Page 10 of Devil of the High Seas
“Gavin Castleton—Named for his uncle, a grand adventurer who was lost at sea.”
The culmination of that moment, of being with Charity and her child, along with the unbearable longing to have met this nephew who had been given his name, tore out Gavin’s heart. Both Charity and Griffin had wanted him here, and knowing he could not stay, they had named their babe in his memory.
Gavin sucked in a breath as his chest tightened so harshly that his lungs were crushed just as if he’d dived too deep beneath the surface of the sea. The crushing darkness and the pressure of the water... He suddenly couldn’t bear it and shouted, letting out all of his pain and rage until his face was streaked with tears and he had nothing left in him except the grief that had burrowed into his heart.
He pressed his forehead to Charity’s headstone for a long moment in remembrance, then slowly stood and wiped his eyes.
“You were my dream,” he whispered to her. “But I understand that Griffin was yours.”
That was the way with twins—they shared everything most of their lives, but Charity could not be shared. She’d given her heart away to Griffin, and he knew why she had loved his brother, even if it had broken his heart.
He’d accepted her choice to marry Griffin, understood it as only a twin could. “I love him too, and I’m so very sorry I left you both. Forgive me.”
What would it have been like if he’d stayed? He couldn’t imagine it, but there was a huge part of him that wished he’d tried to stay. Perhaps then Charity might not have died...
It was vain and foolish to think he could have changed her fate. Love was never lost... it simply changed into grief for the person who was no longer there. And Gavin’s grief ran deep, as deep as the sea that called to him.
The mist began to clear as a cool breeze brought whispers of the sea’s endless secrets, made him turn toward the distant shore. The sea had always called to him, that desire to sail just a little farther, to see what lay beyond the horizon. He closed his eyes, swearing he could almost hear Charity whisper to him.
“Chase and find your future off the edge of the map...”
She had loved to talk about what adventures they could have in the exotic lands depicted in the maps and atlases they’d discovered in his family’s vast library. They’d spent hours curled up on a couch together, the atlas spread out on his lap while she leaned against him, tracing the lines where the known world vanished. She’d spun tales of imagined adventures that Gavin would never have dreamt up on his own. She’d been afraid of nothing—or so he’d thought.
Gavin’s lips curved in a bittersweet smile as he remembered her talking about wanting to search for treasure and the glory of being a pirate roving the high seas. Charity had been his treasure. Now she was gone. The sparkle of her brilliance was left in shadow because the sun had set upon her life.
“Sleep well,” he said softly and once more touched her tombstone. As much as he wished to lie down and die beside her, fate had other ideas.
Hoofbeats had him turning. A distant figure on horseback was trotting down the path toward the graveyard. Gavin left the stones and sprinted for the shelter of the woods. He wasn’t sure why he turned back to look at the graveyard once more, but he did.
The rider halted at the edge of the sacred space and dismounted. A whisper of something came through along that invisible connection that had always existed between Gavin and his twin. Griffin was here.
Griffin made the same walk toward the three stones of their family plot that Gavin had visited just minutes before. His head turned in all directions, as if he was able to feel Gavin’s presence. Or perhaps he had noticed that someone had recently cleared one of the stones.
“Gavin?” Griffin called out. Gavin almost made a sound, but he stopped himself at the last moment. Griffin’s shoulders slumped and he faced the graves, leaving a bouquet of flowers on each one before mounting his horse and riding away.
“Griffin!”
Gavin bolted up, his brother’s name escaping his lips, but he realized it had all been a dream... a dream of his last memory of when he had been here a year ago, long before he’d lost his ship in a mutiny. The injury throbbed in his shoulder, reminding him of what had driven him home again so soon.
“Gavin?” a feminine voice said drowsily. “Is your shoulder hurting?”
He drew in a steadying breath, getting his bearings. He was in the secret cave connected to his family’s ancestral home, and not in the past. As his mind knitted together his memories from the last few days, he felt something squeeze his hand and that feminine voice spoke again, asking about his shoulder. He stared at the hand for a moment, then followed it down the arm and up toward the face that was illuminated only by a single oil lamp. The woman stared at him in return, openly concerned, but for a moment he couldn’t find the words to speak.
Josephine.
Her name struck some deep chord within him, as though his heart was made of strings that could sing when touched. He drew in another breath, his chest tightening as he continued to look at her, then down at their joined hands.
Her palm was warm, and it fit perfectly against his, almost as though their hands had been formed to hold each other’s. The thought caught him off guard, causing his heart to give a slow, painful beat against his ribs. He hadn’t thought he could ever feel like that again, not after losing Charity. Yet this... connection, it was something he could neither explain nor defy.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
He stared at her, realizing she was lying on a pallet on the floor beside his bed.
“I...” He found himself unable to speak at first, then changed the subject. “Did you sleep here the entire night?” he asked as he reluctantly released his hold on her hand. A pale light was growing at the end of the tunnel that led down toward the beach, meaning dawn was approaching.
“I did. You needed someone to watch you through the night, lest you succumb to a fever.” She sat up and ran her fingers through her tangled waves, combing out the wild dark strands before she gathered her hair at the nape of her neck and bound it with a bit of gold ribbon that she unwound from her wrist. For some reason, it amused him that she kept a ribbon around her wrist in case she needed it for just such a circumstance.
Gavin’s eyes then strayed to the nightgown she wore. It was filmy, and he could almost see through it. The swell of her generous breasts and hips made him briefly remember that he had once been a gentleman, and he cleared his throat and looked away.
