did you come with me?” he said. “Just now.”
“I wanted to be away from Charlie’s accusations. And I was not yet prepared to tell him about the missing type.”
“Let me help you, Elle.”
“He will notice it soon enough. Perhaps he already has.”
“Till you’re certain of it, I’m your man. We’ll work out something.”
“No. This time there truly is no we, Captain. Your part in this is finished.”
“Can’t bear seeing your pretty eyes dulled. All because of what I’ve done.”
“I cannot believe you lied to me!” she burst out. “I cannot believe I thought that you were a man of integrity.”
“Blast it, I am a man of integrity, at least where you’re concerned. I never lied to you, Elle.”
“How can you insist on this when I now know the truth?”
“You do know the truth, the truth that I’ve lied to everybody for a decade.” He halted the carriage before her building. “And you know all the other truths of any importance. You know that I find you clever and bold and beautiful and sweet and rich as butter, that you turn me inside out, that you’re all I’ve thought about for days—you and that damn missing type,” he growled.
“I do not wish to hear any more of this. I should not have gotten into this carriage.”
He clapped a big, beautiful hand over his face. “Confound it!”
“Confound what?” She hated the note of desperation in her own voice.
“Confound honor and duty and everything I’ve held dear for twenty years! Confound it that I asked a woman I don’t know to marry me because her husband was a friend and I’m to blame for his death. Confound it that they went and had three children, and now mother and children haven’t a penny left or a relative in the country and she won’t accept charity, but I can’t leave ’em like that. And confound it that I knocked you over that night, because I wasn’t too keen on the plan already, never intended to marry, perfectly happy as a bachelor for the rest of my days, still I knew I had to fix this, but now I dread it because I’d give everything I have to kiss you even one more time. That’s confound what, Miss Gabrielle Flood.”
“You are at fault for your friend’s death?” she said thinly.
“My first lieutenant. John Park.”
“Your—He was—he was her husband?”
“Aye.”
“What happened to him?”
“I taught him how to game. No. Didn’t teach him. Forced him. Said a man’s not a man if he don’t ease up and enjoy himself in a calm sea. He did it to please me. But he took to the card table too well. Got in over his head. Couldn’t pay his debts.”
“I don’t understand. How did he die?”
He stared over the horses’ ears.
“How?” she prodded.
“He put a pistol in his mouth.”
“Oh, Anthony.” She moved close and looked up into his face. “You mustn’t blame yourself because a man could not control his gambling.”
“I should have known.”
She laid a hand on his arm and pressed her fingertips into his sleeve.
“You are not God. You cannot predict another’s actions.”
He looked down at her hand. “I can mend what I’ve broken.”
She drew away. “Like you wish to mend my mistake, though it was not truly your fault. It was my misdeed. I must shoulder the blame. Alone.”
“I won’t allow it.”
“I am not one of your crewmen, Captain. You cannot order me to obey you.”
“By God, when you speak to me like that, I want to—”
“Make me swab the deck?” She offered him a little smile.
“Kiss you. I want to kiss you again more than I want to breathe.” But he was not looking at her lips. He was looking into her eyes.
“You may not.”
“I realize that.”
He swept his hand over his face. “Blast it.” Then he dismounted the carriage and came around it to her. He stood so tall and straight, as though he were on the deck of a ship. He offered his hand, but she climbed down without taking it. He remained by the carriage as she went to the door, then paused.
“Will you . . .” She mustn’t do this. But she was not as strong as her grandmother believed, and she needed this. That she realized it only now made her heart ache even more fiercely. “Will you come inside and allow me to introduce you to my grandmother?”
All expression deserted his features.
“She has been hoping to meet you. She is very ill, and I think a visit would buoy her spirits.