Felix leaned into Gabriel’s shoulder in sympathy. “Now, Lizbeth was a fine woman.”
“That she was.” Gabriel frowned though. “Only I never told her so often enough.”
“I am sure she knew how you felt about her,” he said. They had had this discussion earlier in the day, and the poor man still did not believe. “She was proud to be your wife.”
“You are the only one who thinks that. She married me and I drove her to her death. I should have taken her with me, or better yet have given up my commission. I had enough to live on four years ago, but no, I had to keep fighting, thinking she would be waiting when we won the day.” Gabriel stared down at his hands. “They are not like us. Women like, no need, to have men spell out their feelings in the finest of detail. If you think a wench is pretty, say so. If you love her, tell her so every day, not just the once. I did not deserve Lizbeth, so she was taken from me.”
There was not much Felix could say to that rant that he had not commented on before, so he pushed Gabriel’s refilled mug of ale toward him and hoped he would keep drinking.
The innkeeper topped off both mugs again after Gabriel had taken a long swig. “Are you married, Captain?”
Felix glanced up at the innkeeper’s question. “No.”
“He almost married once,” Gabriel told the innkeeper. “Now, that Sally is a fine wench. Quite the temper, I’ll wager.”
Felix took a sip of his fresh ale. “She is and she does. My word, she does. Usually directed at me.”
The innkeeper’s eyes lit up. “I gather you have fallen under her spell.”
“Unfortunately,” Felix said morosely, considering Sally. She had not been angry with him today. It had been wonderful when she had thrown herself into his arms. Everything had been going so well until Ellicott showed his smug face. And everything had changed for him after that.
The innkeeper drew up a stool. “What happened, Captain? If you do not mind me asking? Did she pass on too?”
“No, she lives on to haunt me in the flesh.” Felix had spent so much time not talking about Sally that he was tempted to share the burden of his mistake. “Her father’s political scheming led to her throwing me over. I did not know what her father was doing until it was too late to save us from an argument that did not end well for me.”
“She blamed you for her father’s schemes. Hard to fight that.”
“Impossible, given her loyalty to her family. Six years and she has not wavered in her conviction that I was duplicitous. I would have beaten down her door and kidnapped her if I had thought it would do me any good. Too late for that now, of course.”
The innkeeper was hailed by a customer, but he leaned closer as he stood. “Then if you still love her, you had best prove yourself a better man than her father.”
“There is no point. She is to marry another man soon, and he is titled.”
“Then you have no time to waste. If she is still angry, she must still care.” The man was hailed again. “Excuse me.”
Felix considered that piece of advice carefully. There were many reasons to keep his distance from Sally Ford. His career for one, her family for another. He would not like to have a second bloody nose courtesy of Lord Rothwell or whatever tortures her brothers could concoct.
Jennings leaned close. “You are still sittin
g here?”
“She is not the woman I fell in love with.” He took another sip of his ale, pondering all the ways Sally had changed over the years they had been apart. The way she dressed, modest and prim, the way she seemed conscious of every move she made around others—he missed her curses. He missed the wilder Sally of her youth. Her fallen hair and the way she would secretly come to him for a kiss and more.
“And you are not the man who landed in her father’s sticky web of political schemes without a clue how to fix things. Kiss and make up. Ask her to wait. What have you got to lose?”
“Everything I have worked so hard to obtain,” he said. “My ship, my command.”
“Believe me you can live without those. Not happily perhaps, but it is not a death sentence not being a captain.” Jennings lowered his voice. “Can you bear to watch her marry someone else, knowing the fellow is rutting with her, and never once try to win her back?”
He gritted his teeth at Jennings’s coarse description of Sally and Ellicott sharing a bed. He could not imagine Sally happily married to Lord Ellicott, and he did not want to think of her in the earl’s bed, which she probably already was, and that made him ill inside. Ellicott was a smug prick and a fortune hunter. Whenever Felix saw Ellicott near Sally, he wanted to drive his fist into the man’s pretty face and never stop.
“It is too late.”
Jennings swallowed another mouthful of ale. “It is only too late to change a mistake when one of you is dead. Until that time, there is always a choice.”
Felix gritted his teeth. No regrets, no doubts. He had feared and hoped for entanglement with Sally’s life for so long, and now he was neck deep in lust and longing once more. How the hell was he supposed to walk away this time?
~ * ~