ships.”
She paused, then, as calmly as she could, went on, “As you know, I was told from an early age by supporters and detractors alike that the only reason any man would seek to marry me was to gain control of the shipyards.” She raised one shoulder in a slight shrug. “I’d thought you were different, but when you stayed away and didn’t even write, I realized I’d misread things. I’m sure you recall it was Iona who insisted on us handfasting and not formalizing a marriage immediately. She’d seen the truth that I hadn’t.” Blindly, she gestured toward him. “And of course, you, as the future head of Frobisher Shipping, had the greatest incentive of all to want to gain control of the Carmichael Shipyards.” Despite her best efforts, the breath she drew shook, but she clung to her dignity and went on, “As I wanted more from marriage than you were able to give, I realized I couldn’t go forward and formalize our marriage. Once I’d reached that understanding, there was no reason to do anything other than wait to tell you if you ever got back.”
Royd stood behind the woman who, despite the years, still held his heart, and felt as if he’d been turned to stone. He’d known of her belief that she wasn’t attractive, and that her temperament made her unsuitable to be any gentleman’s wife—ergo that no gentleman would offer for her hand other than to gain control of the shipyards. He vividly recalled the day he’d gone to meet her at the yards, but hadn’t been able to find her. He’d been certain she was there somewhere, so he’d hunted, and eventually, he’d found her hidden away on a perch overlooking the ribs of a hull in production. She’d been hunched in on herself and had been, if not actively crying, then deeply upset; he’d had to tease the reason for her uncharacteristic downheartedness from her, but in the end, she’d told him—gifted him with—the raw truth. The truth as she’d seen it—the same truth she’d just handed him, but then, she’d been all of fourteen.
Despite the difference in their ages, at that time, she’d been as tall as he, all long limbs and bony elbows and knees. He remembered that girl quite well.
He’d talked her around, convinced her that she didn’t need to worry about any gentleman marrying her—that everything would change by the time she was ready to walk down the aisle.
Even then, he’d intended to be the man waiting to meet her at the altar.
It had never occurred to him that that fragile and vulnerable girl of long ago still existed inside the confident, exuberant twenty-year-old young lady he’d handfasted with, much less inside the woman she now was.
Didn’t she have a mirror?
But no—he knew perfectly well that if one was convinced of a truth, one didn’t necessarily see reality. He’d used that human failing to his advantage many times over the years. He’d been actively doing exactly that—letting people think they saw what they expected to see—while she’d been giving birth to his son.
How to open her eyes...especially given that Iona would have held up his behavior of eight years ago as proof of his motives for marriage? Her grandmother had always viewed him and his involvement with Isobel askance. And he couldn’t argue that he wasn’t the prime candidate for wanting control of the shipyards; he was.
Yet that had never figured in his determination to marry Isobel. If she had nothing whatsoever to do with the shipyards, he would still want to marry her.
Intellectually at least, he—with the help of others—could convince her that, even by the age of twenty, her ugly duckling had transformed into a swan. But with her, that was only half the problem, and over the years, the other half—her unfeminine behavior and her devotion to and passion for the active practice of shipbuilding—had only grown more real, more confirmed, more blatantly a part of her.
And for the very same reasons she’d believed he’d wanted to seize the shipyards via marriage, he would never urge her to change her involvement in shipbuilding. Put simply, she and her talents and skills were far too vital to his and Frobisher Shipping’s future.
He wanted her as she was—on every count.
All those thoughts reeled through his brain at mind-numbing speed. He felt pummeled by realizations, but he was too experienced to leap into actions that might prove counterproductive.
Winning Isobel again—claiming her again—was a battle he needed to approach with all due caution.
He focused on the sliver of her face that he could see, faintly lit by the ship’s running lamps. Simply telling her the truth—his version of the truth, the real truth of why he’d wanted to marry her...would she believe him? He doubted it; putting himself in her shoes, based on what she currently knew, he didn’t think he would believe him, either.
When she’d dismissed him so decisively and refused to see him again, he’d walked away and done his damnedest to appear unaffected and unconcerned, especially in ways he knew were likely to be reported back to her. Behaving openly as if her dissolving their handfasting hadn’t bothered him had been his way of striking back, and he had a lowering suspicion he’d succeeded all too well. He usually did.
He’d screened his true feelings from everyone—too hurt and, yes, too wounded not to. Attempting to rewrite the truth he’d encouraged not just her but everyone else to believe wasn’t going to be any easy matter.
One fact, however, was now crystal clear. She’d hidden Duncan from him as a direct consequence of him knowingly concealing a significant section of his life from her.
The eight years they’d spent apart, the nearly eight years of Duncan’s life he’d missed, were the price he—and unwittingly she and Duncan—had paid for him keeping a secret mission secret.
He could swear and rail against a Fate that had conspired to so tangle them in their own strengths and weaknesses, their own vulnerabilities, but to what end? They were where they were now and had to go forward from there.
The past was the past. They needed to put it behind them and move forward.
In that order.
She was comfortable with his silences; few were, but she remained patiently waiting—one of the few things about which she’d learned to be patient.
She knew him better than anyone else in the world. He was fairly certain she still felt something for him, but he didn’t feel confident as to what that something was. Not now. Still, she was a passionate woman, yet she hadn’t encouraged any other man. As far as he’d heard—and when it came to her, he’d kept his ear to the ground—she’d never taken any other man to her bed. Why was that if not...?
An alternative answer came with his next heartbeat. She hadn’t taken up with any other man because of Duncan. Because, according to the laws under which they’d handfasted, she was still plighted to him—Royd—even if he hadn’t known it.
Another realization buffeted him.
He narrowed his eyes on her face. “You’ve been waiting for me to marry.”
“Obviously.”
He managed not to snort. As if that was going to happen. He’d long ago accepted that he wouldn’t be marrying anyone else; for him, it had always been her or no one.
As things stood, that also meant that for her, there would be no one. Or at least, no one else.
Not unless he agreed to release her from their troth.
He couldn’t
