She raised a shaking hand to touch him, then thought better of it. Tension hummed around him like a thousand angry bees.
“Should I go?” she asked unsteadily, fighting her impulse to fling her arms around him and draw his head against her breast, to comfort him the way she comforted Kerenza.
But Kerenza, for all her quirks and intelligence, was a child. Robert was an adult man. A hug, however loving, wouldn’t solve his problems.
He blinked as if struggling to make sense of her question.
“I should go,” she said in a thick voice. She turned away, although leaving him in the dark, alone and distressed, went against every instinct.
He shifted infinitesimally. If she hadn’t been so attuned to his slightest reaction, she wouldn’t have noticed.
Still, it was clear that he wanted his own company, and she was an intruder into thoughts too bleak for sharing. She stepped back so the candle no longer shone such a cruel light on his stark expression.
“No,” he said, almost inaudibly.
Chapter Fifteen
* * *
Morwenna paused and regarded Robert intently through the gloom. “No?”
That muscle in his cheek was back to its erratic flickering. His face was drawn and austere, with the skin stretched tight over the bones. He certainly didn’t look like he wanted her to stay.
She sucked in a breath that tasted of defeat. “I’ll see you downstairs.”
“No.” More loudly this time. He reached out to catch the filmy material of her skirt. “Wait.”
She cast him a troubled glance, but didn’t retreat. When he realized she wasn’t going to move away, he dropped his hand.
She set the candle on another chest and dragged up a trunk to sit on, disturbing a cloud of dust. She didn’t touch him, but remained within touching distance if he decided he needed physical contact. “Are you ill?”
His lips twisted downward. “Only in my mind.”
She shook her head. “You’re not mad.”
He gave a snort of self-derision. “It might be easier if I was.”
“Don’t say that.” After what he’d been through, some men would have lost their senses. But whatever else ailed him, his wits remained as dauntingly sharp as they’d ever been.
A thorny silence descended between them.
“What can I do?” she asked eventually.
With a shaking hand, he grabbed her wrist, the way he’d grabbed it that first night. He wasn’t gentle, but she didn’t mind. She could see he teetered on the edge of disintegration.
“Just...just stay with me.”
“Of course.”
For a further interval, they sat unspeaking. Slowly his awful tension receded. At last, she took a chance on him being ready to talk.
“Why the attics?”
When he didn’t answer immediately, she wondered if she’d made a mistake. Then he started to speak slowly, as if unsure whether he’d muster the words. “I was asking Kerenza about her favorite toy. She wanted to know what had been mine.”
Ah. “The ship.”
In the shadows, she heard rather than saw him put the toy down on the bare wooden floorboards. “Yes.”