She wasn’t going to forgive him for that, any more than she would if he did what she thought he intended to do. It wouldn’t matter that her father was guilty of piracy and had escaped justice until now. She would see it as a betrayal and it would be. But he hadn’t anticipated wanting her this strongly, or wishing they could have met under different circumstances. And the more time he spent with her, the more he was conflicted. But he wasn’t going to take advantage of her passionate feelings for him before she knew the whole truth. That would make him as bad as she thought him to be.

He was relieved when she walked away from him to stand at the railing behind him. It was far enough away to make any further conversation difficult, yet she couldn’t get off the quarterdeck without walking past him. At least she didn’t try to use his revelation about wanting her against him. Jack Malory seductive would be his undoing.

He could no longer wait to get Jack and her brother on his side. They were getting too close to the Caribbean, where he would have his parley with their father. Lacross’s men had to be dealt with before then, before they got anywhere near James Malory. Jack’s brother could certainly help with that, but not unless Damon explained a few key elements of his true mission to Jeremy and Jack. But not all. Damon wondered if the two siblings even knew that their father used to be a notorious pirate?

It had been a shock to spot Captain Hawke in London four years ago when Damon and Mortimer were celebrating the end of the university term. Barely changed, still big and menacing, but dressed like a gentleman now. The very man who’d taken his mother away from him and his father. And he’d seen it happen.

He had been seven years old at the time. The day had been hot and sultry despite the trade winds, and his mother had been behaving so nervously. She’d been dressed to go to town, even had a large bag with her, but all she’d told him was “We’re going for a walk.”

He loved walking with her, spending time with her. She always smelled wonderful and looked so pretty in her fancy dresses. She’d taught him to read, to ride, to swim. His father wanted to make a planter of him, but she never let Damon forget that he was a gentleman first, and gentlemen didn’t tend the soil, they had workers to do that. He knew his father spent almost all his time in the fields alongside his workers because he simply loved to be outside and make things grow. Damon’s mother never scolded him for joining his father because she understood that planting was fun for a boy his age. But he enjoyed walking with her the most, down their long drive, sometimes to town, or along the beach, but they’d never before walked through the sugarcane fields between their plantation and their neighbor’s, at least not when the cane was tall—or when the neighbor was at home.

Damon’s parents had told him that Captain Hawke was a planter, but Damon thought he looked like a real pirate.

Mortimer thought so, too. The man was big and muscular and never had a friendly countenance. Damon had never seen another man who looked as menacing as his neighbor did. But Mortimer wouldn’t go with him to throw rocks at the pirate’s house to prove they weren’t afraid of him. Damon did that on his own. He just wanted the man to go away, back to sea, back to pirating elsewhere, and never come back. He got that wish, but the consequences had been devastating.

But that day, he didn’t realize where his mother was hurrying to until he saw that giant neighbor of theirs waiting for them on his porch. Damon thought she was taking him there so the pirate could punish him for breaking his windows. His seven-year-old imagination went wild, envisioning the horrible tortures Captain Hawke had planned for him.

Damon balked. “No!”

“Damon, please, we need to hurry.”

“You can’t turn me over to him!”

“What? No, you mis—”

He’d already broken away from his mother and was running back home. She yelled after him, but he wouldn’t stop even though he heard the tears in her voice when she called his name, which brought tears to his eyes, too, yet he couldn’t go back to face that man.

Crying, she screamed a promise that she would come back for him. At least he thought she did, hoped she did, but he wouldn’t turn around to find out for certain. Because of him.

His mother left with the man. And she never came back. His father was just as devastated by her desertion as Damon was, but he was furious, too, and swore he’d kill Hawke when he returned. Year after year, Damon waited for her to come back for him, but she never did. Neither did Hawke or his son, whom Damon had only ever seen a couple of times. Nor would they return, because the very next year, the captain’s plantation was sold by an agent. Only years later did Damon suspect Hawke had seduced his mother into leaving her family. Why else would she abandon them? That’s when he started to hate Captain Hawke.

But he should never have approached the man the night he saw him again in London four years ago, because he hadn’t been sober or able to control his feelings of suspicion and hatred for the man. All he’d done was shout, “Where is my mother?” Actually, he’d done more, he’d also grabbed Hawke’s lapels, which got him a single punch that knocked him on his arse and landed him in the hospital. When he woke up, a doctor was poking at him and telling him that he’d cracked his head in a fall.

He’d searched for Hawke again every chance he got when he was able to leave Oxford, but no one knew the name and Damon never saw him again. Until the day Damon and Mortimer were sailing home to the islands. Damon had been waiting for a hackney outside his hotel when he spotted Hawke and another man in a carriage. He’d had to run through the streets to keep up with them. They’d stopped at a sporting hall and gone inside. He’d followed them. The excited chatter and wagers flying around the hall revealed they were brothers, lords, and that the man he’d known only as Captain Hawke was actually James Malory, Viscount Ryding.

Damon had watched the fight for a few minutes. It had been brutal. He’d questioned the young gentlemen around him and learned that Malory lived with his wife and children in Berkeley Square. He’d married Damon’s mother?! Damon had immediately gone to find the house and asked to see James’s wife, but a rude butler had slammed the door shut in his face after saying, “Lady Georgina ain’t receiving.”

But Georgina wasn’t his mother’s name. Devastated once again to be unable to find out what had happened to his mother, and out of time with his ship soon sailing, he knew his questions would have to wait until he returned to England. But what he found when he got home to Jamaica changed all that.