Tessa’s parents’ rejection drained Joseph’s righteous indignation. It was the very last thing he expected her to say. She was meant to be cool and calculating. She was meant to be happily carrying on with her life, using his name. She was meant to be . . . if nothing else . . . well. Happy.

Fine.

He took a step back, trying to reconcile this news. Tessa’s face tightened.

She said, “You’ve made it clear that you are a busy man, but I believe this conversation warrants at least five minutes of your time.”

“Of course,” he said. “I didn’t mean to retreat, merely—” He paused, searching for what he meant. “I don’t know what to say, Tessa. I’m stunned.”

He was also angry, confused, and . . . sorry. So terribly sorry.

However, he wasn’t prepared to say those things yet.

“I endeavored to put it all down in a letter,” she told him. “I even managed to get some version of it off, but obviously the note has missed you.”

“Obviously,” he repeated, and then he winced. He didn’t care about the damned letter. He also cared far less about the brig and the cargo and the missing slip, but it was all he could think to say at the moment. Before he’d fully considered his words, he said, “So, your father canceled the slip?”

“No, I did it,” she said. “A preventative measure. When my parents disowned me, they vowed to separate themselves from you, too.”

“They believe the child is—” He stopped himself and frowned. It wasn’t important what they thought of him.

Her voice was sharp. “I told them you were not the father. I’ve sworn off dishonesty, if you can believe it.”

“I do,” he said. They hovered in the doorway, half in the corridor, half in the parlor. His world shrank to her. “I believe you,” he repeated, and he realized that this was true.

Tessa turned away and began to pace the parlor. “After my parents discovered the truth, they looked more closely into your life and business. They had been wholly won over by you, and they couldn’t understand why a man of your accomplishments would help me and my fatherless baby.” She turned back to him.

“You didn’t ask for my help, did you?” he asked. “You simply pushed things through.”

She nodded and looked at the floor. “Regardless, they soon turned up the details of your boyhood in service, and they had their answer. After that, they wanted nothing to do with you.”

“The feeling is mutual,” Joseph scoffed.

Tessa finished, “I am truly sorry, as I know you valued my father’s mentorship. It is another casualty of my . . . situation, I’m afraid.”

“I’ve no further need of your father,” he said, and he meant it.

Tessa stared at him. Her expression was confused and cautious and something else he could not name.

Finally, she took a deep breath and said, “And that is the reason I canceled your slip at the West India Docks. My father’s position on the West India board gives him the power to block you from the docks forever, and I assure you, he harbors quite enough outrage and ill will to do it. In order to salvage what I could of your Barbadoes venture, I saw no choice but to seek out the dock house myself, learn the system in the mooring office, and cancel your previous contract. I’m sorry you arrived with no warning about the change. It was done only to prevent him from taking some other action. He can be very rash and destructive when he feels betrayed. I felt it would be best that all trace of your business had been removed from the records.”

“Forgive me,” he said, following her into the parlor, “my mind has not moved on from this treatment by your parents, I cannot think about the dock. I don’t understand why you cannot . . . ? That is—”

He shook his head and began again, “Your parents seemed like reasonable people. Granted, I did not know them well. I was at Berymede only a matter of weeks.” He frowned. “A little adherent to propriety, I suppose.” Another frown. “But to disown you?”

“It was always ambitious to think they would not discover my . . . secret.”

“Alright, fine, they learned about the baby. But to separate from you entirely?”

Tessa threw up her hands, fingers spread. “Joseph? Why do you think I kept the baby secret and scrambled to find a husband? For what reason did I marry you?”

Not because you loved me, he thought. Not because you trusted me to help you.

Joseph shook his head. “Because you made some solitary plan and were determined to see it through?”

She raised her hands again. “Because I knew this would be their reaction.” She turned away and stalked the length of the room. When she spoke again, her voice was controlled. “To them, reputation is paramount. Even if they had managed some compassion or understanding, their shame would have been very great. I would have been secreted away, my baby taken from me, some fabrication would have been spun about my absence.”

She shrugged. “But they are not compassionate or understanding. As I knew they would not be.” She circled a yellow chair and then dropped into it. “At least they’ve been quiet about it. A public shunning would only have compounded their humiliation. To the world, we married for love and had a baby right away. So, please do not think our marriage was in vain.”

“I do not believe we married in vain,” he said.

To his surprise, she blushed at his statement. Her color was already high, she’d had so much to convey. She looked, he thought, so beautiful. Despite her terrible dress and the tight, unyielding way she’d styled her hair. Despite the look of distress on her face.

But beauty had never been the problem. He had spent sleepless nights on the island, dreaming about her beauty. He wanted to stare. To take in what he remembered and account for the changes. To admire. To lo—

Instead, he cleared his throat and looked around the room.

The decor of the townhome was lovely. The walls and upholstery were coated in soft colors. There were potted ferns. A lush garden glowed autumn red and gold through the window.

“The Boyds’ house is lovely,” he said. From nowhere, he thought, Tell me you hate it.

Weep and tell me you hate it.

Beg me to take you away from it.

Ask me to take you anywhere.

Joseph blinked, reeling from this radical new line of thought.

Tessa told him, “Willow’s aunt and uncle have been so very generous. And it is a fine house. This townhome will always be the envy of the neighborhood, even with mansions going up around it. It has been very comfortable.”

Joseph nodded and looked around again. It was not an unfit house. Certainly, it was more modern and tastefully arranged than his own London home. He’d bought a house in Blackheath the year before, sparing no expense. Blackheath was a respectable neighborhood (the only respectable neighborhood) near the London docks, but the house sat empty while he was at sea. He furnished it in fits and starts, a work in progress.

