He held up his bandaged hands and wiggled the tips of his free thumbs. “I’ll have to. I wouldn’t dare ask anyone else to feed me.”
Actually Rhys managed quite well with a spoon. Kenna was glad. Feeding Rhys would have been…intimate, she thought, and she was ill-prepared to do such a task. He seemed to sense her discomfort in sitting directly opposite him at the table because after a few bites of stew he declared he wanted to put his feet up. He moved to one end of the table so that now they were seated at a right angle and promptly rested his feet on another chair. Kenna enjoyed her meal after that.
“Do you know,” she asked, “I didn’t realize we were going to the United States until this morning?” She pointed toward the window seat. “I sat there and watched the sun come up and it slowly came to me there was but one direction we could be going.”
“What did you think?”
She broke a chunk of bread from the loaf on the cutting board between them and offered him some. “I don’t know that I thought anything. I was confused, a little frightened, and perhaps angry with you.”
He nodded. “And now?”
She dipped her bread into the stew. “I’m numb.”
Rhys almost wished she would lie to him. “That’s understandable.”
“How long will we be staying in Boston?”
He nearly dropped his spoon in surprise. Didn’t she know? Rhys thought to avoid the truth, then decided against it. “For the rest of our lives, I suspect.”
Kenna’s spoon clattered to the tabletop. Her astonishment was complete. “You don’t mean that,” she said, even while the implacable expression in his eyes told her he did.
“I’m the head of Canning Shipping now, Kenna. There are many people who are depending on me for their livelihood. I have to be in Boston.”
“But what about me? You, at least, are American. My home is in England!”
There were probably more tactful ways to approach this issue but Rhys wanted to have done with it. “Your home is with me now. You’re my wife, Kenna.”
“Let us finish with that piece of fiction, Rhys. It is all very well to tell the others we’re married to save my reputation, but it is of no account between us.”
Rhys’s loss of appetite was immediate. He pushed away the bowl of stew. “It’s no fiction,” he said, gauging her reaction watchfully. “Wearemarried. Don’t you remember?”
“If I remembered I wouldn’t be speaking of inane things, would I?” She picked up the napkin on her lap and tossed it on the table, her mind working furiously as she tried to recall the event.
“I have our license.”
She further surprised him by saying, “I don’t require proof, Rhys. I believe you. I simply don’t know how I allowed such a thing to happen.”
“You had your reasons,” Rhys said. “You tossed them overboard this morning.”
“I see,” she said thoughtfully. She looked down at her dress. “Was I wearing this when we were married?”
“Yes.”
“This morning…it seemed familiar,” she told him slowly. “Did I want to marry you?”
It was an odd question but Rhys answered it honestly. “You wanted your medicine, as you called it. You would have done anything to get it. You offered your body. I offered marriage.”
“And I accepted.”
“Without hesitation.”
“You used my illness to get what you wanted.”
“Yes.”
Kenna searched Rhys’s face. “Why was it so important that we marry? Did you know I was carrying your child?”
Rhys paled slightly. “No. I didn’t know.”
