The Scoundrel and I - Katharine Ashe Page 0,58
“What?”
“Clear the deck. Do they always part for you when you walk through, like the Red Sea for Moses?”
“Cob saw you board. I suspect he thought I’d prefer it.” He did not laugh as she had hoped he would, or even smile. She could not fool herself that this was his captain’s demeanor. She knew it was her presence here.
Without speaking he moved to the railing where a rope was dangling from a mast far above. Taking it into the big strong hands that she loved, he affixed it to a device attached to the rail and pulled.
“Why are you here?” he said over his shoulder.
“Where are you going?”
He paused in his task, but his hand remained on the rope, his coat strained across his shoulders. “Why do you want to know?”
“Well.” Nerves in a tangle, she moved toward him. “I was wondering if you are heading to Hungary, if I could perhaps come along and act as your translator.”
He twined the rope about a metal bracket. “Quit with the teasing.”
“All right. But does that mean I must quit with you too?”
“Can’t quit what you never started, can you?”
“What if I want to start?” she said, then cleared her throat and said clearly. “With you.”
Abruptly he turned to her.
“With me?” His eyes were stormy. “You threatened me. Me.”
“It was wrong. I was wrong. I did not mean any of it. I thought—”
“You thought what? You thought that you could make love to a man like you care about him and then leave him with callous threats dashed across a scrap of paper, which, by the by, it took him an agonizing quarter of an hour to read, and he still wasn’t certain he’d understood it correctly because frankly he was shocked, and astonished, so just to be certain he got it right he took it to his sister to confirm, which was its own unique kind of mortification. Is that what you thought?”
She couldn’t speak. She nodded.
“Do you know what, Gabrielle Flood? You are a scoundrel.”
“I am a scoundrel. I asked you to make love to me even though I knew there would be nothing between us afterward. I wanted to be with you so much that I didn’t care it was wrong.”
He walked right up to her and looked down into her face. “I am not Josiah Brittle Junior. That you can believe for even an instant that I made love to you with dishonorable intentions—”
“I thought you would never forgive yourself if you did not offer for Mrs. Park. You want the best for everybody, even when you cannot possibly be responsible for everybody. Still, you try to make it better. I could not bear to be the cause of you never making peace with your lieutenant’s death.”
“You were wrong,” he said. “I made my peace with it.”
“You did? How?”
“I hounded down her long-lost love.”
“Her long-lost—Oh.” She had seen him on Gracechurch Street: Jane’s fiancé in the carriage with the children.
“Got lucky, admittedly. Fellow’d just returned from the East Indies. But I wouldn’t have stopped searching till I’d found somebody to take her in and keep her safe so she wouldn’t end up like—Damn it, Elle, I—” He turned away again and his shoulders rose. Then he strode back toward the stairs to the top deck.
“I did not write that note only because I thought you wished to make atonement,” she said to his back.
“Is that so?” he said diffidently, mounting the steps.
“I was frightened.” She scrambled up after him. The breeze buffeted her hair and gown and she exclaimed, “I am frightened. I have never known a man like you. I have never known a man so thoroughly good-hearted. I thought—I don’t know what I thought but I’m frightened.”
He turned to her, but he said nothing.
Her throat was closing up. “You wrote to Lady Justice.”
He frowned. “How do you—”
“She demanded that Mr. Brittle forgive me for the missing type. She said if he did not do so, and increase my wages, that she would go to another printer.”
His face was a mélange of relief and pleasure and pain. “Fine then,” he said only. “Fine.”
“You wrote to her.”
He shrugged and looked over her head and his blue, blue eyes studied the complex crisscrossing of masts and ropes and furled sails, assessing carefully. “Surprised she even got the gist of it,” he said. “Disaster of a scrawl. I’m not that hawk fellow you want.”
“Ain’t.”
“What’s that?”
“You ain’t that hawk fellow.”
“Gabrielle.” His voice was abruptly tight.
“Anthony.”
“Don’t.” He ran his hand over