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Her hand flew up in the air next to her. “It was the gunshot. I hear them and they do something to me. Take over my brain until I cannot think, until I don’t know what I’m doing, where I am. I’m just…gone. And then I wake up somewhere—like flopped over a horse today.”
“So you curl into a ball and hide?”
“Usually. It is better if I know a shot is coming—like when a hunting party goes out, I can control myself. But if it is out of nowhere as it was today…I cannot control the reaction. Or I have not been able to.”
His look bored into her. “So you usually turn into a turtle? What happens when it is not usual?”
She picked up her fork, looking down at her plate and pushing the beans about the edge. “It does not matter.”
He shifted in his chair, leaning forward, his elbows sliding onto the table. “Except it does matter—for the same reason it’s hard to protect a turtle, it’s just as hard, if not harder to protect something unpredictable.”
She sighed, her hand with the fork falling to the table as she looked at him. “Rage. There were two times when I woke up after a gunshot startled me and I had a knife in my hand. A bloody knife. Both times. Not my blood. Jules found me once in the middle of it—at a house party in Essex—and extracted me from the situation. She knows her way around a blade.”
“Jules?”
“Yes, Jules—she learned when she was a pirate bride—stolen on the seas and forced into marriage.” Her forehead furrowed. “Weren’t you on the ship—theFirefoxwith her when she escaped off the pirate ship? I could have sworn she said she knew you from those days.”
Both of his palms went up to her. “I was on theFirefoxthen and I do know about her past, but I didn’t know how public that information was.”
She exhaled some of the angst brewing in her belly. “That is admirable of you, feigning ignorance. And for the benefit of a lady with a title.”
He shrugged, not acknowledging her sarcasm.
“Well, Jules’s past is not public knowledge. And it needn’t be. Jules told me and there are Des’s shipmates from theFirefoxthat know, such as you. But beyond that, the only thing that has ever floated about society is merely rumor and we’d prefer it to remain so.”
He offered one nod, his gaze skewering her as if she was daft.
Her head dropped, her stare on her plate as she picked up her fork, avoiding any further conversation.
Apparently, he knew how to be discreet. She had to give him that.
But she was done with questions, because she hadn’t been wrong about him.
He was dangerous. Dangerous on levels she hadn’t even anticipated.
Not just his devil-set-on-earth looks or his ability to extract her from deadly situations.
He was dangerous in the worst kind of way—he hated her—and she had never done well with men that fell to that persuasion, for she either ended up slicing them with a dagger or falling into bed with them.
She stuffed a bean into her mouth.
This journey to set the box in its resting place had just gotten inexplicably more complicated.
{ Chapter 6 }
Rune looked to his left at Elle sitting sidesaddle atop her horse.
For a woman that had been parted with her trunks and possessions the day before, she looked remarkably polished. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tidy bun, sans the bonnet that was left in the carriage. The skirts of her dark blue dress showed only minor wrinkles. The military-styled celestial blue satin pelisse layered over her blue dress still looked crisp. Her eyes were alert and she had good color on her cheeks that the day’s sun had set in place.
They’d had to ride out of Ilminster, as there were no coaches for hire, and remarkably, Elle had taken it in stride.
He’d told her the situation and she had merely nodded, her eyes lighting up as she looked toward the stable.
She liked to ride, liked the horses—that much was obvious. She’d cooed to her mare for quite some time when it was brought about—something about making friends—but it had taken so long that he’d finally had to nudge her to the block to get on the horse.
That had been six hours ago and she looked like she could easily go on for ten more.
Him, not so much.
