Rose shook her head, unable to comprehend his going in the opposite direction to home. And to her.
Finn shrugged. “Shipbuilding at its finest. That’s what was in England and Scotland. I needed to learn more, and I learned from the best.”
She nearly asked, “What about me?” yet held her tongue. She was, after all, neither frail nor desperate, and so much time had passed, she could wait a little longer to hear if he had thought of her at all.
“After half a year, I went to Glasgow. They’d had a hard lesson after the capsizing of theDaphne. You may remember that. It was in all the papers.”
She nodded. In all the papers, just like theGarrard.
“I needed to learn more, so I did. Their university has the best naval architecture program in the world.” Finn crossed his arms and looked away from her.
Rose let that sink in — the priority he’d placed upon educating himself, which apparently far surpassed his feelings for her — and then she asked the question that popped into her bewildered brain. “When did you come back?”
“Last month, I landed in Portland.”
A month!He’d been on the same soil as her for that long. Why did it feel like a personal failing that she hadn’t known somehow?
“I went home for a bit,” he added.
Home. Of course to him that meant Maine. He hadn’t been in Boston all that very long when she’d first met him.
“When I got there, my father said he almost didn’t recognize me. I wasn’t the same.”
Finally, she let herself turn and study his profile. More lined perhaps, and a new scar on his brow by his right temple. He was wearing his hair a little longer, and when he realized she was examining him, he turned to her with a serious look in his eye that hadn’t been there before.
“I would recognize you anywhere,” she declared, wondering at the distant way in which they were speaking to each other. That she wasn’t in his arms being soundly kissed seemed unthinkable. Yet he was like a stranger, and she couldn’t imagine wrapping herself around him as she once did.
Finn gave her a wry smile, returning her scrutiny with a brief flicker of his gaze over her face.
“You might not have, not if you’d seen me as I was when I got to England. It took a long while to seem like myself again. I still have such strange dreams sometimes when I think I’m awake.” He gave her that curious, new serious look. “You could be a dream right now for all I know. I’ve had this conversation with you a hundred times over the past few years.”
She felt tears collecting. “Iamreal. I’ve been here all along. You could have found me any time you wanted.” She couldn’t help the bitterness in her voice. “I don’t understand why you didn’t send word after you reached Plymouth or Newcastle ... or even a month ago.”
Inadvertently, she’d put her hand on his arm, and he covered it with his own. She looked down at their touching hands as did he. Then they locked gazes.
“I told you Rose, I wasn’t the same. As soon as I reached England, I started trying to get back to you.”
“I guess you didn’t try hard enough.” She knew she sounded bitter and simply couldn’t help it.
He stared at her, long and hard, before he spoke again.
“I had no money and no proof of identity; no one to recommend me or to vouch for me. I had to find work so I could earn my passage home.”
Finn withdrew his hand from her and crossed his arms.
“I did the only thing I could, I found a shipyard and got a job. Then I decided it would be better to make something more of myself before I came back.
Rose knew why, too. Because she hadn’t introduced him to her family. She felt a hot rush of shame.
Into her silence, he continued, “What if I’d shown up unwell as I was, with strange dreams plaguing me, and you suddenly had to introduce me to your mother and the rest of your kin? Your strange, off-kilter husband!”
She had no one to blame but herself for his feeling that way. She dropped her glance from him. In the next instant, she raised it back to his face. It was too incredulous that he was even actually there, and she feared taking her eyes off of him in case he disappeared.
When he remained silent, she asked, “Why did you come back now?”
His gaze returned to the horizon. “Do you wish I hadn’t?”
“Why would you ask that?” Even as the words were out of her mouth, she considered what his return meant. The end to all her plans. For the first time since she’d run toward Finn, she thought of William.
