Run Wild (Escape with a Scoundrel)

chapter 26




Nicholas had already drawn the curtains and turned the lamps down low. Now he prowled the room, looking at the gilt-framed pictures on the walls, the vase of flowers on the dressing table in one corner. He rearranged the collection of glass bottles on another table. Wasn’t sure why, except that it gave him something to do.

Something other than stare in bleak pain at the woman who lay sleeping on the bed.

Stopping before the hearth, he braced one arm against the mantel and hung his head, gazing down at the hot coals in the grate, unable to feel their warmth. For hours now, he had been trying to think, to plan, but he could only hear a sweet voice in his memory—speaking words that ripped through his heart.

The sound of Samantha declaring her hatred for him.

He shut his eyes, his fingers closing tightly around the polished marble edge of the mantel. He had always known she would hate him if she ever learned his true identity. But the fact that he had anticipated her reaction so accurately hadn’t cushioned the blow in the least.

Unable to sleep, he had found himself drawn here, to her, to the source of his pain. It made no sense, this power she had over him, this connection between them. Nothing seemed able to break it. The force was almost magnetic. As if he were a compass needle and she were true north.

Straightening, he turned to look at her. It was unnerving to discover that, without the shackles, he felt more bound to her than ever.

He noticed that someone had untied her. Clarice, no doubt. A plate of food sat on the night table. Untouched. Samantha had fallen asleep fully clothed, still wearing the blouse and woolen waistcoat and skirt of her riding habit. But she had taken off her shoes... and he noticed the mark around her ankle. The shackles had left what might be a permanent scar.

The same mark they had left on him.

His heart thudding in his chest, he walked back to the wing chair he had placed beside the bed. The huge, velvet-draped four-poster made her slender form seem so small, so... alone.

He sat down, listening to her soft breathing, watching her while she slept. The way he had watched over her during so many long nights in Cannock Chase. And the ache inside him widened and deepened.

He reached out and let his hand rest on the blankets, near hers, but he did not allow himself to touch her. He hadn’t intended to come here until morning, to tell her the decision he had made. A decision that would make her furious—if it were possible for her to be any more furious with him than she already was.

He didn’t look forward to fighting with her again. He was so bloody tired of fighting.

So he did not wake her, wanting simply to look at her, to hold onto one last, peaceful moment.

His gaze traced over her in the gentle glow of the lamplight—from every flawless curve of her face to the way one of her hands clutched a corner of the pillow, while the other lay upturned on the rumpled covers. Her fingers looked so delicate next to his.

Breaking the chain hadn’t changed anything, he thought, his throat constricting. Time and distance had only made him more aware of how important she was to him, had only made his feelings for her stronger.

Samantha Delafield was the most precious treasure he had ever held in his hands. The only one that had ever really mattered to him.

The only one that was utterly beyond his reach.

She stirred, making a small sound—and opened her eyes. Their gazes met.

Both of them went still. Neither of them spoke.

She glanced at his hand, so close to hers, and then she sat up, withdrawing as if afraid he might burn her. “W-what are you doing here?”

It took him a moment to summon an answer—at least, one that he was willing to speak aloud. “Couldn’t sleep.”

She drew her legs under her, perching in the middle of the bed as if she might make a dash for the door.

But she didn’t. In fact, a moment later, strangely enough, she relaxed a bit. And though her gaze remained wary, he didn’t detect any of the blazing fury he had seen earlier. Perhaps because she was tired.

He looked down at his hand still resting on the covers. And decided with bleak resignation that there was no sense in delaying the inevitable. “I’ve made a decision.”

“Oh?” she asked cautiously. “About what?”

“You.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. “I wasn’t aware that there was a need to make a decision about me,” she said mildly. “I’m quite accustomed to taking care of myself.”

“And how are you going to do that?” he replied quietly, bracing himself for the inevitable explosion. “You can’t stay in England. You have no money to travel to Venice or anywhere else to start a new life. And I can’t let you go without worrying that you might someday leak my name to the authorities.”

When she didn’t respond, he glanced up... to find her eyes sparkling with some emotion he could not name.

“I’m not a threat to you, I promise.” She remained calm, quietly waiting for him to continue his explanation.

Which knocked him off balance. He had come prepared for another heated argument, not for this... this... he wasn’t even sure what to call it.

“The way I see it,” he said, regarding her uneasily, “I really have only one choice. Since I decided some time ago not to kill you—”

“Glad to hear that.”

