Page 26 of The Lady Sparks a Flame (The Damsels of Discovery #2)

26

All this is a dream. Still examine it by a few experiments. Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature; and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency.

—Michael Faraday

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”

The blasphemy ejaculated by the dockworker next to him summed up Sam’s thoughts perfectly. Then he was done thinking. He took two steps back and made a running start to jump off the dock.

Or at least, he tried to.

Instead of leaping into the Thames, Sam choked on the dock, his collar in the firm grip of someone behind him.

“Think with your brain, not with that embarrassment between your legs, for Christ’s sake, man.”

Sam twisted in the grip and turned to confront the Earl Grantham. Or Grantham’s chest, for the earl would not let Sam go.

Mother of…how did Grantham manage to show up when one least expected him?

“I need to help Phoebe!” Sam cried.

She could be dead.

She could have hit her head on the side of the steamer when she jumped from the bow of the ship.

She could have broken her limbs upon hitting the water.

She could have drowned from shock at the cold.

“Phoebe can take care of herself,” Grantham admonished.

“She shouldn’t have to!” Sam wrenched free of the earl’s grip and pushed him in the chest with the flat of his hand. “For once in her life, Phoebe has someone who will take care of her .”

He turned away from Grantham and ran to the edge of the dock, examining the water below them for a sign of Phoebe.

“Me, by the way,” he called looking back over his shoulder. “I’m going to take care of—whooa!”

Feck, but the Thames was disgusting.

That was the second thought that roiled through Sam’s head after falling off the dock. The first was Grantham would tease him mercilessly for this. Thank goodness Grey had taught him to swim last year at his country estate. The viscount had spouted some nonsense or other about Sam being prone to accidents near water.

Ha.

He tried to keep his mouth shut when his head broke the surface of the river, but the greasy brown water got in through his nose and ears. Faugh.

“You are a walking disaster, Fenley,” Grantham cried from above. “I should let you drown!”

Sam ignored the earl, twisting in the freezing water, trying to find the spot where Phoebe had jumped, but there was nothing but ships and his own head bobbing in the water. Panic sank its talons into his spine.

He couldn’t lose her.

Not now.

Their love would be huge and unwieldy and require he strip himself as bare as she had when she admitted to her scars. Sam wanted that love more than anything.

Anything.

“Phoebe!” he screamed, fighting to be heard above the sounds of the docks and cries of the sailors aboard the steamship that a passenger had fallen overboard. “Phoebe!”

Nothing.

Grantham shouted that he was getting help, but Sam knew what he had to do. Taking a deep breath, he dove back under, straining his eyes to see in the brown-green murk of the river. The pillars of the dock behind him were coated with green slime and barnacles. The black hull of the steamship was sparkling in comparison. Nothing thrashed in the water. All was silent.

Lungs betraying him, Sam kicked and swam upward, losing a shoe in the process. When he emerged, shaking the water from his eyes, sound slapped at his ears.

“Phoebe,” he gasped, wiping his eyes and spitting a nasty taste out of his mouth along with his summons. “Phoebe?”

“You look ridiculous.”

If she had told him he was the most beautiful man on earth, he couldn’t have been happier. Holding the pilings on the opposite side of the dock, wet, dirty, and with a clump of seaweed pasted to the left side of her head, Phoebe Hunt had never looked so beautiful as she did right then.

“I love you,” he said while the waves slapped arcs of dirty brown foam around like fireworks. “I love you,” he said again. In case something happened. In case he forgot how to swim or the numbness in his fingers caused him to let go his grip.

“You shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near water,” Phoebe informed him, her teeth chattering so the scold sounded more pathetic than Sam supposed she’d planned.

“I love you,” he told her. The cold was slowing his brain, but if he told Phoebe enough times he loved her, she would finally believe.

Sam pushed himself away from the piling he held and swam over to where Phoebe was losing her grip on the slick, algae-covered wooden posts.

“I love you,” he reminded her as he set his arms around her and held her body close to his. “I swear, if you stay and marry me, you will wake every day knowing this is true. I will never stop trying to make you happy. Please don’t drown or freeze to death before I can convince you of this properly.”

···

The rancid odor of dead fish and refuse saturated the air. Not the most romantic setting for a declaration of love. Then again, nothing about her and Sam had ever been conventional.

