Page 60 of The Pirate Lord
“But that don’t answer my question,” Silas continued. “You don’t know much more about cookin’ than I do. I heard you were a governess back in England, not a cook.”
“I was. But in the years I worked for the Duke of Dorchester, I . . . became interested in cooking. I used to spend a lot of time in the kitchen.” It had been the one place Harry could never catch her alone, the one place she was safe from his groping hands. That she’d learned a bit about meal preparation had just been a side benefit.
“I still say you ain’t tellin’ me everythin’. I’ve scolded you and grumbled at you, and it don’t seem to bother you. Why ain’t you scared of me the way the others are?”
“Because I know you won’t hurt me!” she blurted out, then wished she hadn’t. Why must he ask all these uncomfortable questions?
“Ah. I thought that might have somethin’ to do with it.” When Louisa looked at him in surprise, he added, “What man hurt you so bad inside that you only feel safe with a man you think can’t bed you?”
Her face turned crimson. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He set his pipe down with a scowl. “Aye, you do. I been thinkin’ on it. The only reason a woman like you would turn away somebody like Barnaby for somebody like me is if she didn’t want a man to touch her.”
She’d never said it to herself. She’d never even thought it. But deep inside, she knew that was indeed why she’d latched onto Silas. He was good and kind . . . and impotent. She’d never have to fear that he’d come up behind her and force himself upon?—
She bit her lip hard, trying to contain the raw feelings that always brought her close to tears.
He came toward her, his face intent. “I ain’t blind. I’ve seen how you flinch when a man touches you. I’ve seen how terror leaps up in your eye before you fight it back and sharpen your tongue to make ’em keep their distance.” He stopped a few feet from her. “You think if you make yourself useful to me, I’ll marry you, even though supposedly I can’t bed you.”
“That’s not true,” she protested feebly before the word “supposedly” sank in. “What do you mean, ‘supposedly’?” Then, realizing how awful a question that was, she stammered, “That is . . . well . . ..”
“Don’t trouble yourself over it. I know what that fool Barnaby probably told you. Said I couldn’t make love to a woman, didn’t he?”
She debated whether to admit it, but finally decided she owed him that much honesty. “Yes.”
“He told you I didn’t like women ‘cause I couldn’t bed ’em. That’s what he said, ain’t it?”
Averting her face from him, she nodded.
“Well, it ain’t true.”
Her gaze shot around to meet his. “Wh-What do you mean?”
“I mean, my parts are in as good a working order as that damned Englishman’s.”
“But why?—”
“It’s a long story.” His lips thinned into a tight line beneath his mustache. When she looked at him expectantly, he sighed and rubbed his beard. “At the time I lost me leg, I had a common-law wife in the West Indies. A Creole, she was. Gideon brought me home to her for healin’, and she took care o’ me. But me lack of a leg bothered her. She tried not to let me see how much, but one day I found her rollin’ about in the bed with a merchant. ‘Twas then I knew she’d never love me again . . . if she ever had.”
When he turned away and went to the table, dropping heavily into a chair and picking up his pipe again, Louisa wanted to follow after him and give him comfort. It wasn’t right. He was a good man. How could any woman stop loving her husband for something so trivial, so unimportant?
“We parted ways then,” he went on. “She went to her merchant, and I went back to sea as theSatyr’scook. But the men all thought the problem between us must’ve been in the bedroom. They thought I’d injured somethin’ else when I injured me leg.”
He stared down at his pipe. “I . . . sorta let ’em think it. It bothered me less to have ’em thinkin’ my wife left me because I couldn’t give her what any woman has a right to than to admit she just didn’t . . . like me. The men . . . they thought it was tragic and all, and I let ’em think it. Gideon knew the truth, but nobody else. And he always kept my secret.”
He drew hard on his pipe, then exhaled, the smoke swirling up about him like incense. “Truth be told, after that I weren’t interested in women anyway. She’d trampled on my heart, and I didn’t think to find nobody else to care for me again. So I went without a woman, ’cept when I could get away in secret to find a whore in some port.”
With a sinking feeling she wiped her clammy hands on her skirt. She knew where this was leading. And she didn’t know what to do about it.
He lifted his face to hers, his eyes as clear as the sky outside. “Then you came along, a spitfire like I never seen. You were the tonic a man takes to brace himself for livin’. And I knew I had to tell you the truth.”
“Don’t say any more. Please, Silas?—”
“I got to say it. You cozied up to me because you thought I weren’t a real man, because some bastard made you afraid o’ real men. I’d like to flatter meself that there was more to it than that?—”
“There was!” She couldn’t let him think she just chose to be around him because she thought he was safe. When he stared at her over his pipe, disbelief in his expression, she added softly, “Truly, there was more. You’re kind and gentle and?—”
“I ain’t kind and gentle, lass!” he roared as he jumped to his feet. “That’s what I been tryin’ to tell you. When I see you in the mornin’, lookin’ like the freshest rose that ever bloomed on these shores, the blood pounds in me ears. I want you so bad, I want to haul you into me arms and kiss the life out o’ you. What I feel for you . . . it ain’t gentle.” He tossed his pipe down, his eyes now alight. “And you want gentle. You want a man who’ll treat you like a piece of delicate glass and?—”
