The Captain of All Pleasures (Sutherland Brothers #1) Page 15

“We’ll arrange for bail and have you out of here today,” she said to her father in a confident tone.

“How will you raise the money?” Lassiter asked slowly.

She said nothing, only stared at the ceiling, the wall, straight past Derek in the doorway, back to the ceiling.

It was as if Derek could see the sudden realization washing over Lassiter’s face, because after a pause, the man shouted, “Oh, no, Nicole. I forbid it! There is no way I’ll allow you to do this for me. I’d rather rot in here than take her money. If you go to her, you’ll always owe her and she’ll tear you apart.”

Nicole’s her real name? I knew she wasn’t a Christina.

“Father, it’s the only way—the race is in four, no, only three days now.”

“No! That’s final. For once in your life, you will do as I tell you—my God, when you first arrived, you certainly didn’t feel this way.”

Nicole took a deep breath and said in a wistful tone, “No, but I suppose fate’s trying to tell me that we can’t always get what we want.”

Lassiter was silent. Finally he said, “I won’t be beholden to that woman even if you’ve changed your mind.”

She acted as if she hadn’t heard him. “The sooner I go, the sooner we can get you out of here.” She rose calmly to depart, leaving Lassiter choking on his myriad, unheeded commands.

Derek almost smiled when, on her way out, she called over her shoulder, “Oh hush, Father! My mind’s made up.”

When she reached Derek, she paused and looked up to him, her face grave. She probably thought this was all his doing. He felt a flush of guilt because, if she hadn’t arrived when she did, it would have been.

“Listen, I can help you,” he said, not caring if Lassiter heard him.

He did. “Shut up, Sutherland!”

“Go to hell, Lassiter,” Derek barked before turning back to hear her response.

“Haven’t you done enough?” she asked, her eyes laced with sadness as she turned to go. Derek was right behind her, but the big man who’d been waiting stepped in front of him.

“Not unless ye’ll be wantin’ another fight,” he warned as he backed out the door.

It rained, the bone-chilling, lingering rain that always reminded Nicole of her last stay in this awful land. She’d been five years old. Her father was broken, her mother dead. Somehow he’d managed to get them to London from the South American port where Laurel Lassiter passed away. He would tell his mother-in-law in person that her daughter had died.

A week after the dowager learned of Laurel’s death, she’d reemerged from her room as forbidding as ever. Her blond, gray-laced hair was perfectly coifed, her spine rigid. Only she looked much, much older and was clothed in black. She demanded to see Lassiter, and Nicole had been sent outside to play. But as usual, she couldn’t get warm, so with frozen feet and hands she’d sneaked back into the house. She stopped outside the door to the sitting room and peeked in when she heard them talking about her.

“She’ll never marry,” her grandmother had predicted, her oddly dark, cold eyes taking in Nicole’s poor father, her disgust undisguised. He was quiet before her.

“If you take Nicole back on that cursed ship with all those filthy sailors, you can assure yourself that by the time she’s to find a husband, a husband good enough for her station, her reputation will be so shredded that no member of the nobility will want her. Not to mention the fact that she has already turned into a little savage.”

Lassiter had looked as if he might argue—Nicole remembered wanting him to—but he seemed to draw deep from some inner well of patience. “I can’t let her go just yet,” he said, his voice toneless. “She is all I have left of Laurel. I have to keep her with me.”

“Selfish as always, I see.” They both turned toward the portrait of her mother above the fireplace. Laurel had been a lovely, fair-haired young woman. In the painting, she would look forever merry, as if she’d just been told something humorous and couldn’t be trusted not to erupt into peals of laughter at any moment. The skilled artist had captured that happiness beautifully as well as the hint of stubbornness in her mien.

“Why she ever gave up all this”—the dowager waved a hand to indicate her opulent town residence—“I will never understand.” Then to herself, she added in a low voice, “The threats the pleading all useless once that girl made up her mind to be with you.”

She rose in her extravagantly wrought day-dress to move toward a window, the rich satin gown making a muted, rustling sound with each step. Turning on him, she accused, “Staying in England wasn’t good enough for you, so you dragged my poor daughter all over the world, never slowing your pace.”

Nicole had watched, fascinated, as pale sunlight caught the few jewels that adorned her grandmother, throwing tiny, brightly colored prisms on the papered walls.

“And now she is gone. But Laurel did as you wished.” She returned to her ornate desk, her movements slow and dignified.

“Damn it, you know that she loved sailing with me,” her father bit out, his voice hoarse. “She craved that excitement and she never regretted the life we lived even in the end.”

Her grandmother narrowed her eyes shrewdly. “How can you be sure the same thing won’t happen to the girl? What if she were to die—”

He’d shot out of his chair to loom over her desk, his large hands knotted into fists. “You listen to me—I will never let anything happen to her. Do you understand me? She is a strong child, raised at sea. I will always protect her.”

“I understand that you think you will.” She looked up at him, unbowed even by the fearsome picture he presented. “But even if she were to live to be ninety,” she continued, “Nicole will be doomed to spinsterhood, because she must marry a title before I’ll give her Laurel’s estate. And titled men do not marry female sailors. And were you to disregard her inheritance and think to marry her elsewhere, perhaps to some oafish American such as yourself, who will have her? She’ll be more man than woman, with no grace, without the charms or the dowry to attract a decent husband.”

She shook her head as if revolted at the image. “She’ll be aged before her time with sun- and wind-roughened skin and hands. Do you think society will smile on such a one as she? No!” she cried as her flat palm slapped the desk, her heavy rings rapping. “Nicole will be alone because you will not do the right thing now.”

“What would you have me do?” he asked, waving an arm. “I can’t give her up, so what do you suggest?”

She leaned forward slowly and pinned him with her dark eyes. “You will send her to me on her twelfth birthday, and not a day later. She must come to me before she becomes a woman so that I will have time to undo all that you”—she looked him up and down with a sneer—“and your degenerate life have done to her. I will prepare her to assume her birthright as a leader of the nobility and marry accordingly.”