break at—’
‘Half past nine,’ he finished.
She lifted her eyebrows in unspoken question.
‘I used to work on the docks.’
‘And now?’
‘And now, I do not. Cards and chest,’ he said.
She laughed and the relaxed fascination he felt for her grew stronger.
‘Five o’clock start. Your father will be done by four.’
‘If only.’ She frowned again at the mention of her father. Twice in five minutes; Ned had never seen her look worried, even on the night when she had thought herself alone facing the two sailors in the alleyway. ‘He is on a double shift in the warehouse.’
‘Good money, but tiring.’
‘Very tiring.’ She glanced down the hill at the dockyard with sombre eyes. ‘It is hard work for a man of his age who is not used to manual labour.’
‘What did he do before manual labour?’
She gave no obvious sign or reaction, only stood still as a statue, but her stillness betrayed that she had not meant to let the fact slip.
Her gaze remained on the dockyard. ‘Not manual labour,’ she said in a parody of his answer to her earlier question. She glanced round at him then, still and calm, but in her eyes were both defence and challenge. Her smile was sudden and warm, deflecting almost. ‘I worry over my father, that is all. The work is hard and he is not a young man.’
‘I still know a few folk in the dockyard. I could have a word. See if there are any easier jobs going.’
The silence was like the quiet rustle of silk in the air.
‘You would do that?’
‘There might be nothing, but I’ll ask.’ But there would be something. He would make sure of it. ‘If you wish.’
He could see what she was thinking.
‘No strings attached,’ he clarified.
Emma’s eyes studied his. Looking at him, really looking at him, like no woman had ever looked before. As if she could see through his skin to his heart, to his very soul, to everything that he was. ‘I wish it very much,’ she said.
He gave a nod.
There was a pause before she said, ‘My father is an educated man. He can read and write and is proficient with arithmetic and mathematics, indeed, anything to do with numbers.’
‘A man with book learning.’
She nodded. ‘Although I’m not sure if that would be of any use in a dockyard.’
‘You would be surprised.’
They stood in silence, both watching the dockworkers unloading the ship, yet her attention was as much on him as his was on her.
‘Whatever you do for a living, Ned, whatever illicit activity you might be involved in...if you can help my father...’
‘You think I’m a rogue...’ He raised his brow. ‘Do I look a rogue?’
Her gaze dropped pointedly to the front of his shirt before coming back up to his face. It lingered on his scarred eyebrow before finally moving to his eyes.
‘Yes,’ she said simply.
‘My Mayfair shirt.’
‘And the eyebrow,’ she added.
‘What’s wrong with the eyebrow?’
‘It does give you a certain roguish appearance.’
He smiled at that.
And she did, too.
‘And if I am a rogue?’
She glanced away, gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders. ‘It would not affect how I judge you.’
‘How do you judge me, Emma?’
She slid a sideways glance at him. ‘Cards and chest, Ned.’
He laughed.
‘I should go and leave you to your contemplation.’
They looked at one another, the smile still in her sunlit eyes.
‘Join me,’ he said, yielding for once in his life to impulse. His eyes dared hers to accept.
He saw her gaze move to his scarred eyebrow again, almost caressingly.
He crooked it in a deliberate wicked gesture.
She smiled. ‘Very well, but for a few moments only.’ She smoothed her skirt to take a seat on the bench.
He sat down by her side.
A bee droned. From the branches overhead a blackbird sang.
Emma’s eyes moved from the dockyards to the derelict factory, then over the worn and pitted surface of the road mosaicked with flattened manure, and all the way along to the midden heap at its far end.
‘Why here?’ she asked.
‘I grew up here. It reminds me of my childhood.’
‘A tough neighbourhood.’
‘Not for the faint of heart,’ he said. ‘Children are not children for long round here.’
‘Indeed, they are not.’
There was a small silence while they both mused on that. And then let it go, eased by the peace of the morning and the place.
‘It is a beautiful view,’ she said.
Ned glanced round at her, wondering whether she was being ironic. ‘Men in gainful employment are always a beautiful sight,’ he said gravely.
‘I was not thinking in those terms.’ She smiled. ‘It reminds me of a Canaletto painting.’ Her eyes moved to the old manufactory. ‘It has the same ruined glory as some of his buildings. The same shade of stone.’
‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen a Canaletto painting.’
‘I think you would like them.’
‘I think maybe I would.’
Her gaze still lingered on the derelict building as she spoke. ‘A ruined glory. There are pigeons nesting in what is left of the roof. Rats with wings, my father used to call them,’ she said.
‘Plenty good eating in a rat.’
She laughed as if he were joking. He did not. He thought of all the times in his life when rat meat had meant the difference between starvation and survival.
‘One day it will be something else,’ he said. ‘Not a ruined glory, but rebuilt.’
‘But then there will be no more violets growing from the walls.’
‘Weeds.’
‘Not weeds, but the sweetest of all flowers. They used to grow in an old garden wall I knew very well.’ The expression on her face was as if she were remembering and the memory both pained and pleased her.
Emma looked round at Ned then and there was something in her eyes, as if he were glimpsing through the layers she presented to the world to see the woman beneath.
‘I will remember that, Emma de Lisle,’ he said, studying her and everything that she was. A man might live a lifetime and never meet a woman like Emma de Lisle, the thought whispered again in his ear.
Their eyes held, sharing a raw exposed honesty.
Everything seemed to still and fade around them.
He lowered his face to hers and kissed her in the bright glory of the sunshine.
She tasted of all that was sweet and good.