“To cause you any trouble.”
Her feeling darkens and he reads it in her face, she can tell by theway he’s looking at her. He says, “It’s why you left London, isn’t it? Because of trouble.”
Now the fear creeps in. Does he know something? But how could he? He’s a smuggler, a captain of a ship that tries to outrun the cutters of the Revenue Service all the way at the tip of England. How could he possibly know about the rumors?
“I told you,” she says. “My husband left a lot of debts. He was a good officer, but I’m afraid he had no talent for business. He was advised badly and lost all of our wealth in a series of investments overseas.” It feels disloyal to George to say even this much. She adds, “He was going to take his lieutenant’s examination as soon as he got home. His captain recommended it.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Jack says. “Is that why you wear his medal?”
Her hand goes up to the ribbon, feeling the silver. “Yes.” Then: “You don’t really believe that, do you? That I’m the child of this creature, the Sea Bucca?”
“I don’t know. You look like you could be the daughter of merfolk.”
“I’ve been told the Sea Bucca has the skin of an eel and seaweed for hair.”
He says, “You’re as pretty as a mermaid’s daughter. You could be one of the sirens, calling to the sailors, luring their ships onto the rocks.”
She looks down to hide the blaze in her cheeks. “Now you’re jesting.”
Glancing up, she catches his smile, light and quick. “Perhaps. In any case, I cannot fully discount the tale. Didn’t you arrive dripping wet as if you’d come out of the sea? And at such a young age. It’s strange, you’ll have to admit that, at least. Don’t you wonder where you came from?”
“My parents—the ones I was born to—are either dead or they did not want me. So no, I do not wonder about them.”
“Yet of all places, you moved here, to Helford.”
She has no answer to that. “The fact that I was found in this manner is strange, I do agree,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean there was anything…unnaturalto it.”
“There’s nothing unnatural about the Bucca. He’s nature itself; he’s a part of the sea.”
She cannot tell if he’s serious. It irks her and she bursts out, saying, “But to believe in such a thing!”
“I don’t, necessarily. I merely keep an open mind. I always leave a fish as an offering in the cove before a cruise, and upon our return, it’s always gone. Did the gulls eat it or was it the Bucca, accepting my offer and sending fair winds? Who knows…But though I’ve sailed in many a storm, I haven’t yet lost a ship.” A pause, unexpectedly heavy, then he says, “The men reckon it’s the Bucca’s doing. Who am I to contradict them and set their nerves a-fraying?”
“That’s very calculating. It sounds like you don’t know what you believe.”
“Is it? I like to think of it as insurance.”
Part of the blanket hangs off the side of the bed. She pushes at it with her foot and watches it sway. “Why do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Smuggling.” She recalls Lieutenant Sowerby’s words, of how smugglers aid the French, and how he hanged Jed Ferries for treason. “It’s not just breaking the law; it’s aiding the French.”
With obvious effort, he tries to push himself up on his elbows. She says, “No, don’t, it’s not good for the wound.”
Jack says, “Do you know what the tax is on brandy?”
“Does it matter? People can do without brandy very well if they can’t afford it.”
“Tea, then, and salt? The tax on tea alone is over one hundred percent.” Studying her, he adds, “I’ll wager you didn’t know that.”
Of course she didn’t—she has never had to buy her own tea before. And if it’s taxed at 100 percent, she won’t be buying it as often as she had hoped on her widow’s pension. She tries not to show herdisappointment as Jack continues. “Or what of sugar, tobacco, dried fruit, coal even?”
“You never smuggle coal,” she says, thinking,sugar, too?
He laughs, softly this time, so it doesn’t pull on the wound. “True. There’s no profit in it.”
“So don’t make out as if you’re smuggling out of the good of your heart, for the people to have their goods cheaply.”
