Page 156 of The Worst of Them

She had to be here. If she was upset with him, she wouldn’t hide—she would have come to him and made it his problem, as she should. And if she wouldn’t come to him, he’d comb every inch of this godforsaken ship until he found her just to ensure she hadn’t made some rash decision and thrown herself to some fish or sea monster or tripped off the gangplank because she certainly wasn’t gone.

The only other explanation niggled into the back of his mind like the tip of a blade, and he ignored it because it didn’t make sense.

“Jack.”

Copson stood at the threshold to his quarters with a peculiar look on his face—like he knew what Jack already felt, and he’d be the only one kind enough to tell him outright.

Jack was walking to him before he even realized he’d started to move. Then he was standing inside the room with the door shut, and his father faced him with pity in his eyes.

His heart thundered in his ears, but he managed to hear the answer to a question he hadn’t wanted to ask.

“She’s gone.”

Softly spoken, meant to break and soothe all at once. They were the same words he’d said when Jack was eight and his mother’s body lay on a bed behind a door that only his father and a doctor had walked through. Jack hadn’t wanted to look at her—he’d been too afraid to see death on his own mother, and his father had known that and gently whispered those terrible words.

She’s gone.

Jack closed his eyes and shook his head. He could no longer hear his pulse against the ringing in his ears.

“Where?” he asked, because Cecily wasn’t dead. He knew that, at the very least.

“She left, Jack.” Again, those words were horribly tender. “When we met with the other ship this morning, she boarded it.”

He met his father’s solemn gaze, his eyes the color of a storm. When it was only the two of them, he was no longer the dreadful Captain Copson. He was merely a father.

“Why?” Jack whispered.

“I’m sorry, son.”

“Tell me,” Jack said, his voice wavering.

Copson sighed heavily, and his voice turned pained. “She decided long ago what was best for her. We spoke before she left. I tried to convince her to change her mind, but she refused to listen.”

Jack glared at the buttons on his father’s coat as he turned the words over, setting them against the weeks he’d spent with Cecily.

He refused to accept it. She had tried so hard to convince him that she was wicked, but he’d never believed it. He wouldn’t believe it now—that she’d be so conniving and unfeeling as to let him hold her one minute only to leave him the next.

“She wouldn’t do that,” he said. “And if she did, there was surely some other reason.”

But what reason? He could think of nothing that would tempt her away from him. She’d been so sure of their life together—both halves of it, despite what he had yet to tell her. But everything else was mere detail, just decoration and pomp beyond what she already knew.

Or so he hoped.

His father spoke reservedly, like every word was a hook pulled free from his tongue. “After all she’s endured, even before she met you and again these past weeks…what makes you think she would stay? She may love you, but she’s also a young woman who has been burdened with far more than she ever asked for. She wants a life of peace.” His chin dipped. “We are not peaceful, Jack.”

Jack swallowed. It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make any damn sense.

Unless…unless it was her baron’s boy.

Jack nearly scoffed at the idea. The untitled son of a baron. And there—oh, there was anger. Not tears or disappointment, just raw…anger.

At her. At the Stinton twit she’d nearly married. At this whole situation that he didn’t understand because how could he not be better than a baron?

She hadn’t known yet that Jack was the son of an earl, with an inheritance and lands far more prestigious than whatever a Stinton could offer—without even considering his love for her. He’d killed for her, saved her, offered her a family and a home and everything else besides. Even his very heart, which he’d never given anyone. He’d never wanted to give it to anyone until she came along and cut his face and challenged him, and suddenly he was desperate for her to have every wicked piece of him.

Copson frowned. “If this is all she has of you, perhaps it’s best you move on. Let her go, and leave this mistake in the past.”

It wasn’t a mistake. But they’d had this argument so many times already, and neither were willing to back down.