehension caught him in the gut, but whatever horrors she revealed, he could withstand it.

But why now? Here?

“I declined Lord Deal’s offer of marriage,” she told him instead.

“His offer.” For a heartbeat the world froze.

“It was pure kindness,” she said quietly. “Lord Deal is a dear friend—he would do anything for Papa. For me.”

Despite their conversation earlier. James’s heart thundered in his chest. If she had accepted, he would have killed Deal with his bare hands. But then—

“You declined?” A powerful sense of victory surged through him.

“He wasn’t what I wanted.” Hope flooded him, but then she added, “Not that it wouldn’t have been...tolerable.”

“Tolerable.”

“Living with a kind man is not so awful.” She looked him straight in the eye. “Anne’s father was such a man.”

That quickly, they were back to Algiers. He tried to digest her words but couldn’t. “You describe your captor as tolerable?”

“No. I describe him as kindhearted.”

Kindhearted. James thought about the time he’d spent in Salé trying to negotiate her freedom, only to discover she’d been gifted to al-Zayar.

“Full of smiles and laughter, if not vim and vigor,” she went on quietly. Directly. Softly, with something like nostalgia in her voice. “His physicians said he had a bad heart. But he loved to play in the courtyard with the children, and he treated his dogs like royalty. No creatures were ever so pampered.”

“His dogs.”

“Spoiled. Each and every one.”

“And his slaves?”

Even in the darkness, he saw her eyes flash. “The dreadful tale of ravishment and horror you imagine is the stuff of novels.”

“Anne’s existence says it isn’t.”

Her hand flew up to slap him. He caught her arms and held it firmly. “I meant no insult by that.” Bathed in starlight, her face looked like porcelain. He felt her arm relax, and he released it.

“I need you to understand,” she said desperately, gripping his shirt. “You must understand.”

Ah, God. He framed her face, pushed his fingers into her hair. “I do. I do understand. God knows, we tried to convince al-Zayar to accept a ransom.” The futility of it stung bitterly even now. “I can only imagine how you must have prayed—”

“No—that’s not it at all. Don’t you see? Can’t you see how much better my life was with Mejdan than it would have been if I’d been ransomed and brought home?”

“Better!” He tightened his fingers in her hair, wanting the impossible: to kill a man that, according to her testimony before the committee, was already dead.

“You know bloody well the life that awaited me here. The whispers, the ostracism, the kind of man who would have offered for poor, ruined Lady Katherine.”

He forced himself to inhale. “And the alternative?”

“Studying the stars through Kisa’s telescope.” Her expression softened, and her fisted hands uncurled against his chest. “Savoring pomegranate seeds on a hot day. Trying not to laugh when Mejdan’s mother scolded us for talking too much.” She searched his face. “Please understand, James. I thought I would live there forever. It wasn’t a large household. We all lived together—Mejdan’s wives, daughters.”

Concubines.

“They were my friends. My family, even.”

“Until al-Zayar died.”

A shadow darkened her eyes.

“You grieve for him.” He caught himself before sharper words shot from his lips.

“He never mistreated me. It could have been so much worse. Would have been, if his mother hadn’t helped me that night. James, please—”

“I know. I know.” He struggled to calm himself in the face of something he couldn’t change. “I understand.”

* * *

KATHERINE COULD SEE it was a lie. Even in the near-dark, his murderous expression was clear: he wanted to raise Mejdan from the dead just for the pleasure of killing him. Perhaps it had been a mistake to entrust James with this. But if they were to be married...

Oh, God.

Perhaps this entire thing was folly. He still had not renewed his proposal. Marry me, Katherine. The words were so simple. Why had he not said them?

She needed to make him understand about Algiers. “Without Riuza’s help, I would have been trapped when Mejdan’s son took over the household, and all could have been exactly as you imagine.” James’s chest was taut beneath her hands, rising and falling with his angry breath.

“You should have gone to the consulate.”

“With Anne in my belly?”

“At least you would have been safe!”

“I was safe.”

“Rowing out with William to steal a ship from the harbor? Good God. When I think what you must have endured...” His arms came around her, and he held her tightly against him.

His furious heartbeat thudded in her ear. “Endure is relative. You know that.”

“You never should have had to endure anything,” he said against her hair. “And I intend to see that you never do again.”

Never again. She pulled back a little and tried to read his thoughts, but couldn’t. She made herself take a chance. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life seeing pity in your eyes and knowing you see me as a tragedy.”

“That’s not what I see, Katherine. Not at all.” She saw the moment he realized what she’d said. His hands came to her face. “Then you’ll marry me?” The words might have sounded like a command if not for the uncertainty coloring them.

“I will.” She barely managed the words.

His hands tightened a little on her cheeks. “Immediately. Tomorrow morning.”

It was mere hours away. Her pulse danced wildly. “I suppose that would be wise,” she said, cursing the nerves in her voice. “Under the circumstances. Do you not agree?”

A muscle flexed in his jaw, and triumph flashed in his eyes. Instead of answering, he kissed her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

NICK SAT ACROSS the desk from Lord Cantwell, negotiating his own future with all the warmth and excitement of a shipping transaction. In fact, it was a shipping transaction—a bloody irregular one.

“I have good reason to believe my daughter is headed for the Mediterranean,” Cantwell was saying. “You would agree to pursue her all the way there, if necessary?”