Once and Always Read online

“I looked at that obscene woman standing on the makeshift altar, holding a cross, and I wanted to kill her. On the other hand, I didn’t know how loyal her congregation was to her and, since I couldn’t fight them off single-handedly, I asked if she would sell the boy to me. I told her I thought he needed a man to punish him properly.”

  Pulling his gaze from its distant focus, Captain Farrell looked at Victoria, a mirthless smirk on his face. “She sold him to me for the six months’ pay I was carrying in my pocket. Her husband had died a year before and she needed money as much as she needed a whipping boy. But before I was out of the place, she was showering my money on her congregation and shouting about God sending His gifts to them through her. She was insane. Utterly insane.”

  Victoria’s voice was a pleading whisper. “Do you think things were better for Jason before his father died?”

  “Jason’s father is still alive,” Captain Farrell answered stiffly. “Jason is Charles’s illegitimate son.”

  The room began to whirl and Victoria clamped her hand over her mouth, fighting down the nausea and dizziness that assailed her.

  “Does it disgust you so much to discover you’re married to a bastard?” he asked, watching her reaction.

  “How could you think such a stupid thing!” Victoria burst out indignantly.

  He smiled at that. “Good. I didn’t think you’d care, but the English are very fastidious about such things.”

  “Which,” Victoria retorted hotly, “is extremely hypocritical on their part, since three royal dukes I could name are direct descendants of three of King Charles’s bastards. Besides that, I am not English, I am American.”

  “You are lovely,” he said gently.

  “Would you tell me the rest of what you know about Jason?” she asked, her heart already full to bursting with compassion.

  “The rest isn’t quite as important. I took Jason to Napal’s home that same night. One of Napal’s servants cleaned him up and sent him in to see us. The child didn’t want to talk, but once he did, it was obvious he was bright. When I told Napal the story, he felt pity for Jason and took him into his business as a sort of errand boy. Jason received no money, but he was given a bed in the back of Napal’s office, decent food, and clothes. He taught himself to read and write—he had an insatiable desire to learn.

  “By the time Jason was sixteen, he’d learned all he could from Napal about being a merchant. Besides being clever and quick, Jason had an incredible drive to succeed—I imagine that came from being forced to beg with a wooden bowl as a child.

  “At any rate, Napal grew more mellow as he grew older and, since he had no children of his own, he began to think of Jason more as a son than a poorly paid, overworked clerk. Jason convinced Napal to let him sail on one of Napal’s ships so that he could learn the shipping business at firsthand. I had become a captain by then, and Jason sailed with me for five years.”

  “Was he a good sailor?” Victoria asked softly, feeling terribly proud of the little boy who had grown into such a successful man.

  “The best. He started as a common seaman, but he learned navigation and everything else from me in his free time. Napal died two days after we returned from one of our voyages. He was sitting in his office when his heart stopped. Jason tried everything to bring him back, he even bent over him and tried to breathe his own air into his lungs. The others in the office thought Jason had gone crazy, but you see, he loved the old miser. He grieved for him for months. But he didn’t shed a single tear,” Mike Farrell said quietly. “Jason can’t cry. The witch who raised him was convinced that ‘devils’ can’t cry, and she beat him worse if he did. Jason finally told me that when he was about nine years old.

  “Anyway, when Napal died he left everything to Jason. During the next six years, Jason did what he’d tried to convince Napal to do—he bought an entire fleet of ships and he eventually multiplied Napal’s wealth many times over.”

  When Captain Farrell stood staring silently into the fire, Victoria said, “Jason married, too, didn’t he? I discovered that only a few days ago.”

  “Ah, yes, he married,” Mike said, grimacing as he walked over to the bottle of whiskey and poured himself another drink. “Two years after Napal’s death, Jason had become one of the richest men in Delhi. That distinction won him the mercenary interest of a beautiful, amoral woman named Melissa. Her father was an Englishman living in Delhi and working for the government. Melissa had looks and breeding and style, she had everything but what she needed most—money. She married Jason for what he could give her.”

  “Why did Jason marry her?” Victoria wanted to know.

  Mike Farrell shrugged. “He was younger than she was and dazzled by her looks, I suppose. Then too, the lady—and I use the term loosely—had a . . . er . . . look about her that would make any man expect to find warmth in her arms. She sold that warmth to Jason in return for everything she could wheedle from him. He gave her plenty, too—jewels that would please a queen. She took them and smiled at him. She had a beautiful face, but for some reason when she smiled at him like that, it reminded me of that demented old witch with the wooden bowl.”

  Victoria had a sharp, painful vision of Jason giving her the pearls and the sapphires and asking her to thank him with a kiss. She wondered sadly if he thought he had to bribe a woman to care for him.

  Lifting his glass, Mike took a long swallow. “Melissa was a slut—a slut who spent her life going from bed to bed after she was married. The funny thing was, she had a fit when she found out Jason was a bastard. I was at their house in Delhi when the Duke of Atherton appeared and demanded to speak with his son. Melissa went wild with fury when she realized Jason was Charles’s illegitimate son. It seems it offended her principles to mingle her bloodline with a bastard’s. It did not, however, offend her principles to bestow her body on any man of her own class who invited her into his bed. Odd code of ethics, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Extremely!” Victoria agreed.

  Captain Farrell grinned at her loyal reply, then said, “Whatever tenderness Jason felt for her when he married her was soon destroyed by living with her. She gave him a son, though, and for that reason, he kept her in the height of fashion and ignored her affairs. Frankly, I don’t think he cared what she did.”

  Victoria, who had been unaware that Jason had a son, sat bolt upright, staring in dazed shock at Captain Farrell as he went on. “Jason adored that child. He took him nearly everywhere he went. He even agreed to come back here and spend his money restoring Charles Fielding’s run-down estates so that Jamie could inherit a proper kingdom. And in the end, it was all for nothing. Melissa tried to run away with her latest lover, and she took Jamie with her, intending to ransom him back to Jason later. Their ship sank in a storm.”

  Captain Farrell’s hand tightened on his glass and the muscles in his throat worked convulsively. “I was the first to discover Melissa had taken Jamie with her. I was the one who had to tell Jason his son was dead. I cried,” he said hoarsely. “But Jason didn’t. Not even then. He can’t cry.”

  “Captain Farrell,” Victoria said in a suffocated voice, “I would like to go home now. It’s getting late, and Jason may be worried about me.”

  The sorrow vanished from the captain’s face and a smile broke across his rugged features. “An excellent idea,” he agreed. “But before you go, I want to tell you something.”

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t let Jason fool you or himself into believing he wants nothing from you but a child. I know him better than anyone else does, and I saw the way he watched you last night. He’s already more than half in love with you, though I doubt he wants to be.”

  “I can’t blame him for not wanting to love any woman,” Victoria said sadly. “I can’t imagine how he’s survived everything that’s happened to him and stayed sane.”

  “He’s strong,” Captain Farrell replied. “Jason is the strongest human being I’ve ever known. And the finest. Let yourself love him, Victoria—I know