“Mother and sister?” she prompted.
He nodded. “I’ll tell you about them later. Let me finish.”
She composed her hands in her lap and bit back her questions. He rushed on.
“The debts buried me,” he said. “I felt desperate to redeem myself. When two men who appeared respectable enough approached me at a dinner party and offered me an opportunity to invest, they found me easy prey.”
“Predators?” she asked.
“So I came to understand. That night, though, I thought them saviors. I would invest money in shipping and gain tenfold on my small inheritance. I would rescue the estate and care for my family. Stupid, stupid, stupid.” He threw his head back.
“How so?” Nora prodded him to go on.
“The gains they promised sounded good—too good. I ought to have been warned that something smelled foul. I asked no questions.”
“The venture failed,” Nora guessed, her anxiety growing by the moment.
“Spectacularly. The ship sank,” he said flatly.
“Unfortunate, but not uncommon,” she mused. “Shipping is high risk.”What can possibly be so terrible?
“Yes. I felt a fool, but then came the worst.” Jamie looked ill. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.
Nora’s heart ached for him. She reached over to touch his arm, but he pulled away. He stood and took two steps away before turning back to her, his face pained and his body stiff with grief.
“The Avante was not the merchant vessel I took her for, Nora. She carried human cargo.”
“Human cargo?” For a moment she didn’t understand, but the full horror dawned quickly. “Slaves?” She gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh my God!”
His face crumpled. “One hundred and thirty-two went down with the Avante. Dead. Every one. And I financed it.” He ground out the words with a hoarse voice, thick and wet. He sank to his knees and grasped her hands so hard they hurt.
“I didn’t know, Nora,” he said hoarsely. “You have to believe me. I will regret it for the rest of my life. I didn’t know, but I should have.” The words wrung out of him as if torn from his soul.
Nora froze, unable to respond, visions of chained, drowning men filling her with revulsion. Jamie moved after a long silence.
“I’ll leave you now,” he said. “You deserved the whole truth about your husband, and now you have it.” He lurched to his feet and left her.
Chapter Forty-Four
Jamie almost made it through the open doors to the foyer before responsibility stopped him. He should stay to make arrangements for their separation, for meeting the terms of Nora’s guardianship, but he couldn’t. One more moment, and he would shatter into a thousand pieces.
“Jamie! Wait,” Nora called.
Hope flared. He looked at her, and it died.How can she forgive the unforgivable?
“We’ll manage something,” he said, breathing hard. “You don’t have to tie yourself to me.”
Nora looked up at him, her eyes reservoirs of sorrow.
“You carried this alone for a long time,” she said. “Do your friends know?”
He nodded and hung his head. “They do now.” His friends knew and understood his need to redeem himself. He could live with himself if he had to.
“Now I do,” she said.
The blue eyes that shone up at him held compassion and something else. She held out her arms to him.
He dragged her close and clung as if he himself were drowning. Tears began to fall; he couldn’t stop them. His wrenching sobs might have toppled them both if she hadn’t pulled him down to a bench and held him until the storm abated.
