Part 13 (1/2)
”I don't believe you can, Francesca, not by half,” he said, using her Christian name for the first time, surprising her by lingering over the syllables the way an Italian would and not making it harsh and sharp and English. ”But I've seen for myself the French at their worst, la.s.s, seen it with my own eyes, and I'd not wish that fate on any woman.”
His eyes narrowed just a fraction. ”You told the admiral that you'd do anything for your pa.s.sage, didn't you?”
Now her anxieties took a new twist, spurred by the cold determination in his voice. ”But to bind myself to you forever, a man I scarcely know, to abandon who and what I am for you-che impossibile!”
”Evidently so,” he said, clipping the words sharp with bitterness. ”It is your decision, Miss Robin, but I must conclude that marrying me is not preferable to torture, rape, and death. I regret having caused you such distress by my daring to think otherwise.”
”That's not fair,” she said swiftly. ”That's not my reason, and you know it!”
”Ah, one more a.s.sumption that I am supposed to somehow intuitively know.”
”But you do know this,” she said, struggling to find the right words to convince him. ”I told you before I'd never had a lover, ever, or even a sweetheart, and now the notion of suddenly taking you as my husband-ah, ah, it is so much for my poor head to consider!”
”Then perhaps, Miss Robin,” he said, beginning to turn away, ”your poor head should consider how much longer it wishes to remain attached to your poor shoulders. Good day, miss.”
”Oh, please, don't go yet, I beg you!” she cried frantically, catching at his sleeve as she remembered how Carlo and his knife could be waiting for her in her studio even now. ”Could we only pretend to be married, for the sake of the admiral?”
He frowned. ”You heard him. You won't be permitted aboard any vessel in the English fleet unless you're wed to an Englishman. He won't countenance anything less, and neither will I.”
Of course he wouldn't, not when rules and orders meant so much to him. ”Then-then if I marry you today, could we agree to allow time to know each other better?” she pleaded. ”To see if it can possibly suit?”
Now his frown seemed more from disbelief than displeasure. ”You wish me to court my own wife?”
”No, no!” she said hurriedly. ”I wish us to have a way, a means, to separate if we find we are not an agreeable match. I am not the woman you'd ordinarily choose, Edward. I wish you to see my faults, before you must have me to keep.”
”No one is perfect, Francesca,” he said with a hint of irritation. ”I can accept that. I myself have no fortune to offer you beyond what I earn in the navy, no home on land for you to grace, no family to welcome you. I am often at sea for months at a time, and the odds would certainly favor your being my widow for much longer than you will be my wife. I could even be s.h.i.+pped home to you a broken-down cripple worse off than the admiral, for you to tend and pity for the rest of my days. I am, in short, no prize myself.”
”Then might we agree not to, ah, consummate our union until we are sure, so that we can more easily obtain an annulment if we do not please?”
”You would refuse me?” he asked sharply. ”You would not be my wife in every way?”
Francesca nodded, her palms sweating inside her gloves. This is what came of being raised in the same house as the Oculus, for she could barely look at Edward now without feeling the first flush of desire for him, the swift tease of pa.s.sion curling through her body, from the tips of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to the secret, wanton place between her legs. She wanted him, yes, she wanted him in a way that no proper English lady would ever want her husband. But once they were wed, the law would let this man she scarcely knew command her every thought and action, and oh, saints in heaven, she wasn't ready for that.
”I would refuse you, yes, so you in turn could refuse me,” she said as evenly as she could. She needed to make it clear to him that there was a far greater likelihood that she'd leave than stay, that she wouldn't let herself be governed by desire. ”If we agree to separate, then I will never ask for a single s.h.i.+lling of recompense from you. I will simply vanish away from your life as if I'd never entered it. So refusal, yes, but also no regrets, no blame.”
He didn't answer at first, clearly unhappy with such a suggestion.
”If that is what you wish,” he said finally, making it perfectly clear that it wasn't what he'd choose. ”Very well. But I'll warn you, Francesca. I'm a man of my word, and I don't take it back.”
”Ramsden,” called the admiral. ”You have one minute more.”
Edward rubbed his finger along the side of his neck and sighed impatiently. ”You've set your terms, Francesca, and I've agreed to them. So what's it to be, la.s.s? Yes, or no?”
”One more question, Edward,” she said, finally daring to ask what had been plaguing her from the beginning. ”Why?”
”Why.” He glanced downward, away from her gaze, to the well-polished toes of his shoes. ”d.a.m.nation, I do not know. I hadn't planned to venture such an offer, you know, not to you or any other woman. Good sailors do not make good husbands. You haven't far to look for proof of that. But when I saw you kneeling there, begging for your own life, why, I couldn't leave you behind when we sailed. This was the only way I could make sure I didn't. The words came out on their own, and here we are.”
”And here we are, caro mio,” she repeated, her voice turning wistful. ”Here we are.”
She couldn't explain exactly where ”here” might be, and she still didn't want to be anyone's wife, let alone the wife of an English aristocrat. But Edward Ramsden had told her the truth, unadorned and unvarnished, something few men bothered to do, and she appreciated his bare honesty more than a thousand flowery promises that meant nothing. He'd been that way from the beginning, when he'd first challenged the authenticity of the carved Cupid, and he wouldn't change now, or likely ever. He was a man of his word, just as he'd claimed. He could have followed his admiral and dismissed her to her fate, yet instead he had chosen to save her the only sure way he could.