Promise Me Tonight (25 page)

“But—”

“No, regardless of what you say, you wanted to marry her. What I don’t understand is why you ran after the wedding.”

“I slept with her once,” James said. “I can’t do it again.”

“That bad, eh? So keep a mistress. You can bloody well afford it, and most men—”

“No,” James cut him off, “that isn’t the problem. Far, far from it.”

“Then why?”

“Do you believe in omens?”

Ethan halted, thrown by the abrupt change in subject. “An omen as in, ‘Red sky at night, sailor’s delight; red sky at morning, sailor’s warning’? Aye, every sailor knows there is more than a mite of truth in that. Why?”

“I had a vision, a premonition actually, before Isabella and I were wed.”

“Go on.”

James closed his eyes and raked a hand through his hair. His voice dropped to a near whisper as the awful scene played out in his mind once more. “It was terrible. I was back at my mother’s funeral, but I was a grown man, not young, as I should have been. It was a miserable day with storm clouds hovering. I stepped to the edge of the grave, ready to toss a handful of dirt atop the coffin, when I saw that it was missing its lid. It was then I realized it was not my mother and sister being buried. It was Isabella. Our babe was nestled by her side.”

“Jesus,” Ethan breathed.

James nodded, opening his eyes. Their expression was bleak as he said, “It was a warning. I can’t be around my wife without wanting her, but I can’t have her. I can’t risk it. If she gets with child, it will kill her, just as it killed my mother. I can’t—” He drew in a shuddering breath. “I can’t lose her.”

Ethan was silent for a long moment. “I don’t believe it was an omen,” he finally said. “If it was a warning at all, it was one conjured by your mind out of fear that you were coming to care for her too strongly. This premonition, as you call it, allows you to justify your distance from her, both physically and emotionally. You can run away and tell yourself that it is for her own good, that you are doing it to protect her.”

“I
am
doing it to protect her,” James growled.

“Did her mother have any problems bearing children?” Ethan asked. “I recall you said your wife has scads of siblings.”

James crossed his arms over his chest and glowered.

“Right, then. There is no reason, other than this vision of yours, to think that your wife would have complications in childbirth. Because of your past, you are scared of ever getting too close, scared of ever caring too much, but it’s too late, James. You have fallen in love with your wife, and you have fallen hard.”

“I have not.”

“Yes,” he said firmly, “you have. The question is, are you going to spend the rest of your life running? We could all, any one of us, die tomorrow for any one of a thousand reasons. No one knows how much time he’s been given.”

James clenched his jaw. “Enough.”

His friend refused to heed the warning. “Do you want to spend that time miserable, as you are now? Would you not prefer to be with your wife, to raise children in the loving family you were denied? And what about an heir? Who stands to inherit if you remain childless?”

“Upon my death, the Sheffield line will come to an end, and I presume the title and estates will revert back to the crown.” He laughed bitterly. “My grandfather will be rolling in his grave when that day arrives.”

Ethan’s brow creased into lines of disapproval. “I didn’t realize you were so selfish,” he said quietly.

“
Selfish?
” James exploded. His outburst attracted the notice of some sailors working on the deck beneath them who looked up, shading their eyes against the sun, to see what the commotion was. James took a few steps away from the railing and lowered his voice. “You grew up in a family. You have a father, a mother, and siblings who all love you. You have no idea what it was like for me growing up, the things I had to listen to.”

“Stop thinking about yourself. You hated your grandfather. I understand that. He was a cold, unfeeling bastard, and I don’t blame you for feeling the way you do, but you cannot think solely about yourself.”

“I—”

Ethan slashed a hand through the air, silencing him. “Every decision you make, every action you take affects others. If all your lands revert to the crown, your tenants will suffer. Instead of having a lord who fairly manages his estates and looks after them, they will be at the mercy of Prince George’s greed. Even though your grandfather is six feet under, you are still letting him control you; your hatred is dictating your life.”

“Excuse me, Captain,” a young officer shouted as he hurried toward them.

“I will be with you directly, Lieutenant,” Ethan called out in response. He turned to face James. “All I ask is that you think about what I’ve said,” he told him, and then strode off.

James resumed his position at the rail, staring mindlessly out at the dazzling azure waters of the Mediterranean, his mind awhirl in a chaotic jumble of half-formed thoughts. For the first time since he had been at sea, he was glad for the general inactivity aboard the
Theseus
. It seemed he had quite a bit of thinking to do.

Off the coast of Egypt in the Mediterranean

1 August 1798

The search for the French fleet was over. Four days earlier, Captain Troubrige of the
Culloden
had received confirmation that the French ships had sailed east. Again the British fleet had set off for the Egyptian coast, and they had reached Alexandria earlier in the day. Where it had been empty just weeks before, the port was now filled with French transport vessels. Nelson had directed his fleet to continue sailing along the coast.

The ships had all readied for action; the decks were clear and the guns stood at ready. Dusk had just fallen when Nelson’s flagship,
Vanguard
, flew the signal that the enemy was in sight. James was standing beside Ethan on the quarter-deck when the flag was raised. Ethan had been watching the line of French ships through a wooden spyglass, which he offered over to James. Vice Admiral Brueys d’Aigalliers, commanding the French, had his line of battle chained together and anchored in the shallow waters of the Bay of Aboukir.

“It’s time, then,” James said, handing the heavy glass back to his friend. During the months of searching for the French fleet, Admiral Nelson had made a practice of frequently assembling his captains and discussing plans for the eventual battle. James knew from Ethan that their instructions were to attack with immediacy and aggression. As the last glimpse of the burning, red sun disappeared from the horizon, heavy fire began to rain down from the French batteries on Aboukir Island; broadsides followed from the enemy ships.

