He did not reply but looked away. After a moment he gave one quick nod.
Now Sabine felt indignant. She felt childish and maligned and... indignant. She was not someone’s penance. She was not a healing broth that one ate despite how terrible it tasted.
She asked, “So you’ve simply stopped? You’ve seen the guano venture through to the end and... done whatever else it is you do when you sail around the world, and you’ve ceased rescuing people?”
“I have,” he said simply.
Sabine thought about this. She considered his demeanor each time they met for their rare, brief encounters. Had he seemed fulfilled and carefree? Had he seemed happy?
No, he had not. He seemed as glowery and brooding as ever.
She narrowed her eyes and asked, “And has your retirement been the liberating, revitalizing thing that you hoped it would be?”
He opened his mouth and then closed it. He shifted his position in the bed. Finally, he said, “I have been very busy. When Cassin and Joseph left the partnership, someone had to do the work of two absent men.”
“But the guano is depleted. You’ve sold it all. You’ve made enough money for ten men. That was a year ago, wasn’t it? Since then have you been so fulfilled?”
She saw him swallow hard. “I’ve been looking for some property in which to invest. To put down roots. I want to build a house. I... I believe I will feel more settled when I have a proper home. I’ve not had one, not really. It’s why I was in Portugal when I was attacked. There is an eighteenth-century villa for sale in Cabo de San Vicente.”
She stared at him. Slowly, she began to shake her head.
He offered, “You’ve said you seek the same thing. For a home. To return to Park Lodge.”
Park Lodge could not be further from her mind. Even the investigation and the smugglers and seeing her uncle imprisoned felt like an afterthought.
Sabine took a deep breath and looked away from his face. She stared down at the crisp sheets of the bed, over to the dog, out the open window. She could think of fifty questions to ask him, but perhaps he’d said enough. He’d never been so vocal, not remotely, in their four-year association. Her mind spun with all he’d shared. Had she expected him to say,I married you because I fancied you? No. She didn’t suppose she had expected that. She’d asked the question with no expectations so that she would not be disappointed.
She looked back. He watched her with curious reservation. His expression suggested he wanted some response, but he was afraid of what she might say. Stoker afraid of her? If so, she understood the sentiment.
She was suddenly desperate to change the subject. She looked again at his tattoo and asked, “Did it hurt terribly? When you got it?”
Stoker’s eyes narrowed and he hesitated.
She raised an eyebrow.
Slowly, he said, “It was not the most comfortable undertaking. I don’t really remember. I was not entirely sober at the time.”
“Do they use a... knife?”
“Needles,” he said. “Hundreds of needle pricks that push dye beneath the skin.”
Sabine scrunched up her face. “Needles...”
The thing she said next could be blamed on impulsiveness or impetuousness or pique or any number of unaccountable reasons, but the truth was, she said it because she wanted to. It had suddenly becomeallshe wanted. Even their incredibly personal conversation, as fascinating as it had been, fell away to make room for this.
“May I touch it?” she asked. She released the dog to the floor.
Across the bed, Stoker went very still. His half-lidded eyes opened wide.
Sabine raised her chin. The instinct to flinch or flee the room did not even enter her mind.
Stoker said nothing but extended his hand to her with careful slowness. She watched him reach out, realizing suddenly that she had touched him, really touched him, so few times. When they’d married, they’d barely shaken hands. When she’d discovered him on theDreadnought, staffers had conveyed him to the wagon; when she’d gotten him home, footmen had put him in the bed and Harley had tended to him. There was the incident in her study, but that had felt less like touching and more liketransporting. She’d fed him for a week, but they had been separated by the length of a spoon.
What she asked now was touching for the sake of touching. Whether it was years of latent curiosity, or his openness when they spoke, or simply his bare arms and chest spread before her—she did not know and did not care. She wanted her brain to shut down for five minutes and simply...
She ran four fingertips along the surface of his forearm, the motion of smoothing down an imaginary sleeve. His skin was warm, and she felt tendons and muscles twitch beneath her touch. The dark pattern of the tattoo was risen ever so slightly, barely discernable through the dusting of hair on his arm.
“Was it painful for days?” she asked softly.
