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His eyes lifted to her. “The fire?”
She gave a half nod. “I’ve been killed twice in my life. Once on the day of the fire. I was never the same. The person I was, was killed, through and through. That one happened to me.”
Her right thumb and forefinger meshed alongside her skirt, her nails digging back and forth into the pads of her fingers. “And then I had to kill that person I became after the fire—the rage and the hate and the monstrosity of a human being I became. I had to kill that wretched person I was—I did it on the day I left Vinehill. Buried her and never looked back.”
He sat upright, his face moving away from her left hand as he leaned back in his chair and his look centered on her. “And what were you left with?”
A rough chuckle crept up her throat as she moved the back of her right hand to his cheek. “Nothing? I have never been the same and I’ve never been able to figure out exactly what I am now. The only thing that I’ve been able to discern is that I do not belong. I do not belong anywhere. As much as my husband adored me, I never fit into his world like he wanted me to. I could smile, I could go about the business of dinners and balls and opera and the rides in Hyde Park. Even though I tried, I never belonged in any of it. I knew it. He knew it.”
“Have you considered returning to Wolfbridge and your cousin?”
She shook her head. “Sloane has her own life. She would welcome me into it, I know. But it’s her life. Not mine.”
His look dipped downward for a long moment. When his forehead eventually tilted up, his grey eyes pierced her. “Why did you do it, Torrie?”
“Do what?”
“Why did you go into the fire after them—your family? Why stay in the cottage—you had to have known the roof would collapse. You knew it was death.”
For all she didn’t know who or what she was anymore, she knew this.
She met his look, her words immediate and steady. “You run after the people you love, Roe. You run like hell into hell. You do whatever it takes to save them.”
He scoffed, shaking his head, his gaze and his face moving away from her.
“What? You don’t have people you would die for?”
Roe shrugged and took a gulp of his brandy.
Her look narrowed at him. “No one?”
“No. No one, Tor.” He stood up, setting the tankard onto the desk with far too much care. “And I have to check on Weston to make sure they didn’t toss him overboard.”
He walked out of the room without once meeting her eyes.
Walking away from her again. Every time the questions got too hard. Every time.
For all she had seen of the man—of the man on board this ship and not the one she had thought he was—he was still a complete mystery to her.
A mystery she wasn’t sure she wanted to solve.
Damn that she was too darn curious for her own good.
{ Chapter 8 }
From the quarterdeck Roe looked down at Torrie walking about the main deck. It wasn’t the deep stretching that she liked to do in the wee hours of the morning before the crew was awake, but it kept her legs moving and that kept her spirits up.
With her dark hair in a long braid pulled forward over her left shoulder, she rounded the starboard side of the ship, dodging Peck as he hauled a bucket to dump over the side of the ship. She smiled and Peck grumbled an awkward bob of his head to her. The men hadn’t exactly embraced her in the past week, but they’d managed to stop giving the sign of the cross every time she crossed their path. Another week on the ship and they might even produce a smile or two for her.
To her credit, Torrie didn’t let the lack of acceptance faze her. She kept her head high, the smile on her face regardless of how many scowls were directed her way.
Just another reason he needed her off this ship. Not only for the peace of his men, but for him. Every action, every step she took, dragged him further into his obsession with her.
He needed to get her to Port de Brest, and soon. The winds that had picked up in the last day helped, though not nearly as fast as he’d like for how they had drifted off course.
But until he could get her to port and on her way back to England, he may as well make her as comfortable as possible. And that meant talking to her in front of the men, showing them, again and again that she was a welcome addition to the ship.
He shuffled to the edge of the quarterdeck, pausing for just a moment to watch her before he descended onto the main deck and intercepted her path along the mounded coils of rope.
