“I think I know that now.”
For a long time after Rhys fell asleep, Kenna stayed awake, watching him. She would always remember it as one of the most uniquely peaceful nights she spent in his arms.
That memory helped sustain her until the following afternoon when, in the course of three hours, Rhys called her sprite more than a dozen times. He was sitting at the desk, studying some papers, and Kenna was sitting on the desk top, leaning over the very same charts. They were trying to determine the extent of the cargo their schooners could carry as well as a realistic timetable for the run from the Indies to New York and Boston. She set her teeth the first time he had casually dropped the odious nickname, but when it tripped off his tongue again and again she could no longer let it pass. Did he want a wife, a lover, a partner, or a child?
“Approximately once every eleven minutes,” she said, scribbling down a few numbers on a scratch paper. She pushed the paper in front of him.
“That can’t be correct, sprite,” Rhys said good-naturedly. It was not often she made a mistake like that.
Kenna took back the paper, scratched down a few more figures and gave it to him again. “You’re right. Make that closer to every twelve minutes.”
Rhys leaned back in his chair. “Kenna,” he said patiently. “How can we send off a ship every twelve minutes? We’d need a fleet of vessels larger than…well, beyond my imagination anyway.”
Kenna was tapping her fingers on the desk. “I was not referring to our shipping timetable,” she said sweetly. “These calculations are based on one hundred eighty minutes, which is the length of time we’ve been working here, and fifteen, which is the number of times you’ve called me by that preposterous nickname. Have done, Rhys!” She jumped to her feet and walked away from the desk, spun around, arms akimbo. “Do I look like a sprite?” she demanded. “Sprites are small, airy things, impossibly delicate and equally mischievous. Forget I said the last,” she added when she saw a smile tug at his lips. “I am not small, nor am I airy, and above all I am not delicate!” To prove it she stamped her foot against the deck so hard the papers on the desk shuddered.
“Come here, Kenna,” Rhys said in a voice that brooked no argument.
Kenna hesitated until one of his dark brows raised, issuing a challenge she could not ignore. She walked toward him. The sunlight at her back filtered through her blue muslin day dress, outlining the length of her long legs and the slenderness of her waist.
“Closer.” Rhys pointed to a spot directly in front of him, directly between his splayed legs. “Right here.” Kenna took the final two steps a shade defiantly and Rhys closed his legs, trapping her. “All right. Let’s address these issues. First, your height. Even on tiptoe you are still shorter than I am. Therefore, to me, you’re small. And airy? Kenna, if you saw the way you looked coming toward me, light and ethereal, you would not doubt me on this point.” He reached for her wrists and raised them in front of him. “That brings us to delicate. These are delicate.” He dropped them and spanned her waist with his hands. “This is delicate.” He drew her down on one knee and brushed her lips with the tips of his fingers. “Not delicate. Exquisite.”
“Rhys,” Kenna sighed. “You present a lovely argument. But I don’t think you understand the problem.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s this: when you call me sprite I feel like your sister, or worse, the wretched little girl who dogged your every step at Dunnelly. More importantly, I wonder if that is how you see me. Is it, Rhys? I want to be your wife, your lover, your friend. Am I still a child in your eyes?”
“Child? No.” He shook his head for emphasis. “I haven’t thought of you as a child since your seventeenth birthday.”
Kenna could not hide her surprise. “You were on the Peninsula then. You hadn’t seen me for nearly three years.”
“I was on the Peninsula, yes, but Nick sent me a miniature of you. He commissioned a portrait of you for your birthday and asked the artist to duplicate the painting in miniature.”
“I never knew.”
“Nick knew better than to tell you. You wouldn’t have sat for the portrait.”
“God, I could be cruel!”
“You thought you had reason enough to hate me,” he reminded her. “When I saw the painting I saw a woman, Kenna, not a child. Your face was so solemn, so grave, that I wept for the loss of your childhood and wondered if you had even noted its passing. There was a frailty in your expression, a certain vulnerability in your eyes, and I mourned the absence of your spirit. It was not the wistful face of a child the artist had captured on canvas; it was the haunting face of a young woman who was completely unaware of her own beauty.
“I had a locket made for the miniature and I carried it everywhere. It was my good luck piece. To this day I don’t know what happened to it. I was preparing for a battle and reached in my pocket to get it, just to hold it for a moment, and it wasn’t there. I shall never forget how scared I was to face the enemy that day.”
“You didn’t need it.” A lump in her throat made it difficult to get out the words.
“You’ll never convince me of that,” he said in self-mockery. “That was the day two of my finest animals were shot out from under me and a pistol ball creased my hairline.” He caught her horror. “I was unconscious for a while, that’s all. It was not much more than a scratch.”
“Oh, Rhys,” she said miserably.
“Don’t think on it, Kenna. I don’t. Think on this: when I call you sprite it is because you’ve triggered a chord that responds to your spirit. Don’t ask me to ignore it. I don’t think I can. I loved you as a brother when you were a child. Not any longer. I thought you understood. I love you as a man can only love a woman. There has been nothing less in my heart for years.”
“You never said…I thought everything you did for me was toward protecting me. I thought you were sacrificing your life for mine.”
“I am not a sacrificing man,” he said. “I’m a selfish one. Very, very selfish. You are as necessary to me as air itself. I would guard you as jealously as a thirsty man would guard his last few drops of water. That is the sort of protection I’ve always offered you.”
“I love you,” she said. Kenna leaned her head against his shoulder. “Dear God, how I love you!”
Chapter 8
