Ship of Dreams (13 page)

The blow he'd been trying to avoid had fallen with devastating suddenness. Kent hardly dared to look at Della, but he realized that half the table must have heard the obnoxious woman's words.

A nervous laugh swept through their shipboard friends, and Mary Patterson exclaimed, "Surely, ma'am, you must be mistaken? Della here is Mr. Bradford's wife!"

Della started, and for a moment Kent thought she meant to rush from the table. She quickly overcame whatever her initial impulse had been, however, and raised her chin almost defiantly. Some response from him was absolutely necessary.

He cleared his throat. "I'm not surprised you hadn't heard, Mrs. Benbow, as you've been traveling." Now all eyes were riveted on him with varying degrees of curiosity and condemnation. Della's eyes held an urgent question he tried his best to ignore—for the moment.

"Caroline and I broke off our engagement just before I sailed. I doubt it would have made the papers before you left for California." He only hoped that there was no one within earshot who might be able to contradict his story.

Embarrassed in her turn, Mrs. Benbow sputtered, "Oh, I'm terribly sorry to hear that. That is," she looked confusedly at Della, "I'm happy for you both, of course, but I ... I'd have thought my sister would have written ... So good at keeping me up with the gossip, you see ..."

"Perhaps the Cadburys preferred to keep the news quiet," he suggested. "They did not inform me of their plans in the matter."

Mrs. Benbow seemed to accept this, as did the others at the table. Most of the others, anyway. Della's gaze was far too knowing for his comfort. He'd have to confess the entire truth to her later, when they were alone.

It was not something he looked forward to.

The conversation became general then, if rather stilted. To Kent's relief, Mrs. Benbow left the table immediately after finishing her dessert—and Della's, as she claimed she wasn't hungry. Once she was gone, the irrepressible Mary Patterson leaned across the table.

"Who
was
that woman, Mr. Bradford? How exceedingly rude of her to spread such gossip, embarrassing poor, dear Della!"

He could only shrug. "I'd never met her before in my life, though it seems she once had a passing acquaintance with my mother. I suppose that at this distance, it's not surprising she had her facts a bit muddled."

"But is it true that—" Mary broke off, apparently intercepting a glance from Della. "Well, I suppose it's none of my business anyway," she concluded awkwardly. The look she sent Della was sympathetic, which only added to Kent's irritation, though he could not have said why. Perhaps because it made him feel even more like a heel.

Vainly, he tried to remind himself that Della had brought this whole situation on herself. But that couldn't excuse his glaring omission in not telling her about Caroline at all. No, the blame for this particular incident fell squarely upon him.

Virginia's scheme of charades was revived once the plates were cleared away, but now even the ladies seemed less inclined to play, claiming a collective desire to retire early. Kent couldn't help suspecting that they wished to discuss his possible perfidy in private, with their own husbands—though that was probably absurd. He could not so easily disregard the lingering suspicion in Della's eyes, however.

Nor that in Nelson Sharpe's, when he approached him a few minutes later. "What's this I hear about you jilting a Philadelphia socialite, Bradford?"

Though his tone was jesting, Kent could see he'd have some work to do to allay the man's renewed suspicions. "Stories have a way of becoming blown out of proportion when they travel halfway around the globe, I'm afraid," he said, but did not elaborate. When—if—word got back to Caroline and her mother, they would certainly consider her jilted.
Damn
.

Sharpe nodded. "I assumed it was something like that. But a man can't be too careful of his reputation, eh? Especially when there's already one black sheep in the family."

"Of course." Everything seemed to be irritating Kent tonight. He had to stifle an urge to tell Sharpe to go to hell. Fortunately, the man had other business to attend to, so took himself off, back to the captain's table.

Kent turned, to find Della standing beside him. "I believe I'll turn in, if you don't mind," she said quietly. "I find myself unaccountably tired, for some reason."

Did he imagine it, or were those unshed tears swimming in her eyes? The sight tore at him. "Very well. I'll join you shortly." He tried to communicate with his eyes that he would then explain all, but she had already turned away.

The next half hour was agony, as he tried to maintain small talk with those gentlemen who had not yet joined their wives in their cabins, giving Della time to change for bed. Kent's mind kept straying to his own cabin, imagining what stage of undress she might be in—then sheering away in self-disgust. He had no right to think of her in that way. Especially not now.

Finally, he felt enough time had passed that he could safely make his excuses to the others and head for the cabin himself. He found Della, wrapped tightly in her robe, seated on the edge of her berth, waiting for him.

"I'm glad you're still awake," he said, closing the door softly behind him.

"Are you?" she asked icily. "You surprise me. I assumed you'd be hoping to avoid this explanation, as you've avoided it for the past week and more. I presume it's true that you had, or have, a fiancée back East?" Her eyes bored into his, allowing for no prevarication.

With a sigh, Kent nodded. "I know I should have mentioned her before."

"That might have been nice," she agreed sarcastically.

Recalling his own recent inclinations, which she must have sensed, he couldn't blame her for feeling betrayed. Especially after what she'd said—tried to say—before dinner. Still, he attempted to defend himself in the face of her sudden coldness.

"At first, it seemed irrelevant, as I thought surely I'd—we'd—think of a way out of our charade before reaching New York. And then, well, I forgot."

Her eyes widened in patent disbelief. "You forgot. That you were engaged to be married?"

Kent ran a hand through his hair and attempted to pace in the tiny room. As he could only take two steps in any direction, he quickly gave it up.

"All right. I didn't exactly forget, but discussing it wasn't foremost in my thoughts. I ... had other concerns." He couldn't very well tell her that it was her own attractions that had driven Caroline from his mind. He had no right.

