On that he looked up from his correspondence, allowing a light of dry humor to touch his eyes. “Madam, if you think I bore him ill, you are quite wrong. And if you think I would do murder on your account, you sadly flatter yourself and malign me. Now, you were offered this cabin, quite properly and privately, and you did not wish to find accommodation here, so I will appreciate it if you leave me.”
The tears hovered ever close in her storm-swept eyes; he held himself in rigid check.
“I do despise you, Sloani” she whispered. “And, no, I do not want your cabin, or anything else for that matter! You should not have bothered with your superbly gallant rescue! Your strength does not make you any better a man! I—”
He looked down unseeingly at the letter again. “Your husband bade me vow to free you, Brianna. I keep my word.”
“Well, then, all is fine, isn’t it? I am free. I’ll thank you now for the passage.”
“For the passage?” he asked her politely. “It’s quite possible that I saved your life.”
“I’m not sure what my life is worth!” she spat out, and then gasped as she heard her own words. But she wasn’t about to back down, not that evening.
“Well, then, thank you, Lord Treveryan. Thank you again, and again, and again, and I am so damned sick of thanking you! If they take me for a witch in New York, bless them and I shall buy the rope myself! But until that time I will take my son and quit your company and pray never to see you again.”
He looked up, smiling. “My son, Goodwife Powell? Have you forgotten that?”
“By the law—”
“All, you’ve seen yourself, girl, I would think by now, that the law works in most wondrous ways.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Nothing, really. If you’ve finished with your accusations and assertions, I’d appreciate being left alone.”
She emitted a wild cry and flew around the desk, ready to pelt against him in uncontrollable fury and misery. But as negligent as he had appeared, he was on his feet with the speed of a winter’s wind, catching her before a first blow could land, and twisting an arm behind her back, causing her to cry out.
His touch was like ice; and, as always with him, she had lost.
“Madam, I’m not in the mood to handle you this night. I’d given orders that you were to be kept away from me, yet I don’t find it hard to understand that you could maneuver some other poor fool. Well, I am done with it now. I am sorry about Robert Powell, as sorry as I have ever been to see a man’s life wasted. But it was not my fault, any more than it was yours. Now, you may call me cruel, or bastard, or any other epithet that comes to your lovely lips, but not in my presence. You turned down my cabin, yet you came here to accost me. The cabin will be yours this evening, and you will not leave it, because I will not be accosted again. You will have to learn to accept the paths life takes, girl—and I’ll not be your martyred scapegoat while you do it!”
Suddenly he pushed her across the cabin, causing her to land on the bunk. Vaguely she heard his footsteps as she tried to right herself. He was leaving.
The cabin door closed—and locked.
She ran to the door, banging against it. The strangest sense of déjà-vu filled her then, causing her slowly to sink before the door until she was sitting, grasping her head furiously between her hands, as if she could crush away the pain there.
She started to cry at last, not loudly, not hysterically at all. Tears fell silently from her eyes for Robert Powell, and she could not help but hate herself for what had come to pass. She had married him—without loving him. And all the time he had been struggling along, she had betrayed him in her heart. Lying at his side she had dreamt of Sloan. While Robert had lain a prisoner, she had kissed Sloan and almost forgotten that she had ever taken marriage vows at all. Robert had died accused and alone, and very possibly imprisoned because of her. She sat there remembering the darkness of his eyes and the gentleness that never failed to dwell within them. She thought of him holding Michael and of his great determination that nothing should ever happen to her.
At last she rose and moved to the bunk, so listlessly that it seemed a great journey. She fell down on the mattress and closed her eyes.
Would she ever learn to bear such sorrow? She wished that she had died—but then she repented of such a thought, for there was Michael to consider. She would teach him Robert’s fine values of love and honesty and goodness. She would live with him quietly, close to the land. And she would never let the illicit passions of her heart and soul injure Michael as she had injured Robert.
Yet even while these thoughts tore at her mind, she wondered at the fury and emptiness she felt toward Sloan. He’d risked a great deal for her; at her plea he had taken the sisters from the jail. It had not been his concern, he could have left at any time.
Now he said that he was done with her, and that was what she wanted, wasn’t it? To live a life that would bring pardon from God for the terrible sins of her soul.
She thought of Robert again. Smiling, laughing, speaking gravely. It cut through her like a knife; he was gone. Dead, and she would never see him again. She would never be able to thank him, to tell him that he had been one of the finest men, surely, who had ever lived.…
Somewhere in the jumble of it all she fell asleep. She didn’t hear the door open, or ever know that Sloan had come in to stare down at her.
Or that he shuddered with the same sense of déjà-vu that had struck her. It was so familiar, watching her lying there, at last asleep. It had been almost four years since he had first done so. He had watched a girl then, and now she was much aged by the passage of years, yet not old at all. Matured—and still young enough to believe that heartache could be fought, rather than experienced and slowly quelled.
He thought to touch her, to shift her more comfortably on the bunk, but he did not. To touch her was dangerous. He left the cabin and did not lock the door. When she awoke, they would be docked.
Rikky came for her in the morning, and Rikky, gently solicitous, led her along the wharf for her first glimpse of New York.
There were people everywhere, an abundance of people in all manner of dress, with all manner of accents. From the women who hawked bright ribbons and cakes, to the old seafaring men pushing their catches, the place seemed incredibly alive. The sky was beautifully clear, and beyond the weather there seemed no hovering of gray here—no pall of doom. People smiled and laughed, and they did not rush by their neighbors in their fear or speak in hushed whispers.
