The Captain's Caress (36 page)

“No you can’t. In a minute I’ll see your eyes begin to turn green, and I’ll know you’re out of reach.” She moved away from him. “Please listen. This is very important.

“What I’m trying to say is that according to everyone else what we’re doing is totally wrong. As far as they’re concerned, I’m Gowan’s wife. It really doesn’t matter that I was forced to marry him. If I suffer in silence they’ll pity me, when they remember to think of me, but if I pretend to be your wife they’ll destroy us. They won’t care how bad Gowan is. They’ll only think I’ve committed a crime that cannot go unpunished.”

“No one can destroy us if we don’t let them,” Brent declared.

“Try to understand,” she begged. “They won’t care if I’m your
mistress,
but I won’t be allowed to be your
wife.
They’ll refuse to recognize me, and I’ll be ostracized if I attempt to force my way into their midst.”

“I’ll see that you’re invited anywhere you want to go.” Brent now had a martial light in his eyes.

Summer smiled lovingly at him, but shook her head. “This is one time you can’t change the rules. You can’t force people to accept those who trample on their social customs. That threatens everything they believe in, and they’ll fight back. It wouldn’t be easy for you either.”

“I’ve been an outcast for years, but I’ve succeeded quite well in spite of it.”

“It’s not only you I’m concerned about. There are children to consider.”

“We don’t have any children to worry about.”

“We will, and I don’t want them to be brought into this world as bastards. And they would be because I’m not your wife, no matter how much I ought to be,” she added quickly to forestall his protest. “It was wrong of my father to sell me to my husband, but that doesn’t make the marriage illegal. Our children would never be accepted by the only strata of society they could really be a part of. Do you think the marquise would allow one of her sons to marry our daughter, even though she herself has seduced half the men in Havana?”

“No,” he admitted thoughtfully, “she wouldn’t.”

“Neither would anyone else, and you couldn’t expect our children to understand that.” Summer paused briefly, and then continued as by an act of will. “I know what it’s like to be unable to claim your rightful father, and I could never do that to a child of mine.”

“What do you mean? Your parents were married.”

Summer hung her head. “I never told you before, but Ashton is not my father. I didn’t know it myself until a few months ago. He probably never would have told me, but when he ordered me to marry the earl, I vowed I’d run away or do anything else I could to keep from marrying a man I’d never seen. That’s when he threatened to disown me, to throw me out of the house and tell everyone I wasn’t his daughter. He swore he’d cut me off without a penny so no one would marry me and I’d starve or be reduced to doing anything to stay alive.”

“The rotten bastard ought to have his neck wrung,” Brent said savagely.

“He was drunk, and scared. He had enormous gambling debts, and was afraid of what would happen to him if he couldn’t pay them off.”

“Then who is your father?”

“My mother created a terrible scandal by eloping with Frederick Boyleston. Somehow he died a few days later, and she was forced to marry Ashton and come out here. I’m Frederick Boyleston’s daughter.”

“Thank God for that.” Brent was unmoved. “Ashton is a commoner, but Boyleston comes from a good family.”

“But I’m a
bastard,”
she nearly shouted. “Don’t you understand? You’ve been eaten up by hate for years because you can’t reclaim your own land. I can’t claim
anything.
My mother was the only person who would acknowledge me, and she’s dead. Do you think the Boylestons would claim a penniless bastard? Mother’s father disowned me before I was born, and Ashton is liable to do the same the next time he gets drunk. I’d be ready to swear an oath that the earl would rather have me drowned at sea than admit his wife is illegitimate.”

Brent tried to calm her, but Summer was too worked up. The horrible secret had been festering inside her for months and she had to get it all out.

“I can never claim to be part of the Boyleston family, and our children wouldn’t be accepted as members of yours. I can’t bear to think of leaving you, but I can’t face a life of ostracism. It would ultimately destroy us, if not because of what it did to us, because of what it did to our children.”

“You don’t have to worry about any of that,” he said, taking her into his arms and holding her close. “I promise that before long we will be man and wife in the eyes of all the world, not just ours.”

“Don’t you understand? Don’t you care?
I’m a bastard!
There’s no way you can get around that.”

Brent spoke sharply. “I’d rather have you illegitimate than think that Charles Ashton’s blood runs in the veins of every child I sire.” He put his fingers to Summer’s lips to silence her protest. “I don’t care who your father was. I fell in love with you as Ashton’s daughter, and I’ll go on loving you as Boyleston’s. It doesn’t make any difference to me.” He stifled another protest. “Nobody knows anything about Boyleston and no one ever will. Your mother died without breaking her silence and Ashton has no reason to break his. But I can offer him plenty of reasons
not
to change his story. So, as far as the world is concerned, none of this ever happened. You have two legal and respectable parents, and before long you’re going to be my legal and respectable wife.”

“How?” she asked, hardly daring to hope he could find a way to dispel the troubles that dogged her heels.

“Smith and the lawyers will unravel the tangle.”

“Isn’t it impossible unless Gowan dies?”

“Maybe not. Since you’ve never met your husband and were married against your will, the best solution would be to have the marriage annulled. However, we may have to settle for something less satisfactory.”

“What?” she said, almost afraid to ask.

“I’ve told Smith that if things begin to look impossible, he’s to steal the records and destroy them.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” she gasped, horrified.

“I’d sack every church in New Spain if it would free you from that marriage. I’m not going to let anyone or anything stand in the way of your happiness.”

“Can it really be done without causing a scandal or doing something terrible that people will never forget?”

“I’m a rich man, and I can’t think of a better way to use my money than to buy your freedom.”

