Page 66 of Worth Any Price
Nick was silent for a long moment. When he glanced into her upturned face, his eyes were bleak with the knowledge that there was nothing left of the boy who had once lived here. “Not tonight. I need to see it alone.”
“I understand,” Lottie said, slipping her hand into his. “I am quite fatigued. Certainly I would prefer to tour the house tomorrow morning, in the daylight.”
His fingers returned the pressure with a barely discernable squeeze, and then he let go. “I’ll take you upstairs.”
She pressed her lips into the shape of a smile. “No need. I’ll have Mrs. Trench or one of the servants accompany me.”
A clock from somewhere in the house chimed half past midnight by the time Nick finally entered the bedroom. Unable to sleep despite her exhaustion, Lottie had retrieved a novel from one of her valises and had stayed up reading until the book was half finished. The bedroom was a cozy haven, the bed richly appareled with an embroidered silk counterpane and matching hangings, the walls painted in a soft shade of green. Becoming absorbed in the story, Lottie read until she heard the creak of a floorboard.
Seeing Nick in the doorway, Lottie set the novel on the bedside table. Patiently she waited for him to speak, wondering how many memories had been stirred by his walk through the house, how many silent ghosts had traversed his path.
“You should sleep,” he said eventually.
“So should you.” Lottie turned back the covers. After an extended pause, she asked, “Will you come to bed with me?”
His gaze slid over her, lingering on the ruffled front of her nightrail, the kind of prim, high-necked gown that never failed to arouse him. He looked so alone, so disenchanted... very much the way he had appeared when they had first met.
“Not tonight,” he said for the second time that evening.
Their gazes caught and held. Lottie knew that she would be wise to maintain a facade of relaxed unconcern. To be patient with him. Her demands, her frustrations, would only drive him away.
But to her horror, she heard herself say baldly, “Stay.”
They both knew that she was not asking for a few minutes, or a few hours. She wanted the entire night.
“You know I can’t do that,” came his soft reply.
“You won’t harm me. I’m not afraid of your nightmares.” Lottie sat up, staring at his still face. Suddenly she could not stem a flood of reckless words, her voice becoming raw with emotion. “I want you to stay with me. I want to be close toyou. Tell me what I should do or say to make that happen. Tell me, please, because I can’t seem to stop myself from wanting more than you’re willing to give.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“I promise you that I would never—”
“I’m not asking for reassurances or promises,” he said harshly. “I’m stating a fact. There is a part of me that you don’t want to know.”
“In the past you’ve asked me to trust you. In return I ask you to trust me now. Tell me what happened to give you such nightmares. Tell me what haunts you so.”
“No, Lottie.” But instead of leaving, Nick remained in the room, as if his feet would not obey the dictates of his brain.
Suddenly Lottie understood the extent of his tortured longing to confide in her, and his equally potent belief that she would reject him once he did. He had begun to sweat heavily, his skin gleaming like wet bronze. A few strands of sable hair adhered to the moist surface of his forehead. Her longing to touch him was untenable, but somehow she remained where she was.
“I won’t turn away from you,” she said steadily. “No matter what it is. It happened on the prison hulk, didn’t it? It has to do with the real Nick Gentry. Did you kill him, so that you could take his place? Is that what torments you?”
She saw from the way Nick flinched that she had struck close to the truth. The crack in his defenses widened, and he shook his head, trying to navigate past the breach. Failing, he gave her aglance filled with equal parts of rebuke and desperation. “It didn’t happen that way.”
Lottie refused to look away from him. “Then how?”
The lines of his body changed, relaxing into a sort of wretched resignation. He leaned one shoulder against the wall, facing partially away from her, his gaze arrowing to some distant point on the floor.
“I was sent to the hulk because I was responsible for a man’s death. I was fourteen at the time. I had joined a group of highwaymen, and an old man died when we robbed his carriage. Soon afterward we were all tried and convicted. I was too ashamed to tell anyone who I was—I simply gave my name as John Sydney. The other four in the gang were hanged in short order, but because of my age, the magistrate handed me a lesser sentence. Ten months on theScarborough.”
“Sir Ross was the magistrate who sentenced you,” Lottie murmured, remembering what Sophia had told her.
A bitter smile twisted Nick’s mouth. “Little did either of us know that we would someday be brothers-in-law.” He slouched harder against the wall. “As soon as I set foot on the hulk, I knew that I wasn’t going to last a month there. A quick hanging would have been far more merciful. Duncombe’s Academy, they called the ship, Duncombe being the officer in command. Half of his prisoners had just been cleared out by a round of gaol fever. They were the lucky ones.
“The hulk was smaller than the others anchored just offshore. It was fitted for one hundred prisoners, but they crammed half again that amount into one large area belowdeck. The ceiling was so low that I couldn’t stand fully upright. Prisoners slept on the bare floor or on a platform built on either side of the deck. Each man was allowed to have sleeping space that was six feet long, twenty inches wide. We were double-ironed much of the time, and the constant rattling of chains was almost more than I could stand.
“The smell was the worst of it, though. We were seldom allowed to wash—there was always a shortage of soap, and we had to rinse with seawater. And no through ventilation, just a row of portholes left open on the seaward side. As a result, the reek was so powerful that it would overcome the guards who first opened the hatches in the mornings—once I even saw one of them faint from it. During the time that we were locked down from early evening until the hatches were opened at daybreak, prisoners were left entirely to themselves, with no guards or officers to observe them.”
