The Pirate Lord (33 page)

Then he gripped the hilt of his saber as he faced the ship’s captain, a sea-roughened raisin of a man who stood beside the main mast.

The man looked oddly unafraid. “We carry no cargo of any use to you and your villains, sir.”

“I’m not here for cargo. I seek the Earl of Blackmore. Is he aboard?”

“He’s aboard,” came another voice from beyond the main mast. A man stepped forward, a pistol in his hand. “I’m the Earl of Blackmore.”

Gideon scanned his enemy with cold eyes, looking for signs of the weak coward he’d expected to find. But though the man was finely dressed and younger than Gideon had expected, he looked nothing like the noblemen Gideon had dealt with in previous captures. There was a hardness about him, an edge of stubborn pride, that Gideon couldn’t help but admire.

And he was leveling the pistol on Gideon as if he itched to fire it. “What do you want with me? Is it gold you want?”

“There’s only one thing I want of you, and that’s Sara,” Gideon said bluntly, ignoring the pistol. “I want my fiancée. Either you take me to her, or I hold you and your ship captive until you do.”

“Or I could shoot you and your cursed pirates. Even
now my men have yours under their guns and can pick them off at will if I command it.”

Gideon sneered at him. “Barnaby!” he shouted. “How fare the earl’s men and their guns?”

Barnaby and the fifteen other men emerged from behind the forward house, pushing a group of disarmed and disgruntled sailors ahead of them. “Oh, they fare quite well, Captain. As for their guns, let’s just say we’ve added to our arsenal substantially this day.”

The earl scowled as Gideon faced him with a thinly veiled smile. “I’ve been a pirate for many years, Lord Blackmore, too many to fall for such paltry tricks.”

“I still have you under my own gun,” the earl retorted hotly.

“Aye. And my men have you under theirs. Now, about your sister—”

“Jordan, you fool, put that gun down at once!” shouted a familiar feminine voice. Sara ran out from beneath the quarterdeck to stand in front of Gideon, facing the earl. “Don’t you dare shoot him! Don’t you dare!”

Gideon’s breath stopped in his throat as he took in the flaming hair and lithe form. “Sara!”

She turned to him, her face glowing. “I told you I would return. I told you.”

He gave her no chance to say more. Throwing down his saber, he caught her to him and crushed her against his chest. She was here. She was really here! “Sara, my Sara,” he whispered into her hair, “you have no idea what I’ve endured without you.”

“No worse than I’ve endured without you.” She drew back from him a little, her tear-filled eyes scanning his face with tender concern. “You look far too pale and thin, my love. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to leave you. Truly I didn’t.”

“I know.” He ran his hands over her waist and ribs, scarcely able to believe that he held her in his arms. “That’s why I’m here. I was on my way to England to
fetch you when I spotted your brother’s ship.”

Sara’s expression turned irate. “Ann told you what happened? Oh, just wait until I see
her
again—”

“You mustn’t blame her for telling me, sweetheart. I’d already decided to go to England to carry the women who didn’t wish to live on Atlantis.”

Shock spread over Sara’s face. “You…you what?”

“You were right about so many things,” he said solemnly, “but especially about the women. I finally learned that. What kind of a paradise is there where people are not free?”

“Oh, Gideon,” she said, her voice choked.

He went on haltingly. “So I…decided to take the women back to England, those who wished to go.” His voice grew earnest. “And once I was there, I intended to find you and beg you to return. That’s why Ann told me the truth about why you left. She was trying to keep me from coming after you. She said if I got caught, all your sacrifice would’ve been for nothing.”

“You should have listened to her,” Sara protested. “Didn’t you believe I would return? You should have, especially after she told you the truth.”

“It wasn’t
you
I was worried about.” He looked beyond her to where her brother stood. The earl no longer had his pistol trained on Gideon, but he was scowling at him darkly enough to kill. Gideon’s voice hardened. “I feared that your bastard of a brother would never let you go.”

The earl crossed his arms over his chest, an impudent glare on his face. “The thought did cross my mind, Horn.”

“Hush, Jordan,” Sara said when Gideon stiffened. She lifted her face to Gideon. “What he did was awful, I know, but you must forgive him. He is my brother, after all.”