“Can you promise something like that?”

“Do you doubt me?”

“No, but…”

“No
buts.
Either you do or you don’t. Do you believe in me?”

“You know I do.”

“Do you believe that I will do what I say I’ll do?”

“Yes, as far as you are able.”

“There you go, qualifying your trust again. Have you ever known me to fail?” he challenged. “Come on, have you?”

“No, I haven’t,” she confessed with a trace of a smile, “not even when I thought there was no way you could succeed. But then you never took on the whole western world.”

“Then forget all your fears. We’ve wasted too much time on them already.”

“That sounds agreeable to me.” Summer repressed an urge to ignore any possible obstacles to her happiness. “I would like nothing better than to settle down here and raise a family of strong sons and beautiful daughters, but there is one more question that has to be faced.” She hesitated, but knew she had to go ahead. “What about your home in Scotland?”

“I’ve told you before that I no longer have a home in Scotland.” His voice was harsh, a look of dulled hatred filled his eyes, and his hands instinctively tightened on the reins. The horses reacted sharply to the sudden pressure on their tender mouths, and Summer allowed Brent time to get himself and the horses under control before she spoke again.

“What about your estates? Are they still yours?”

“As long as I pay the taxes Gowan can’t take them from me unless I die without an heir, but as long as I’m outlawed they might as well be his personal property.” He ground his teeth. “But I have better land here even if there’s not so much of it. Why should I saddle myself with a run-down estate that’s covered by snow half the year?”

“Will you be content here?”

“Yes!” That one strangled syllable convinced Summer that no matter what Brent did with the rest of his life, he would never forget his home or the manner in which he had been forced to leave it.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” he asked after a prolonged silence.

“No,” Summer answered quietly. “You could forget if you had left on your own, but not when you were driven out against your will.”

“You’re as bad as Smith. There’s no reason to go back. The estate has been going to ruin for years. My father went to sea to find the money to restore it, but it would now take a fortune to put Windswept back on its feet. It would be years before it could begin to pay back the investment.”

“Have you forgotten your father’s money?”

“That’s beyond reach. My father trusted Gowan so completely that there’s no way to prove the money ever existed, much less that it was mine. If any proof does exist, it’s in Gowan’s hands.”

“Can’t the courts help you?”

“The courts are Gowan’s trump card. He doesn’t have to lift a finger against me. He can even pretend to see to my part as my guardian and trustee while the courts do his dirty work for him. He’s required to uphold any verdict they reach, and since there’s only one verdict they
can
reach, he has me neatly boxed in.”

“But someone must know something.”

“After what happened to Ben, no one is going to come forward to speak against him.”

“There’s got to be some way.”

“I’ve spent years trying to think of one, but I can’t even get near Scotland as long as I’m accused of murder. That was Gowan’s master stroke. There’s no way I can be cleared, not with his men waiting to swear that Ben was last seen alive with me screaming at him.”

“Were you?”

“Yes. I went mad with rage when he told me what Gowan had done, and I went straight to the castle and confronted Gowan with everything. Fool! Somehow I expected he would confess and everything would right itself. That was stupid, but I was too young and angry to think; I couldn’t see that the most likely result would be that Gowan would find a way to get rid of me.”

“People would have suspected him first if anything had happened to you.”

“Not when no one knew about the money. AH anyone knows is that I’m supposed to have killed that old man.”

“What did happen to him?”

“I don’t know. Someone must have overheard enough to tell Gowan that I knew the truth. Ben and I left the tap room still arguing, and we separated at the edge of the village. They found him in a ditch not far from his sister’s cottage. He had been hit over the head and strangled. My riding crop was found nearby. I sealed my own fate by running away.”

“There must be a way to prove your innocence.”

“No way and no reason. I have everything I want right here.”

“But Smith says you’ll never be happy until you go back.”

“Smith is a romantic fool for all his efficiency,” declared Brent. “He listened to me too often those first years. All I could think about then was how much I hated Gowan. I counted the days until I would be able to wreak my vengeance. But when I saw you things began to change. I didn’t care about revenge anymore. It took me a while to find that out, but now Scotland seems far away, too remote to be an important part of my life ever again.”

“I can’t believe that I can be a substitute for a lost estate.” Summer was not sure quite what to think.

“I’d forgo the whole of Scotland before I’d hand you over to Gowan for even one hour.”

Overcome by this tribute, Summer abandoned her effort to make Brent realize how important his past still was to him. She feared he would never be content as long as his family’s name was sullied, but she decided she would talk of this some other time. She had never experienced the electrifying feeling of having the man of her dreams tell her she was more valuable than an estate, and she intended to bask in his love and enjoy his adulation to the fullest. She tightened her hold on Brent and leaned her head against his shoulder.

“Do you love me enough to let me change the house?” she asked, looking up into his eyes and giving him her most tempting smile.

“Keep smiling at me like that, and I will let you tear it down block by block.”

“I don’t mean to do anything so drastic,” she assured him, satisfied that he had given her permission to proceed. “I only want to open it up to the sunshine. It’s so dark I feel I’m in a cave when I’m in that main hall.”

“I’ve spent my whole life in the open, so you have my permission to do whatever you like.”

Summer sat up, eyes alight, words about to cascade from her lips.

“Provided I approve of it first,” he added hastily.

Her pent-up energy escaped in a chuckle. “I knew you were going to say something like that. You probably won’t even allow me to use the estate carpenters.”

“They’ll be working on the mill, or the barns, or building kegs for the rum. You and I will have to build it with our own hands.”