Chapter 16 #2
Louisa couldn’t even speak. All she could do was laugh and point at the carving.
“This?” Ann asked as she held the carving up. “What’s wrong? Don’t you like her fine woolen dress?”
Louisa erupted in more peals of laughter. Unfortunately, it was just at that moment, when Louisa was laughing herself to death and Ann was waving the carving about in the air that Silas chose to make his untimely entrance.
“What are you females doing in here?” he roared from the doorway, making them both jump.
Ann dropped the carving, watching with horrified eyes as it rolled across the wooden floor, losing its exotic gown in the process. Louisa managed to rein in her laughter, though a few chuckles still bubbled out of her.
“We wasn’t doing nothin’, truly,” Ann began to babble. “Louisa said . . . I mean . . . we thought . . ..”
“It’s all right, Ann.” Louisa faced Silas, laughter still in her eyes. But when she saw his livid expression and reddened face, she sobered. “I’m sure Silas knows better than to blame you.”
“We was just tryin’ to help.” Bending to pick up the carving, Ann held it out to Silas. “Honestly, Mr. Drumm—”
Silas made a choking sound as he saw what Ann held in her hands. “Get out.” Snatching the carving from her, he tossed it across the room. “I said, get out of here! Now!”
Ann hurried to the door, and Louisa followed quickly behind, but just as she approached Silas, he grabbed her arm. “Not you, Louisa . . . just her. I got a word or two to say to you.”
Her heart sank, and for the first time since she’d met Silas, Louisa felt fear.
This wasn’t the man who’d given her salve for her burn.
This was a different Silas. She’d never seen him look quite so furious.
His eyebrows were drawn into a tight frown, and even his beard seemed to bristle.
She must have been daft to think he would overlook her coming into his hut while he was away.
Well, it didn’t matter. She’d dealt with plenty of angry men before, and the best way to fend them off was not to let them take advantage of you. She’d learned that lesson the hard way.
Wrenching her arm from Silas’s grasp, she faced him, her posture stiff. “It’ll do you no good to scold me. I didn’t do anything wrong. Someone had to clean up this . . . this pigsty you call a house, and since you obviously weren’t going to ask anyone—”
“You aimed to do it behind my back.”
There was a wealth of resentment in his tone that suddenly made her realize how he might see this. “Not exactly. I just . . . I merely thought you would appreciate it more once it was done.”
“Oh, you did, did you? You thought I’d appreciate havin’ my things tossed about and made fun of?”
She colored. “That wasn’t what it seemed. We were just—” She broke off when she realized she couldn’t possibly explain that to his satisfaction. “We weren’t trying to cause trouble. We just wanted to help . . . to . . . to pay you back for being so kind to us.”
His eyebrow shot up. “To us?”
Her blush deepened. “To me.”
That seemed to give him pause. He stared at her a long moment.
Then, to her surprise, he headed across the room.
Taking his pipe off a shelf, he filled it with tobacco, then lit it and took a couple of puffs before cradling it in his right hand.
The pungent smell of tobacco smoke filled the room.
When he faced her, his anger seemed to have faded.
Instead, he watched her with eyes half-hooded by his bushy eyebrows.
“You’re a meddling woman, Louisa Yarrow, if ever I saw one.
” He paused to draw hard on his pipe, his brown eyes watching her the whole time.
“What puzzles me is why you meddle in my life when there’s plenty of other men on this island for you to pester. ”
“I didn’t think of it as pestering you.”
He ignored her caustic comment. “Why me, Louisa? Why am I the only one?”
She grew uncomfortable under his intent stare. Turning away from him, she began to snatch up his soiled clothing. “You’re the cook, that’s all, and I wanted to make sure we got some decent food for a change. You must admit you’re not the best cook.”
He didn’t protest the insult hotly as he usually did with everyone else. “Aye, ’tis true. I served Gideon well as a sailor before I lost me leg, and that’s why Gideon puts up with me cookin’.”
She hadn’t known that. It made her revise her opinion of Captain Horn a little.
“But that don’t answer my question,” Silas continued. “You don’t know much more about cookin’ than I do. I heard you were a governess back in England, not a cook.”
“I was. But in the years I worked for the Duke of Dorchester, I . . . became interested in cooking. I used to spend a lot of time in the kitchen.” It had been the one place Harry could never catch her alone, the one place she was safe from his groping hands.
