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“You’re angry with me,” he said after reaching the conclusion, then turned his attention to straightening the pillows.

“No,” she said, re-straightening the pillows he’d already arranged. “I just don’t want you to feel as if you always have to have the upper hand.”

When he made to shift the pillow back, she scooped it up and whacked him on the shoulder. He playfully rubbed his shoulder, wincing.

“All right. But you like it when I have the upper hand in bed… this bed right here.” He patted the mattress. “A bed that is now perspiration free, waiting patiently for this argument to end so we can return to more pleasant pursuits.”

She bit back the smile he’d been trying to provoke, then she looked away, falling silent. Too silent.

Her absent stare set his nerves to itching.

When she finally turned back to face him, the change in her expression did nothing to ease his anxiety. She took his hand. Led him to the bed to sit beside her. Michael’s feet suddenly felt too heavy to cooperate.

“It isn’t about this. Not really.”

Yes. He thought as much. When people were mad at him, it was seldom about the most recent thing he’d done wrong.

She pulled their interlaced hands into her lap. “You would have had to write the letter to The East India Company before we married. Before we were even engaged.” She paused, perhaps waiting for him to deny it, but there was nothing to deny. They both knew she was right. “You could have told me the moment I opened Lionel’s correspondence, ending the argument before it began, but you didn’t want to relinquish the advantage.”

Michael frowned. “When did you work it out?”

“Just now, while I was attempting to make the bed.” She toyed with his fingers. “And stop changing the subject.”

She was still holding his hand. She couldn’t be all that angry with him, or she would have dropped it like a hot potato, so he clasped it more tightly between both of his, holding on for dear life. When his muscles immediately relaxed, he realised just how much he’d needed that reassurance.

“You’ve got it entirely wrong,” he said. “It has nothing at all to do with keeping the advantage and everything to do with me realising I’d never had it at all. You won before I even stepped foot on the boat.” He looked up. “I wrote that letter the day after I arrived…and… it scared me to admit as much.”

Gwen frowned, her brow knitting. “That doesn’t make any sense. Writing that letter, ensuring the yard had the best possible chance of success… it was incredibly kind. But then… the harbormaster, the insurance…” she shook her head. “Why would you do something so generous one moment only to threaten me the next?”

Michael shrugged a shoulder. “Now you see why I was reluctant to admit to what I’d done. No man wants to own up to being utterly illogical.”

She pulled her hand free and stroked slow circles across his back.

Michael thought it might have been the sweetest touch he’d ever known.

“Surely you have some idea of your motivation,” she said, in a voice so encouraging he would have confessed to every stupid thing he’d ever done.

“I’ve some idea, I suppose.” Michael sighed. “Unfortunately, what I’ve worked out is scarcely more flattering than having behaved like a complete lunatic.”

She nudged him with her shoulder. “Surely it can’t be as bad as all that.”

Michael gave a humourless laugh, then slowly looked up. He took in her kind, intelligent eyes, the hesitant curve of her smile—the one he’d once thought he would never see again—and squeezed her hand.

Gwen squeezed it back.

“I think…” Michael began. “I think from the moment I saw you covered in sawdust, part of me knew I could never go through with it. Before that, really. When you were nothing more than a collection of angry words and ridiculously loopy g’s, insisting you’d sooner send the deed out to sea in a leaky rowboat than sell Llanelli to me.”

“Did I say that?” she scrunched her nose. “I didn’t say that.”

“You did.”

She laughed then, and it was as though the sound reached right into his soul, smoothing away every rough edge he’d been carrying.

“But then, if you were so very smitten, why make trouble for the yard at all?” She cocked her head to the side. “Why not just put all your energy into wooing me from the start.”

He inclined his head, fully expecting the question. “Partly because I knew you wouldn't have me but… that’s not the whole truth, not really. And this is where it becomes a bit more difficult to explain, and considerably more difficult to admit.”

He looked down at their joined hands.