“I’ll just have to keep you.”

She blinked at him. Once. Twice. “Keep me?” she echoed as if he had spoken a foreign language. “What do you mean by that?”

Her cool question stretched his nerves even tighter. Rising from the wing chair, he walked to the end of the bed, waiting for her to erupt in outrage and hatred.

“You may not like the idea, but we don’t seem to have any other satisfactory option.” He toyed with the velvet drapes that hung from the canopy, his fingers destroying a delicate golden tassel that held them in place. “If you’re with me, you’ll be safe. And I’ll know you’re not blathering my identity all over England.”

“I see.”

“It’s the only solution.”

“It’s kidnapping.”

The way she calmly pointed that out made him laugh, a dry rasp that hurt his throat. “Not the worst crime I’ve ever been accused of.”

“All right. I’ll go.”

“Besides, the Colonies may not be Venice, but it’s better than staying in England, with your face in every newspaper and a murder charge...”

He stopped, his gaze on the tassel in his fingertips, as her words finally made their way to his brain. He slanted a glance toward her. “What did you just say?”

“I said all right. I agree to your ‘satisfactory option.’ I’ll go with you.”

He stared at her, stunned silent by her quick acquiescence. He could detect no sarcasm in her voice, no anger in her expression.

No hatred in her golden gaze.

“Uh... excellent,” he choked out. “You’ll be leaving with Masud in the morning. He’ll see you aboard our ship and take you to South Carolina.” He paced away from her before he could wreck any more of the bed curtains.

“Wait a moment, what do you mean I’ll be leaving?” she protested, her voice taking on a sharp edge for the first time. “What about you?”

“I’m staying in London.”

“You can’t stay here.” Her air of calm vanished, suddenly and completely. “If you haven’t noticed, there are people here who want to kill you.”

He stopped in front of the hearth, keeping his back to her. “That’s exactly why I’m staying. I’m not leaving until I’ve taken care of the blackmailer once and for all. I’m going to handle it personally this time.”

“But he might already be telling the authorities about you. He wants the bounty on your head. He’ll do anything to get it.”

“Exactly. Which is why I intend to go out in the open and make it a little easier for him to find me.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed.”

It almost sounded as if that mattered to her. He turned to look at her, but she glanced away before he could read the emotion in her eyes.

And he abruptly realized what—or rather, who—might have changed Samantha’s attitude toward him. The dishes on the nightstand offered a clue.

He frowned. The last thing he needed was a pair of scheming females allied against him. “Why do I get the feeling there’s something going on here that I don’t know about? Did Clarice say something to you?”

“Yes.” Samantha kept her gaze fastened on the covers beneath her. “She told me all about rogues and locks and safes and fairytales.”

“What?”

“And she said that you’re not worth losing my appetite over.”

This wasn’t making the least bit of sense.

“And I don’t care.” Her head came up, her eyes blazing now. “Why can’t you just leave with me and Masud?”

He folded his arms, realizing he was about to get the argument he hadn’t wanted. “Because I am not going to spend the rest of my life on the run.”

“You’re not going to have a life to spend if you insist on this insane plan!”

“I’m not asking for your opinion. I’m telling you where you’re going to go.”

Her anger finally ignited. “Well, let me tell you where you can go, Captain.” She grabbed a pillow and threw it at him with a frustrated oath, aiming for his head.

He sidestepped neatly and it landed on the hearth. “No sense condemning me to Hades, angel. I’m already halfway there.”

“Damn it.” She added a few more curses as she looked around for something else to throw at him. “I wish I’d never fallen in love with you.”

“Before you damage any more of Clarice’s—what?” he sputtered in shock. “What did you say?”

She went still, bent over the side of the bed, one hand reaching for her shoe.

Frozen in that position, she turned her head to gaze at him, hanging there half upside-down. “Uh... I said... that is... I meant...” Closing her eyes, she gave up and let herself go limp, her hair falling in a cascade around her and trailing on the floor. “I said I wish I’d never fallen in love with you.”

He remained rooted in place, not allowing himself to take one step toward her. Not one step. “You can’t love me.”

“Well, I do,” she said from beneath that blonde tangle.

“You shouldn’t.”

She finally righted herself, sitting up with a sharp toss of her head, her golden mane gleaming in the lamplight. “I don’t care.” Her jaw had that stubborn little tilt that he’d come to know so well. “I love you.”

