Page 31 of Unearthing the Smuggler's Heart
“Edward panicked and misjudged his step, toppling over a crag and landing on a nest of sharp, jagged rocks. It was not a long fall, but he never stood a chance of surviving that landing. It was the cruelest sort of way for the universe to call Lord Benton's bluff."
Jade stared at him, an image of a young man who looked much like herself sprawled at the bottom of a natural quarry, eyes staring sightlessly into the night sky.
"One would think," she said after a moment, forcing herself to swallow the surge of nausea that had risen in her throat, "that my grandfather would have been humbled by causing such a tragedy."
"Any decent man ought to have been," Mathias agreed, reaching forward to touch her hand, to offer her a small comfort in the wake of a terrible revelation. "But to men like Benton, all that is wrong in the world is the fault of others. Now that his son was actually dead, his rage and vindication became all the more keen, and he directed it at his daughter and her accomplices. The four of them immediately set about making plans for their escape, as it was the only true option remaining to them in the wake of a powerful lord’s fury.
"My mother ensured they had a space on a Silver Leaf vessel, which would leave early to ensure their safety, but your parents only ever made it on board, while the Oliviers arrived some minutes after and could only watch in horror from a distance. Benton and the authorities were waiting for them. I imagine the old man was genuinely shocked that he captured his daughter alongside a ship full of foreign fugitives and a heap of contraband wealth."
Her mother said it had been clear that night on the boat, and warm. She had said the last thing she'd seen as a free woman was the moon, a bright crescent hanging in the sky like the promise of an escape they would never make. She hadn't told Jade about the sharp rocks. She had actually never even really said that Edward was dead, in so many words. It was all implied by the pauses and the gazes into the distance, and the way she clutched at her locket at her throat when she said his name.
Jade wondered what it might be like to have a brother, to love a brother, and worst of all, to lose one and feel responsible. She imagined that her own mind would shatter as well, under such a terrible burden. It should not be possible, she thought, for so much tragedy to stack together this way, for one man to have the power to hurt so many others.
She hadn't realized there were tears on her face until Mathias reached forward to brush them away. He looked distressed, as though it had caused him pain as well to tell her these things.
"I am so very sorry," he said, with a hitch in his own voice very much like tears.
"Thank you for telling me, Mathias," she replied, catching his hand at her cheek and squeezing it. "Thank you for trusting me to hear it."
He nodded, apparently stricken speechless by her words. He drew her into an embrace, one that spoke of nothing sinful or sensual or wanting, but instead provided the purity of comfort, a strong place in which one could crumble for a while, if she needed to.
She clutched him back, balling her fists into his shirt as he cupped a big hand around the back of her head.
She knew that more tears had come. She could feel them soaking into his shirt. Any other time, she would have immediately drawn back and stammered an apology, but just now, on another warm night with a crescent moon hanging on the horizon, she knew that it was all right.
And so she squeezed her eyes shut and breathed deeply, content to accept the gift of his strength in a moment when she truly needed it.
CHAPTER13
They arrived in Marseille as the sun rose, orange and hazy on a foggy horizon.
Each step of the arrival plan had unfolded so smoothly that Mathias was beginning to wonder if they were walking into a trap. Somehow, nothing went wrong, and the transition from ship to port to city had already come and gone. They had secured passage to the outskirts of Marseille on a farmer's cart, and the three of them sat in the back, their knees bumping against bales of green and fragrant feed as the carriage rolled along the dirt roads that led beyond the city gates.
Something was different. He couldn't put his finger on it, but Marseille seemed to him no longer a familiar port of call. It had become different. Foreign.
Was this France without the cloud of war hung heavy over her shores?
He frowned to himself. He might not fit into a France at peace. He might not have a place here, now that it was all done and over with, and perhaps the same held true of England. Maybe the only place that still fit Mathias was theHarpy, and the perfect chaos of the open water.
He had barely slept. He'd passed the remainder of last night swinging in his hammock, staring up at the ceiling of the berth and thinking about Jade Ferris. He had seen behind her armor again, hadn't he? He'd seen her at her rawest, but in a wholly different way than he had the first time, in a moment of heat and passion. This time, he'd seen her cry. He had been so focused on the fact that she never seemed to smile that he hadn't realized she never frowned either.
Jade Ferris thought she owed the world a mask of neutrality, and that broke his heart.
He knew which version of a disarmed Miss Ferris he preferred, but the truth of the matter was that both incidents had utterly crippled him, each in their own way. The most distressing thing of all was that he could not say exactlywhy. She wasn't the most beautiful woman he'd ever met and certainly not the most seductive either. What was it about her?
She had called him by his name last night.
Mathias.
She had never done that before. In the moment when it had escaped her lips, he had registered it with a jolt of surprise and little else. But the longer he thought about it, the more it stirred his blood.
She'd called him Mathias.
In the distance, he could see the hillside flattening out into the short path to the inn. It was not a long journey. Little more than an hour had passed since they had finished departing with their things, but already Isabelle was stifling yawns behind her fingertips, frowning afterward as though her body was a misbehaving child.
He had not forgotten that she had agreed to see a doctor once they'd come to land. He must not forget to ensure that she kept her word. After all, it wouldn't do to return Isabelle to England illness-ridden, perhaps in mortal danger.
Peter would never trust him again, never mind Isabelle's own wrath.
