Page 77 of Fortune Favors the Viscount
His faint smile disappeared. “Because my father was not a good man, Emilia. He could be charming when necessary—in a contretemps with a merchant or a harbormaster—but generally he was coldhearted and cruel. Discipline was strict aboard his ship.” His fingers curled around hers tightly.
“You must have supposed, from my description of my aunt’s taking me in, that I relished the seagoing life,” he said quietly. “I suppose I did, on some level, because it was all I knew. Itcouldbe thrilling and adventurous. But it was also filled with terrible things. Sailors lashed raw with a cat-o’-nine-tails. Slave auctions, on the wharves of Charleston, South Carolina, where whole families of Africans were casually torn apart. Plantations in Antigua, where the poor souls enslaved there were forced to work harder than any animals, from dawn until night in the sweltering cane fields and sugar mills. I watched my father step over the body of a boy, no older than myself, and calmly conduct business with the man who had just whipped that boy insensible.” His grip was like iron around her hand, but Emilia didn’t move.
“Sally abhorred it—the brutality, the inhumanity. She refused to go ashore anywhere except Philadelphia. I suspect she had a family there, and she took any chance to search for them, but one time she didn’t return. My father had her dragged back and the court added a year to her indenture. She never told me about her family, but that additional year of servitude was a blow. I remember hearing her weep quietly, repeatingMamaover and over...” Nick paused. “She was still with my father when Heloise took me. I can still see her, standing and watching at the ship’s rail as they cast off and left me behind. She was the only true friend I had, and I might have been her only friend. Neither my aunt nor my father cared.”
For a moment he sounded angry all over again. Emilia’s heart ached for the boy he had been, losing his mother and taken from that home, carelessly exposed to his father’s wanton cruelty, then sent against his will, without his only friend, into the strict home of his aunt, who was another stranger to him.
“Did you ever see her again?” she asked softly.
“No.” He turned his head to look at her. “Sally is Charlotte’s mother.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE
“Oh,” said Emilia, taken aback. “He— Your father married her?”
“No.” He looked away. “No, he did not. I’ve no idea if she wanted to have a child with him, or if he coerced her.”
“Oh,” she whispered again, in horror.
“Charlotte knows,” he said, as if she’d asked. “She was born the year our father died. Old Sam”—a note of viciousness entered his voice—“left Sally and Charlotte nothing but the clothes they owned and a few pounds. Sally was alone in Liverpool, a stranger in this country, with a babe and no money and not even the respectability of a marriage license.”
His hand had gone completely still on her back. Emilia could feel the rock-hard tension in his arm beneath her, and wished there was something she could say to comfort him. Even her father, selfish and uncaring as he’d been, was not as bad as this.
“That is appalling. But... surely you don’t blame yourself for it?” she asked hesitantly.
He gave a harsh bark of laughter. “I couldn’t have stopped him even if I’d known. Heloise wrested me from my father’s care when I was a boy of ten, and I only saw him a handful of times afterward. Heloise urged me to write to him, encouraging him to repent his wicked ways before it was too late, but he rarely wrote back.” His mouth twisted. “My aunt was right—I was better off with her. But I despised her for leaving Sally behind. Heloise knew what my father was. She could have bought Sally’s indenture and taken her as well, and probably even more cheaply than she bought me, but she didn’t.” He glanced at her. “I never forgave her for that, despite all she did for me. Ungrateful, she called me.”
“No,” she exclaimed. “Ungrateful, for wanting something other than what she wanted! I ran away from home to avoid the path my uncle wanted me to take—a path many would call eminently respectable.”
He cocked one brow. “You went on to an honorable, if difficult, line of employment.”
She blushed. “I hadn’t any other skills.”
He laughed a little. “Too right you are. I learned gambling on the ship, and I was good at it. The fact that it horrified Heloise only made me more determined to pursue it.”
Emilia wet her lips after a moment of silence. “When did you learn about Charlotte?”
“After my father’s death. A letter from one of the Blakes informed Heloise that Sally had applied to them for funds to support her child—my father’s child—which they refused.” Nick’s voice began to crack, and he paused a moment before continuing more evenly. “I had asister. It was the first I’d heard of it, and I flew into a frenzy, raging at Heloise to send for them. She balked at that, but she did give Sally money. I was at school by then, but I threatened to run away and give myself to a press gang if she didn’t. There was a very brief reply from Sally, thanking her for the funds, then nothing else.” His face was grim again. “The moment I came of age, I went to Liverpool to find them, but it had been a few years, and I had no luck. When my aunt died, I hired investigators to search. I was in London by then, running the card games that became the Vega Club. Only five years ago did my search pay off, when the investigator found Charlotte in a workhouse in Manchester.”
Emilia started. “Where?Why?”
“Sally was gone. She’d left Charlotte with a friendly family, but the man died and his widow couldn’t feed her own children, let alone Charlotte. Charlotte told me her mother was going back to Philadelphia and meant to return for her, but I’ve not been able to locate Sally, here or there. It’s a long and dangerous voyage.”
“Oh, Nick,” she whispered.
He turned to face her, deadly serious. “It took me years to find her, and I only did so in the nick of time. There are people, Emilia—evil men—who have a taste for children. A defenseless orphan, let alone a pretty female one, would be easy prey to them. By the grace of God, the matron at the workhouse tried to protect the children, and Charlotte was merely hungry and ragged. I took her out of there and installed her in a house of her own, where she had a warm bed and plenty to eat and pretty dresses to wear, and she will never be hungry or cold, ever again.”
Mutely she seized his hand. He gripped it back, hard, and she pressed her lips to his knuckles.The most honorable man I know,she thought with a throb of emotion.
“Is that how Charlotte knows what a cock bawd is?” she asked without thinking. She had been shocked to hear that term for a brothel keeper.
“Yes,” said Nick flatly. “The matron at the workhouse used to tell the children not to dawdle, or the cock bawds would snatch them. She was right. I came through the gutters of London, building Vega’s, and I know exactly how depraved some corners are. James is always two steps behind her when she’s out of the house because I will not lose my sister again.”
“And that’s why you left a pistol by her bed at nights.” Now she understood. A chill ran through her as she pictured Charlotte at Lucy’s age, completely alone and vulnerable.
He grimaced. “I had no idea how to deal with a child’s fears, and I was away all night. It seemed a good idea at the time.”
She smiled. “It wasn’t the worst idea. It comforted her, and that’s what was important.” Suddenly she gasped. “Andthat’swhy you agreed to my bargain!”
