Chapter 10 #2
“You can trust me,” he said. How many times had she heard a man say those words?
How many times had she actually trusted a man—any man?
A very few times, and where were those men now?
Her father was dead. Her stepfather likewise.
She shouldn’t ever trust a man again. But something about the way Kildare was looking at her, the feel of his hand holding hers, made her want to try and give her trust.
“Go ahead then,” she whispered. He released her hand, set his wine aside, and moved the board from the chaise to the floor. Then he sat on the edge of the chaise, causing her to scoot over to make room.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
She would never be truly comfortable in his presence, but she made a show of arranging herself on the furnishing, so her back was against the cushioned end.
One foot hung down and the other was bent and tucked against itself.
It was a most unladylike way to sit, but she didn’t care.
She didn’t care about anything but the way Kildare was looking at her.
Everything inside her seemed to have gone hot and liquid, like the heated metal in a blacksmith’s shop.
Like that molten steel, she was waiting for Kildare to take her lips and make her into something new—or at least feel something new.
He reached for her face, sliding a thumb along her cheek. His hands were not as soft as she’d expected. She remembered he’d been in the navy, which meant, pampered as he was now, at one point in his life, he’d had to work. Kildare paused and pulled back. “What happened?”
“Not a thing,” she said.
“That soft look you were giving me is gone. You look wary again.”
“You can kiss me,” she said.
“Not if you won’t enjoy it.”
Tamsin couldn’t help it. She burst into laughter. “I didn’t think men cared whether a woman enjoyed it.”
“I care. What’s wrong? Are you still worried about pregnancy?”
“I’d be a fool not to worry about it, but that wasn’t what I was thinking about. I remembered you were in the navy.”
“Ah.” He leaned back and retrieved his wineglass, took a sip. “And the navy pressed your father into service.”
“The navy killed my father.” She stood up and paced toward the French doors, grasping their frames for support before taking a calming breath.
The walled terrace was open to the sky, and the air up here seemed fresher and sweeter than the air down in the gutters, where she lived.
She inhaled a couple of times, trying to force her traitorous tears back into hiding where they belonged.
She felt him come to stand beside her and moved into the sunlight covering the paint-splattered terrace.
No wonder an artist lived here. They needed light to paint, and this flat held more light than she’d ever seen in a home.
“I’m sorry about your father.” He was leaning against the frame of one of the doors, looking at the floor. “That must have been difficult for you and your mother.”
“It changed everything,” she whispered. “But go on and tell me how we need the navy, how we’d all be speaking French or Spanish now if not for the glorious navy.”
“Don’t look to me to defend it. I hate it as much as you. I thought I made that clear before. If I could commandeer a cannon, I’d blow every one of His Majesty’s ships out of the water—with their captains on them.”
Her gaze dropped to his hands, which were clenched into tight fists. “Let’s do that.” She moved toward him. “After we find Charlie and Joanna, we’ll steal a cannon and blow the whole fleet up.”
“Do you know anything about firing a cannon?”
“No. You?”
He shook his head. “That wasn’t my job. God, how I wish it had been.
” He turned to go inside, but she caught his hand.
He paused and cocked his head in her direction but didn’t look at her.
Tamsin was not an expert in understanding people, but she knew shame.
She had felt it enough, seen it enough, to recognize it.
She’d only needed to meet the eyes of one or two barefoot women, toddlers hanging on their aprons, dirty hands out to beg for a penny, before she understood shame.
Shame was in the way a whore took the hand of a man and led him down a dark alley.
Shame was in the way Tamsin had given Snoozer every cent she possessed in the hope it might keep Joanna and Charlie alive.
Tamsin understood shame in every sense of the word.
“What happened?” she asked, still holding his hand. “What did the navy do to you?”
He shook his head. “It’s what I did in the navy. Come on, I’ll take you home.”
“Tell me.” She tugged his hand, drawing him back through the door. She thought he might resist, but he went with her, allowing her to lead him into a shaft of sunlight. “Tell me,” she said again.