“Not by blood,” Gideon growled, his gaze still fixed on the earl. “And the man certainly doesn’t deserve to call you his relation.”

“I’ve known her longer than you have and taken care of her much better,” the earl snapped. He stepped forward, his fists clenched, only to find Barnaby’s pistol aimed at him.

Sara glared at Barnaby. “Put that thing down now, Barnaby Kent, or I shall never speak to you again!”

Barnaby glanced at Gideon, waiting for confirmation of her words. When Gideon hesitated, Sara faced him once more with a scowl. “You are
not
going to have my brother shot, Gideon, much as you may wish to. I know he behaved badly, but so did you. I wouldn’t let him shoot you for kidnapping me, so I’m certainly not going to let you shoot him for the same thing. Do you hear me?”

Gideon suppressed a smile as she stuck her chin out at him. She was as stubborn and demanding and loyal as he remembered. Thank God some things never changed. “All right, sweetheart. I won’t let Barnaby shoot your stepbrother. Besides, it wouldn’t do to kill an earl just when I’ve decided to retire from piracy, would it?”

When she beamed at him, then reached up to brush her lips against his, he caught her to him and kissed her long and deep, despite the strangled sounds coming from her brother. When at last he managed to tear himself away from her mouth, Barnaby still held the pistol on his lordship, though a grin split the first mate’s face from one end to the other. “Put the gun down, Barnaby,” Gideon said jovially. “It appears that Sara has come back to me despite Lord Blackmore’s machinations. So there’s not much point in shooting him now, is there?”

“I suppose not.” Barnaby stuck the pistol in his waistband.

“I take it that all the talk of shooting is over now?” a new voice asked.

Whirling around, Barnaby exclaimed, “Who the bloody hell are you two?”

Gideon looked to where an older couple had emerged from the doorway beneath the quarterdeck and now stood at Barnaby’s back. Their eyes, oddly enough, were on Gideon, although there was no hint of fear in them.

Twisting her head to one side, Sara looked at them, then at Gideon. A sudden uncertainty seemed to cross her face. “Um…Gideon, I’ve brought some people with me whom I think…I hope…you’d like to meet.”

The well-dressed couple were surveying him in a way that made him uncomfortable. “Oh?”

Stepping back from him, Sara swept her hand in the direction of the older couple. “Gideon, may I present Lady Dryden, Eustacia Worley. Your mother.”

Thunderstruck, Gideon looked beyond Sara to the slight, dark-haired woman standing there. “My mother is dead, Sara.”

The woman flinched and started forward, but the tall man beside her held her back.

“She’s not dead,” Sara said gently, forcing Gideon’s attention back to her. “She’s very much alive.” Sara drew in a ragged breath. “Elias Horn lied to you all those years ago. The only true thing he ever told you was that he was your mother’s tutor and that she was briefly infatuated with him. But everything else he said was a lie. When he pressed her to run off with him, she refused. She never eloped with Elias Horn. She married your father instead.”

Gideon was still reeling from the knowledge that Elias had lied to him, when her last words arrested him. “Did you say my father?” His gaze returned to the couple standing behind Barnaby, and this time he surveyed the man who stood there, so proud and unflinching…the tall, gray-headed man with blue eyes…and Gideon’s own face.

Gideon’s heart began to pound as he clutched Sara’s arm with painful tightness.

“Hello, son,” the man said in a strained voice, his eyes bright with unshed tears.

Shaking his head, Gideon staggered back from Sara. “There must be a mistake. My father is dead. My mother is dead.”

“Your mother is standing right here,” Sara said firmly. “After she met Lord Dryden, she realized that Elias Horn wasn’t the man for her. She’d already noticed his propensity for drink, so she told him as gently as she could that she didn’t wish to marry him.” Sara’s voice hardened. “Apparently that didn’t satisfy Elias. After she married Lord Dryden, he sent her notes, trying to get her to meet him. And when Lord Dryden put an end to that, he struck back at them both by stealing you away shortly after your birth. One day when the wet nurse brought you to the park, he waited till she turned aside for a moment, then he snatched you.”

“No, it can’t be,” Gideon said hoarsely. “Elias was an unfeeling man sometimes, but he wouldn’t have…he couldn’t have…” His mind raced through a thousand memories, trying to reorient them according to this new information, yet failing. To be told that he had both a mother and a father, that Elias had lied—” But what about the brooch she left behind?” he said as he touched his fingers to his belt.

