She felt trapped by the fact that he had not so much left Loki in the open, but that he would have let her take him.
“I have been watching you, wonderin’ how I should approach you,” he said. “I know that learning about your father came as a shock—”
“Why would you care?”
He smiled briefly. “I could not rightly say,” he admitted, scratching his head and eyeing her with bemusement. “You do not much like me—that is true, I think, and deservedly so. You have only tried to cut my throat and bash my brains with a rock. Maybe I do not like having the advantage between us, love.” He paused, then said softly, “Maybe I have been where you are. Trapped.”
Folding her arms, she dropped her gaze to her feet and swallowed past the constriction on her throat. The smell of burning candle wax made her nose itch. After a moment, she sat on the wooden bench in the alcove next to the narrow stairway. As if she’d invited him, he settled his large body next to her making her scoot a bitto accommodate him. She could not help staring, for his warmth burned through her damp clothing. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and they remained thus in companionable silence. She could feel his eyes on her profile. His leg remained in her field of vision and she glanced at the stone engraved with his great-grandfather’s name.
“He isn’t buried here,” she said.
“He perished at sea a year after Janelle died giving him a son.”
“I ... am sorry,” she said, compelled to say something.
“Aye, but ’tis a fact of life. Loved ones die. Ships vanish.”
Most ships that vanished remained so forever. No one ever knew the fate of the crew or passengers. Like her mother. Ruark could have so easily met such a fate. “You are his namesake. How is it you managed to follow in his footsteps?”
He didn’t answer immediately and she sensed some kind of struggle within him. “My father made the decision for me,” he said watching the candle sputter. “He and I did not have the best relationship. More often than not when it came to settling our differences, he won. One day after a particularly ... violent disagreement, he shipped me off.”
“McBain told me . . .”
“It was a long time ago,” he said. “The reason no longer matters.”
The tenor of those words told her that at one time nothing else had mattered more. But something had changed inside him just as something was changing inside her whenever he was near.
“Is it true then that you tried to kill him?”
Humor twinkled in his eyes, though his gaze was at once direct. “Aye. I was not known for my restraint in the tender years of my youth.”
“But thirteen years ago you were barely an adult. How is it that you eventually became captain of theBlack Dragon?”
“The captain was a drunkard and wieldy with a whip. One day while he was beating one of the crew, I decided I’d had enough.”
“You mutinied?”
“I am guilty of smuggling. Perhaps even a bit of subversive behavior should anyone choose to mount an offense against me. But not a mutineer. The Roxburghe family owns a fleet of merchant ships. My great-grandfather’s legacy to this family. The ship on which my father exiled me, theDragon, was my own inheritance. My father possessed a macabre sense of irony when it came to doling out life lessons.” He studied his clasped hands. “It took me a year of hell before I had the guts to claim the helm of that ship as my own.”
“What did you do with the captain?”
He glanced sideways at her. “I dropped the bastard off in Workington with a note to my father, telling him to go to the devil. I then gave the crew a choice to stay or leave. Every single man jack stayed.”
“Will they come to live at Stonehaven?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Most want to stay on the sea.”
Do you?she wanted to ask.
“I came here to save my brother,” he said, as if he could read his mind. “I never had any intention of staying. I’ve never been much of a farmer.”
“You should stay, my lord.”
She looked around the sunlit stairwell in hopes of diverting her thoughts. Dull early-evening sunlight brokethrough the clouds and filtered through a stained-glass window at her back throwing patches of red, green, and gold on the walls around her. “This is a fine loft that your grandfather built. You have kind servants. A beautiful home.” She cleared her throat and stood. As did he, slowly, as he stepped down the stairs and once again took his place in front of her.
“Why should I stay?”
“Because you are looking for something, and if you have not found it already, then you have not been searching in the right place.” Self-consciously, she looked down. “Now that I have rambled about, I think I should like to return.”
