The smile appears as it did the day before when she first saw him. He’s quick to smile. He seems glad even though he’s laid up here with a gunshot wound in his side and a riding officer knocked on the door not thirty minutes ago. “Should you wish to?”
“Yes. No. Maybe.”
The smile widens. “Well, which is it?”
“I shall have to think about that, too.”
“You know how to reach me.”
“Yes,” she says. “Yes, I do.”
—
When the doctor returns the next afternoon, he pronounces Jack a miracle, he’s recovering that fast. “You must rest another three weeks at home, at least,” he says. “And nothing strenuous for four weeks thereafter. However, it’s probably best if you move tonight, under cover of darkness, before the moon waxes too bright. Shall I send word to Dick Pascoe to come get you with the boat?”
“I’d be much obliged,” Jack says.
“You haven’t had any trouble since I last saw you…of the lawful kind, I mean?”
“Sowerby showed up, but Isabel saw him off. She’s a fiery one.”
She says, “You should see me wield my tinderbox,” which makes Jack laugh.
The doctor looks from him to her. “There hasn’t been any sign of infection? No fever?”
He speaks to her as if she’s Jack’s nurse. “None,” she says.
“Good. Has he eaten anything?”
She details the bread, the cheese, the soup, and milk.
The doctor says, “I heard about the hanging. He’s a right bastard, that Sowerby, isn’t he?”
“He’s worse than most,” Jack says.
The doctor puts his coat back on, the fabric taut over his bulging arms. After he takes his leave, Isabel says, “He doesn’t much look like a doctor, does he? Is he a surgeon?”
“He’s a veterinarian.”
“You’re not serious?”
“He was a ship’s surgeon at one time, but he couldn’t bear watching the press gang at work. Said he didn’t like having men under his knife who never chose to join His Majesty’s Navy in the first place. He’s very good. And he can be trusted.”
The hours until nightfall flow by like water. Before she knows it—before she wants it—there’s the call of an owl outside, hooting four times in a row. “That’ll be Dick,” Jack says, pushing himselfup.
“How will they move you?”
“I’ll walk.”
“It’s bad for the wound.”
“It’s only down to the boat. Can’t be more than five steps from the house.”
She likes how he sayshouse,as if it’s more than a two-room cottage. It makes her think of her old house in Greenwich. Aside from George’s debts, she left it to escape the rumors that had begun to swirl about her and James. And now she finds herself here with a smuggler. How has it come to this, in only a week?
Jack’s voice pulls her out of her thoughts. “Thank you again, Isabel.”
“It’s nothing,” she says, at a loss for words.
