Page 1 of Devil of the High Seas
PROLOGUE
1735Cornwall, England
Gavin Castleton adjustedhis bottle-green frock coat and glanced about the crowded ballroom. His parents were occupied with guests and would not look for him for a little while. He quickly escaped the crush of dancers currently swirling around the floor and slipped out a back door into the gardens of his family’s grand manor house, Castleton Hall.
Strains of music drifted through the perfumed gardens, lending the spring night an air of magic and romance that even he, a young man of nineteen, could appreciate. His eyes searched the twilight and caught a glimpse of shimmery silken skirts vanishing around a tall row of hedges.
She was here. She had come as he had asked. His heart leapt with joy. Tonight... tonight he would ask her the question that would change both their lives forever.
Gavin’s heart pounded with excitement as he pursued the woman who had owned his soul for the last two years.
“Charity,” he whispered as he stalked his love. This was a game they had played many times since they were seventeen. Chases and kisses in the garden. He heard a soft giggle as he rounded yet another hedge, glimpsing her skirts disappearing once more around a corner of the elaborate hedgerows. The long, flowing train of her sack-back gown was tempting him. He wanted to catch her, to get his hands under those skirts, just as he had done so many times before.
“Got you!” he gasped in delight as he caught her from behind. Charity chuckled and then moaned as he placed soft kisses upon her neck.
“Oh yes... please... yes,” she encouraged as he began to pull up her voluminous skirts. “Please, take me here, Griffin.”
Gavin froze, his hands falling from her skirts. “Griffin?” His head began to fill with an odd buzzing sound.
Charity spun in his arms, her lovely face a mask of confusion and then shame. “Gavin? I didn’t—I thought you were...”
“I know who you thought I was,” he said softly, as his heart fractured in half. “How long have you preferred my brother to me?”
Her brows arched up in confusion. “How long?”
“How long has Griffin been courting you?”
“Almost the same length of time that you’ve been courting me. You and I never agreed to be—”
“To be true to one another?” Gavin finished, his tone icy now as he felt like a stranger in his own skin.
“You never asked me to be, Gavin. You haven’t even proposed yet.” Charity frowned at him. “I will not let you make me feel guilty. I have a right to be courted by anyone until I accept a proposal.”
Gavin had been planning to ask her to marry him tonight, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. Not now.
“And my brother? Has he asked you to marry him?” Gavin demanded.
“I was going to this evening.” Griffin’s voice came from behind them. Gavin’s twin brother was younger than him by a mere six minutes, and they were all but identical in appearance. Only someone who knew them well could see the minute differences in their features.
“So, what’s it to be, my lady?” Gavin asked Charity, unable to keep the contempt from his voice. He loved his brother fiercely, but this... this felt like a betrayal. He had been the first to meet Charity two years ago when her family had moved here from London. It had been love, wild love. She wasn’t simply beautiful. She was bold, carefree, intelligent. She’d made him want to be a better man, someone worthy of marrying her. He had told Griffin the day he’d met her that he would marry her someday. He’d always known Charity was going to be his. But oh, how wrong he had been.
“I...” She looked between them, her eyes pooling with tears. He knew her well enough to know that those tears were genuine. He could see in her face that now she realized her actions had torn apart the bond of brothers, and she regretted it.
“Oh, Gavin,” she whispered, and he knew then thathewas not the one she would choose.Hewas not the one she would spend her life with.
Gavin shifted his gaze from her face to his brother’s. Griffin looked stricken, as if he could feel the pain tearing through Gavin’s soul. As twins, they had shared a thousand secrets between them and had always been able to sense each other’s feelings.
“Brother, wait—” Griffin began.
“No,” Gavin snapped. “No, Griffin. No.” He turned and fled. He could not stay and see them together without his heart shattering any further. It felt as though a cannonball had blasted through his chest. His very soul was obliterated. He staggered back toward the house. He avoided the ballroom and the merry guests as he rushed up to his bedchamber. He slammed the door and leaned back against it, trying to control the horrible realization that now presented itself to him.
Charity would marry Griffin, and they would live here... or perhaps at Meadow Cross Cottage, but they would be here all the same. Gavin would someday take his father’s title as the Earl of Castleton, but that title and its privileges were nothing in the face of living without the woman he loved.
Leave...The single word whispered dangerously in the back of his mind.
Leave...Never look back...
Could he do that? Could he abandon his parents and his twin? If it meant escaping the pain in his chest now, what choice did he have?
