And then Dot’s face went brilliant with delight. “Oh, look, it’s Cap—EEP!”
Angelique had leaped to her feet, seized Dot by the arm, and tugged her up the stairs at a swift clip, herding her with little pats like a sheepdog herds a lamb.
Delilah sank back down onto the settee.
He came toward her, slowly, each pace measured, as though he feared she’d disappear or would thrust her hand out, finger pointed at the door, and shout “Begone!”
Delilah felt lit like a candle. Every cell of her body seemed to sing a soft hosanna.
“Please don’t stand,” he said.
She could not have if she tried. Let alone speak.
Imagine a day in which the King of England’s visit was the second-best thing to happen.
“May I have permission to speak?”
Something was terribly amiss if Captain Hardy was requesting permission.
But she merely nodded, because she could not possibly speak.
He sat down gingerly across from her on the settee opposite. The one lately occupied by a monarch. The one Captain Hardy had elevated to a throne the day he’d checked into The Grand Palace on the Thames, and still did.
He drew in a breath. Released it slowly.
He leaned toward her. Hands folded on his knees.
“I am sailing out tomorrow if the weather is good. Up to Dover, to see Massey get married. Then off across the sea.”
She couldn’t say a word. Her heart gave a terrific jolt, as if it had suddenly sprung to life again. If this was the last time she saw him, she would hungrily memorize his face.
“Delilah, I don’t know that I would have or could have done anything differently. It seemed as though I was doing the right thing all along, until I realized that I could not know what the right thing was anymore, because I have never before truly been in love, and then suddenly I was.”
The brightness that burst inside her was almost unbearable. Like a new star being born. Her lips parted soundlessly. She tried to form his name. She couldn’t.
“You once asked me why I wanted you. And what I told you were, in fact, the reasons I love you. The point of you, Delilah, is like the point of... the sun. Or a breeze on a spring day. Or a hawthorn, even complete with its thorns. You are funny. And passionate. And clever. You are perfect as you are, and you make the world better simply by being. You are so beautiful that my heart has never quite beat the same way since I saw you. There is no one else like you, of that I am certain, and you know that I am always right.”
Her fingers dashed at her eyes, which were inconveniently blurring and obscuring her view of Captain Hardy. She gave a short laugh.
“It takes enormous courage to be kind in the face of so many reasons not to be,” he said. “I think that the reason the world contains people like you and people like me is so that I can keep you safe should your kindness land on people who do not deserve it.
“But all of those things do not quite add up to reasons why I love you. So... I wrote a poem.”
Her mouth dropped open.
It was very likely the last thing on earth she expected to hear. She saw the faintest hint of a smile at her raw shock.
“Somewhere, in the annals of time, these things—poems and that rot—had their purpose. You can buffer a good deal of anguish of feeling with words. It makes them easier to deliver and digest, perhaps. And so I tried. But every word was like a drop of blood squeezed from a wound. I failed. It is a terrible poem. Eleven words was the best I could do. But it is yours. I ask that you read this after I’m gone.”
Astonishingly, he laid a sheet of folded foolscap on the table before her.
She stared at it, wordlessly.
Words seemed superfluous in the face of miracles.
And then he stood up slowly, and looked down at her, his eyes burning as if he were branding the image of her onto his soul.
“I will bear the loss of you, Delilah, as I have borne other things. I will bear the fact that you don’t love me. But just as we are only born once and only die once, I know I will only love once. And if life is ever unkind to you, I want you to remember that you are loved, and maybe take some comfort from that, even if we are oceans apart. I know that you never again want to be at the mercy of any man. Know that I am at your mercy, now and forever.”