“Connell won’t like it.”
“Connell shall have to accustom himself to disappointment.” The devilish glint in the colonel’s eye reassured Nick. This man wasn’t a fool. Nor did he seem scheming. Still, Nick would be cautious.
A servant in fancy livery held the carriage door open. Colonel Fitzwilliam motioned for Nick to follow him. “My father is eager to meet you,” he said.
For a flicker of a heartbeat, Nick was tempted to return back inside the prison rather than face this new world full of rules and contradictions he did not understand. A world he couldnever belong to.
But freedom was a heady sensation, and not one to take lightly.
He followed the colonel, trying to ease his misgivings with conversation. He despised idle chatter, was no good at it, but if His Lordship had gone to so much trouble to get him out of Newgate, Nick figured he could make a worthwhile effort to be polite. “Ye’ve had a busy morning, I take it?”
“I apologize I could not come earlier. There was an urgent matter I had to attend to—a wedding.”
“Yers?”
“No.” If the colonel meant to elaborate, him stepping inside the carriage prevented it.
“I wish the couple happy,” Nick said, sitting gingerly against the cushions, doing his best to make himself small and therefore minimize the damage he was certain the interior of the fine conveyance would suffer.
The colonel bunched his chin, then spoke. “I would rather they be happy, too; however, I doubt they shall be.”
Nick held his raw wrists, meaning to comment but getting distracted when the carriage jolted forward. Gripping the sides of the padded bench, he watched the streets through the windows. He was unaccustomed to being a passenger.
He didn’t like how close the sides of the carriage got to other passing vehicles, but his uneasiness inside theconfined box paled compared to his anxiety in meeting His Lordship.
What if Lord Matlock took one look at Nick and sent him packing? So long as he did not send Nick back to prison, he would manage. But Connell would be a problem.
Nick would have to keep his head low until he could get aboard a ship—a nice frigate would do—and… He shook his head at himself. Old habits were hard to break. That was theoldhim. The one he had left behind in Louisiana. Nick was an honest man now. Or as close as he could be to it, he chuckled facetiously.
The colonel raised his eyebrows.
Nick explained, “You know, when I lived as a pirate, I was prosperous and at peace. And ever since I decided to leave that life behind, I’ve been properly damned. Me ship was seized, I’ve been in prison, and I’ve been threatened with the noose.”
“Why did you leave?”
A question Nick had spent weeks pondering of late. He shrugged. “Me conscience got too loud. It was time for a change.”
“A pirate with a conscience. You are a rarity. How did you get captured?”
A flash of black hair and steel-blue eyes crossed his mind. Nick shoved the memory of her away with a scowl. “I was stabbed in the back by me own kind. She didn’t want me to go, and when I went anyway,she turned on me.” That was the only explanation for it. Connell had been waiting for him. It had been an ambush. Andshehad been the only one who had known Nick’s route.
“She?” the colonel asked.
“Alexandra Lafitte,” Nick spat her name—a name which had once been sweet across his lips but now filled him with bitterness. “Ye might know her as La Femme Lafitte. Blasted proud of that name, she is, too.”
“Is she any relation to the Lafittes operating at the Louisiana Purchase?”
Nick nodded. “Their little sister.” He rubbed his chest. Why had she not come with him? Why the betrayal? Nick hated the void her absence created in him. It hurt. He’d rather be angry. “If I ever see her…” he seethed, cutting short his threat. He could never hurt her, no matter how tempting the prospect. “She’d better pray I never see her again.”
The colonel left him to woolgather, so Nick stewed over that blasted woman until the lanes widened and he saw houses as clean as his ship,The Revenge, on the other side of the carriage window. That was where the familiar ended and the new began.
Parks with velvety green lawns and trees in full bloom lined the pavements. Flowers bordered pointy iron fences. Nick hadn’t seen flowers in weeks, and there’d been a time during his youth when he’d gone years without seeing their vivid colors or smelling their exotic perfume. Roses were his favorite.
He let out his breath and turned to the colonel. “I forgot how pleasant being on land can be.”
“You shall like Matlock House. That is where I am taking you. Under the circumstances, it was what my father and I considered best.”
Nick nodded. He would not argue with the man who had freed him from Newgate. He’d bide his time and slip away quietly.
