Silent Surrender by Abigail Barnette Page B

for a man like me to learn to talk to her as you do.”
    “To sign?” In America, Jude had met many a man gone deaf from cannon fire or work at a loud job. The ability to sign seemed to vary from person to person. “I suppose it depends on a person’s aptitude with language. It’s certainly possible.”
    “Ah.” Esau sipped from his cup, eyes straight ahead.
    “Are you asking for yourself?” Jude knew full well that he was. “Because you couldn’t learn in a matter of days. It wouldn’t be a…productive use of your time here.”
    “No, of course not.” He pushed his chair back and dropped his napkin beside his cup. “No breakfast for me this morning. I’ve got a man I need to see. I want to be back before she wakes up.”
    Jude’s gaze flicked to the clock on the mantle. It was nearly eight. Esau looked down pointedly with a false apology on his face before he stepped out the doors. Of course he would have loved her again after Jude had gone to bed alone. Whom had she been thinking of, lying beneath the brute?
    Did it matter whom she’d thought of? He knew already whom she had gone to. She hadn’t followed him, hadn’t come into his room and climbed into his bed.
    Because he had rejected her, because he was afraid of what might happen if he let himself love her.
    He’d finished his tea by the time she came through the door. She was dressed plainly in a black dress, and it struck him that he missed seeing her in the bright colors she so loved. Her posture held a hint of mourning he had not seen for a while.
    She looked up and quickly signed, “Good morning.”
    He replied in kind. “Esau left. Gone a few hours. He want return before you wake.”
    “He left, I wake.” She went to the sideboard and took some cold ham and two peeled boiled eggs. “How feel your head?”
    “Bad.” He waited until she had swallowed her first bite to say more. “I sorry. Last night, I drunk. I upset you.”
    She shook her head. “You adult. Your choice, not mine.”
    “I kiss you.” He would not let her get by his barricade that easily. He would not let her go to France with every one of their memories tainted by his imprudent behavior. “That wrong.”
    Chewing determinedly, she faced straight ahead.
    He placed his hand over her wrist on the table, and she looked up. He held his breath a moment. Her dark hair was pulled back severely from her face, knotted in a large coil behind her head. A braid wrapped round that, and he tried hard to remember the wild, thick tangle of it in the firelight the night before. She had seemed like his Honoria then, a woman who could belong to him, not a serious pupil with whom he had only a passing acquaintance. They had known each other too long and too well. “I want you. Not when I drunk. Not when first you with Esau. I want you.”
    She touched her napkin to her lips, and he saw her pulse speeding in the bare temple.
    “Honoria, please look at me,” he said aloud, and her body went entirely still.
    Her eyes lifted to his, hers rimmed with water. “My father want France for me.”
    “You choose,” he signed, hoping his frustration did not show in his expression. “I wait. You tell me your answer, I will accept.”
    She nodded, and they finished their breakfasts in silence.
    * * * * *
    Esau had not given thought to what his mates at the dock might say about his fine new clothes, not until he was there and it was far too late.
    “Will you look at this, Charlie!” Old William called from his seat on top of a tall crate. The old man couldn’t work anymore, but he still reported to the docks anyway, hoping to find a copper or two for a drink. “Looks like we have a turncoat in our midst.”
    Charlie Groat, a short, stout little keg of a man, turned from counting a stack of burlap sacks and frowned a moment, until he recognized whom he stared at. “Esau? Good lord, is that Esau Coal?”
    “It is,” Esau said, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. He’d thought it was bad to