She glanced up at him, realized he was looking at her, and felt herself flush and turn her gaze to the road.
“He must not think much of you marrying Mr. Pale.”
Amelia grimaced. “I’m bad with names, but I’m not that bad. His name is Mr. Flappert. Mr. Alden Flappert.”
“Ah. This is serious. You know his name.” He was smiling at her—teasing her, she suspected—and she found her own smile creeping out in return.
“My first husband was an Alden. Alden Smith. When I found out this one was also named Alden, it seemed extremely convenient. I wouldn’t have to learn a second name!”
“A match made in heaven. But consider this extremely important countervailing point—my name is also Alden.”
Her eyes widened, and she turned to him. “It is?”
“I’m joking.” His smile practically split his face. “It’s funny because you actually believed me. You really don’t know my name.”
“Of course I know your name. You’re Captain…” Pigeon. Shoot. Prey. “Hunter,” she guessed.
“Look at that,” he said, as if he were actually impressed. Which he assuredly wasn’t. And even if he were, the feat was less impressive than it appeared, as she’d been half guessing. “What’s my Christian name then?”
“G—Gabriel?”
“Close. It’s Grayson.”
She felt herself grimace.
“Soooo.” His conversation had an idle quality to it, as if he were simply trying to be friendly. She doubted he had ever done anything idle in his life. “Your brother, who knows you well, who has encouraged you to think of yourself as clever and quick, doesn’t want you to marry Mr. Flappert.”
Hold on to your heart. Without Leland, Amelia would have given no credence to those falsely remembered words. She’d held on to her heart for so long, and to what purpose?
It had caused so much trouble.
“But what he wants is immaterial,” the captain went on. “What do you want?”
“You make it sound so easy. The wanting, I mean.”
“On the contrary. Wanting well is extraordinarily difficult.”
She was aware that he was easy to talk to. Leland had told her that he was utterly ruthless. That he got what he wanted.
He didn’t seem ruthless. He was being so, so nice.
“You are a ship’s captain,” she said to him. “When you’re out in the middle of the ocean, do you ever worry about what lies beneath you?”
He took this wild change of subject with aplomb. “I lay submarine telegraphic cable. I worry about the ocean floor all the time.”
“I’m speaking less geographically and more animalistically.”
He wrinkled his nose. “You mean plankton and such?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of a megalodon.”
He stopped and turned to her. “A megalodon.”
“Yes,” she couldn’t stop herself from saying. “The massive sharks from the Jurassic period. The teeth that have been found can be as much as six inches in length, and they believe—”
She managed to bite back her words before her megalodonic enthusiasm overwhelmed the conversation. She could imagine her mother’s reproach. Nobody wants to know more megalodon facts, Amelia.
But he was watching her with a bemused expression on his face. “Anyone who has been out to sea knows there are things in the world that can’t easily be explained,” he said slowly. “When we were laying the telegraphic line from Singapore to Hong Kong, somewhere in the middle of the South China Sea, something sheared the cable through.”
She couldn’t help herself. She gasped.
His eyes were twinkling as he faced her. “Whatever it was, it sliced the line as if were cheese instead of copper.”
“What did you do?”
He shrugged. “Dredged the ocean floor until we found the fallen end of the cable.” He met her eyes with a smile. “Hoped the megalodon beneath the waves took pity on us and didn’t make matters worse for our vessel.”
Amelia narrowed her eyes. “You’re teasing.”
“I am. A little. We were talking about your wants and somehow we ended up over here, discussing species of gargantuan extinct sharks. I trust you’ll make the connection?”
She shook her head. “If there are megalodons beneath the waves, there’s no point thinking about what’s waiting in the deeps. They’re too big, and they’re full of massive, sharp teeth.”
“As much as six inches long, you said.” He was still smiling at her.
“You see my problem. There’s nothing to be done with a creature of that size. All you can do is stay on the surface and hope for the best.”
He let out a long sigh. “Very well, Mrs. Smith. Tell me about your surface worries.”
“Aren’t those obvious? I don’t fit in much of anywhere. I’m not anyone’s first choice for anything. I’m not their second choice. I’m perhaps the seventh, if they get around to choosing me at all.”
The way he was looking at her changed.
She waved an annoyed hand at him. “For God’s sake. Don’t pity me. It is what it is. I’ve accepted it. But you see what I mean. There’s enough for me to contend with in these shallow waters. I can’t go hunting megalodons. Your entire proposition is preposterous.”
Amelia’s home was just around the bend now. He didn’t answer, not as they grew closer. Not as the glinting glass of her household windows greeted her.
“Well,” he said casually, turning to her. “Then that’s a no from you?”
She nodded.
“What a pity.”
Leland had said he was ruthless. Was he giving up so easily? Amelia felt strangely bereft.
“For curiosity’s sake,” he said as they came to a stop a few yards from the front door, “how large are megalodons?”
She’d been expecting a different question. A harder question. She felt herself brightening at this instead. “As much as fifty feet long,” she informed him. “They’ve found megalodon vertebrae the size of dinner plates before. Jaws so large that I could walk through them.”
His lips pressed together in ill-concealed amusement.
“You’re laughing at me.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he reached into a pocket and took out a card. “I’ll be here two more days. In case you forget my name again and need to come looking. It’s Captain Grayson Hunter. Don’t ask what my ship is; that’s complicated.” He smiled. “I’m here on the Lenity. Come find me.”
She blinked at him. “I thought you’d given up on employing me.”
“Not in the slightest. I was just establishing basic facts.”
“Basic facts? Basic facts about megalodons?”
“About you.” He reached out and took her hand. Amelia’s breath caught. He was standing close and he was very tall and very handsome. The rays of the early afternoon sun reflected off the rich brown of his skin in golds and oranges.
The want that threatened to envelop her was no megalodon, just a hint of wistfulness. If he had been Mr. Flappert after all…
They could have talked of telegraphs and he might have only laughed at her a little instead of bidding her to be quiet, please, for God’s sake.