"I see." He wondered if she did. "I take it that your story to Mrs. Benbow, about having broken off the engagement, was one you fabricated on the spot?"

Wretchedly, he nodded.

"It appears, despite your claims to the contrary a week ago, that you are quite as facile a liar as ever I could be." Irony fairly dripped from her words. "Between us, it seems we can dupe everyone on the ship—to include each other."

Kent frowned uncertainly. "What do you mean?"

"I presume you still mean to carry off the fiction that we are married. As I have given my word, I will continue to play along. Though my ethics have previously been brought into question, they do not allow me to break a promise."

As she no doubt intended, Kent writhed inwardly at this reminder that he had been less honest with her than she with him. She continued.

"However, knowing what good liars we both are—" she seemed to delight in using that word, he thought—"we need to be certain we do not take our roles too seriously in private. We wouldn't want the lines between reality and fantasy to blur for
us
, now, would we?"

As she castigated him, he realized with despair that she looked more beautiful than ever—and completely unapproachable, despite being clad only in a wrapper.

"I'm sorry, Della. I—I realize now that I may have implied ... that is, that my behavior—"

"That you led me on? Yes, you did. Perhaps I'll accept your apology at some point—that was an apology, wasn't it?"

He nodded.

"Good." The tiniest glimmer of humor returned to her eyes. "But not tonight. I'm too tired to think about it. Good night, Kenton Bradford, of the New York Bradfords."

With that, she retreated behind the drapes and pulled them firmly shut behind her, leaving him standing in the middle of the cabin feeling like a cad and a heel and a dozen kinds of fool. Sighing again, he bent to remove his boots.

He couldn't have botched things more thoroughly if he'd set out to do so—and she clearly meant to make him grovel. Whether he would oblige her or not, he hadn't yet decided.

Lying on his berth in the dark a few minutes later, he tried to sort out just what had happened, and how he felt about it. In a way, it was a relief to have the truth about Caroline out in the open with Della. These past few days, when he'd felt the pull of attraction, the idea of telling her had seemed increasingly awkward. At least he no longer had to dread it.

Nor was she likely to pursue a relationship with him now, as she had so clearly been hinting she'd like to do. That should relieve him, too.

But somehow, it didn't.

He realized that after just eight short days, he knew Della better than he'd known any other woman in his life, to include his own sisters. He knew her past, her likes and dislikes, her talents, her weaknesses, and her moods. And still he liked her. Perhaps more than liked her ...

Vainly, he tried to call up Caroline before his mind's eye. Only a few days ago he'd told himself she was a classic beauty, but the vague image he was finally able to summon seemed but a pale imitation of Della—lifeless and insipid. His disloyalty gnawed at him. Was he really no better than Charles after all?

It suddenly occurred to him to wonder how much loyalty he now owed to Della. She'd gamely gone along with his plan rather than risk his business standing with the other gentlemen aboard, and for what benefit to herself? None, other than avoiding the threat he himself held over her head. A threat they both knew by now he could never carry out.

He realized that to set her adrift after insisting she come to New York would be a far more villainous act than the mere breaking of an engagement—an engagement that owed everything to expedience and practicality, and nothing to love. For the first time, Kent looked ahead to what such a marriage would be like, and found it unutterably dreary.

Even if Caroline would still have him—which was by no means certain—he wasn't at all sure he could go through with it. He'd had a glimpse, if only in imagination, of what pleasures a union based on real affection could hold. Would he now be willing to settle for less?

With that unsettling question circling in his mind, he finally fell into a fitful sleep.

*
          
*
          
*

Della woke feeling nearly as wretched as she had the night before. The long watches of the night had only allowed her to replay, over and over, her embarrassing admission to Kent the evening before—before she'd discovered his dirty little secret. To think she'd felt guilty about concealing something as minor as her name!
 
Her only source of comfort now was that she'd stopped short of telling him she loved him.
 

And that,
that
was the shattering truth, the thing that had kept her awake for most of the night—the thing she had tried so hard to conceal from herself. Della Gilliland, humble Irish prospector's daughter, had fallen in love with Kenton Bradford of the New York Bradfords.

Amazing and absurd that such a thing could happen, and in such a short time—but their enforced proximity had allowed them to get to know each other better in eight days than many couples might in months of formal courtship. She could only hope that if she was able to fall in love so quickly, that she might be able to fall out of love in a similar amount of time.

Her heart warned her, however, that her hope was vain.

Still, all she could do was try. The other way lay insanity and despair. With this resolution firmly in her mind, she sat up and listened. Slow, even breathing from above told her Kent still slept. Though their routine called for her to stay in bed until he left, she felt far too restive to lie still for what might be another hour or more. A glance through the curtains at the porthole told her it was barely dawn.

As quietly as possible, she slipped out of bed and dressed, keeping her back to the berths in case he should awaken before she was finished. He did not, however, and a few minutes later she was able to leave the cabin and make her way up onto the still largely deserted promenade deck.

This far south, even the early morning air was warm and humid but she breathed deeply anyway, to clear her head. She and Kent had not been in the habit of spending much time together over the past few days. Perhaps the easiest way to get over her ridiculous infatuation with a man she could never have would be to simply avoid him.

She sighed. Easy? She knew it would be anything but. Leaning over the rail, she searched the calm sea for any sign of the dolphins that had yesterday shadowed the ship, but saw none. She did, however, see a school of some sort of brightly colored fish just beneath the surface, heading toward the ship as though to go under it. Trying to keep them in sight, she leaned out further.