Page 77 of The Pirate Lord
She took the bucket. Anything to appease Silas, she thought, so she could get out of here. She had to get away before she poured her heart out to him and told him the full extent of her dilemma.
Silas meant well, but he couldn’t help her decide what to do about Gideon. She was the only one who could do that.
Chapter Twenty-One
I thank the goodness and the grace
Which on my birth have smiled,
And made me, in these Christian days,
A happy English child.
— ANN AND JANE TAYLOR, ENGLISH AUTHORS OF CHILDREN’S BOOKS, “CHILD’S HYMN OF PRAISE”
Gideon sat on a bench in his half-finished house, sanding the edges of a plank he meant to use as one of several shelves in the kitchen he was building for Sara. When he’d begun it, he’d thought she might like her own, instead of sharing the communal one.
He’d meant it to be a surprise, but now he was having doubts about it. Three weeks had gone by, and his goal of winning Sara was not as near as he’d hoped. It wasn’t that she hadn’t softened toward him. Sometimes she acted almost like a wife. Two nights ago, he’d returned to the cottage to find all his clothes cleaned and repaired. He knew she’d done it, because Barnaby had seen her enter his cottage that morning.
If she saw him laboring in the hot sun, she brought him a bucket of cold water when she thought he wasn’t looking, and Silas had revealed she was always requesting that Louisa prepare Gideon’s favorite foods. He’d never experienced the kind of feminine attentions that most lads got from their mothers and then their wives. It was a novel experience to have someone care that much about his welfare. He liked it. He liked it a lot.
The trouble was, she wouldn’t talk about his intention to marry her, even when he raised the subject. Obviously, his fumbling attempts at courtship had left her unmoved. But what did he know of courting a woman? He’d never even had a sweetheart, just the occasional brief acquaintance with a ladybird or two that left him feeling unfulfilled and morose.
Still, he’d had hopes for him and Sara. This morning when she’d come upon him bathing, he’d been sure that he’d finally broken through her maidenly qualms. But no, she’d fled his presence and avoided him all day after that.
His right hand suddenly slipped, scraping the knuckles of his left hand with the holystone. Muttering a curse, he tossed the board and holystone aside. Confound the woman and all her hesitation. Cold baths were becoming standard with him. He went to bed hard and woke up harder.
It wasn’t supposed to be this difficult. He’d spent months at sea without a woman and not felt as much frustration as he had in the last three weeks. But it was one thing to be stuck at sea without a woman and quite another to be constantly in the presence of the only woman he wanted without being allowed to touch her. It was all he could do to keep from grabbing her and kissing her senseless when he left her at the door to her cabin at night.
But he knew better than to try seduction. It hadn’t worked before, so there was no reason to believe it would work now. No,he must stick to his plan, and pray that she relented before the month was up.
He stood up and stretched, then turned to pick up the board again. That’s when he saw her, standing in the doorway to his cabin with a startled look on her face and an empty bucket in her hand.
“What are you doing here?” she burst out.
Her confusion brought a smile to his lips. “It’s my house, remember?”
“Yes, but Silas said—” She broke off. Dropping her gaze to the bucket, she mumbled, “A curse on that meddling man!”
“What meddling man?”
“Silas, that wretched liar. He told me you needed this bucket. He begged me to come over here and give it to you, and said you were out catching fish with Barnaby. Obviously, he was lying about it just to throw us together.”
Thank you, Silas. He took a step toward her, pleased that she didn’t break and run as she had this morning, and struggled to find something to say that would keep her there. “Why would Silas try to throw us together now? He hasn’t tried it before.”
That didn’t get the reaction he expected. She colored to the roots of her hair. “Because he and I were . . . talking about you.” Her head came up, and her eyes locked with his. “He told me about your mother.”
Gideon went still. All his pleasure at having her there abruptly vanished. That blasted old fool. When Gideon got his hands on him, he’d yank his beard out. How dared Silas tell her? Whirling away, he picked up the holystone and the pitcher of sand and strode into the other room, his bedchamber. She’d never dared to enter it before, and he prayed she wouldn’t now. The last thing he wanted to discuss with Sara was his treacherous mother.
But Sara followed him apparently without any qualm. “He didn’t lie about that, did he? Your mother really is an English noblewoman? A duke’s daughter?”
“Yes.” He strode to the window, staring blindly out at nothing. “What of it?”
“Did she really abandon you and your father?”
A groan escaped his lips. Blast. He gripped the holystone until his knuckles whitened. He could feel her pity without even looking at her. That’s why he hadn’t told her in the first place. He hadn’t wanted her to know his secret shame, to pity him when he wanted her to feel something else entirely.
“Did she?” Sara repeated.