“I don’t like to talk about it.”
“Keeping the pain hidden won’t make it go away.
” She knew that all too well. When her father had been taken and then they’d received the news he was dead, she’d tried to hide her pain.
She’d thought if she pretended everything was fine or that somewhere, somehow, he was still alive, then she wouldn’t have to feel the wrenching anguish of never seeing him again.
“I tried that,” she murmured. “When my father died. I thought if I pushed the hurt down, I could ignore it. I could pretend nothing had changed. I could pretend I hadn’t changed. ”
“Did it work?”
“No. All that hurt has to go somewhere. It churned inside me, eating me alive from the inside, until I was like a rabid dog, foaming at the mouth and snapping at enemies that weren’t even there.”
“And how did you overcome it? This malady?”
“My stepfather. One day he took me to a field on the outskirts of the city. We were all alone on a cold, windy day. He told me I could take as long as I wanted to scream my anger and pain at the heavens. I crossed my arms and refused, but he wouldn’t take me home until I’d at least given it a try.
Once I began to scream my pain, I couldn’t stop.
I almost lost my voice from crying out to God.
Then I sobbed for hours, and in the last hour, I let him hold me. ”
“And then everything was better?”
Her eyes stung from the memory. “No, but it wasn’t worse. When my stepfather died, I didn’t hold on to my anger. I had to help take care of two little children, so I didn’t have the luxury of being angry with the world. I just did what everyone else does.”
“What’s that?”
“I sobbed into my pillow every night.”
He gave her a sad smile.
“Do you want to scream your anger to the world?”
“Yes,” he said, “but I don’t think Killian’s neighbors would appreciate that.”
“Then do you want a hug?”
She thought he might say no. His hand in hers tightened, and she felt the way his entire body stiffened.
If he pulled away from her now, she’d still love him.
She’d love him until the day she died. But she’d have to love him from afar, as she had for the last couple of years.
She couldn’t give herself to a man she cared for this much if he couldn’t give her anything back.
He’d consume her, and she’d fought too hard for the little life she had to allow it to be taken from her.
Kildare still hesitated, and Tamsin swallowed her disappointment.
Then he moved.
· · ·
Garret hadn’t consciously made the decision to pull Tamsin into his arms. He just couldn’t walk away from her, couldn’t not pull her against him and wrap his arms around her.
She pulled him hard to her, circling him with a strength he hadn’t expected from such a petite woman.
He’d meant to hold her, but she could obviously hold him just as easily.
He couldn’t scream to the heavens, as she had, but he could ease some of the pressure the pain caused inside him.
He could give away a little and keep the bulk of it to nurse and fester.
A life of rotting guilt was his punishment as much as anything ever could be in this world.
“If you’d asked me after my first eight or nine months what I thought of the navy, I would have had few criticisms,” he said, resting his chin on the top of her head.
“My first assignment was on the HMS Brighton. It was a frigate, a small ship that escorted merchant vessels. Our job was to protect them from the French ships, who were funding the war, in part, by seizing the cargo of British ships and then either commandeering the ship itself or sinking it. I saw the world on the Brighton. I saw people and places I never knew existed. I ate new foods, learned new songs, saw the most beautiful coasts imaginable.” He trailed off, wanting this to be the end of the story. “And then my assignment changed.”
She must have felt how he tensed because she held him tighter.
He wouldn’t have believed such a slim person could feel so solid and unmovable, but in that moment, he felt as though she would be there for him, no matter what.
He didn’t have to say this next part. He could let it keep churning and decaying inside him.
He could keep waking up in the middle of the night, covered in sweat, his insides feeling as though they were being ripped apart by the claws of his anguish as they tried to escape the dark abyss of his guilt.
“Captain Armstrong was the captain on the HMS Dauntless. It was a bigger ship, a sixty-gun ship of the line. This was a warship, and I was young and stupid enough to be excited at the prospect of seeing battle.”
“Did you see battle?” she asked.