He reached for his ruby-red wine. “Sounds more like Will saved yer life rather than yer shoes.”
“The cart wasn’t that close.” Silence wrinkled her nose, because the cart had been rather close and the first thing William had done upon setting her on her feet again was to give her a scolding. Not that she was about to tell Mickey O’Connor that.
“I thanked him,” she continued, “and went off with Temperance and thought never to see him again. But then the next day, he came calling to ask Father for permission to court me.”
“And what did yer da say?” Mickey O’Connor asked as if he were greatly interested.
“Father was not at first pleased.” Silence saw a look cross Mr. O’Connor’s face and hastened to add, “William was a bit older than me, you see.”
“How much older?”
Silence poked at the half-eaten pear. “Fourteen years.”
She looked up to see Mickey O’Connor watching her and for the life of her she could not read his black eyes.
“It’s not such a great age difference as all that,” she said and heard the defensive note in her own voice.
“How old were ye?”
“Eighteen,” she muttered, then said louder, “He sailed very soon thereafter, but before he left he brought me a posy of violets.”
“He didn’t get ye the cream cake ye were moonin’ over in the bakery window?”
“I wasn’t mooning,” she said indignantly. “And, no, whyever would he buy me a cream cake? It’s a gift for a child.”
“It’s what ye wanted,” he retorted.
“Violets are much more suitable.” She frowned. “While he was away at sea he sent me wonderful letters from his travels, with all sorts of descriptions of the foreign places he saw. Then when he came home he would call upon me. It was so lovely,” she said dreamily. “William would take me to fairs and puppet shows.”
“And then?” His voice was expressionless.
She shrugged. “I married him. I was one and twenty by that time so Father would not have been able to stop me. But I wanted his blessing and he gave it to us. He said that William had shown his devotion for three years and that he was satisfied that he’d make me a proper husband.”
She paused, but Mickey O’Connor didn’t say anything.
She looked down at her plate. She’d eaten the pear as she talked and she no longer felt hungry. The empty desperation was gone—all that was left was the vague queasiness from having overindulged. Some of the pirates were laughing now as they finished their meal, while Mr. O’Connor’s little secretary had opened a book beside his plate and was making notes as he ate.
“We were happy,” she said slowly. “We lived in Wapping, by the ships. I would go to the docks and watch the tall ships come in, looking for the Finch, even when I knew she wasn’t expected back for months. And when she did dock”—she closed her eyes, remembering—“William would come to see me first thing. I always ran into his arms. We were happy. So happy.”
“And yet when ye needed him most he didn’t believe ye,” she heard him murmur. “He didn’t listen to ye.”
“I only needed him to believe me because of what you’d done,” she pointed out, but her voice lacked heat.
He didn’t reply.
She wiped her cheeks. Where last night she’d felt rage, now all she held inside was a deep sadness. “Is that what you think? That because he didn’t believe me, because he didn’t listen to me, he must not have loved me? That our happiness was but a sham?”
She stared at him, but he merely took a drink of his wine, watching her.
Had her happiness been a sham? At the time she hadn’t thought so. Life with William had been perfect, it seemed. He was away for long periods, true, but when he did come back it was like a honeymoon every time.
She frowned, troubled by the thought. What would her marriage have been like if William hadn’t been a sea captain? If they’d lived together day in and day out like most married couples?
Silence heaved a sigh and looked around the table. No one was paying them any mind—although she suspected that was more because of Mickey O’Connor’s presence than that they hadn’t noticed her tears.
She turned back to Mr. O’Connor. “Where are your women?”
His mouth curved slightly. “What women?”
She waved a hand, wondering if she’d drunk too much wine with her meal. “The women you always have. Your… your whores.”
He took a sip of wine and set down his glass. “Gone.”
She wrinkled her brow. “Oh.”
“Are ye disappointed?”
She bristled. “What do you know of how I feel or think?”
“I don’t know,” he said as he waved a youth over. The boy held a tray of sweets. Mickey O’Connor’s hand hovered over the selection before he chose something with a candied cherry on top. He turned back to her with the sweet in his hand. “That’s the fascinatin’ thing about ye, Silence, m’love. I know what me men will think afore I tell them we’re raidin’, what me whores will think at the end o’ a night, even what Lad will think about tomorrow—mostly me bed and a nice stew bone. But ye—ye I cannot fathom. I look into yer pretty green-brown-blue eyes, and I haven’t the tiniest idea what yer thinkin’ about. What ye truly feel.”
Silence stared at him in wonder, then blurted, “Why should you care?”
“That,” said Mickey O’Connor, holding the sweet to her lips, waiting while she accepted it into her mouth, then smiling almost as if he could taste the melting sugar on her tongue himself, “is a very good question.”
Chapter Seven
As soon as dark fell in the king’s garden, a bird’s song filled the air. Three notes and the other two nephews were nodding their heads, but Clever John had his ears stopped so he could not fall under the spell of the sweet birdsong. As soon as the king’s nephews were asleep, a wonderful bird alit on the cherry tree. Its feathers were every color of the rainbow. The bird began pecking at the king’s cherries. But up jumped Clever John and seized the bird by its delicate neck.
Whereupon the bird turned into a lovely—and quite nude—woman….
—from Clever John
Mick watched as Silence ate the confection from his fingers. He felt a strange satisfaction in feeding her himself that wasn’t dulled even when she realized what she’d done and drew away, wrinkling her nose.