“I can only surmise you spent at least a few minutes with an excellent tailor.”
He gave a short nod again, as if she’d scored a point.
“The reason I know about falling masts, Mrs. Breedlove, is because I learned everything there is to know about a ship—from how to repair nets to how to sail one to how to make fortunes in cargo—after I awoke from a fever, only just alive, in the hold of one sailing to China. They had fished me from the water in the dead of night a few moments after I’d been cast in. Cold filthy water sobers one rather swiftly, in case you find yourself in a position requiring rapid sobering.” He offered a swift, taut smile here. “I’d managed to swim to an opposite dock after I was cast in, but I’d gone under three times, and I’d decided the fourth would be the last. I was told later they’d wagered on whether my thrashing in the water was a rat drowning or something else. A coin flip saved them shooting me to put me out of my misery. They hauled me out of the water.”
Angelique was motionless. Her ears were very nearly ringing with an onslaught of emotion, as though someone had clashed a cymbal nearby.
“The captain was a Dutchman named Janssen, working for the East India Company. The price of my life was labor. That, and my boots. They took my boots straight off.” He smiled faintly. “Gave me a pair stolen off a dead pirate in exchange. My fencing and shooting lessons endeared me to Janssen. And coincidentally I know everything there is to know about how to convert a pirate from living to dead, thanks to that journey and the ones thereafter.”
Somewhere during this recitation she’d begun to hold her breath. The terrifying plunge. The sink into the black dark. The despair, frustration, and exhaustion. Swords clanging, straining against each other in a great glinting metallic “X” in the air, hovering between life and death. He’d left the adjectives and the emotions out of his story, just as she had when she told Delilah her own story—the one and only time she’d told it in her entire life—but she felt them all the same.
Along with a ferocious, almost helpless, admiration. Devil’s blood, indeed.
He waited.
She said nothing. Her stomach, however, had contracted as though she’d just been thrown into the brackish harbor waters.
“At no point did I think it was an unfair trade for my life, either the work I performed or the boots,” he continued. “It’s how I became who I am now, which is, frankly, wealthy. But I will never again wear boots that are anything other than the best that can be had. Or anything else for that matter. Life is short, brutal, and confusing. And because I’m able to do so, I see no reason I should not arrange it to suit my tastes or preference. Which happen to be excellent and particular.”
He concluded this with an almost bored finality. As though his right to arrogance was inalienable.
She cleared her throat.
“What unusual luck you’ve had, Lord Bolt, of every variety. I am sorry if you’ve experienced suffering. I imagine you learned to be resilient. Adaptable to circumstances. So admirable. I doubt many men would survive such arduous, frightening conditions. You are to be commended.”
Other men would begin basking in the compliment at this point. He was no fool. His sardonically uplifted brow told her he knew she was setting up a point.
“And somehow, the reward of this resilience is that you have become a man who needs to bend to no one. You have acquired wealth and, I suppose after a fashion, power. You don’t normally do a thing you don’t wish to do. You don’t accommodate anyone you don’t wish to tolerate for more than a second. And now and again you can’t even be bothered with manners, and yours, I’ve noticed, when deployed, are exquisite. So as an ironic result of your resilience, you’re more rigid now than ever you were. And much like the proverbial ship’s mast in a storm, rigid men are a trifle prone to, well...”
She held out her two fists together and flicked them down sharply.Snap.
Then she tipped her head in mock sympathy.
He’d gone motionless. He stared wonderingly at her fists.
She put them back in her lap and laced her fingers neatly.
Then he lifted his eyes back to hers.
He gave a short, stunned laugh.
That is, if a sound resembling a laugh but lacking all amusement could be called a laugh.
“One might, in fact, describe it as a weakness. It’s funny how wealth does that to a person, no matter how it is acquired,” she added lightly. “Well, wealth, and being born a man.”
It seemed she had decided détente was not her goal, after all.
Their gazes met and locked. She couldfeelthe concentrated life force of him, like a blast of wind coming off the sea. She sensed there were limits to Lord Bolt’s patience, but the frisson of danger wasn’t unpleasant. It meant she’d found a vulnerability in him. She realized suddenly she’d been in search of that since he’d walked in. Something, anything, that made her feel more sure-footed around this man, whose very presence demanded everything of her senses from the moment she’d laid eyes on him.
When he spoke, his voice was low, deliberate, ironic. “And doubtless you have learned over the years that a stunningly beautiful woman can get away with saying nearly anything.”
Her breath stopped in her lungs.
His words detonated in her like a little firework in her chest.
Perfidious vanity. But there it was.
And he knew, of course. Bastard. Because his eyes gave her no quarter.