The Blood of a Baron - K.J. Jackson Page 0,16
ago without a care for the décor. I bought it for the square across the street.”
She nodded, a soft smile on her face. “That makes sense. You always preferred to be outdoors.” Her head suddenly cocked to the side. “How did you afford it?”
“Because you made sure I lost every coin I had so I must still be poor?” The words snapped out before he could stifle them.
Her cheeks flushed and her hand lifted, running along the curve of her throat. “I never thought you weren’t capable of making your own way in the world, Wes. That was the one saving grace in it all—I knew that, somehow, you would find a way forward, no matter what.” Her fingers left her neck and she motioned about the room. “I was just curious what you have been doing for the past seven years. Clearly you have made a fortune in some endeavor.”
Morton had never told her.
Interesting.
He considered for a moment not telling her, but he had nothing to hide at this juncture. Nothing to be ashamed of, for shame had long since been banished from his list of feelings.
Not that he was eager to impart to her any information about his life.
With a deep sigh, Wes went to the sideboard, yanked the stopper on a decanter of brandy, and then poured two glasses. His to the brim, hers halfway. He shrugged off his coat and waistcoat, draping them along a chair that sat next to the sideboard.
Tugging free his cravat, he moved to her and nudged the glass in front of her. “Here.”
She set her boots and stockings she had just removed under the settee, then tucked her feet up under her skirts and looked up at him, her forehead scrunched. “Brandy?”
“To calm your nerves. You’ve been jumpy since we found your townhouse as it was.”
“I suppose I have been.” She pulled her arms free from her wool pelisse and then grabbed the glass. Cupping the tumbler between her palms, she took the smallest sip.
Wes sat to the left of her on the settee, pulling his right ankle atop his left knee as he stretched back, his right arm going long atop the upholstered back.
He swallowed a gulp of brandy and looked to her. “Privateering. One of the few remaining ships with a letter of marque—the Firehawk. It garnered me more riches than I ever could have imagined.”
“But?”
His left eyebrow cocked. “But what?”
She pointed the rim of her glass to his face. “Your eyes, they darkened—like they do when you’re showering me with spiteful looks. They darken. So the story isn’t really about riches—where is the ‘but’?”
He drew in a deep breath. He needed a wall between them so she couldn’t see him. Read him. Annoying as hell. “The ‘but’ is that all those riches came at great cost. Time and again.”
“Deaths?”
“Aye. Deaths of good men. Deaths of people I depended upon, admired. Deaths of innocent people.”
“But you survived.”
“I did. Not by my volition, though.” He lifted his glass and sipped. “I boarded the Firehawk to die—one way or another. A battle on the sea was how I wanted to leave this earth. In a glory of gunfire and swinging cutlasses.”
Her mouth parted, a quick intake of breath brushing past her lips.
Dammit. He was looking at her blasted lips. Her plump, pink lips of all things. Lips that had once had a home on his neck, his mouth, his chest.
He’d promised her one night without hate, but he hadn’t realized how vulnerable that made him. How much of a shield his hatred for her was.
A shield he currently needed.
She shook her head, her amber eyes wide. “You never used to be like that, Wes. For all your size and strength—you always hated fighting—except when you were young and still shorter than me and wished to take down Boney.”
He looked away from her lips, staring at the flames in the fireplace. “Yes, but then I’m not the man you knew anymore. When I stepped onto that ship I was no one. And fighting felt good. Gave me peace when silence and stillness could not.” He shrugged. “It is deranged. I am aware.”
She took a slow sip of her brandy. “It is no more deranged than what I did. You fought, while I was busy retreating into nothingness, until I was nothing through and through.”
He looked at her. “You said that earlier, that you have no one left.”
She shrugged, looking away from him.
“Why do you have no one left? You had plenty of