Page 49

“Oh, it be nothin’,” she said, looking away. “I just remember a time when ye ’elped me when I be younger. That be all.”

“Did I?”

Just as she’d suspected. He didn’t remember.

“Did I rescue your shoe from the sea, too?”

She smiled, looking away. “No.”

“Did I pull ye from another tangle o’ bushes?”

She shook her head.

“Did I ’old your books when your hands were full again?”

Heavens. How many times had the man come to her rescue? “No, just the once for that.”

He ran his fingers through his hair again. “’Ow old were ye?”

How she wished she could say it was only a few years ago. That would make her seem far less strange. “Oh, just a little girl.”

He looked away for a moment, water still clinging to his dark lashes as he stared into the harbor water as if attempting to remember. Before he could tell her another way in which she was indebted to him, she finally spoke.

“’Tain’t nothin’ special,” she began. “I lost a few loose pages o’ me book in the wind one day, and ye managed to catch ’em ’fore deliverin’ ’em back to me, that be all.”

At once, August’s eyes brightened. “That was ye?”

She narrowed her eyes. There was no possible way he remembered. He was simply being nice. “I don’t expect ye to recall it. It be so long ago…”

But August shook his head. “No, I distinctly remember ye chasin’ after ’em papers down the causeway. I managed to step on one and caught the other midair ’fore they would’ve flown into the sea.”

Livvy could hardly breathe. He did remember. “Yes,” she managed to reply.

“I can’t believe that was ye all this time. I’d forgotten until now. Ye were cryin’ when I handed ’em to ye, if I recall correctly.”

The blood rushed back to Livvy’s head, warming her cheeks. “Was I?”

She looked away. She really needed to break her habit of telling falsehoods to make herself appear less ridiculous. The truth of the matter was that she remembered that day perfectly, and she had been crying. Quite a lot.

She’d been ten years old. Mother had died only a few months before. The book had been one of the novels the Otterhams had given to her—The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes. She’d read it so often, and the copy had been so frail to begin with, that the pages had taken to falling apart one by one.

But it was special to her. It was still special to her. Priceless, even. Irreplaceable. And August had rescued it for her.

“Ye must’ve loved that book to ’ave been chasin’ after its pages all those years ago,” August said, his eyes warm as he peered down at her.

She bit the inside of her lip. Should she tell him the truth? The worst he could do was run away from her.

Or ask ye more questions.

She cringed. People’s questions had been a major deciding factor in becoming the hermit she was today.

But then, August had never asked her imposing questions before. And if she spoke vaguely enough, there would be no need for him to ask anything at all.

Drawing a deep breath, she began. “It was that book that ’elped me to fall in love with readin’. From the Otter’ams, it was. It…it also ’elped me goin’ after me mother’s death.”

There. She’d said it. She’d said it, and she was still alive. Furthermore, August’s eyes had softened even further with deep compassion and understanding.

“I be that glad I found ’em papers for ye, then,” he said softly. “E’en more so now.”