“Was it the ship’s sinking that caused it?” she pressed.
“No, it was my own stupidity. I let my mind wander while working.” Looking up into her dark blue eyes, his breath caught in his chest. How could he ever be worthy of this woman?
She frowned at him, clearly not understanding his intense expression.
“Tell me,” Rose persisted.
“I was wielding an adz.”
“I don’t know what that is.” She gave a rueful smile.
“Why should you? It’s a wicked tool, used by brutish men.” He caressed the side of her face. “It’s like a large axe, only heavier, made out of forged steel. It has a curved chisel head,” he added, demonstrating the shape with his hands. “I was hewing timbers with it,dubbing, we say — that is, carving out the wood.”
“Why am I already feeling a little queasy?” she asked, then added, “Go on.”
“Unfortunately, I was not attending to the work at hand. My thoughts were like driftwood on the tide. I should have been concentrating. Instead, I was thinking of—” he broke off sharply. He considered telling her how her face and the memories of them together used to fill his waking moments. Would that be manipulative? He didn’t want to make her feel guilty, or to be an object of her pity. Yet he wanted her to know that he had not callously put her aside.
“I was always thinking good thoughts of being with you,” he continued, and watched her nod solemnly, her large dark eyes never leaving his. “A moment’s carelessness was all it took. Splintered my shin bone. Damn painful, too.”
He lifted his trouser leg and rolled down his stocking. Rose gasped and put a hand on her own stomach. He had no doubt it was churning for the scar was ugly and deep, a white line, running crookedly across his shin about four inches below his knee.
“I was damn lucky it didn’t chop my leg in half, but it wasn’t a full blow. A knot on the timber deflected the blade — unfortunately, right into my shin bone. As I said, though, it was a glancing strike.”
Rose reached her hand slowly out to touch the scar, but Finn released his pant leg, covering the old injury. He grabbed for her other hand, so he held them both in his again.
“I’m all right,” he said. “There’s no pain anymore except on the dampest of evenings when it throbs a bit.”
“Yet your limp,” she began.
He shrugged. “I lost a wedge of bone, but I had a fine physician. I was in Newcastle at the time and was treated at the Infirmary. Couldn’t have asked for better.”
He offered her a small smile. “As I said, I’m lucky not to have lost my leg — either to the adz or to amputation.”
He could feel her tremble while she continued to stare at him in silence for a long time. Then he realized her eyes were glistening. Reaching up, he stroked her sweet cheek with his knuckles.
“Really, love, it’s all right.”
His words of comfort seemed to be her undoing. He watched tears fall from her eyes and course down her cheeks.
In an instant, Finn pulled her to him, taking her into his arms, and then settling her on his lap.
“Please, Rose. Don’t cry for something that’s over and done with.”
***
Rose knew Finn was right, but couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“I can’t help it,” she told him between sniffles.
She was crying for him and his pain, as well as for their lost years together, every lost minute, every lost hour, taken from them by the ship’s sinking.
“Hush,” he soothed. “It hurts me when you cry.”
She sniffed and wiped her face on his shoulder. She couldn’t tell him her tears were for more reasons than she could list, including that he’d let her believe him dead.
Regardless of his many reasons for staying away, a part of her hung onto the believe that if he had truly loved her, he would have come back sooner. Despite the intimacy they’d just shared, it was hard not to toss aside his excuses about being injured and then wanting to better himself.
If he loved her the way she loved him.Hadloved him?
