The Captain of All Pleasures (Sutherland Brothers #1)(65)
Author: Kresley Cole

Her words lanced his heart. He thought of all the months he’d wanted her and wanted her to stay with him. Then, just as she gave in, decided to risk all for him, to trust him, he would leave her. He bent down to press a kiss in her hair, knowing it was the last time he’d breathe in her scent.

He recalled his last words to the Irisher this morning. Derek had turned back and asked the big man, “Why are you so bloody loyal to the Lassiters?”

The Irisher didn’t hesitate. “Because the father saved my life, and the daughter saved my soul.”

Derek had nodded and turned to go with a heavy heart, knowing that without Nicole, his own soul was lost.

Chapter 24

I’m going on,” Jason Lassiter declared on his fourth night in Cape Town.

“We’re going on,” Maria stubbornly corrected as she pushed her spectacles farther up her nose.

“Woman! I brought you this far against my better judgment.” He shook his head. “Never should have stopped in Recife. But, damn it, you won’t leave Cape Town with me.” Grabbing her elbow in frustration, he steered her around a pack of drunken sailors swerving down the docks. He and Maria had come down to check for word of any ships inbound from Sydney, but had gathered nothing.

Maria reminded him, “It’s a simple business matter.” Business was simple. And unemotional. Was that why she worked so hard? Because her emotions careened around this man so badly she needed a constant to ground her? “I paid for passage to Australia—you have no say.”

Letting her go, he scowled, until she reached out to lay her hand on his arm. He calmed a bit. “Jason, Chancey will have gotten her by now. And we have her messages. She wrote that she is very well and told the crew to meet her here if they couldn’t find a way back. And what about the money she sent them? You know the only person she could have gotten that much money from is Sutherland.”

“It’s just that I can’t stand this feeling—he’s got my little girl, Maria.”

She thought her heart would break at his admission, but it didn’t change her decision on the matter. “She’s not a little girl anymore, and I don’t care what your crew says, he won’t mistreat her. I watched them in Recife, and I tell you he’s in love with her.”

“Then why does the crew want him dead?”

She pursed her lips, because he had a point. Then rallied. “You must trust me in this matter—he will take care of her.”

Jason shook his head firmly. “I’ve got to go get her.”

“If you’re going, I’m going,” she said resolutely. “But I think you’re making a mistake. If Chancey left weeks ago, they should be on their way back here to pick up the crew. What if we miss them?”

Sometimes she couldn’t understand this man. She was certain they would pass by Nicole and Chancey in this big ocean. It would be a miracle if they did meet them. She loved Jason, but she could see that often he was far too impatient, and it overruled his better sense.

“Be reasonable, Jason. You know Chancey will protect her with his life. And think of how terrible it would be for her if you weren’t here when she arrived. You know she would wait here for you to return from Australia.”

She sensed she’d won with that argument. Truly, it would be awful to be stranded at the Cape. Nicknamed the Tavern of the Seas, it contained the worst sorts of people—transients, thieves, even pirates. The only nice thing she could say about Cape Town was that it was a good place to do business. There were hordes of the newly rich from the African mines who didn’t know what to do with all their wealth—

Maria’s eyes widened behind her spectacles. Distantly, she heard Jason saying, “I should never have pressured her to go to her grandmother’s. Pressure certainly didn’t work with her mother. And she’s so like Laurel. If Nicole doesn’t want that life, then she doesn’t have to live it. I’ll have to find a way to provide better for her.”

Like a flash, the idea came to her. Cape Town had an abundance of capital, if you knew where to look. Sadly, Jason didn’t.

But Maria did.

“Can’t this thing go any faster?” Nicole asked irritably as she looked around the deck of their unwieldy steamer. Irritability had seeped into her personality until it, and sadness, defined her. This wasn’t just because they hadn’t been able to find a sailing vessel leaving Sydney for Cape Town and had been forced to settle on this coal-hungry monster. It wasn’t even that she felt awkward and useless at sea when she couldn’t work.

It was because the man she’d fallen in love with had abandoned her.

No one will ever hurt you again. Lies! He’d said the words, said them like a solemn vow. Then clawed open her chest and ripped out her heart himself.

She’d found herself able to go about four or five days without talking about him before the words clamored for release, threatening to strangle her if she didn’t let them out. As always, Chancey was a patient listener. They’d been over this again and again, but she still sounded baffled when she whispered, “He didn’t even say good-bye. Waited until I went to town without you, then left.”

The tears began, and her chin automatically rose in a futile gesture to forestall them. “Heartless but he’s a selfish man. I foolishly thought he’d changed.”

Chancey shifted his craggy face from one sympathetic look to another.

“Looking back, it’s as if he wanted to make me fall in love with him. Always trying to get under my skin and to get my attention. To get me to open up to him.” She didn’t bother hiding her confusion. “Then for him to do this? I was just a game for him.”

Chancey looked strange, as if her suggestion had startled him. “No, no, then, that couldn’t be it. He probably woke up and realized that ye deserved more than a drunken wretch,” he said fervently. He’d been acting so odd lately, Nicole thought. Anytime she mentioned that she was merely Sutherland’s cast-off, he defended him.

Chancey frowned and was about to say something. She waited with raised eyebrows, but he coughed and hastily pulled himself up, excusing himself to go to work. He’d signed on as a hand so he could learn as much as possible about steam-propelled ships. He and her father both recognized they were the ships of the future. She didn’t begrudge him the work, but she had nothing to take her mind off those bedeviling memories.

Those crushing memories. She might deserve more than a “drunken wretch,” but she’d sensed the real man under all the pain. And loved him.

Now he’d given her pain of her own.

But she would survive. All she had to do was bluster and swagger her way through this. That’s what she’d done all her life.

Yet some part of her questioned whether she was strong enough to rebound from the last few months. The home she’d wanted so badly was at the bottom of the South Atlantic Ocean, along with the life it could provide. Thanks to losing the race, her father’s shipping line was dying. To cap it all, she’d been left behind like rubbish by the man she had loved. Still loved, fool that she was.