Delight flickered in her expression. She was pleased. “Well, this was the second—and last—time we went to the seashore. My father and mother and me. And it was quite a blustery day. The wind tried to tear off our bonnets, and it whipped our coats out behind us, but the day was clear and beautiful. And we were all in such jolly moods. The three of us walked along the beach until we reached a jetty that reached a long way out into the ocean from the shore. And then Papa decided to be silly—he could be impulsive and silly—and ran out onto it, all the way to the end. He smiled and waved at me on the beach. I could see his teeth.”
Her lips twitched wryly at the memory.
“And I smiled and waved back at him. And then...” she took a breath “...a huge wave appeared from what seemed to be nowhere and crashed over the jetty. He disappeared. And we haven’t seen him since.”
He was struck dumb.
Ofallthe stories he might have anticipated.
He’d seen more than his share of impossible and terrible death, so he was surprised by a jolt of devastation, as though that wave had come for him. He was immediately haunted by the image of her smiling father disappearing before a young girl’s eyes.
Words momentarily eluded him.
He already knew, from the warmth in her voice, what her father had meant to her. And what the loss of him had done to their family. They’d all been blown off course.
“I’m terribly sorry, Miss Wylde. The sea is capricious even for seasoned sailors.”
She plucked up the quill again, and drew the feathered end of it through her fingers, over and over. She nodded.
“The strange thing was... at first it was almost like those Punch and Judy shows. You can’t believe it’s real. It doesn’t seem real. There was a second or two where I felt nothing at all, and then for a moment I thought it was almost funny—surely Papa is playing a joke. Surely he’ll pop up again at the end of the dock. I suppose that’s the thing that helps ease you into the shock and...” she cleared her throat “...loss of it.”
He considered what to say to her. He was conscious of a peculiar jolt of anger. As though it had been his duty to be there, and prevent that from happening. He could not undo it.
“I think it’s a common enough reaction,” he said gently. “Some years ago, when I was still a lieutenant colonel, I had in my platoon a soldier by thename of Josiah Gunderson. That boy had no talent for being a soldier. But he was game and had a good heart and a ready wit, and he reminded me of my son, whom I saw very rarely. I tended to choose battlegrounds with upward slopes so I could hide more of my troops on the reverse of them—we could surprise our enemy. I knew I could win a battle that way even when we were far outnumbered. I gave the orders for my troops to flatten themselves against the ground. But Gunderson heard a sound, and lifted his damned head,” he said grimly. “And . . .”
Too late he realized he probably shouldn’t have gone straight to gore in order to sympathize.
“Ha perso la testa?”She whispered it.
“Yes. He lost his head. One minute there. The next gone.”
She stared at him, pale and absolutely silent.
“Oh God. I have gone and frightened and shocked you,” he said finally.
“No, Your Grace.”
“Oh, yes, I have. My apologies, Miss Wylde. Like a heathen, I’ve forgotten how to speak to women about things beyond the usual social niceties.”
“And Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas.”
“And them.”
“Your Grace,” she said firmly. “Perhaps it isn’t ladylike to say so, but I’m neither unduly delicate nor unduly horrified, and, well, arguably, not a lady.” She flashed him an ironic little smile. “Because warishorrifying, isn’t it? Terrible death is a feature of war. One would hardly be shocked tohear the sky is blue or that there is a cloud in it, because those are the features of the sky. I’m a little shocked because it’s shocking. Even to you. I don’t suppose shock will ever kill me if it hasn’t yet.”
It was quite an astounding thing to hear, or for a woman to say. But it was increasingly clear how Miss Wylde had survived fatherless in London from the age of fourteen: a filament of steel in her spine.
“I’m just terribly sorry you witnessed such a thing,” she added. He could hear the sincerity and the ache in her voice. “And lost someone you cared about. And sometimes feeling... terribly sorry for someone... makes it very hard to speak, doesn’t it?”
The disarming, astute loveliness of this stopped his words yet again.
“I do not want you to spend a moment of your time feeling sorry for me,” he said quietly. “I’m a bloody general and a duke, and here I am, alive, tutoring a notorious soprano in Italian as a punishment for being rude in the parlor. I only hope you shall not be scarred by my awkward attempt at commiseration.”
“Nonsense. I amcomforted,” she assured him, perhaps a little too vehemently.
He snorted.
She smiled at him.
