She looked away.
“Why?” She wrapped her hands around her elbows. “Why did I believe you had changed enough to trust your word?”
He stared at her, silent for a moment.
“Time, I suppose,” he finally answered, reaching to place a piece of wood on the table. “Time and familiarity. Ye saw the harmony between my words and actions and that created trust.”
“And now?”
“Now . . . I have the tremendous honor of earning your trust all over again.”
She longed to snort and roll her eyes, but the profound sincerity of his gaze held her fast. Like looking into the eyes of a wild stallion that had allowed itself to be caught.
She hadownedall that power and passion for herself—
Her heart clogged her throat.
She looked down at the carpentry tools resting beside the wood—a plane, a drill, a saw, three chisels of varying sizes. “I take it you think to jar my memory with these?”
“Aye. I thought perhaps ye could work on repairing this chair here.” He motioned toward a stool that was missing a leg. “See if your muscles and fingers remember the movements, even if your head does not.”
She darted a glance at the stool and then returned to the carpentry tools, even touching a finger to the wooden plane before pulling back.
“They willnae bite ye,” he said, laughter in his voice.
His easy, almost flippant, manner was like a lit fuse in her chest.
Her emotions were a turbulent froth, and yet, he appeared utterly unaffected.
She wanted him as off-kilter as herself.
She touched a chisel, more deliberately this time. “Why did I marry you?”
It was the one question she had neglected to ask him the day before, the one that looped in her brain.
She looked up from the woodworking tools.
That was likely a mistake.
He still watched her with those sincere pale eyes.
Piercing eyes.
Too-seeingeyes.
“Ye married me because ye loved me.” His simple words cut her.
“Are ye sure?”
“As sure as any man can be of a woman’s affections, I ken.” He rubbed the back of his neck. The gesture was abruptly familiar and therefore equally unsettling.
Unbidden, she wondered at the memories he might keep—a stolen kiss behind casks of wool in the ship’s hold? his arm wrapped around her waist as they whispered under a star-lit sky?
“What did I claim to like about yourself?” The question tumbled from her.
He grinned at that, hands spreading wide, shirt sleeves tugging in the breeze. “My handsome face? My delightfully quick wit?” He spun in a slow circle, forcing her to appreciate the tight cut of his trousers around his thighs. He paused and looked at her over his shoulder. “My ravishing physique?”
She was torn between smiling and throwing a chisel at his head.