He remained silent, struck dumb, unable to bear the joy pouring through him. Hatred, he could endure. Pain, he could endure. But not this.

Every fiber of his being urged him to cross the distance between them, to sweep her into his arms and kiss her breathless. But he didn’t. Couldn’t.

He knew he could only bring her misery. Knew her love for him wouldn’t last.

Because God had not made a woman like her for a man like Nicholas Brogan.

“Nicholas?” she murmured, a slow smile tugging at her lips. “I think the pillow is on fire.”

“Blast the pillow,” he choked out. “Let it burn.”

He couldn’t move toward her, couldn’t make himself turn away, couldn’t tear his gaze from her. For one long, glorious moment, he drank in her smile, the look in her eyes, the love—feasted on it like a condemned man devouring his last meal.

Then, in agony, he closed his eyes.

And turned his back on her. “We all make mistakes in life, angel.” He tried to sound careless, cool, but instead his voice sounded hoarse. “You’ll get over the mistake of falling in love.”

With a frustrated oath, she launched herself from the bed. “Listen, you stubborn... impossible...” She seemed to run out of words to describe him—and fell back on an old favorite. “Rogue. Clarice told me you’re not worth losing my appetite over. Foster told me you’re not worth dying for. Everyone you’ve ever met seems to have a low opinion of you—”

“Which should make you think twice about what you just said,” he retorted.

“It doesn’t. Because I’ve been thinking twice about what you said earlier—that ‘they’ are not always accurate.” She stopped a few paces behind him.

He could hear her breathing, rapid and shallow.

“Nicholas,” she said more softly. “I don’t think they really know you at all. I don’t think you’ve ever allowed anyone to know you. Not the way I do.”

Her words, so gentle, so caring, lashed him more painfully than any whip that had ever scarred him. And the sound of his name on her lips—his real name, spoken so tenderly—cut deeper than the hot iron that had branded him. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do, Samantha,” he said roughly. “You don’t know the truth.”

“I know that Clarice said you gave up piracy. That you quit. That’s when you went to the Colonies, isn’t it? You weren’t lying to me about that, were you?”

“No.” He tipped his head back, glared up at the ceiling. “I wasn’t lying.” Hellfire and damnation, he wanted to lie. Wanted to deny, conceal, walk away. Wanted to do anything but tell her what she was forcing him to tell her.

He had never admitted the truth. To anyone. Had never spoken the words aloud.

But he couldn’t lie anymore. Not to her. And there was no point in trying to save himself.

“Then I don’t understand,” she said in that same quiet, gentle, compassionate tone that tore at him. “How can you say—”

“She didn’t tell you why I quit, did she?” he snapped. It was best to get this over with quickly. Once and for all.

“No, she—”

“Of course not. Because Clarice doesn’t know. No one knows.” He turned on his heel so suddenly that he startled her. “You want the truth? All right.”

He made it swift, sudden, final, like a single thrust of a cutlass, severing everything between them.

“I killed a child, Samantha. That’s why I quit and walked away. I killed a child!”

~ ~ ~

Sam stared at him, so shocked at both what he said and the brutal, blunt way he said it that she couldn’t speak.

“A boy only ten or twelve years old,” he continued harshly. “A Royal Navy cabin boy. I took his life without even thinking.” He took a step toward her, as if inviting her to either strike him in outrage or back away in horror.

She did neither, unable to move or even breathe. Her entire body seemed suddenly made of stone.

“I shot him,” Nicholas went on when she remained still, his voice savage and stark. “I killed him because he stood between me and vengeance. That was all I wanted. All I cared about. I spent so many years seeking vengeance that I wasn’t even human anymore. I was exactly what they’d made me. An animal. So blind to anything but blood and violence that I didn’t even realize it until I—” His voice suddenly choked out. “Until I watched that boy falling to the deck and I could...” He shut his eyes, as if saying the words aloud brought it back too clearly. “I could see myself in his eyes. I could see what I’d become.”

“Oh, Nicholas,” she whispered, wanting to touch him and not daring, hurting inside for what he had done, and for what had been done to him.

“So that’s the truth about me,” he snarled, his eyes piercing her once more. “That’s who you think you’re in love with.”

“Nicholas... dear God...” she whispered. “But h-how... how did it come to that? Why? Why were you seeking vengeance?”

“I was after the men who killed my father,” he said curtly.

