Lorenzo opened his eyes. He stared at the stars above the mast and took one careful breath, then another.
“Because I wanted to stay near my brother.”
Tristan looked away. Shame moved through him with a slow, corrosive heat. What sort of bastard was he that he could not accept his own blood unless it came with clear terms and an easy way out?
“Was it worth it?” Tristan asked, shutting his eyes.
Lorenzo turned his head toward him. “I thought I was making progress. What can I say? I’m an optimist. But it is hopeless, is it not? You cannot even bring yourself to call me brother. You will keep pushing me away. Just like you did with Marguerite.”
Tristan’s jaw locked. “Do not bring her into this.”
Lorenzo dragged the blanket tighter around his shoulders and rose unsteadily. “You let Marguerite come close enough to see you, then you jumped into the sea because drowning is easier than opening a door. I’m glad I’m only half English.”
The wind moved over the deck. Lorenzo looked at him for one last second, then shook his head.
“Buona notte, Captain.” He walked away, wet footprints marking the deck behind him.
Tristan watched him go.
The footprints were uneven. One heel dragged a little where Lorenzo’s strength had not yet returned, and the sight of that small weakness opened something raw beneath Tristan’s ribs. His brother had nearly drowned because he believed that following Tristan into danger was the only way to reach him.
For a year, the boy had filled Tristan’s life with wrong idioms, unsolicited advice, too much singing, and the maddening word fratello. Tristan had treated it as noise. The sort of sound a man could tolerate because it had no weight.
It had weight.
Christ, it had weight enough to pull a man overboard. Tristan’s hands shook, and he pressed them flat to the deck. So Lorenzo wanted in? Idiot. If he or Marguerite went any deeper into his heart, they would see through the other side of his lousy carcass. They were already five fathoms deep.
Chapter twenty-six
Marguerite stood at the rail and watched the Neapolitan felucca approach them across the blue water. It was a pretty little vessel, its white sail catching the sun.
“Now we will finally be able to disembark?” she asked Lorenzo.
She already knew the answer. The envoy would come aboard, sniff at the ship, deliver the court’s invitation, authorize the frigate to enter Naples properly, and open the door she had been knocking upon since Brighton.
Lorenzo stood beside her, one hand resting on the rail. “Yes, carissima. If that is what you want.”
Yes. What she wanted.
Behind the felucca, Naples rose from the curve of the coast like something invented by a painter who had never known English weather. Vesuvius stood beyond the city, blue and purple against the hard brightness of the sky, its dark cone softened by distance. The city spilled beneath it in pale tiers, cream and ochre and rose, roofs and domes and church towers descending toward the water. Even the air seemed different. Warmer.Looser. Less moral. It slipped over her face and throat, under the edge of her bonnet, through the fine muslin at her wrists, and promised to reach the bones if one allowed it enough time.
She had imagined this warmth for years. Naples had been the answer to every cold room and every unpaid account. Naples had been marble under bare feet, lemon trees in courtyards, music through open windows. Naples had been the Italian husband waiting beneath orange blossoms, incapable of English restraint.
Marguerite kept her eyes on the coast, waiting for her heart to leap toward it. Instead, it kept turning back to the quarterdeck, where Tristan stood near the helm.
He always seemed most himself when occupying the place from which he could bear responsibility alone. His coat was dark against the brightness, his posture severe, his eyes fixed on the approaching felucca. A duke, a captain, an ambassador, a man who had outwitted a corsair and then retreated into silence as though victory had cost him something he did not intend anyone to see.
Why, of all the catastrophes available to a sensible woman, had she fallen in love with an Englishman?
A hollow ache opened beneath her breastbone, spreading slowly outward until her ribs felt too small to hold it. She had given too much again, and now look at her, arriving in Naples empty. Utterly spent.
The coast before her glowed with all the warmth she had ever wanted, and still she felt cold inside, as if some private winter had crossed with her and would not disembark. Perhaps the issue had never been England. Perhaps she was the sort of woman who could stand before the Mediterranean, before sunlight poured over marble and sea, and still feel cold and empty.
She had no feeling left. No clever little store of untouched selfhood she might open and say, there, you see, I kept enough back for the next negotiation. She had given all of it. Again. Not because Tristan had demanded it. Not because he had tricked her. Not because he had promised what he had not meant to give. That would have been easier. One could condemn a villain. One could survive anger.
No, the unbearable fact was that he had been sweet. He had given her keys, hot water, and safety. He had carried her, listened to her, touched her as if her body were a country he wished to learn. He had tried, in his own way, not to take more than she offered.
And still she had offered everything.