“I had pinned it to the inside of the basket you lay in, the day you were taken,” said the woman who claimed to be his mother. “It sparkled so much that you used to love to look at it.”

There was so much sincerity in her voice that he could almost believe her. Almost. “No, I saw the letter from you to my…to Elias. What about the letter?”

“Letter?” Lord Dryden echoed, his gaze flitting to Sara. “What is he talking about?”

But Sara seemed not to hear him. “You were ten years old, Gideon. Did you think to look for a postmark? Any identifying marks? Of course not. Elias wrote a fake letter and showed it to you, because you were making
trouble for him by asking questions at the consulate.”

“Oh, my God,” Gideon choked out. He felt like a boat turned topsy-turvy by a tempest. If this was the truth, then everything he had thought, everything he’d believed about Elias and his mother, was totally wrong. “This is impossible.”

“Think, Gideon,” Sara said, her face full of sympathy. “If Elias had truly been your father, why would he have tortured you by reading you a letter that was calculated to wound? No caring father would willingly tell his son that his mother didn’t want him, that his mother’s family thought he was dirt beneath their shoes. He did that because
he
felt like dirt beneath their shoes, and he wanted to put you down there with him. No doubt he thought to taint Lady Dryden’s marriage by stealing her son. Only he didn’t know what to do with you once he had you.”

Gideon’s hands formed fists as he thought of all the times Elias had cursed him for being as proud and haughty as his mother. He thought of all the beatings he’d suffered, the lack of familial affection he’d sensed in Elias even from the beginning. Rage boiled up in him, a wild rage that needed an outlet.

He turned to his parents. “If you knew Elias had taken me, why didn’t you look for me? Why did you leave me to that…that monster?”

“Oh, my dear boy, we
did
look for you!” Lady Dryden cried. “But we never dreamed he’d taken you to America. We didn’t think he had the money. Besides, the war with America was still going on, so we assumed he would never take you there.”

Lord Dryden stepped forward, his eyes stark with pain. “We searched through Ireland and England and Scotland. We even searched the Continent. Every time there was a report of an abandoned baby that matched your description, we traveled wherever it was to determine if it was you. We never believed he would keep you. Why should he? He knew nothing about babies.”

“He certainly didn’t,” Gideon said bitterly. He looked at his mother. “I think he kept me only because I was a link to you. He always loved you, you know. And maybe some part of him came to believe that he really
was
my father.” His tone grew harsh. “Knowing Elias, it’s more likely he thought to punish you by punishing me. He always said I was like you, every time he—”

“Gideon, no,” Sara said in an undertone as she came up beside him. “You mustn’t tell them all that. They’ve suffered endless tortures wondering how you were being treated, and it’s not fair to heap more upon them now.”

He looked at Lord and Lady Dryden and realized she was right. Never had he seen two people look more anxious. They weren’t to blame for the actions of a man who’d never completely been right in his mind. And to tell them the full extent of Elias’s perfidy would probably destroy them.

His parents. Confound it, they were
his
parents. How would he ever get used to the idea of having real parents?

“Son,” his mother said in an aching voice as she came nearer. “I’ve been…waiting thirty years to hold you in my arms. Do you think…you could…indulge an old woman?”

Tears misted his eyes as he looked down into the face of the woman he hardly knew, the woman he had hated all his life with no reason. And suddenly, he wanted desperately to know her. “Mother,” was all he said through a voice choked with emotion.

Then somehow they were embracing.

Sara watched them together, her heart near to bursting. She couldn’t be angry at Jordan now for forcing her to return to England, not when it had come out like this.

Next it was Lord Dryden’s turn to hold his son, his eyes red with unshed tears as he clutched the younger man to him. When after several moments his parents released him, Gideon had the look of a boy who’d just
been given the key to a sweets shop. “A mother
and
a father. I can hardly believe it.” Pulling away from his parents, he turned to Sara. “And it’s all thanks to you. You found them, didn’t you? You did that for me.”

She ducked her head shyly. “I…I just never could quite believe that Elias’s tale was true. It didn’t make sense that a woman could abandon her child with so little thought.”