‘You want to know what I felt?’
My head eyes snapped up from the book to stare at Mr Ambrose. It took me a moment to connect his words to our earlier conversation. He had picked it up as if no time had passed in between.
‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘Do you?’
I was just about to make some teasing reply about him not having any words for feelings - but I caught sight of his face in time and stopped myself. Right now was not the time for flippancy. Instead, I just nodded.
‘Yes.’
He looked away from me, shaking his head. ‘I’m not talking about just now. I’m talking about back on the ship, when the storm hit.’
For a moment, I forgot to breathe. I remembered all too well what he had said and done - well, almost done - back on the ship. And Mr Ambrose was just like an iceberg: cold, hard, and only a tenth of him visible. The rest he kept well hidden. To imagine what feelings must have been raging inside him to make him act like that…
‘I still want to know, Sir - if you want to tell me.’
He raised his eyes to mine again, his gaze iron-hard. ‘I felt… desperate. I’ve faced death many times before, Miss Linton. But never once have I felt desperate before. Not once in my entire life.’
Desperate? That didn’t make any sense. He hadn’t seemed desperate to save himself at all, back on the ship. Quite the contrary. His only thought was getting me off that sinking death trap…
My thoughts tapered off into nothing, and my lips opened slightly.
Oh.
Maybe it wasn’t himself he was desperate for.
The thought came out of nowhere, sweet, singing seductively to me, like a siren. It was too good to be true. But… what if it was?
‘Why did you it?’ I asked quietly. ‘You’re one of the richest men in the world, and strong. You could have tried to buy yourself a place in the lifeboat, or fought for one. Why did you make me go, and stay behind yourself?’
His left little finger twitched, the equivalent of an angry growl for Mr Rikkard Ambrose. ‘I did a cost-benefit analysis.’
‘A what?’
‘A cost-benefit analysis. I weighed the cost of risking my life against the benefit of saving yours. To my not inconsiderable incredulity, the benefit outweighed the cost.’
Now it was really hard to keep the smirk off my face. ‘Unbelievable.’
‘I know! You are only a relatively insignificant young female with a bad temper, unpleasant relatives and an income so low you have to pose as a male to earn a living!’
‘You really know how to give a girl compliments.’
‘I, on the other hand, am one of the most influential and powerful public figures in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in the Empire, maybe in the entire world! I am clearly a much more important personage than you, ergo my life should be the more valuable thing to save.’ His little finger twitched again. ‘But… I found that that other factors entered into the equation.’
Leaning towards him, I put my right hand over one of his. ‘We’ll have to talk about those other factors, sooner or later.’
Underneath my hand, I felt his little finger twitch twice more. Dear me! He was practically an emotional wreck tonight!
Meeting my eyes again, he nodded, curtly. ‘I know.’ He held my gaze for a moment, and in his look lay a thousand unspoken words.
Or maybe there’s not a single word in it, and you just have a much too overactive imagination.
All right, maybe.
‘How long do we still have to wait?’
For a wild moment, I thought he meant until we could have our talk. Then I realized he wanted to know how long it would be until the coach left for Dover. Of course!
‘Doesn’t your pocket watch work anymore? Or did you lose it when the ship went down?’