Malia Martin (30 page)

“You could never understand,” he said.

“Why?”

James took a few deep breaths. She would never understand his needs because no one ever had. He had tried to explain long ago as a young boy to a few of his acquaintances.

Later, as a lovesick young man, he had tried to tell Melissa. They had all looked at him as if he were speaking another language.

In truth, he had never put his ultimate desire into words. He told Pru she didn’t understand, and the irony of it all was that he did not really understand.

“I … it is difficult to …” James shook his head.

Prudence reached out and laced her fingers with his. James glanced down at their joined hands. “I don’t know who I am,” he said. There was so much more to it, but that is what it all stemmed from. He had never, even when his mother was alive, felt like he belonged anywhere.

He frowned and looked back into his wife’s soft brown eyes. “I want … I mean …” No, he could not say what he
really
meant. “I want to prove myself,” he said instead and shrugged. “You should understand, Prudence. It seems that need has motivated you as well.”

She nodded slightly, a sad smile playing about her lips. “Yes, it has. But if that is what you truly want, you would have told me long ago, James. For as you have just said, I understand the need to prove oneself well enough.”

James pulled his hand from his wife’s grip, his heart beating much harder than it should. She was making him think of things he would rather not. She was making him think of his father.

The man who had ruined his life, really.

“My father promised to marry my mother,” he heard himself say. “She never told me that, of course, she never spoke of him at all, in fact. I only know as much as I know because my mother was delirious the last few days of her life. She said a few words over and over, ‘my lord,’ and ‘my husband.’” James rubbed at his temples.

His wife leaned over and kissed his lips. It was a soft, light, barely there touch, but it made him want to pull her into his arms and make love to her again.

“You want to know who your father is,” she said simply.

James felt as if someone had just dumped him over the side of a ship. He hit stinging, ice-cold water, sank for a moment, then surfaced and took a deep breath of air.

“You want to solve the mystery of your birth, but you are a bit afraid, I’m sure. Part of you wants him to love you and embrace you, another part probably wants to kill him.”

Oh God.

“Go,” he said, his words sounding strangled and foreign.

“Oh, James.” His wife said his name like a song, and a feeling of need that had nothing to do with his physical self tingled up his spine.

James rolled off the bed and turned his back on the sight of his nearly naked wife. “Leave, Prudence.”

She said nothing, but she did not leave either. He knew for the room throbbed with her very presence; the air held her scent, their scent.

“I will not allow you to divert my attention again from what I think is important, Prudence. And I will not listen to your words of lust and nonsense. You, dear, are the worst of connivers.”

“Oh!”

James immediately felt horrible for the words that had spilled from his mouth. Of course, they were not what he truly felt.

He just wanted her to leave, needed her to leave.

James turned. “Prudence, I did not mean … that is to say …”

His wife stood quickly. “I do think you should not say anything at all, James.” Gripping the top of her nightgown together, Pru stomped through the door between their rooms and slammed it shut so forcefully that a very large portrait wobbled on its mooring.

James shook his head and strode toward the door, but just as his hand curled around the knob, he heard the bolt on Pru’s side slide home with a pronounced harshness.

Once more, James found himself standing with his forehead against the cool wood of the door. “I am sorry, Prudence, it was not what I meant to say.”

But his outspoken wife had become very quiet indeed. James knocked his forehead against the door a couple times in pure frustration.

P
rudence did not sleep at all. At first she was so terribly angry with her husband that she lay on her bed fuming. She imagined every sort of horrible thing she could do to the man.

And then frustration hit, and she thought of the people of Gravesly and how she was letting them down. And she thought of Lord Leighton and Mr. Watson, and then perhaps she did sleep for she imagined that her husband and Lord Leighton were swimming in a lagoon with sharks and she was desperately trying to scream to them, but they did not seem to hear.

Sitting up quickly, Prudence stared into the dark of her room, breathing as if she had just rowed a boat out to the schooner. She sighed when it registered in her mind where she was and dropped back on her pillows.

She was rather sure she had figured out her husband. Actually, she was very sure. He had immediately gone on the defensive and attacked her after she voiced her opinion, and with all of her interaction with men in the last couple of years she had learned much about them.

Strange creatures, really. When faced with the idea of being vulnerable in any way, emotionally or physically, they went on the attack. She understood such a reaction from animals. Usually bigger animals were trying to kill them. But, really, it would be nice if men could learn that the human race was surely not on the same level as a pack of wild dogs.

Of course, she had resorted to her own weakness and let him hurt her feelings when he was really only trying to protect his own.

But she
was
human.

Pru threw her coverlet aside and jumped out of bed. It was time to pace.

James wanted to find his place. She remembered him saying this on their trip to Brighton. And, it seemed, he had it in his head that in order to do so, he would have to know his father. Prudence nodded and propped her hands on her hips as she walked.

She was not as sure about his need to be accepted by society. Pru took another turn about her room and snapped her fingers. “If he is worthy enough, his father will come to him.”