That she’d learned a bit about meal preparation had just been a side benefit.
“I still say you ain’t tellin’ me everythin’. I’ve scolded you and grumbled at you, and it don’t seem to bother you. Why ain’t you scared of me the way the others are?”
“Because I know you won’t hurt me!” she blurted out, then wished she hadn’t. Why must he ask all these uncomfortable questions?
“Ah. I thought that might have somethin’ to do with it.” When Louisa looked at him in surprise, he added, “What man hurt you so bad inside that you only feel safe with a man you think can’t bed you?”
Her face turned crimson. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He set his pipe down with a scowl. “Aye, you do. I been thinkin’ on it. The only reason a woman like you would turn away somebody like Barnaby for somebody like me is if she didn’t want a man to touch her.”
She’d never said it to herself. She’d never even thought it. But deep inside, she knew that was indeed why she’d latched onto Silas. He was good and kind . . . and impotent. She’d never have to fear that he’d come up behind her and force himself upon—
She bit her lip hard, trying to contain the raw feelings that always brought her close to tears.
He came toward her, his face intent. “I ain’t blind.
I’ve seen how you flinch when a man touches you.
I’ve seen how terror leaps up in your eye before you fight it back and sharpen your tongue to make ’em keep their distance.
” He stopped a few feet from her. “You think if you make yourself useful to me, I’ll marry you, even though supposedly I can’t bed you. ”
“That’s not true,” she protested feebly before the word “supposedly” sank in. “What do you mean, ‘supposedly’?” Then, realizing how awful a question that was, she stammered, “That is . . . well . . ..”
“Don’t trouble yourself over it. I know what that fool Barnaby probably told you. Said I couldn’t make love to a woman, didn’t he?”
She debated whether to admit it, but finally decided she owed him that much honesty. “Yes.”
“He told you I didn’t like women ‘cause I couldn’t bed ’em. That’s what he said, ain’t it?”
Averting her face from him, she nodded.
“Well, it ain’t true.”
Her gaze shot around to meet his. “Wh-What do you mean?”
“I mean, my parts are in as good a working order as that damned Englishman’s.”
“But why—”
“It’s a long story.” His lips thinned into a tight line beneath his mustache.
When she looked at him expectantly, he sighed and rubbed his beard.
“At the time I lost me leg, I had a common-law wife in the West Indies. A Creole, she was. Gideon brought me home to her for healin’, and she took care o’ me.
But me lack of a leg bothered her. She tried not to let me see how much, but one day I found her rollin’ about in the bed with a merchant.
‘Twas then I knew she’d never love me again . . . if she ever had.”
When he turned away and went to the table, dropping heavily into a chair and picking up his pipe again, Louisa wanted to follow after him and give him comfort. It wasn’t right. He was a good man. How could any woman stop loving her husband for something so trivial, so unimportant?
“We parted ways then,” he went on. “She went to her merchant, and I went back to sea as the Satyr’s cook. But the men all thought the problem between us must’ve been in the bedroom. They thought I’d injured somethin’ else when I injured me leg.”
He stared down at his pipe. “I . . . sorta let ’em think it.
It bothered me less to have ’em thinkin’ my wife left me because I couldn’t give her what any woman has a right to than to admit she just didn’t .
. . like me. The men . . . they thought it was tragic and all, and I let ’em think it.
Gideon knew the truth, but nobody else. And he always kept my secret. ”
He drew hard on his pipe, then exhaled, the smoke swirling up about him like incense.
“Truth be told, after that I weren’t interested in women anyway.
She’d trampled on my heart, and I didn’t think to find nobody else to care for me again.
So I went without a woman, ’cept when I could get away in secret to find a whore in some port. ”
With a sinking feeling she wiped her clammy hands on her skirt. She knew where this was leading. And she didn’t know what to do about it.
He lifted his face to hers, his eyes as clear as the sky outside. “Then you came along, a spitfire like I never seen. You were the tonic a man takes to brace himself for livin’. And I knew I had to tell you the truth.”
“Don’t say any more. Please, Silas—”
“I got to say it. You cozied up to me because you thought I weren’t a real man, because some bastard made you afraid o’ real men. I’d like to flatter meself that there was more to it than that—”
“There was!” She couldn’t let him think she just chose to be around him because she thought he was safe. When he stared at her over his pipe, disbelief in his expression, she added softly, “Truly, there was more. You’re kind and gentle and—”