She sidestepped the question. “My husband trained me to use it.”
“Have you had occasion to use it?”
“Ever? Or here?”
His brows drew together. “Let us start with here.”
“No,” she replied, clarifying after a pause, “I have not used it.”
“Ever? Or here?”
She smiled faintly in acknowledgment at her own words lobbed back at her. “I have not fired it recently and never at a living creature. Although various assorted tree branches and rocks gave up their lives to it as I learned to use it.”
His mouth twitched. “But you had some thought of using it here?”
“Perhaps. Although I confess that even now I am in France, I do not know if I have the nerve to use it for anything more than defense of my own person.”
“Not even on Jeremiah Compton?”
“I cannot know.” She traced around a stain on the table wherean oil lamp had splashed, not recently. “You’ve been a soldier. Tell me, can anyone know with certainty how they will react in a given moment until that moment is fully upon them?”
Blackmore made a sound in his throat she took for acknowledgment. She again traced the stain, waiting for whatever he might next ask.
“Lucy is your sister?”
She looked sharply at him. She had carefully held back Lucy’s name the previous night among other details she was unwilling to reveal. He would not have found it in the valise.
“You called out the name just before you woke.”
So shehadspoken aloud—or screamed. She relaxed marginally. “Yes, Lucy is my sister. Lucinda, properly. She is nearly six years my junior.”
“What is your sister’s relationship to Jeremiah Compton?”
He had leaned against the chair’s back, casual with chin rested on first and second fingers of one hand, thumb up along his jaw. His other hand was relaxed on the table in front of him. Nothing was threatening about his posture, but he was very intent. A predator, watching something small and deciding if it was worth its while to pounce.
She had anticipated he would ask about Lucy; she had, after all, framed a tiny portion of the story for him last night. And yet she was suddenly...Frustratedwas the proper word, that he felt entitled to the story when he had given her nothing. That he expected her to lay bare what so harrowed her. If he wasnota genuine threat to her, she wanted more reason to trust him than a lit candle after a bad dream. He held all the cards, but why should he?
She leaned forward, elbows on the table. “If you desire that I should confide in you, might I suggest you be more forthcoming yourself? So far, I have few enough reasons to trust you, not least of which is that you have a marked interest in the same man I’ve followed here. I believe—no, Iknow—him to be an evil man.”
He considered her.
“Trust runs both ways,” she added. She resolved herself to silence; he would answer or not. She did not permit a flicker of expression to change on her face as she waited.
He dropped his fingers from his jaw and sat back. “Aye. Ask your questions. Although the depth of my answers may not fully satisfy you.”
“I know that you either left England or entered France under an assumed name. Perhaps both. Nearly anything will expand upon that.”
His mouth lifted just slightly at the left corner as he inclined his head in acknowledgment.
“Why were you kind to me on the packet when I felt ill?” She’d been seasick on the crossing; he’d spoken to her briefly.
Whatever he had expected her to lead with, it was decidedly not that particular question. Both his eyebrows raised before his face settled back into more impassive lines. “I wanted to speak to you, having seen you in the Gull’s Wing. Determine what I could learn of you.”
“You needn’t have been kind.”
He shrugged. “It was a small enough thing.Mal de meris unpleasant.”
“Where did you learn the trick about watching the horizon?”