Luckily, Phoebe had left her heavy winter paletot in her cabin. Even so, her waterlogged woolen petticoats and stout leather boots weighed her down like stones in her pockets.

Would they die?

Dear God, she hoped not. How uninspiring a demise—drowned in the Thames. Bodies in the Thames were as common as those ducks floating by.

“Just hold on and don’t let me go,” Sam said. He’d swum to the rotted pole she’d been holding and wrapped one strong arm around her, lending her his warmth. Phoebe curled her fingers into her palms and put her arms around his neck, while currents tugged at her pantalettes and rough waves slapped the back of her head.

Just hold on.

The darkness in Phoebe, the part birthed in that lonely manor in the north, had made its presence known just as she stepped off the side of the ship; a ghost whispering poison into her ear as her toes grew numb and she struggled to shore. With that one step Phoebe had committed to staying with Sam, but what would happen when he finally saw how stupid, how horrible, how deformed, and defaced, and how unworthy she was of love?

I love you.

“Why, Sam?” she asked, her words slurring as her lips numbed from the cold. “I’ve made so many mistakes. Hurt so many people.”

Sam knew what Phoebe was asking, even though she couldn’t say the word. “I cannot think of a single reason not to love you,” Sam replied, putting his mouth to her temple.

All the years she’d been on earth, she’d been told she took up too much space for a woman; her words weren’t important, or someone would have heard her screaming all these years. Damaged and sharp, she ripped jagged pieces through the world, tipping out of balance between anger and exhilaration.

“I can think of a few.” Her stuttered reply was cut into pieces by her chattering teeth.

Pushing its way to the surface was the reason she carried with her always; a stillborn hope she swaddled and held carefully to her breast in case it someday came alive.

Phoebe was broken; for if her father could not love her, why would any man?

She had never inspired the tiniest vestige of love in her papa. Her entire childhood, Phoebe believed the fault to be one-sided. Hers. That whatever woman she was becoming, could become, aspired to—it wasn’t enough and never would be enough for anyone to love.

“Why did you jump off that ship, Phoebe?” Sam asked, his gaze holding her tight, seemingly oblivious to the chaos and consternation they’d caused on the docks above them. “Why would you do something as”—he paused—“something so…”

“Romantic?” Phoebe finished his sentence.

I love you.

“You are a terrible kidnapper,” she told him. “You turn your nose up at the law of gravity and brawl with staircases. You refuse to take life seriously and make me laugh at the most inappropriate of times.”

If she hadn’t been holding on to him, the power of Sam’s smile might have sent her reeling back among the waves. Dear God, that smile.

“When you put it like that, you might as well climb back up into your steamer,” he said gently.

“No, Sam,” Phoebe said. “No, you promised to wake with me every day, and I jumped off that ship because I know you keep your promises. No matter how dark the world might look, I believe you when you say those words.”

I love you.

This love with Samuel Fenley was loud. It made no sense, broke the rules, and burned bright as a star in the western sky. Senseless or not, Phoebe held tightly to the miracle that had tripped and fallen into her life. That ghost whispering its poison was no match for a man like Sam Fenley. His love was a current that fed the starving parts of her. Like electricity, love was powerful without need of gender or liturgy—all were equal while in its grasp.

“We are almost saved, Phoebe-girl,” Sam said, his blue eyes glinting like jewels set against the brown of the water and gray of the sky.

A splashing of oars from half a dozen boats of all sizes drowned out her reply. In the smallest boat, Grantham stood at the bow, unevenly counterbalanced by the slender oarsman behind him scrambling in the prow sitting high off the water’s surface.

Grantham bellowed, gulls screeched, stevedores shouted, and the steamship blew its ghastly loud horn.

So it was that Phoebe waited until they were pulled aboard a partly rotting skiff by two burly fishermen before she spoke. Kneeling on the watery deck, she put a hand to Sam’s cheek so that he could look nowhere but at her.

“I jumped off that ship because I love you, Sam Fenley,” Phoebe said. “I want to wake beside you every morning and hear you say those words for the rest of our lives. I am never going to be easy…”

Sam threw his head back and laughed, then pulled her into his arms and onto his lap.

How undignified.

How wonderful.

“…and you are never going to stay upright, but together”—Phoebe sighed and pressed her forehead against his—“together we are electric.”

As the words flew from her tongue like sparks, the air around them lit with a sun only they could feel.