“But I thought your father was executed for some terrible crime. I thought—”

“That he was a criminal and I was innocent?” he scoffed. “Wrong again. My father was an innocent man, a good man.” His voice faltered, then picked up again, angrily. “He was betrayed by his friends. By people he trusted.”

Sam kept silent as he spilled out the words, the pain that had been locked inside him for so many years.

“My father was a privateer during the war with Spain,” he explained tightly. “His job was to harass and plunder Spanish ships. He worked for the bloody navy, called the officers his friends. He took all the risks while his raids helped fatten the crown purse and build the Royal Navy fleet. But after the war was over, the crown decided that the privateers had outlived their usefulness. Some of them had crossed the line and turned pirate—so the navy rounded them all up. Decided they were too dangerous to be left roaming the seas. My father was arrested on a trumped-up charge of piracy and...”

“Executed,” she whispered, shutting her own eyes, remembering how Nicholas had called out during his fever, the horrifying images of his father’s hanging.

“Executed,” he confirmed, turning away from her. “The rest of us on the ship were spared—”

“But what were you doing on his ship?” she asked in confusion. “You couldn’t have been much older than—”

“Ten.” He stopped before the hearth, picked up the figurine of the dancing lady from the mantel. “I was ten.” He paused, turning the delicate porcelain in his dark, callused hand. In his present mood, Sam half-expected him to break it, or throw it.

Instead, he set the figurine carefully back in place. And when he spoke again, some of the fury had left his voice, replaced by wistfulness. “My mother died when I was eight. My father took me to live with relatives, but I would have none of it. So I slipped away the very next morning and snuck aboard his ship.” He stared down at the coals in the grate. “By the time Father discovered me, we were well out to sea. He was furious.” The soft sound that escaped Nicholas almost could have been a laugh. “He kept threatening to put me ashore... but he didn’t want to be apart from me any more than I wanted to be apart from him.”

Sam wrapped her arms around her middle, feeling everything inside her knotting with pain. As he spoke of his family, she heard an emotion in his voice that she had never expected to hear from him: love.

The love he felt, especially for his father, shone through his words, clear and strong even after so many years. “So when your father was arrested, you were only a boy,” she said softly, understanding fully for the first time, “and that was why you were sentenced to the prison hulk?”

“Aye, they ‘spared’ me because I was so young.” He rubbed at his chest. “And sent me to the Molloch. That was where I spent the next eight years, until I escaped during the riots. By then, all I cared about was revenge. I wanted to repay the navy for what they had done to me. And to my father.”

“And that’s when you became a pirate.”

“That’s when I became what they had made me,” he corrected. “And I was good at it—”

“Because you were reckless,” she said softly, moving toward him one quiet step at a time, her bare feet soundless on the polished oak floor. “Because you didn’t care about your own life.”

He kept his back to her, and his broad shoulders rose in a shrug, but his breathing was shallow, his body tense, as if he were waiting for something. “I joined up with one pirate crew after another, and the price on my head went up every year. All I cared about was making as much trouble for the navy as possible. I was a thorn in their side for fourteen years,” he said with satisfaction.

“So all the legends about you being greedy and—”

“Rich and having treasure chests buried on every island in the Caribbean? Bilge invented by the admiralty. I never kept a shilling. What the hell did I care about the future? I didn’t know and didn’t care if I was going to have one.”

She stopped when only a few inches separated them. “But you finally got the vengeance you wanted?”

He started to answer, then stiffened, as if sensing how close she was to him. His entire body went taut. But still he didn’t look at her.

She wanted to reach out to him, to offer the kind of reassurance and comfort he had once offered her, but she stopped herself, unsure whether he would accept her caring.

Her love.

A heartbeat passed. Another.

His breathing and his voice were both sharp when he finally answered her question. “Aye, I got the vengeance I wanted. I don’t even remember parts of that fourteen years. Some of it’s nothing but a blur. All blood and swords and pistols.” He shook his head. “And faces. Sometimes I still see the faces. People I hurt.” His voice broke on the word hurt and he stopped, breathing hard as if he had run a great distance. The words came faster when he continued. “Then on that last night, when I finally had Eldridge in my sights—the man who had betrayed my father—when I finally found what I had wanted for so long... I realized I had lost...”

Yourself, she thought. Everything of value. Everything that mattered. Unable to stop herself this time, she reached out and touched him, placing a trembling hand lightly, gently on his back.

