“You really think you can still find your mother after all these years? You know now that she wanted you with her, and yet she never came back for you. I hate to say it—”

“Don’t. I—I have to know in either case. This wondering about what became of her is hell. But you’re welcome to join me, you know. You’ll always have a home with me if you want it.”

Mortimer chuckled. “I took that for granted. But you know my family had money. I probably should decide if I want to do something with that education we labored over, or maybe find myself a pretty wife.”

“Good luck with that. The pretty ones seem to come with too many bloody in-laws.”

Mortimer snorted. “Only your pretty one does. I still don’t know how you put up with that tempest.”

Damon tapped his chest. “Let’s hope someday you find out for yourself. Is my father in his cabin?”

“Yes, and he’s anxious to speak with you. I think he’s worried about what happens next—for him. You gave him no assurances yet?”

“No, I haven’t. The surprise at finding him with Lacross hadn’t worn off yet. I anguished over the delay in getting him out of prison, and all the while he’d found his own way out. I’ll speak to him now.”

Damon found his father pacing the floor in the cabin they would share. Cyril looked hale and fit, though his brown hair had turned gray at the temples. If he had suffered deprivation in prison, he had recovered from it these last months.

But his father looked wary now, which made Damon ask, “Did you think you would be taken back to prison?”

“You sailed here, where the prison is located.”

“To clear your name. You are completely free now, Father, so be easy about that. We sail to Jamaica now. Your plantation was sold, but I will find you another before I return to England.”

“You’re not staying—so you learned the truth?” Cyril said cryptically.

Damon frowned. “What truth?”

Cyril wrung his hands. Damon didn’t think Cyril was going to answer, he was silent so long, but then he said, “That—that I gambled too much. And drank too much after you left. The two combined guaranteed I could never win. I understand that now and will never fall into that dual trap again.”

Damon was still frowning. He did vaguely recall that his father had been drinking before he went off to school, and even before his mother left, but most men drank to some degree, and it had never seemed to affect Cyril’s ability to run the plantation. But there had also been the occasional argument Damon overheard between his parents about money, so maybe Malory had been right about Cyril’s having gambled even back then. And if he fell into that ruinous cycle again?

“Perhaps you should return to England with me,” Damon suggested. “The Reeves estate is mine now. You’re welcome to live there with me for the rest of your life. You will never have to work again.”

Cyril smiled wryly. “Idle hands are the devil’s hands, Son, and I am a farmer at heart. Be it my land or another’s, there is great satisfaction in an honest day’s toil. In the islands I’m respected as a planter, in England—no, I’m never going back there.”

“Give it some thought before you decide.”

“Do not for a moment think I am ungrateful, Damon. Look at you, Son, what a fine man you’ve become. So well educated, you speak like a fine gentleman now. I can’t tell you what it means to me that you would risk your life, your reputation, and do so much to get me out of prison. I’m so proud of you.”

Seeing tears forming in Cyril’s eyes, Damon hugged him tightly. “You’ve been a wonderful father.”

“But after all these years, I much prefer these islands, and I have friends in Jamaica, even a mistress I may marry now that I’m no longer wallowing in anger and self-pity.”

“My mother isn’t dead.”

“She is to me,” Cyril said a little too sharply. “I loved you from the day you were born, and loved her, too, for giving you to me. I’ll always love you, Damon, never doubt that. But I understand you have new obligations now and we must live an ocean apart. I won’t make the same mistakes to lose this second chance you’re giving me. I swear it.”

Father and son embraced, and both had tears in their eyes now.

Chapter Forty-Eight

JACQUELINE RAISED HER HEAD slightly from her pillow and opened one eye to see who had just burst into her bedroom without knocking, but she should have known. Only her cousin Judith would make such an entrance.

“Are you actually sick this time?” Judith demanded.

“No.”

“A sprained ankle perhaps?”

Jacqueline put her head back down and dropped a listless hand over her eyes. “Ennui, if you must know. The last trip to the Caribbean was too exciting, which apparently has nasty aftereffects. Now, nothing interests me.”

“Is that all? You’re merely suffering from boredom?”

“What else?”

Judith plopped down on the bed and pulled Jacqueline up to sit in the middle of it with her. “Oh, I don’t know—maybe you lied when you said you didn’t fall in love with your pirate?”

“I did nothing of the sort. But I might be experiencing moments of—I don’t even know what to call it. Misery, I suppose.”

Jacqueline couldn’t bring herself to talk about this yet, that she was worried that Damon didn’t love her, that he’d only used her to get her father’s help. He’d gotten that, and now she might never see him again!

“And tears?”

“Don’t be silly, Judy, you know I don’t cry.”

“And yet boredom does not cause misery—”

“It does for me!”

“—while love certainly can cause misery for a number of reasons. When you’re separated from your heart’s desire, is one. When two people have unresolved feelings for each other, is another. When you think he doesn’t feel the same way you feel about him, that’s a hundred times worse than the other two reasons. When you think he’s betrayed you, that’s a thousand—”

“Judy! We were talking about me, not you, and why haven’t you forgotten the miserable parts of your romance with Nathan? You’re married now and over-the-top happy.”