Page 116 of Marry in Secret
Ambrose must have seen something in his expression. “I’m sorry, Thomas, but I was up to my neck in embezzlement by then, and I knew if I brought you home, you’d discover it pretty quickly. As I expect you did earlier today, if you looked at the books. I wasn’t happy about leaving you there, I assure you.” He shrugged. “But it was you or me.”
Thomas gritted his teeth. “So you left me to be a slave in a foreign country for the rest of my life.”
Ambrose gestured indifferently. “I never really thought about it. I wasn’t thinking about you, I was thinking about me. If you came back I’d be ruined.”
His lack of concern for what he’d done, the ease withwhich he’d sacrificed his cousin, his boyhood companion, stunned Thomas. Had he ever really known this man?
“I might have understood, might have given you a decent portion.”
“I wasn’t prepared to risk it. Now I suppose you’re going to fight me, have me hauled off to prison, or transported. Well, I warn you, I won’t go easy.” He lifted the pistol and trained it on Thomas.
There was a long silence, broken only by the distant sounds of men shouting and talking as they loaded cargo.
It would not end like this, Thomas decided. He’d lost all desire to kill Ambrose, but he wasn’t going to forgive him either. And he wasn’t going to let him get away with his ill-gotten gains, for whom so many innocent people had suffered.
He eyed Ambrose and his gleaming pistol. When had Ambrose ever stood up for himself except in some sneaky, backhanded manner?
Thomas began to walk toward him.
Ambrose backed away, his pistol wavering. “No closer, or I’ll shoot. I will, Thomas. I will!”
“No, you won’t.” Thomas kept walking. “You’re not going to shoot me, Ambrose, not face-to-face and in cold blood. That’s not the way you operate. And we might be relatively unobserved at the moment, but the instant that gun goes off this place will be swarming with people. You know you’d never get away with it. You’d hang for certain then.”
In three swift steps he reached Ambrose, grabbed the pistol, wrenched it from his grip and tossed it into the sea with a splash.
“Don’t hurt me,” Ambrose whimpered, and cringed away from him.
Thomas’s mouth twisted in disgust. “I’m not going to fight you, Ambrose. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to strangle you, and if you’d managed to hurt Rose, I would kill you now. But she’s unhurt, and I’m free, and so, against my better judgment, I’m going to let you go.”
Ambrose frowned and glanced around uneasily. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch. I owe you‚ the family owes you an apology at least for the way you—and your mother—were treated.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I can’t speak for what happened before you were born, but I did think of you as a brother—or at least a cousin, growing up. You never gave my situation in Mogador a thought, but I realize now that I never gave your situation much consideration either. You should have been asked what you wanted to do. You should have been given choices, as Gerald and I were. You should have been given a handsome wage for all the work you’ve done on behalf of the estate. And because you were my uncle’s son.”
Ambrose narrowed his eyes. “You do understand that I’ve embezzled a substantial amount.”
Thomas shrugged. “I don’t know the precise amount, but the estate can bear it.”
“I tried to kill you.”
“You didn’t succeed. But you almost killed my wife, and that I won’t forgive. So get on that ship, do what you will, live the life you’ve always dreamed of living, but don’t ever come back. If you do, I’ll have you charged with attempted murder.”
“You won’t make it stick. There’s no evidence it was me.” He was right, but his certainty was infuriating.
“Then I’ll kill you myself. I warn you now, I’m this close to killing you anyway for what you’ve put me and my wife through.” He held up his thumb and finger.
Thomas still itched to give Ambrose the hiding of his life, to beat him to a pulp, but he knew once he started he might not be able to stop. And killing Ambrose wouldn’t change the past, wouldn’t take away the suffering he’d caused.
But killing him would most definitely ruin Thomas’s future. He wasn’t about to lose everything he’d gained in the last few months for the sake of some petty revenge.
Besides, he’d learned something tonight. They saidtounderstand was to forgive. Thomas wasn’t ready to forgive, not by a long shot, but...
“You’re letting me leave? I don’t believe it.” Ambrose stepped back, scanning the surroundings suspiciously, as if expecting the shadows to disgorge a dozen armed men.
Thomas said, “You think I don’t understand what you’ve just told me, about being trained from birth to be useful to the family? About being prevented from living the life you chose? About having no choice? I do. I understand it more than you can imagine. Now don’t test my patience any longer. Leave this country and never come back. If you do, there will be a warrant waiting for you.”
