What would she tell him then?
Lorena wondered as much all through dinner and the tale of William’s near brush with death. When Drew could no longer keep his eyes open after such an exciting day, Brogan carried him off to bed. She watched from the doorway as he tucked the coverlet around the boy, then Captain Briggs in beside him with a poignancy that made it easy to imagine his doing so countless times before. He brushed the curls off Drew’s forehead and kissed him good-night.
Brogan lingered a moment longer. When she saw him straighten, Lorena backed away from the doorway to allow him entrance into the great cabin. He closed Drew’s door softly behind him.
Brogan was frank with her. He shared his earliest memories of the orphan asylum and his first days at sea. He told of lean times before the war, when he and Jabez and countless other unemployed sailors crowded the docks of Boston Harbor. The despair, the hunger, the boredom, until one day he caught the eye of a wealthy widow, several years older than himself.
Within weeks they were married in a civil service by a justice of the peace. Brogan found positions for himself and Jabez with the Wild Pilgrim and left his bride for a four-month term aboard the privateer. When he returned he learned she was with child.
Good fortune had found him at last, he believed. He was young and naive in that, until then, he’d spent his life at sea far from female society. He fancied himself in love. Or perhaps he only imagined he loved Abigail for the son she gave him.
“Abigail was not the most attentive of mothers, but I was more than willing to make up the difference so that Benjamin never felt unloved or neglected. We were the closest to a family I’d ever known, but two years after his birth, on the eve of my departure to take command of the Black Eagle, she informed me she had sent him away. She refused to reveal where.”
“She presented herself as a widow,” Lorena explained in her own defense.
“And yet my existence does not come as a shock to you. You understand who I am? You believe me?”
Lorena gazed at his proud, earnest expression with eyes of compassion. “I believe you. I’m sorry for all you’ve suffered, but to our minds you were a nameless casualty of the war.”
A worried crease appeared between his brows. “Who told you I was a casualty?”
“My . . . my uncle Stephen.”
“Stephen Huntley? The man suspected of fleeing from the fire that took Abigail? Then the rumors were true? Stephen was there the night Abigail died? They were acquainted?” Turning from her, Brogan began to pace anxiously. “More than acquainted, I’m beginning to suspect. It seems while I was at sea, she sought the attentions of a rich companion. A benefactor. Could that be why my promotion meant nothing to her? It does make perfect sense. She hoped to rid herself of her husband, and our son stood in her way. Is this true? Am I correct?”
“Yes, I believe so,” Lorena acknowledged, hoping to put an end to his torturous, racing thoughts. “She wanted Ben to disappear. They both did. As far as my father and I understood, Ben had no one. No one who cared for him. We gave him a loving home when we thought he had none.”
“And changed his name.”
“To shield him from his past. To raise him as one of our own. As a Huntley.”
“Your uncle’s family refused to see me. Their attorney warned me away with the assurance that none of them had any knowledge of an Abigail Talvis or her child.”
“They spoke the truth. They never knew anything of my uncle’s association with your wife,” she told him.
“In all my inquiries, it was as though Benjamin never existed. Duxboro was my last hope . . . a hope that I might learn something, anything, some small bit of history about Stephen Huntley that could produce a lead. I came for information. Instead, I discovered my son. Not in hiding but living for all the world to see as Drew Huntley.”
Lorena swallowed uncomfortably. “You must have suffered quite the shock.”
Irony rumbled through Brogan’s laugh. “Obviously he’d been well cared for, but all I could think of was getting him back. All the charity in the world cannot replace the bond of blood. One’s own family. And so I devised a plan. I commissioned a ship, biding my time until she was complete, when I could sail away in her . . . with my son.”
Lorena found herself at a loss while she absorbed this knowledge. Brogan had planned to steal Drew out of Duxboro. In the very ship her father had so painstakingly built him. All this happening while George had been purchasing vomit powder for the purpose of entrapping her. If Brogan had followed through with his scheme, Papa would have lost both his children.