What did he mean when he said he was a gentleman at heart? He’s a smuggler. A criminal, albeit a wounded one. She’d be able to get the better of him if she needed to, wouldn’t she? She’s too conscious of the man lying next to her for sleep to come easily, but as she listens to the muted swish of the river, it eventually crawls up and she drifts off, riding the waves of the Atlantic, propelled by a fish’s tail.
When she wakes, Jack is looking at her. He’s still on his back, but his face is turned toward her and he’s awake and smiling. Has he been smiling the whole time, or did the smile appear when she opened her eyes?
“Good morning,” he says. “Or rather, good evening.”
The room is dark, shadows huddling in the corners. The lantern burned out long ago. She says, “Good evening,” and gets up to light the candle. When the flame springs to life, she sits back on the bed and draws her legs under her. The room is still warm. She doesn’t put the pelisse back on; the smuggler has already seen all there is to see. “I never got dressed today,” she says, a little surprised.
He smiles and says, “I never got undressed.”
“Doesn’t it seem unfair to you that women aren’t allowed to go to sea?” She has longed to go ever since she set foot on her father’s ship at the age of five, the desire fueled by the incessant tug of the ocean, but it has changed into something more essential since she lost George. As if by feeling a ship’s deck move under her feet and chasing the wide horizon she’ll be able to touch some part of him and draw him close.
Jack frowns. “Where does this come from?”
“I was dreaming of the Atlantic Ocean.”
“Ah. I see. And no, I don’t consider it unfair. Why? Do you feel it is?”
“George got to go to sea and so did my father, but I never will. It seems unjust, that’s all.” She has always felt the injustice of it. Watching her father sail from Portsmouth as a little girl made her deeply sad, not only because she’d miss him, but because she couldn’t go with him. How she misses him now. The sea did not take him—he would’ve much preferred that, she’s sure—but illness did, six years after she lost her mother. His stories planted the seed of her yearning for seafaring—a yearning that her governess called unnatural in a girl. Isabel’s longing for the ocean was her own, but that for shipboard life was her father’s, transferred onto her like a stamp on a wax seal.
Jack says, “Unjust, is it now? The sea is a dangerous place. People like to talk about how beautiful it is or how treacherous its moods. Both are correct to a point, but mainly it’s dangerous. It’s not a place for women.”
“But who’s to say women aren’t able to face danger? Don’t we face it every time one of us births a child?” Another unnatural thought, according to her governess, but true. How well she remembers her stepmother’s screams when each of her stepbrothers was born. The second birth almost killed the new Mrs. Farnworth. How was that any different from facing the enemy’s guns or the whims of the weather aboard a ship?
“You have very singular ideas, Isabel.”
With some satisfaction she says, “So do you, Jack.”
She checks him for signs of infection or fever—there are none. Downstairs, she inspects her stores, finding enough food to last them both another day or two. She heats the soup she made the day before and brings it to Jack, watching him eat with something resembling relish. It tastes better on the second day, she thinks as she swallows a mouthful herself.
She returns to the bed and they talk until the night has deepened to the point that it’s flat, it’s so dark. With the candle out she cannot see Jack, but she can hear him, his breath between words, his voice, low and deep; she can feel the shape of him, close by, without touching him. This time, when she sleeps, she doesn’t dream.
In the morning, she’s awake before him. She dresses with the same effort as always, fumbling with the ties at the back of her gown—her last clean one. The air is fresh and cool with drizzle when she steps outside to get water; the sun hides behind a deck of clouds. The tide is going out, and for the first time since the smuggler arrived, she longs to follow it to where the river becomes the ocean. The desire is as strong as the need to draw air into her lungs. Only when she turns away from the water does the feeling abate. It is unfair, she thinks, walking back to the cottage, no matter what Jack says about the danger of the sea.
In the kitchen, she cuts the leftover bread into thick slices. The bread has grown hard, but not so hard you cannot eat it. She makes a tray with cheese, the bread, two cups of water, and, for lack of any other decent offering, a sliced carrot. She’s about to take it upstairs when there’s a knock on the door.
The tray wobbles; the water lurches in the cups, nearly spilling. Placing the tray on the floor behind the stairs, she goes to the door and takes a breath so deep it hurts the bottom of her chest. She smooths first the skirt of her dress, then her expression, and opens the door.
“Lieutenant Sowerby!” Too high; too loud. She shouldn’t have said it like that. Can he tell? She drags up a smile. Her ears fill with the sound of the crunch she heard at the hanging, the ripped, agonizing scream. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
He bows. “Mrs. Henley. Please, may I come in? It’s raining again.”
She glances past him: it’s barely a drizzle. “Naturally, please, do come in.”
She steps aside and he takes up the same spot as the first time he called on her, one hand on the table, filling the space. His face gleams; he has sweated his way up the path.
“My dear Mrs. Henley,” he begins. She tries to hide her shudder. “I must impress upon you once more the danger in which you may find yourself, living in remote quarters such as these, all alone.”
Breathe, she tells herself. Slowly, naturally. “I thank you for your concern, Lieutenant, but I assure you I am perfectly fine.”
“You may have heard there was an engagement at sea two nights ago, between a cutter of the Revenue Service,Swallow,and the smuggler vesselRapide,not far from here.”
What should she say? Is it suspicious if she has heard of the event or if she hasn’t? “I hadn’t heard that,” she says, guessing. “Were you involved yourself?”
“I wasn’t, but my most particular friend and esteemed fellow riding officer Lieutenant Sullivan was.”
“I hope your friend hasn’t come to harm?”
“He’s perfectly fine, I assure you.”
