Page 159 of Dark Tides
“I can swim,” she said calmly.
“You could have been arrested. We nearly left you. Thepedottishould not have let us launch the dinghy that close to the quarantineisland. He would not have allowed us to wait for more than a moment longer.”
“But you persuaded him?”
“I had to tell a mouthful of lies.”
She smiled up at him. “That must have been torture for an honest man such as you.”
“This is not amusing to me,” he said furiously. “I thought you would die in the water. I felt—” He broke off.
“What did you feel?” she asked.
“Terrified,” he said, as if the truth were forced out of him. “I thought you were—”
She waited.
“I thought you were lost. I thought I had lost you.”
Still wrapped in his cloak she turned towards him and put her hands on either side of his face. “Forgive me,” she said earnestly. “I had to lie to you, I knew you would never have let me go; but I will promise to never lie to you again.”
He put his hands on her slim waist; but he did not draw her close. “You will be true to me?”
“I will,” she said solemnly.
“You know that I cannot make a promise to be true to you? I am what you called me—a counterfeiter, a forger, a fraud, a grave robber, a thief, and a liar.”
She nodded very gravely. “I know. But you could change?”
He shook his head. “Cara—I cannot promise to reform, I have lived a life—my whole life is dishonest. My business is forgery.”
The look she gave him would have converted any sinner. “But you could change? You could repent?”
He bowed his head. “I am not worthy of you. Even if I were free.”
“I see I would have to save you,” she said, with a hopeful little smile.
He swallowed down his reply, and he released her and she turned away so that they stood shoulder to shoulder again, watching the sea.
“Our worlds are oceans apart,” he remarked. “And soon there will be a sea between us again. Will you go back to being a milliner?”
“Already Venice feels like a dream,” she said. “I feel as if I willwake up to London and the shop and the hats, and the girls will ask me where I have been and what I have done, and I’ll never be able to tell them.”
“What would you tell them about me?”
She shook her head. “I’ll never speak of you.”
For a moment they were silent, looking at the waves.
“Will you sell your feathers at a great profit?” he asked.
“I’ll sell some, but I’ll keep some back. I’ll make my own hats and headdresses and sell them on my own account.”
“I shall think of you in your milliner’s shop, when I am home again,” he said. “I shall think of you every day.”
She looked up at him and for a moment he thought he could not resist pulling her towards him and kissing the sadness from her mouth.
“Don’t do that. Because I shan’t think of you at all,” Sarah said determinedly. “Not at all.”
