“Dot hasn’t any skills at all. Or rather, she does, but she’s terrible at all of them. But Dot is just a lovely person who wants to help and I suppose the world needs more lovely people. And she let that man in after curfew. Out of the kindness of her heart.”
“Because you are kind and she admires you and wants to be like you, no doubt.”
She gave a short laugh. “I suppose I am. You’re right again, Captain Hardy. No, it’s not enough to be kind. Not here. Not near the docks. I’m foolish. Feel free to gloat.”
“I wouldn’t dream of doing anything so frivolous as gloating.”
He could have sworn that somewhere in her buried hands she was smiling.
There passed a little silence.
“Delilah...” His voice was tender. He heard the faint, desperate ache in it. He could stop a man from hurting her, but he could not stop the fear from reverberating. And in this, he suffered.
“I amnotweeping, you’ve no need to use that tone. I’mfurious, iswhat I am.”
“And you feel alone.”
She went motionless. She slowly lifted her head from her hands and peered at him from across the tops of her fingertips.
“I suppose I do,” she agreed crossly, surprised. Two eyebrows at slants. Eyes brilliant.
He liked anger better than despair.
Her eyes were actually a little red around the edges, however, and her lashes were clinging together in damp spikes. But those hot high spots on her cheeks were more representative of fury and frustration than devastation.
She was, in fact, tougher than he’d credited her for. He realized, all at once, that it took a certain steely courage to commit to kindness.
“Why did you say that? Do you feel alone, Captain Hardy? After all, there’s probably only one of your particular species. Then again, I don’t suppose you feel much of anything.”
It was like taking a face full of tiny pebbles. The sting was negligible but shocking.
He knew she was lashing out. The men under his command did, too. Men, he knew how to manage.
But he was out of practice with this sort of thing. Things delicate and intricate. His impulse was to take her in his arms. Would she find this comforting, or would he be just one more man presuming what she wanted, and imposing himself upon her? Would he be doing it to comfort himself, or her?
And what would happen next? The inevitable, no doubt. They wanted each other as much as they didn’t want to want each other.
She gave a short, bitter laugh into his silence. “Oh, the stoic, brave Captain Hardy. For once he doesn’t have to answer a question. Doesn’t feel the need to expound. What turns a man into...” She waved a hand at him. “So hard, so brave, so cold, sodutiful—”
“Enough.”
He said it quietly. But it was a command. And underneath it was something raw and hurt.
Hearing her punishingly recite a list of things he’d always thought of as his best qualities as though they were the very things that made him worth loathing.
Something about his tone broke through her prickly shield.
She studied him, curiously. Her expression had softened, just a little.
“What I do have is this. I usually keep it next to my pistol in my coat pocket.”
Cautiously he dipped a hand into the coat she was wearing.
Then he extended his hand, handkerchief dangling from it.
Her hand crept out. And she quirked the corner of her mouth and accepted it.
She dabbed at the corners of her eyes. Then folded it neatly. She did have her standards. They weren’t going to begin being slovenly at The Grand Palace on the Thames.
