CHAPTER 7“—Wickedly and damnably steep,” Jonas Smith said deliberately.
He looked from one of them to the other. He couldn’t tell which was the more staggered—the young midshipman totally unprepared for the blow, or his sister, in spite of everything not prepared for the crushing completeness of it. How she could have allowed herself to cling to any hope or deluded herself into believing there could be any, after the incident of the beach bag and what had gone on for the last hour and a half in her grandfather’s living room, Jonas had no idea. That she had done it was poignantly clear as she reached out unsteadily for the mahogany bedpost to steady herself, in her parted lips and the look of shocked dismay she fixed on him.
The midshipman caught himself quickly after one speechless insta