He was so lost in his memories of that night, he didn’t seem to feel her touch. “The ship was on fire. I was cut off. Cornered. I couldn’t reach him. The navy crew were swarming all around me. I was... sweet Jesus, I was so blinded by rage.” His voice started to shake. “I saw what I wanted slipping through my fingers. I turned and fired at the first blue uniform I saw and... it was only a boy. A cabin boy.”

“Nicholas...” She moved closer, slid her arms around him, tried to offer something more, words of comfort, but her own voice broke.

“I watched him fall,” Nicholas whispered. “I was staring right into his eyes, and I watched him fall...” Tremors shook him, so strong they seemed to come from the depths of his muscled body, from his very soul. “And I could hear my mother’s voice, reading to me when I was his age. Even over the sounds of the battle, I could hear her...”

He paused, as if suddenly aware of Sam’s presence, of her hold on him. But instead of stiffening or pulling away this time, he turned toward her, into her embrace, burying his face in her hair as the words slipped out of him.

“Thou shalt not kill,” he whispered brokenly, his powerful arms trembling as they came around her. “Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not kill.”

She pulled him close and held him tightly, tears sliding down her cheeks. She could feel his hurt like a knife inside her, could feel how the guilt tore at him. He had lived with this bottled up inside him for so many years. Had cut himself off from the world, from people, from anything gentle or caring or kind. Condemned himself to an isolated prison of his own making. Not merely because he needed to conceal the truth about his identity.

But because he believed he didn’t deserve to be part of anything good.

“Nicholas,” she whispered, a sob tearing from her throat.

“So now you know the truth,” he said a moment later, his voice still unsteady, though his hold on her was unyielding. “The full truth about who and what I am.”

She only held him tighter. “And your name, the one you used in South Carolina?” she asked, her tears dampening his shirt. “The ‘James’ was for your father, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “His name was James Brogan.”

She closed her eyes, feeling as if she were meeting Nicholas for the first time, realizing that she was perhaps the first person ever to truly know him, to understand him.

He had so much good in him. So much caring and kindness learned during his childhood. It was so deeply a part of him that even years of abuse and violence hadn’t destroyed it.

But he was torn apart by remorse, consumed with pain and guilt over what he’d done during those years—guilt so terrible that he couldn’t forgive himself. Couldn’t set the good, decent, true part of him free.

Not by himself.

She lifted her head, wiped at her tears with one trembling hand. “So you gave up piracy on that night. And ever since, you’ve been living by the name of Nick James, as a planter in South Carolina.”

“Thinking I could leave it all behind,” he said hollowly, unwrapping his arms from around her, letting her go. “Almost thought I’d done it, after six years.”

The longing, the defeat in his voice brought a lump to her throat. “Almost...” She didn’t move away when he released her. She stood her ground, gazing up at him. “But you have been living peacefully all that time. You’ve been trying to live as a law-abiding man. And you succeeded until Foster forced you out of retirement.”

“I can’t blame him for what I am.”

“But what you are now is not what you were all those years ago,” she insisted. “You’re not the same man you were then. I know that even if no one else does. Even if you can’t see it—”

“Samantha—”

“You’ve changed,” she said stubbornly. “The good and honorable side of you, the side that the navy guards on that prison hulk tried to beat out of you, is still there. They failed, Nicholas. They didn’t destroy you. The good... the love,” she amended quietly, “has been right there, all along, hidden deep inside. Waiting for you to reclaim it.”

His eyes gleamed brightly as he gazed down at her, his expression one of astonishment that was very close to awe.

“And now you have,” she whispered, sliding her arms around him again. “You have. You are a good man. You deserve forgiveness. And love.”

His arms enveloped her, and she both heard and felt all the breath leave him. “You can forgive what I’ve done?” he choked out, his hold on her fierce, his voice raw with emotion. “Even knowing the truth?”

“The truth is that you’re not a harmless planter. But you’re not a dangerous pirate, either. You’re a little of both. Innocent and outlaw.” Her voice grew softer with each word. “Like me.”

Reaching up, she cupped his face in her hands, as he had done so many times with her. “The truth is,” she whispered, “that ‘they’ were wrong about you, Nicholas Brogan. And I’m not one of ‘them.’ I can’t condemn you. I know you too well.” She pulled his head down to hers, parting her lips for his kiss. “And I love you too much.”