“Abigail was with no other man at the time she was with me,” Brogan asserted. “I know this for a fact.”
“No, Captain, she was with child before she met you and deliberately led you to believe you were her baby’s father. I regret I must inform you that you have been the victim of a cruel deceit. Drew . . . Benjamin is not your son. He is the offspring of my brother Stephen. My nephew. But not even he, poor child, knows this. Lorena and I have allowed him to believe his father perished at sea.”
Brogan struggled against accepting such a possibility. He couldn’t think. He felt numb. Abashed. With all he had endured for his son’s sake . . . no, it could not be true. It was inconceivable.
“I would have thought it beneath you to concoct such a wretched lie in order to keep my son,” he fired out, though in his heart Brogan knew Nathaniel Huntley was not a man to speak falsely.
Huntley’s cheeks paled between a set of ginger-brown side whiskers tinged with gray. “Sadly, it is the truth, Captain.” The man’s brow creased as he stepped away from the secretary to draw closer to Brogan. “My brother welcomed the prospect of an ill-born son as much as he did the tainting of his good name. Marriage was out of the question, and his mistress—your wife—was unwilling to release her hold over one of the richest, most powerful men in Boston society. She held a strange power over Stephen, but they decided they would not see each other for a short time. Meanwhile, she was to marry and pass her pregnancy off on another man.”
Brogan stalked the room like a caged animal, as if by pacing he could walk off the pain and humiliation that filled every pore of his being. He thought back, recalling the day he first set eyes on Abigail as she passed over the cobblestones in her chaise. He recalled the interest in her smile. She returned to that same waterfront locale by the shops, seemingly innocent but hoping to meet him again as though by chance.
Brogan knew all along she had been singling him out, and it had flattered him. No ordinary seaman would dare approach such a fine lady, but Brogan had been just bold enough to open the millinery shop door for her. Abigail was equally bold enough to inquire after his name.
In his vanity he let himself believe she truly loved him, for why else would she have married him? He was but a common sailor in want of employment.
Here he thought himself clever in outwitting her and recovering their son, but she would have the last word again, reaching beyond the grave to deliver this final, crushing blow.
The truth hit him with such force, Brogan could scarcely breathe. It took a moment to realize Huntley was still speaking.
“. . . grew increasingly jealous of his lover’s husband. Stephen desired to resume the affair, but one person stood in his way. A seafaring youth caught in the middle of his treachery, whom I now discover was you, Captain.”
Brogan quit pacing to grab on to the mantel for support. The yellow cream walls closed in on him, and it was all he could do to remain in the same room with Huntley and listen to the rest of his sordid tale.
“Aside from the knowledge my brother kept a mistress, I was unaware of what had been going on, or even of Benjamin’s existence, until Stephen appealed to me just weeks before I took custody of the boy. Stephen confessed to having used his influence to secure Abigail’s young sailor a position with a privateer sailing out of Bristol, Rhode Island. He later made arrangements to finance a privateer schooner, secretly arranging for this sailor to be promoted to captain and sent on a dangerous mission with a sloppy crew and little experience in commanding them. A certain death. He swore you were gone, never to return for the boy. Benjamin was alone in the world, I believed. But it seems Stephen grossly underestimated you.”
Brogan felt as though he were drowning in a sinking black hole, listening to Huntley’s voice from underwater.
His greatest accomplishments had been a lie, from his marriage to his placement among the crew of the Black Eagle to his captaincy on the Wild Pilgrim. Most important, his son did not belong to him! Abigail and her lover had stripped him of all pride, and hate for them overwhelmed him. His wrath demanded to be vented, but on whom? Both his enemies were dead.