“That’s horrible.” Elizabeth shook her head. The faint scent of apple blossoms drifted to his nose. “I’d like to think they could have worked everything out with their human husbands. Perhaps moving close to the sea, or at least a large body of water that might make the longing a bit… less.”
“Would you upend your life, do whatever you could, to make someone… different feel less so?” he asked in a quiet voice.
“Of course I would. What a silly question.” Elizabeth glanced at him with speculation. “As I said previously, love doesn’t see differences, and if it does, it seeks to understand them. It fills the divides, the holes, and brings people closer, lets a couple find strength in those things that were meant to divide them.”
“That’s a rather nice way to look at it.” She made him see things so differently than was his wont that it stole his breath, caught him up in a vortex of confusion.
“I think so.” The smile she gave him dazzled him and worked to further scatter his ability to think straight. She caressed the side of his face, drew a fingertip along the edge of his eye patch, and he trembled from both need an acute anxiety. “Brand?”
“Yes?” He took shallow breaths, for he suspected what she’d ask.
“May I see the space where your eye used to be?” There was no guile or pity in her expression, only concern and perhaps a trace of curiosity.
“I’d rather you not.” He eased into a sitting position as his pulse rushed hard through his veins. “The surgeon sewed the socket closed in a rush. The wound has since healed but is a bit sunken. To say nothing of the scars left behind by the slash of that dagger. It’s not something a woman should behold.” The fact she’d even asked left him reeling and feeling a bit out to sea. No one of his acquaintance—male or female—had ever done so.
“It’s an integral part of you. There is no shame in that.” Her pout almost had him on his knees before her, begging her for anything—everything. “Please let me see.”
How did he think he could deny her? “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Would this be the moment he lost her? At least if that were so, he wouldn’t need to tell her about the wager… Bah! This is why having anything to do with a woman beyond the physical is a bad idea. With a shaking hand, he slowly removed the eye patch. Though he steeled himself for her reaction, the truth of the matter didn’t disappoint. As she stared in horror, her attention riveted to his empty eye socket, his stomach bottomed out. The urge to cast up his accounts grew strong. He fought through it even as cold disillusionment washed over him. “You’re disgusted.” It wasn’t a question.
Of course, she’d be like all the rest.
The tendons of her throat worked with a hard swallow. “It’s shocking, yes.” To her credit, she didn’t look away or give him empty platitudes. “But given time, I will seldom notice.”
Liar!“I don’t need this.” Brand scrambled to his feet as his lungs labored to draw breath. “I thought you’d be different.” How stupid he’d been to extend trust to another woman. “You’re exactly like her.” What had he thought? Women didn’t want a broken or disfigured man. He stormed away from her, his boots kicking up sand as he retreated. “This is why I never wanted a relationship, never wanted to—”
“Brand, stop!” Elizabeth soon caught him up. Her hand on his arm nearly snapped him in two. “Anyone would be shocked at first. Even you must admit that.”
In a small corner of his mind, he knew she was right. When he’d first beheld himself in mirrors after he’d been patched up, the image staring back was shocking. Gruesome, even. “I…”
Though his body was taut and tight from the emotions coursing through him, she turned him about to face her. Concern lined her face. Compassion clouded her eyes. Her chin quivered from the effort of holding back emotion. The last of the sun’s dying rays backlit her and gave the brief appearance of an angel. “None of that means you disgust me.”
“I know what I saw in your eyes.” He wouldn’t give quarter, not when he was so vulnerable in his insecurity.
“No, you saw what you wanted to see, what you expected to see.” Her focus never left his face. Not once did she shy away from including the empty socket in her regard. “I’m sorry the last woman in your life behaved with something less than courage and kindness, but love doesn’t do that.”
He couldn’t let down his guard, for what if she didn’t want anything else to do with him even after those words? “I loved her,” he admitted in a tight voice. Walk away, you fool, before she can hurt you.
“I believe you.” Elizabeth squeezed his arm, and he almost died a thousand deaths to know she still stood before him without duplicity. His chest ached. While he… he had done nothing except deceive her, was doing it even now, all to win a wager. “However, she didn’t love you back. For if she had, your looks or handicap wouldn’t have mattered. She would have loved you for you.”
Oh, God.How was it that this woman, innocent in almost every way of the world, had the power to see him undone? But he strained to hear the words of approval, of acceptance, from her. Needed them. “It took me a long time to realize that.”
“Yet you continue to push people away because of her, so you can leave first and keep your heart intact.” When she lifted her hand to caress the side of his face, he flinched. She soothed him with gentle strokes of her fingers and a soft tsk of her tongue. “This is you, Brand. Don’t let it embarrass you, and never think yourself less.” When he didn’t answer, she continued. “The wound is your history, a mark in time that means you survived the war for a purpose.”
“But I…”
Tears pooled in her eyes. As she drew her touch along the scars from the dagger as well as the surgery, he gasped. It was both heaven and hell. No one had ever dared before. “I’m glad you’re here today to bear witness to that time, but never, not for one second think I don’t value you because of this injury.” A hard note had crept into her voice. Her eyes snapped blue lightning. “I am not that woman from your past, so it is roundly unfair of you to paint us with the same brush.”
Finally, he found his voice, for she’d given him that tiny glimmer of strength. “Oh, that is readily apparent.” Quickly, he replaced the eyepatch, watching her all the while. Some of the pressure within his chest lightened. “Thank you.”
“I only speak the truth.” She searched his face, for God only knew what, but he suddenly hoped she found it.
I want to be worthy of her.Yet, he never would be as long as he courted her only to make her fall in love with him for a damned ship.
“Why have you not considered a glass eye?”
His spirits immediately plummeted. At least if he were angry with her, that deflected the loathing from himself. “Is that the only way you can stomach being in my presence?”
“Of course not.” She frowned. “I’m merely curious.”