Is it fit for a wife and baby? he wondered, surprising himself again—shocking himself. He’d not come here to relocate Tessa and her baby to his own home. He’d not planned to come here at all.

Tessa finished, “It’s been lovely, but I have a mind to move us in the near future. In the spring, I hope.”

Joseph’s heart stopped.

He realized with stunning clarity that, somewhere deep inside the hard knot of his heart, he had fantasized about taking her and the baby away. He’d fantasized so many scenarios for her.

As for the baby?

Honestly, Joseph had expected to encounter the child immediately upon entering the house. When he had thought of Tessa from Barbadoes (which had been frequent), he thought of her always with the child. In his mind’s eye, the infant would be crying, or she would be preoccupied, or both.

And yet now here he was, his first day back in England, sitting down with Tessa, and there was no baby to be seen. And now Tessa was telling him she would relocate, and Joseph’s throat felt like it was closing up.

His brain screamed, I’ve not even seen the boy—

Tessa interjected, “The baby and I cannot impose on Mary and Arthur forever. I am accustomed to caring for him now.” She looked up and gave him a weak smile. “This took some . . . time. Also, Willow’s former lady’s maid, Perry, has agreed to stay on as our nurse for a while longer. But the baby and I must eventually settle somewhere in . . . in earnest. This was always temporary, wasn’t it?”

As revelations went (and it felt very much like a revelation), it was calmly stated and oddly devoid of specifics. She hardly sounded happy, but he could not name the other flat emotion in her words or her expression.

Was she hopeful about relocating or regretful? He couldn’t say, but he wanted to know. Even more, he wished to know what role she envisioned for him in this move.

Her vague calmness unnerved him. Unnerved was a mild word for what he felt. She was calm, direct, and controlled; so very different from the chatty, flouncy, reactionary girl he had met last autumn.

Is this the authentic Tessa? he wondered.

Would the spiritedness and colorful dramatics that so intrigued him when they first met not be seen again? The Tessa of their courtship had veritably bubbled with conversation. He’d listened to countless stories about shopping trips or her vexation with her brothers or some funny trick she’d seen from the cat. She’d discussed her love for the piano, for her friends, her hatred of the grey and hopeless month of March.

Of course, she had been playacting all those months ago. What he’d taken as spirit had been feminine wiles meant to distract him. And what need had she for wiles now? He’d married her, hadn’t he? She could not care less whether he was attracted to her or not.

Joseph studied her face, her bright blue eyes and pink mouth. If she’d been playacting when they first met, she had been deuced good at it. In all honesty, this new calmness seemed just as natural.

“Before I detain you any longer,” Tessa said, “let me explain to you what I have done about the brig. It was never my intention that you would reach London and be shut out.”

Joseph stared at her. And now they would discuss docking rights? He opened his mouth to tell her he would sort it out himself, that he was sorry for his insistence and assumptions before, but she spoke over him.

“I’ll skip to the most relevant bit that will, with any luck, put your mind at ease and allow you to dock the brig immediately—today, if we’re lucky.” From the pocket of her skirt, she pulled a small, leather-bound booklet. It fell open on the low table before them, revealing pages of handwritten notes.

“There are irrelevant bits?” Joseph asked. He squinted at the book.

“Well, no,” Tessa said, “I simply meant we should get right to it. I made a promise to myself not to burden you with the details of my family.”

“I am not burdened by the topic of your family, Tessa.” His voice was defensive. He felt defensive. He’d never put off anything she’d wanted to discuss. She had been the one who chose to shut him out.

“No?” she challenged.

No, he wanted to shout. But he raised his eyebrows.

“But you’ve not asked about my son, have you?” she said quietly.

Oh, that part of her family. You’re entirely correct, he thought. I haven’t asked about the baby because I don’t want to know.

And on the heels of that thought, he had another, more powerful, thought: It’s killing me that I do not know.

Slowly, haltingly, he asked, “How have you and the baby . . .” He paused, considering which of a million questions to ask her, “. . . gotten on?”

“Oh, very well, thank you,” she said, also halting. Their conversation sounded as if their primary language was some foreign tongue, and they were practicing at English. “He is called Christian. You may remember this from my letter. Thank you for the money, by the way.” She looked up at him, a little abashed. It occurred to him that she felt beholden to him. Good lord, money had been the easiest sacrifice, it had been no sacrifice. His heart, his pride—these were a different story.

He tried again. “Are you . . . well? Is he healthy?”

“Quite well,” she said briskly. The formal, businesslike smile was back. He frowned. Was this all she meant to say? Her tone forestalled further discussion, but now he wanted to hear more. He suddenly, urgently, wanted to hear everything about the boy and Tessa’s journey into motherhood.

He ventured, “I should like to meet him, when you are ready.”

She’d been looking down, studying her notes, but now her head came up. She searched his face. What she looked for, he could not say. She studied him like she was trying to identify an insect in a book.

Finally, she said, “He is napping at the moment, but I should like very much to introduce you. He is a lovely baby.” She paused for a moment. “Motherhood is nothing like I expected. But I like it. And I love my son. Above all, I love him.”

My son, Joseph repeated in his head. Her words held an unexpected fierceness and it heartened him. Fierceness had been one of the qualities he’d loved about her in the weeks before the wedding. It felt good to see some connection between the girl he’d thought he’d loved and the stranger who sat before him.

“But let me show you what I’ve done about the dock,” Tessa said, pulling his attention back to her notes. “All is not lost, I hope.”

Joseph sighed and looked down at her notes. “I hope not.”