Run Wild (Escape with a Scoundrel) - By Shelly Thacker Page 0,122

at the ceiling. “I wasn’t lying.” Hellfire and damnation, he wanted to lie. Wanted to deny, conceal, walk away. Wanted to do anything but tell her what she was forcing him to tell her.

He had never admitted the truth. To anyone. Had never spoken the words aloud.

But he couldn’t lie anymore. Not to her. And there was no point in trying to save himself.

“Then I don’t understand,” she said in that same quiet, gentle, compassionate tone that tore at him. “How can you say—”

“She didn’t tell you why I quit, did she?” he snapped. It was best to get this over with quickly. Once and for all.

“No, she—”

“Of course not. Because Clarice doesn’t know. No one knows.” He turned on his heel so suddenly that he startled her. “You want the truth? All right.”

He made it swift, sudden, final, like a single thrust of a cutlass, severing everything between them.

“I killed a child, Samantha. That’s why I quit and walked away. I killed a child!”

~ ~ ~

Sam stared at him, so shocked at both what he said and the brutal, blunt way he said it that she couldn’t speak.

“A boy only ten or twelve years old,” he continued harshly. “A Royal Navy cabin boy. I took his life without even thinking.” He took a step toward her, as if inviting her to either strike him in outrage or back away in horror.

She did neither, unable to move or even breathe. Her entire body seemed suddenly made of stone.

“I shot him,” Nicholas went on when she remained still, his voice savage and stark. “I killed him because he stood between me and vengeance. That was all I wanted. All I cared about. I spent so many years seeking vengeance that I wasn’t even human anymore. I was exactly what they’d made me. An animal. So blind to anything but blood and violence that I didn’t even realize it until I—” His voice suddenly choked out. “Until I watched that boy falling to the deck and I could...” He shut his eyes, as if saying the words aloud brought it back too clearly. “I could see myself in his eyes. I could see what I’d become.”

“Oh, Nicholas,” she whispered, wanting to touch him and not daring, hurting inside for what he had done, and for what had been done to him.

“So that’s the truth about me,” he snarled, his eyes piercing her once more. “That’s who you think you’re in love with.”

“Nicholas... dear God...” she whispered. “But h-how... how did it come to that? Why? Why were you seeking vengeance?”

“I was after the men who killed my father,” he said curtly.

“But I thought your father was executed for some terrible crime. I thought—”

“That he was a criminal and I was innocent?” he scoffed. “Wrong again. My father was an innocent man, a good man.” His voice faltered, then picked up again, angrily. “He was betrayed by his friends. By people he trusted.”

Sam kept silent as he spilled out the words, the pain that had been locked inside him for so many years.

“My father was a privateer during the war with Spain,” he explained tightly. “His job was to harass and plunder Spanish ships. He worked for the bloody navy, called the officers his friends. He took all the risks while his raids helped fatten the crown purse and build the Royal Navy fleet. But after the war was over, the crown decided that the privateers had outlived their usefulness. Some of them had crossed the line and turned pirate—so the navy rounded them all up. Decided they were too dangerous to be left roaming the seas. My father was arrested on a trumped-up charge of piracy and...”

“Executed,” she whispered, shutting her own eyes, remembering how Nicholas had called out during his fever, the horrifying images of his father’s hanging.

“Executed,” he confirmed, turning away from her. “The rest of us on the ship were spared—”

“But what were you doing on his ship?” she asked in confusion. “You couldn’t have been much older than—”

“Ten.” He stopped before the hearth, picked up the figurine of the dancing lady from the mantel. “I was ten.” He paused, turning the delicate porcelain in his dark, callused hand. In his present mood, Sam half-expected him to break it, or throw it.

Instead, he set the figurine carefully back in place. And when he spoke again, some of the fury had left his voice, replaced by wistfulness. “My mother died when I was eight. My father took me to live