Sophia James - The Wild Wellingham Brothers - High Seas To High Society / One Unashamed Night / One Illicit Night / The Dissolute Duke

‘My father was a man who felt that the oceans were his own. Any oceans, but more especially those around the Turks Island Passage. If he had not seen the Caroline that day—’ She stopped as she saw his lips twitch and rephrased her words. ‘Your loss of sight was a direct result of my father’s greed.’

‘My loss of sight was a direct result of my own need to protect my brother; if it had not happened in the Caribbean, it might have happened somewhere else. On the high mast of an ocean-bound ship or in the slow roll of a carriage on the hills before Falder. Fate, Emerald, or destiny. Call it what you will. I do not blame him and I do not blame you. There is, however, something that you could do for me.’

‘Yes?’

‘Marry Asher.’

She almost laughed, but stopped herself at the last moment. He was deadly serious. She could see it in every line of his face.

‘I think marriage is the last thing that your brother would want from me.’

‘You are the only one who can save him.’

‘Save him from what?’

‘From himself. He blames himself for everything.’ He reached down to feel the seat of the chair beside him and lowered himself into it before continuing. ‘When Melanie caught a cold, she went to bed with camphor and honey drinks. When it got worse, the doctor was called. And when it got worse still, my mother held her hand while she breathed her last. If Asher had been at Falder, the result would have been exactly the same. He could not have saved her. But a healthy person can die inside just as easily as a sick one and that is what he has done. Ever since.’

Emerald was astonished. She could barely believe what he was saying to her. The power of it! And Taris was close to his brother. Close enough to truly know what drove him, what hurt him, what made him who he was. Could what he said be true? Could she help him in the same way that he had helped her?

‘Don’t give up on him. Not yet. Can you at least promise me that?’

She took in a breath and nodded because she didn’t trust herself enough to speak and then she smiled. He would not see the movement.

‘Thank you.’

‘You saw me nod?’

‘I felt it. In the shift of light.’

‘Where is Asher?’ she added as he stood to leave.

‘He went to London on business. We have a number of ships due out to India.’

Emerald heard frustration in his voice. ‘In Jamaica I had dealings with a witch doctor who could heal just about anything—even some loss of sight.’

He laughed, a rich deep sound that resonated around the room. ‘You are the very first person to mention my affliction in the same breath as divulging a cure, Emerald. Yes indeed, you should suit our family well.’

And with that he was gone.

Asher spent the next week trying to make sense of everything that had happened, trying to dull the effect that Emerald Sandford had made on him and trying to get his life back into some sort of order.

On the third day in London he found himself in an establishment off Curzon Street; the moment he walked through the front doors, he knew it was a mistake.

Angela Cartwright, a handsome red-haired woman met him as he removed his gloves and hat, the neckline of her gown perilously low. Last time he had been here he had admired her obvious endowments. This time all he could think about were smaller breasts topped with shell-pink nipples and a liberal smattering of freckles.

Emerald.

To be thinking of her in a place like this worried him and he resolved to put her from his mind.

‘Why, your Grace, it has been some time since we have seen you here. All of six months, would it not be, Brigitte?’

A beautiful girl, standing against the far wall of the parlour, came forward, her light blue eyes alive with laughter and her brown hair caught in an intricate style at the back of her head before the length of silk tresses fell to her waist.

‘Indeed, your Grace. I think you were here last time with your friend Lord Henshaw. Is he well?’

‘Very.’ Accepting brandy, Asher drank heavily, reasoning that tonight he needed all the fortification he could get.

‘Perhaps I could show you the conservatory, your Grace,’ she added as she renewed his drink from a crystal decanter. ‘It is the latest addition to our household and has been very well received.’

On the edges of her practised French accent lingered the twang of the Covent Garden markets. Normally the contradictions would have amused him, but tonight he was vaguely angered by it, and bothered too by the over-embellished furniture and paintings depicting cherubs in various stages of undress. This place was the most exclusive of all the London brothels, yet it felt cheap in a way that it hadn’t before. And the churning dread in his stomach had absolutely nothing to do with anticipation.

In the conservatory, any inhibitions that Brigitte had displayed seemed largely gone and when he felt her fingers suggestively cup his genitals he moved back sharply.

Lord, why was he here?

Why was he not home at Falder with the green hills all about him and the beating ocean in the distance? And Emerald Sandford in his bed, warm and willing and beautiful? Because she was a liar and a cheat and the daughter of Beau Sandford and because everything she had ever told him had been based on her skewed version of the truth.

A room to one end of the structure had been fashioned into a bedchamber, its large four-poster draped in lawn. When Brigitte raised her arms to loosen her hairpins, he marvelled that the sight did not affect him in the least. All he wanted was gold mixed with red and entwined with the lightest of corn.

Emerald.

He made himself come forward and draw a finger against the warm smoothness of Brigitte’s skin, trailing his touch along the base of her jaw and down again into the softer places. A swelling bosom and milk-white complexion, the fat abundance of womanhood warm and pliable in his hands as she tipped back her head and groaned.

Emerald. He wanted Emerald. He wanted her joy and her fierce independence. He wanted the feel of her against him as they lay under the full light of a new moon, his ruined fingers curled into hers. Disorientated, he stood back and looked around. Uncertain. Desperate. To leave.

‘I am sorry,’ he said quietly, jamming a coin into her hand before moving away.

Away from the wrongness of Curzon Street, its inherent loneliness tempered only by rich fine drink and impossible dreams. This was not the way to forget Emerald. This was not the way to claw back a future and find again in his life a place where sheer emptiness did not consume him.

When he was outside he laid his head against the side of the building and thought.

The port beckoned as it always had with its freedom and smell and foreverness. The infinite blue of the waves and a horizon that did not finish. Adventure, new lands, the riches of the colonies spilling into his holds, spices, silks, tea.

As his driver pulled into the curb near him, he walked briskly across and ordered the coach to the docks. His newest sloop was a few weeks away from completion and he would benefit from a good bout of hard work.

She found the map on her bed after returning from a walk around the kitchen gardens with Alice.

Asher. He was back. He must have waited until he knew her to be gone from this chamber before depositing the parchment. It had been eight days since she had seen him and the exhaustion that had kept her in bed had dissipated into intermittent tiredness, and then disappeared altogether as the wounds at her waist healed into an itchy red.

Unrolling the parchment, her eyes skimmed across the tangents indicated. True west of Powell Point on the tip of the Ship Chan Cay. And a date. 1808. The year after her mother had gone. The year her father had acquired the Mariposa and dispensed with his life as a lord.