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stench of filth and disease abundant here in Newgate. Still, oblivion would be welcome, if only for a few hours.
He drifted back to thoughts of Lilli lying goldenly naked on a Bahamian beach, of his wife teasing him with her coquette’s smile in their London bed.
He’d known from the moment Manchester had arrested him that he would likely hang. Somehow, he had hoped Christina would realize his love for her was genuine, despite his deceptions.
Such a fantasy would never come to pass. Ryan, Greg and his father had visited nearly every day of his week’s confinement. Christina had not graced him with her presence once.
“Yer lordship,” one of the jailers called, voice mocking. “Ye’ve got a visitor, I’m told. Yer to meet èm in yer new room in the Press Yard. Second floor.”
Drex nodded. His father had arrived and obviously paid the five hundred pound entry fee for such lofty quarters. Regret tinged him when he thought of the wasted years of ignorance and hatred he’d directed at the man. But better to have known his father for a short time than not at all.
He arrived to find other prisoners hovering about his door, near the pins comprising their abandoned game of skittles.
“I haven’t seen one like that anywhere,” remarked another prisoner, clearly educated. “Inside or out of this hell.”
A chorus of guffaws echoed within the long, dim room.
He shouldered his way through the small crowd to the door.
“Are ye the infamous pirate?” one thin man asked.
He scowled his answer. “Move. I have a visitor.”
The men parted to let him pass, and he supposed his bad attitude preceded him.
Drex reached for the latch on his door, a fellow prisoner dressed in perfectly polished Hessians chuckled. “An understatement, my good man. A very substantial one.”
Puzzled, Drex opened the door, not certain who to expect.
The last visitor he anticipated was Christina.
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Shelley Bradley
His legs carried him to her side, his arms rising to hold her. She stood with a regal grace she had never displayed before, chin high, skin flawless.
Drex dropped his hands and grappled to find the words to tell her he loved her, to beg her forgiveness. Anything to remove the indifferent expression from her gilded beauty.
“Your father sent some books. I’ve placed them on the table.” She gestured to the furniture in question, then walked to the oblong of the tiny window, which showed the orange hues of the setting sun. “Do you need more clothing?”
“No. Christina, darling—”
“I hope you enjoy your new quarters.”
“Did you arrange them?” he asked hopefully.
She laughed. “Me? No. It was your father’s doing. You’re probably going to burn in hell. Why pay a small fortune to make your last living days pleasant?”
Drex seized her hand. “Because I don’t want to die a miserable man.”
“You are a miserable man!” She whirled, blasting him with the full force of her anger. “You weren’t content to use and discard me once. No, you felt so guilty about the first occurrence, you repeated it.”
“Christina, I’m so damn sorry. I love you.” He clutched her hand tighter when she would have jerked away. “Believe me, I had no choice. Your grandfather had Ryan imprisoned. I’d been trying to free my brother for the last four years! I had no idea who you were when you boarded the Lair. After we made love on the beach, only then did I know the truth, and only then because you told me.” He sighed, straining for the right words to convince her of his sincerity. “Ransoming you back to Manchester tore my guts out. But I could not let my brother die, not to spare your heart or mine.”
She drew in a breath. “Ryan told me as much. But that does not change the fact you lied to me again when you married me. You lied when you made love to me—”
“No, that’s not true.”
She whipped her gaze back to his. “Yes. And you lied when you said you loved me. You trusted in the strength of my love so little, you withheld your
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true identity and duped me into marriage. I loved you.” Her fists clenched at her sides. “If you had told me the truth, your circumstances… If you had cared for me at all…” Her breath caught on a sob. “Instead, you decided everything and controlled me every moment we spent together. You never once thought about what I might want in life. Just like Grandfather, you assume you have all the answers. Well, no more.”
Drex struggled to digest the fervor of her speech. He’d never meant to control her, just…just love her.
Pain knifed through his chest. “Christina, you’re wrong. Tell me how I can prove my love to you. I’ll do it.”
“And give you another chance to control me and lie to me?” She shook her head. “Goodbye.”
She brushed past him. For the first time since childhood, Drex felt helpless to stop his own destruction.
With her departure, his heart shattered into a million pieces.
* * *
Ashmont, Viscount Monroe and Ryan all entered the town house late in the evening a week later. Their downcast eyes and deep frowns told Christina the trial had ended with dreadful results.
Christina set down the handkerchief she’d been kneading and swallowed.
She looked at the trio expectantly. All looked away.
“It’s death,” Ashmont mumbled, placing his hat atop a hall table with excruciating precision. “At noon in three days.”
Christina’s stomach sank to her knees. Though a part of her argued it mirrored the emotional punishment he’d banished her to when he’d crushed her heart, she didn’t want him to die. Maybe he deserved to, but she would have preferred to kill him herself.
The thought of a world without Drexell lumped her throat with emotion.
Her eyes filled with tears.
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Over the past days, her weepy bouts had combined with her fury in the worst sort of despair. The contradiction of her sentiments puzzled her deeply.
Why, in the face of everything he’d done, did she still love him?
“What now?” she asked.
Ryan slammed his fist against the hall table, rattling the ceramic vase on top. “I feel so damned helpless.”
“But what can we do?” Greg piped in. “In the last three bloody days, we’ve been over every nuance of the case, every possible escape. We’ve all offered our entire fortunes to Newgate’s goalers to let him escape. They all said money was of no use to them from the grave.”
“We must be missing something,” Ryan insisted. “Some way to prove they’ve got the wrong man.”
“There’s no way to prove something that is not true.”
“But my brother hardly deserves to die for trying to free me. God, I wish I’d never left home…”
The loyalty the brothers felt for one another was nearly tangible. Christina had witnessed it in the short time they had all spent under this roof. She understood their love. Commended it, even. She didn’t blame Drex for the lengths he’d gone to in order to save his brother. She simply wished he hadn’t saved Ryan at her expense with his deceptions.
But in his place would she have done anything differently?
“Half the crimes they attributed to Drex he would never commit. Raping nuns? Allowing his crew to killing a merchant’s family while he watched? No.
He would never do such things.”
“Never,” Greg agreed.
Christina agreed with their assessment. He’d maintained shipboard discipline by punishing her, but he’d never broken her. He’d certainly never hurt her or threatened her with death. He might be controlling, but not blood-thirsty. Not a monster.