Ethan turned to James, anticipation lighting his eyes. “Yes,” he echoed, “it’s time.” He moved into action, every inch the captain of the ship, barking out orders and encouraging his crew. The men were ready for this. They weren’t eager, precisely, but after months of waiting, they were ready—ready to have done with it.

James understood completely. He was ready to go home. He had done a lot of thinking since the day Ethan had confronted him. He wasn’t sure he had everything quite sorted out, but one thing had become very clear: He was in love with his wife. He was in love with Isabella. And instead of the panicky fear he had expected would accompany such a revelation, he felt only peace. He had spent his life fighting, rebelling against his grandfather, battling his emotions, struggling to keep people from becoming too close.

But somehow, Isabella had slipped past his defenses and breached the walls surrounding his heart. He was done fighting her, done fighting fate. He had lost the battle, but in doing so, he had won something far more precious. For the first time since the day he had arrived at Sheffield Park, James was filled with a desire to
live
, with hope for the future—a future with Isabella. For reasons beyond his comprehension, she loved him.

Oh, no doubt he had fouled things up royally by leaving her, and she would have kittens once she found out about the navy, but he was certain she still loved him. She’d said she always had and always would, and he would hold her to that. He didn’t deserve her, but he was going to do his damnedest to be worthy of her. He intended to spend the rest of his life devoting himself to her happiness, but first he had to survive. With a heavy heart, he took up his position at the rail, his pistol primed and loaded. Ethan knew he was a crack shot and had instructed him to take out the captain of the enemy ship once they were anchored alongside her.

With the northern wind behind them, the British fleet, led by the
Goliath
and the
Zealous
, attacked. In a surprise maneuver, the
Goliath
’s captain steered the ship toward the landward side of the line, where he anchored and opened fire. The
Zealous
followed suit, followed by the
Orion
and the
Audacious
.

Ethan also directed the
Theseus
on the landward path, sailing down the line of French ships before anchoring and engaging the French
Spartiate
. James braced himself as the first round of French broadsides shook the ship, tearing through the gun deck. The
Theseus
returned fire, splitting the hull of the enemy ship. James scanned the deck, looking for the French captain. Unable to locate him, he aimed instead for a sailor manning one of the swivel guns. When packed with chain shot, those small cannons could quickly destroy a ship’s masts and rigging.

The next round of broadsides came crashing into the upper deck, not ten feet from James. He looked on in horror as men he knew, men he had come to admire, were blasted into pieces. Others were felled by the heavy iron balls, or maimed by the splinters flying up from the shattered wooden deck. He steeled himself against the carnage and focused on reloading his pistol and sighting his next target.

It was impossible, however, to block out the screams of the wounded. Their cries melded into a symphony of pain, a haunting contrast to the faint strains of “Rule, Britannia” coming from the band playing on the deck of the
Vanguard
. Nelson’s flagship had entered the battle on the seaward side and was anchored opposite the
Theseus
, attacking the
Spartiate
from the other side.

The fighting raged on for hours. The ship’s deck ran red, and the dead were pitched overboard to make room for the wounded. Both ships had sustained heavy damage, but the end was far from near. It was a battle to the death—every sailor there knew it—but James refused to die. Not when he had such a very good reason to live. His clothes were torn and spattered with the blood of his fallen compatriots, but it wasn’t for them that he soldiered on.

When his arms ached from the continuous loading and firing of his gun and his legs began to buckle from the strain of bracing himself against the explosions reverberating through the ship, James conjured up Isabella’s image to give himself strength. When the heavy clouds of smoke that filled the sky burned his lungs and stung his eyes, he formed Isabella’s name on his parched lips to give himself focus. And when despair and exhaustion threatened to overwhelm him and drag him down, he summoned the sweet sound of Isabella’s voice promising to love him for all eternity to give himself hope.

He was given a brief respite when the battle paused after the French flagship, the
Orient
, caught fire; anticipating the explosion that would result when the flames reached the ammunition stored in the ship’s magazine, all the ships hurriedly tried to distance themselves from the blazing wreck. As an extra precaution, the sailors doused each ship’s rigging and woodwork with seawater. The
Orient
’s crew began abandoning ship, the men throwing themselves into the water and swimming as if their lives depended on it, which of course, they did.

When the blast hit, it was as if the fires of hell had come racing up from underneath the sea’s floor and burst through the water’s surface, destruction and devastation following in their wake. Burning pieces of the ship and its crew were hurled hundreds of feet into the air. As sailors of both fleets looked on in shock, all the firing ceased; an eerie silence hung over the scene for seemingly endless moments, and then the debris from the demolished ship began to rain down until the whole bay was covered with the scorched, broken bodies of the dead.

Bile rose up in James’s throat at the sight. Although the French were the enemy, every man out there was someone’s son, brother, husband, or father. Most of the poor bastards probably hadn’t had a clue what it was they were fighting for, he thought, wondering what would become of all the loved ones left behind. So absorbed was he in his meditations, James failed to notice that the fighting had resumed until he felt the searing pain of a bullet slamming into his right shoulder. He grasped the rail, stunned by how badly it hurt.

As he grappled with the pain, a second ball tore into his torso, just beneath his ribs. He staggered backward, clutching his midsection with his left arm and trying to halt the rush of blood. He slumped down on the deck as blackness began to creep in at the edges of his vision. Ethan’s worried face swam before his eyes, and then there was only darkness. He heard his friend yelling for the ship’s surgeon, but the sound was growing fainter and fainter.

It was over, he realized. He was going to die there, bleeding to death on a ship in the Mediterranean, far away from Isabella. He had never even told her that he loved her. There was so much he hadn’t done, so many regrets that weighed on him, but that was the worst. Mustering what little strength he still possessed, he called out Ethan’s name.