“What’s wrong?” Stephen asked as she released his hand.
“I have to go.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “You’re all right. You’re healing. I must leave.”
“Leave? What are you talking about?” His gaze darted about the room again. “Where’s the treasure now?” he asked. “How did you get it out? How did you get me out? I vaguely remember a rowboat.”
“It was One-Eyed Jack’s. He’d planned his escape better than us, and I used it to get you back to Polperro.”
Concern tightened its grip on Stephen’s gut. Josie would not have left that treasure out of her sight. But he could hardly imagine how she’d managed to drag him to the rowboat, much less three heavy treasure chests. “Where’s the treasure?” he asked again.
She shrugged. “I don’t care. Probably still sitting on the sand outside the cave.”
“You left it?” He ignored the pain in his shoulder and the spurt of lightheadedness and shot straight up. “You just left it?”
“You were dying, Stephen. I could take you or the treasure. I chose you.”
Something in her tone made him look more closely. She looked tired, but there was something else in her face—a vulnerability that hadn’t been there before. For a second Stephen dared to hope that she meant the words as he’d taken them: You mean more to me than the treasure, more to me than anything.
And then Stephen pushed the ludicrous thought away. This was Josephine Hale—the unflappable, audacious, fearless Josephine Hale. She wasn’t falling in love with him.
“I can imagine how hard that decision was for you.”
“I understand why you think that of me—why you think I’d choose money and riches over your life.”
He wanted to say no, to erase the hurt from her eyes. Instead, he waited. Without the treasure, she had to see how much she needed him. She was his now. She couldn’t go back home unmarried.
She met his eyes. “I think that about says it all, then.” Lifting her boy’s cap from the chair, she put it over her curls. She strode for the door, head held high, hands clenched at her sides. “Good-bye, Stephen.”
“Good-bye?” What the hell was this? She was supposed to beg him to marry her. He was supposed to save her.
She opened the door and walked out without looking back.
He didn’t go after her right away. Why the hell should he? And by the time he’d pushed his pride aside and was thinking clearly, she was gone.
He could have murdered her when he found out she’d taken his carriage. He could have murdered his coachman too, except that the man had driven Josie away.
If Josie had any coin—and Westman couldn’t believe she hadn’t pocketed at least a handful of the doubloons—Westman knew his “loyal” servants would have forsaken him in no time.
And so here he was, with no money, no carriage, and no Josie.
But this time he wouldn’t take it. He’d never fought back, not when his mother told him he was worthless compared to his brother, not when his father shipped him off to India, not when he’d come home and been told it was his responsibility to save the family.
This time he would fight back. He couldn’t fight his father and brother, but he could still save his family. And he would have Josie. She did need him. She just hadn’t realized it yet.
She was his, no man’s but his. He would claim her.
No matter what it took.
Chapter Twenty-two
It took Josie three days to return to London. It took three minutes for her mother to haul her into the Hale town house, push her up the stairs, and lock her in her room.
It took her cousins three hours to show up and sneak Josie out of the house.
The Hale-Doubleday scandal, as the papers called it, was raging through the city, and Josie knew her cousins took a risk coming to see her.
Even so, she’d refused to climb out of the window. After the cliffs of Polperro, she was done with heights, but her cousins scooted her through the back door when her mother was out.
It had been hard for Josie to look at Westman’s house, so close to hers, and know he wasn’t there. He was lying penniless and injured because of her. It had been humbling to know she was so selfish that she had almost got him killed. At least she had stuck to her promise. He had lived, and she had left him. She’d never again be his problem.
