When she opened them again, her eyes were haunted and weary and wry. “Love is terrifying.”
He went still.
He understood something with uncomfortable clarity then.
She probably knew her father and her brothers loved themselves more than they loved her. Itdidn’t matter. She did what she did because she loved them. And it caused her pain.
He felt a peculiar weight on his chest.
“How did it happen?” she asked.
“He did what children do, and ran impulsively out onto the dock and slipped and into the water he went. I went in after him at once. Dragged him out by his wee arm. Handed him off to Hardy. Delacorte threw the rope in and they fished me back out, like a big eel.”
“You could have died.”
“I might have died any number of times before. I’d have been just one of thousands of men who’ve drowned in the Thames.”
Her expression was a picture of incredulity at his relative nonchalance.
“I’m glad you were there. I cannot even imagine what his mother must have felt.”
They were quiet a moment.
“Everyone thinks you’re my wife. You would have inherited all of my worldly goods.” He was amused by this.
“I could always use a few pairs of gigantic stockings.”
He laughed.
And then silence again, apart from Gordon making snorkeling grooming sounds into his striped flanks.
“Daphne...”
She looked up at him.
“I should like to apologize for upsetting you so terribly yesterday. And for the loss of your stockings. I was... I overstepped.”
She fixed him with a deep, steady, measuring look. Surprisingly it was not at all discomfiting to gaze back at her. He liked seeing what she thought of him reflected in her eyes, regardless of whether it was flattering.
“You think I’m ridiculous,” was what she said finally.
It wasn’t the beginning of an argument. It wasn’t an accusation. It sounded as though she was not going to let him off with a rote apology. She was going tosolvethis.
“No. It isn’t the word I would choose.”
“You cannot sympathize with the way I was raised, because you were not so much raised as born and then let loose to fend for yourself like a wolf cub. And you succeeded against enormous odds.”
He coughed in astonishment. “Christ. No wonder everyone in your village thought you were clever.”
She snorted softly.
“Very well then... it doesn’t give me the right to disdain the things that are precious to you. For I do not, in fact, disdain them. I think they merely remind me of what I am not and cannot be.”
He began to realize he was a little drunk. Something about the cocoon of coverlets, the whiskey, the near death, had stripped a layer of reticence from him.
Her eyes flared in shock.
“And whatever you think of me—and odds are even the worst you can imagine would not befarwrong—I know the value of things. I know the value of people. I do not ever take the things I value for granted.”