Pru stopped her pacing for a moment and closed her eyes. “Stupid man,” she said softly, wanting in that moment to run through the door connecting her room to her husband’s and throw her arms around him.

But she would not do that, of course.

Pru linked her hands behind her back, turned on her heel, and walked back across her suite. At least now she understood.

This knowledge could help her immensely. Finally, she would know how to manipulate Captain Ashley.

She shook her head.

No, no, no, that is not what she wanted at all, not really.

Prudence dropped into a brocade chair that sat before the enormous fireplace in her room. So what
did
she want?

She thought back to the days before Captain Ashley had complicated her life with his presence. She had been very sure of herself then, so very sure that she wanted to be the Wolf and take care of Gravesly for the rest of her life.

She had known that she was happy. And then Captain Ashley had dipped his head under the doorway of her small house, and suddenly everything changed.

Her heart had decided that it wanted more.

But what exactly?

Prudence made a strangled sound and combed her fingers through her hair. What indeed. She wanted to make love to her husband. She wanted James Ashley to hold her in his strong arms and touch her with his lovely hands.

And she wanted him to love her.

Because she loved him.

“Damn him,” she muttered. He had complicated everything.

Her dear husband had given her more things to want. Unfortunately, given who he was, he had made them impossible to have.

She would have to figure out what was most important. And that was quite easy, really. There was no way that loving a man came before people’s lives. It did not have anything to do with her need to have her own name anymore, either.

They had gotten to the point where a whole town faced destruction.

“Think,” she said out loud. And then she stood again and resumed pacing. “Think,” she said again, and realized that she really must whisper, so lowered her voice.

“No matter my ultimate wants, I need to concentrate on my immediate needs. I need to put my own feelings aside. I need to meet with Mr. Watson, and I need to soften my husband. So”—Pru twirled on her heel and started back across the room—“I will find Lord Leighton tomorrow,” she snapped her fingers. “And I will send Clifton to interrogate the man’s servants.” That was a flash of pure brilliance. Prudence smiled hugely. “And I will try desperately to be patient with my husband even when he says things that make me want to bash him over the head with the hardest thing I can find.”

Prudence did not realize it, but she did not have to whisper her thoughts. James had left his room a few minutes after his wife had slammed out in a huff.

“I have a problem,” he said softly through Clifton’s door about twenty minutes later. James heard movement, then his wife’s butler filled his vision. Nothing like a man the size of a small country to make you tongue-tied. In the darkness James could just make out Clifton’s round head and dark eye patch.

“You’ve woken me from a sound sleep to stare at me, Captain?”

James frowned. “No, man, I need to speak with you immediately on a matter of grave importance.”

“Then speak.”

James glanced down the hall. The walls in these downstairs rooms were probably as thin as sheets. “Meet me in my study in ten minutes, Clifton.”

“Yes, sir,” Clifton answered, obviously intrigued, for the man gave no more argument as he stepped back and closed the door.

James took the stairs two at a time back up to the main floor. When he reached his study, he sank into the chair he had only moments ago vacated, propped his feet back on the table in front of him, and curled his fingers around the still-warm glass at his elbow. Another swallow of fine whiskey heated his throat and splashed into his belly. One whole glass had already preceded this last.

Prudence was driving him to drink, truly.

Not only did he have to figure out the problem of her former life, but he had to figure out the problem of his future life. He had resigned his commission in the navy the first day back in London, feeling rather like he could not continue in good faith since his wife’s former occupation had been one frowned upon by the king. He had also not gone the usual route of taking a job in the War Office. Again, he had not felt completely right about it.

Still, he had been playing with the idea of going into politics. Politics did not require complete honesty in the least. Also, a thought had occurred to him while he spoke with his wife in the carriage. Perhaps, he could persuade her to live in London as the proper wife of a politician and help the people of Gravesly through legal channels.

And perhaps they could do it together.

And perhaps they could live their entire lives like the first night of their marriage.

The thought was lovely, but probably completely without merit. Persuading Prudence to do anything that she did not want to do was a Herculean task if ever there was one.

“Sir?” Clifton stood in the doorway.

He stood. “Thank you for coming up, Clifton. Would you like a drink?”

Clifton shook his head curtly.

“Fine then, please sit with me.” James gestured to the chair opposite him.

Clifton squinted toward the chair, then looked at James suspiciously.

“I am not going to bite you, Clifton. I just wish to speak with you.”

The butler said nothing, but entered and carefully took the seat across from James. James sat as well, trying to think of the best way to broach the subject he needed to discuss.

“First of all, Clifton, may I have your word that our conference here tonight will remain in confidence?”

Clifton stared at him for a very long time in silence, but James waited patiently. The two glasses of whiskey actually helped him in this effort.

Finally, Clifton nodded slowly. “I will keep your confidence, sir, if doing so does not hurt Lady Prudence.”