Page 78 of The Pirate Lord
The holystone thudded on the floor as he faced her. “Yes.”
Just as he’d expected, she looked stricken. And her eyes most definitely showed pity. He flinched at the sight of it.
“Did you ever look for her?” she asked. “Perhaps she regretted it later. Perhaps?—”
“Trust me, she didn’t regret it.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
She got a stubborn look on her face. “Oh, simply because she left you once, you decided to cut her off and never?—”
“She sent a letter, all right?” The pain lashed him all over again. By now, he ought to be immune. Why did it still hurt so much? He went on, knowing Sara would plague him until he told her. “I asked about her at the British consulate when I was ten. I only had her first name, so they thought I was lying . . . or that my father had lied when he told me about her. They made it quite clear that no Englishladywould run off with her tutor.”
He’d gotten a harsher beating than usual from his father for going to the consulate. The consul had apparently told Elias Horn about Gideon’s secret visit, assuming Elias had put Gideonup to it for some nefarious purpose, and had warned the man to keep his “ragamuffin” son away from the consulate.
“A letter came for my father at the consulate a few months later,” he went on coldly. “I don’t know, maybe the consul actually took the trouble to hunt her down. It was from my mother. She said she wanted nothing . . . to do with me.” He could hardly speak the words. “A few years after that, my father received word that she was dead, and the family wanted no further ties to either of us. Then my father proceeded to drink himself to death.”
By then, Gideon had already buried his childish hopes of finding his mother and convincing her to take him back. He’d endured his father’s drunken thrashings in silence, knowing that Elias only beat him because Gideon washerson, as he so often liked to say. That’s when Gideon had begun swearing that one day he would pay the English back for their superior airs and their lack of morals, for thinking they could do as they pleased with impunity.
And he’d kept his oath, hadn’t he? He’d made fools of every nobleman he’d ever met, praying one of them might be his mother’s kin. He’d exulted every time he’d snatched the jewels from the neck of some haughty English bitch.
Until Sara. Sara had changed everything.
“But didn’t she leave you anything?” Sara persisted. “A will? Some . . . some sign that she regretted her actions?”
It irritated him that she refused to believe an Englishwoman capable of such abominable behavior. With jerky movements, he removed his belt, then tossed it at her feet. “That belt buckle is the only thing she left me, and I’m sure she didn’t intend to leave that. It was her brooch before I had it made into a buckle.”
Sara bent to pick it up. Slowly, she turned it over and over in her hands. He watched as she traced the ring of diamonds and the massive onyx center carved in the shape of a stallion’s head.
“No doubt you’ve seen plenty of brooches as expensive as that in your life,” he said, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice even now. “You probably owned several.”
“Yes, I did. I didn’t ask for them, though. I didn’t expect them. They just . . . came along with being an earl’s stepdaughter.” She lifted mournful eyes to his. “Why did you keep it if you hate her so much?”
He tried to shrug, but her questions were like a knife probing at an old sore, and it was hard to be nonchalant. “When I was five, I kept asking why I had no mother, so Father showed me that and told me the whole story. A few days later, I stole it from him and kept it with me. You see I never wanted to believe that—” He broke off. He’d never wanted to believe that his mother had purposely left him behind. It had been too painful for a child of five to consider. “Years later, after I learned he was telling the truth, I kept it to remind me of what she’d done and what kind of woman she was.”
Her face was etched with pity. “I don’t understand. How could any woman abandon her son?” There was so much sadness for him in her voice that he could hardly stand it.
He spoke more harshly than he intended. “I don’t know. I guess she missed having servants cater to her every whim. She missed expensive gowns and champagne and well-sprung carriages. She missed the jewels she wore dripping from her fingers at evening parties?—”
He broke off before the bile could choke him. Turning away from her, he looked out at the island. His island. He took several deep breaths, letting Atlantis’s sweet air calm him. Only Atlantis had the power to purge the pain of his mother’s treachery from him.
When he went on, he was thankful he sounded calmer. “My father didn’t have much to give her, I warrant you. He made a decent living, but nothing approaching the level she was used to.When she knew him, he wasn’t a drunk, or so he told me. He only started drinking after she deserted him.” Anger crept into his voice once more. “Apparently, he had trouble understanding why a husband and a son didn’t compare to a huge house with fifty servants and diamond brooches the size of her delicate, noble-born fist.”
She was quiet a long time. When at last she spoke, her voice was a ragged whisper. “I’m not like her, Gideon. I know you think I am, but?—”
“Don’t put words in my mouth!” He whirled on her, his fists clenched. “Confound it, I know you’re not like her! You’renothinglike her! Trust me, my mother would never have traveled with a crowd of convict women. She wouldn’t have quoted Aristophanes to a pirate. She would’ve fainted at the sight of that snake, and she would certainly never have helped put out a fire.”
He dragged in a heavy breath as his gaze locked with hers. “But then, no other English noblewoman I’ve ever seen would have done those things either. Most of the earl’s wives and daughters who traveled on the ships I attacked showed little backbone and less intelligence.”
“Can you blame them? They were probably terrified.”
She said the words defensively, bringing a half-smile to his lips. That was just like Sara, to take up for a group of women she didn’t even know. “Perhaps. Butyouweren’t. You shook your fist at me and spoke your mind. Face it, Sara, you’re not the average English noblewoman.”
“But if you don’t . . . hate me for being what I am, why haven’t you . . . I mean. . .” She broke off, her cheeks glowing crimson.
He stared at her. Surely she wasn’t trying to say what he thought. “Why haven’t I what?” he said in a carefully modulated voice.
