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‘I don’t remember my father ever talking about that.’
‘He didn’t...it wasn’t his theory,’ she confessed.
‘It’syours,’ Mateo stated.
‘Yes.’
He stared at her patiently, daring her to tell him her theory about Isabella.
‘You don’t know what you’re asking,’ she said to him, a plea in her voice he chose to ignore. She shook her head as if she could shake him off. ‘I’ve been ridiculed enough just aiding Professor Marin’s research. A female archaeologist, following such a romantic, unproveable legend? I would never work again.’
She reached for her glass and took a sip of wine.
‘It’s just me, here,’ he said, suddenly convinced that this was the most important thing he could know about her.
She sighed, and he wondered if she realised that she was looking out over the same sea that she believed Princess Isabella to have sailed, to have waged a war against her ex-fiancé, against the injustices the Dutch East India Company were committing.
‘I believe that after Princess Isabella survived the attack on her ship, she became close to the first mate, who taught her everything she needed to know. I believe that she proved herself to him and to the crew and that the change of her name was intended to show that she was more loyal to them than her own family. I believe that rumours were spread to denigrate her and destroy her spirit and she didn’t let them.’
He wondered if she could see it, the parallels that had consciously or otherwise drawn Evie to Isabella. Because how could she not see that the strength she admired in the Pirate Princess was the same strength she showed every single day against the colleagues who had turned their backs on her, or the family that had abandoned her? ‘You admire her,’ he stated.
‘Absolutely. When she had been left for dead by everyone she knew, instead of giving up, she pushed on—overcoming an incredible amount to lead some of the most dangerous mercenaries in the world at that time. And it led her to a man who respected her, rather than resenting her gender or inexperience. A man who followed her rather than taking a lead that would have pretty much been his right to take as First Mate. But instead he brought her into his life, he shared that with her, supporting her and letting her shine. It was a true partnership.’
He heard the yearning in her voice, added it to the bits and pieces she’d shared with him about her life. Mateo’s heart thudded once, heavily. A cloud passed in front of the sun, the cool descending over the table as if she’d reached out with her cold hands and touched him.
He could see it in her eyes. The wistfulness, the hope. And it dawned on him that Evelyn wanted something that was as far removed from what he could even begin to imagine from himself. A chasm opened up between them and, somehow, she felt it happen too.
‘Mateo?’
‘It’s nothing,’ he dismissed.
‘It’s clearly not nothing,’ she said, frowning at him as if trying to see what he was thinking.
He looked up at her and realised that she might have misunderstood. ‘No, Evelyn, I... There is nothing to be embarrassed or concerned about with your theory of Loriella and her husband, if that was what he was.’ He’d hate to think that he had offered her a safe space to share her thoughts and then taken that space away. But... He shook his head. ‘I just... I just don’t think those kinds of partnerships are real or lasting. I think that what you’re looking for in Isabella and her first mate are as much fantasy as—’
‘As the treasure?’ she demanded, the warning signs of an angry flush painting her delicate cheeks.
‘No, I just think it’s naïve to—’
‘Naïve?’
Cristo. He was getting this wrong, but he was frustrated, annoyed by her outrage. Because he had seen what happened when those once-in-a-lifetime loves went wrong. Wasn’t that precisely what had happened to his parents? An age-old anger rose, unfurling and twisting, adding heat and hurt to words he could barely stop himself from saying.
‘Yes, naïve,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘My mother believed in that kind of marriage, that kind of partnership, and what did it get her? Nothing. Nothing but crying herself to sleep every single night for a year after we returned to Spain. Nothing but having to start over again under the pitying, watchful gaze of a family who had never thought she should marry an English academic anyway. Of having to pretend that everything was okay, when inside she was being torn apart. But do you know what the real kicker is? Why she actually left him? It wasn’t because she didn’t love him,’ he said, sounding as surprised as he’d always felt. ‘It wasn’t because she didn’t want to be with him. It was because ofme. It was because she couldn’t bear to see me disappointed every single time my father would forget a birthday, or a celebratory meal, or that he’d promised to read me a book that evening, or that he’d promised to attend my graduation. So, if that’s what partnership and true love get you? I’ll take a hard pass, thank you.’
‘Mateo...’ Evelyn reached across the table, but he pulled his hand away, unable to put the roiling mass of emotions back into the box he usually kept them safely locked away in.
‘Do you know what? I honestly don’t know one single marriage that has lasted. Henri’s mother raised him by herself, even my board of governors has two failed marriages behind it and one impending divorce between them.’
‘Carol and Alan are still married,’ she pointed out.
‘And what a fine bastion of the institution of love and affection they are,’ he snapped, watching as she flushed pink and then pale, so pale as the blood ran from her cheeks. Guilt fisted his chest. ‘Evie, I’m—’
She stumbled up from the chair and he cursed, seeing the tears that gathered in her eyes. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I...’ Without finding the words to finish that sentence she disappeared and he damned himself to hell and back. He hadn’t meant to upset her. Why was he getting everything wrong when it came to her?
Three hours later, Evie stared out of the window of her cabin, her eyes a little less puffy than they had been before. The conversation with Mateo had been painful, but more so for him than for her, she’d decided. Yes, what he’d said about Carol and Alan had cut, but she could hardly say that it wasn’t true.
It was the glimpse of the little boy who had been so badly hurt by the breakdown of his parents’ relationship that had clutched at her heart. A little boy who had taken responsibility for something not of his own making. She could see it so easily. A mother who had tried, but failed, to hide her pain from her son. A father who had been so distraught by the breakdown of his marriage, he’d buried himself in his work. And Mateo... Mateo, who had closed himself off from the one thing that might have healed his wounds.
