I craved the addictive sensations he stirred in my body. And I feared every second he made my knees weak and my heart yearn for more than carnal pleasure.

He braced an elbow on his thigh and lazily trailed a knuckle around the outer curve of my breast, his gaze pensive as he watched the movement. “Why do you hate England?”

“Besides the fact that everyone there wants me dead?”

“Yes.” He cupped me in his palm and ran the pad of his thumb over my nipple.

“England rejected my mother. Banished her.” I brushed my fingers through his shiny black hair. “Whenever she was reminded of her home, it made her horribly sad.”

“Perhaps she was sad because she missed her beautiful country. Have you ever been there?”

“No. I remained here, in the West Indies, for the last seven years. Before that…” I took a bracing breath and met his eyes. “I spent the first fourteen years of my life in the wilds of Carolina. Charleston. No one knows that.”

Except Priest.

Ashley regarded me impassively. “If you were in Charleston, how did you know your father?”

“He visited throughout my childhood. I was closer to him than I was to anyone else. When he…” I placed my hand over his, flattening our fingers against my broken heart. “When he died on the gallows, my mother threw herself off a cliff.” My voice stuttered, hitching with old hurt. “I was there when it happened. I lost both of my parents on the same day.”

He reached for me, pulling me onto his lap and against his bare chest. “I’m sorry.”

His soft, sincere tone swaddled me in warmth. As did his arms and the protective cage of his body. He straightened the nightgown to cover my chest. Then he just held me, watching the sun rise, sipping from a cup of tea, with no sense of urgency to set me away.

So I started talking. I told him about my upbringing, my mother’s struggles in exile, my father’s secret visits, and their tragic love story. And because he listened with such quiet intensity, I walked through every detail of that harrowing day seven years ago, including the start of my relationship with Charles Vane.

By the end of it, my sadness had settled like the sand in an hourglass, resting quietly but always there, ready to tip and flow again.

“Have you visited Carolina after that day you left with Vane?” he murmured against my hair.

“No. Charleston and England are the two places I intended to avoid for the remainder of my life.”

“England is a special corner of world, Bennett.”

“What do you love about it?”