“Oh, thank you. I don’t believe I do, but it’s kind of you to say.” Behind Lady Darby, the horse snorts again and she turns to him. “We’ll go riding again later. I’m much too glad to have made a new friend.” To Isabel, she says, “I do hope you don’t mind me calling you my friend. I know we’ve only just met…oh, minutes ago, but I am sure we shall be the best of friends. Do you know, this is such empty country? I could ride for a day and not meet a friend. Except now you’ve come. Weatherston is only three miles from here.”
Isabel smiles. Just listening to Lady Darby makes her feel more like herself again. She’s about to say,would you like to come in,but then remembers the cottage. She looks away, her hand moving to George’s medal, her eyes on the sparkling river, and then she has it. “Should you like to take tea in the garden with me, Lady Darby? It’s particularly lovely this time of year.”
“Oh! I should like it of all things. And please, call me Harriet. I don’t stand on ceremony, not with friends. May I call you Isabel, Isabel?” She giggles again. “Isabel, Isabel. I’m such a dooby, aren’tI?”
“Will your horse be all right here?”
“Buttons? Yes, he’s fine. He’s an impatient fellow, but I shan’t be more than an hour, I’m sure. My husband expects me home by five. Oh,” she says suddenly. “Do you mean on account of the smugglers? My friend Lieutenant Sowerby told me there has been an engagement at sea recently, shots fired and so on. They seem to be growing more impudent by the day.”
Isabel glances at the shed, saying, “It would appear so.”
Harriet says, “You don’t think they would try to steal Buttons?”
“I’m sure they wouldn’t dare; not when we’re right here. But perhaps it’s best to put him in the shed. I can’t lock it, but he’ll be out of sight.”
Ten minutes later, Harriet is sitting on the white bench in thegarden, the color moving in her face as she drinks in the view of the river. Isabel has taken her around the cottage rather than through it. It’s not much of a path, more of a strip of grass, that wraps around to the back, but it meant she didn’t have to show Harriet the kitchen and sitting room.
Harriet says, “It’s ever so pretty, isn’t it? Just as I think I cannot love this country any less, I’m presented with a view like this, which turns my entire judgment upside down again.”
“I’ll fetch the tea,” Isabel says. “It will take me a little while, I’m afraid.”
If Harriet wonders about her getting it herself, she doesn’t say. In the kitchen, she flies through the motions: the fire, the pot, the tea leaves, floating like so many paper-thin boats, the strainer. She’s glad she has saved the tea for any potential guests.
The cups are earthenware, but she has milk and a little sugar. Thank heavens she went to the baker that morning; the bread has barely had time to cool. She cuts the slices far thicker than she would if she were on her own. She has butter, too, and a pot of strawberry jam from Mrs. Winters who lives down the road, where the inlet peters out into mud, and who wouldn’t take any money forit.
She feels foolish for thinking she did not want any friends when she came to the village. She has been here only just over a fortnight and the people in Helford treat her like one of their own. Mrs. Dowling even calls her that,one of our own. “It’s because you were born here,” she says, and Isabel is inordinately grateful she says it like that,born here,and notfound hereor worse,brought here by the Sea Bucca.
Balancing everything on the tray isn’t easy as she walks down the uneven path, through the tunnel of greenery into the paradise garden. A part of her worries she has taken too long and Harriet will have left. But no, she’s still sitting on the bench, gazing at the river, her gloved hands folded in her lap. Isabel didn’t realize how much she missed having a friend like Harriet until she saw her standing in front of the cottage when she returned from her swim. She didn’t realize how much she missed feeling like herself.
Harriet smiles when Isabel brings the tea. Her speech is fast and punctuated with giggles. From time to time, her fingers move across her face and throat, as if she’s brushing away a fly or a tear. She proclaims the tea delicious, the garden utterly delightful, the bread and jam the best she has tasted south of the Tamar. She tells Isabel a little of her life in the west country, of the lack of society, of how much she misses London and her parents’ ancestral home in Kent. More than anything, she wants to hear what she calls “the latest gossip,” and Isabel says, “It’s not really the latest. I came into Cornwall a fortnight ago. And I lived in Greenwich.”
As she says it, the fear claws inside her. Harriet has friends in London. Family, too. Could she have heard the rumors? But if she did, Harriet wouldn’t have come to call on her, would she?
Harriet says, “Greenwich is nearly London though, isn’t it? And a fortnight is still far more recent than anything I’ve heard. My friends are too busy calling on each other and attending balls to send more than a few lines every couple of weeks. I’ve no idea what I’m missing out on and have only my imagination to paint the picture for me.” Harriet’s hand dangles by her side. She plucks a daisy from the wall—erigeron, or fleabane, Isabel’s mind supplies after a lesson from Mrs. Dowling—and begins to remove its petals one by one.
The fear ebbs away. As they drink their tea, she feeds Harriet bits and pieces of the life she has left behind in Greenwich. Harriet doesn’t ask about George. She does say, “Aren’t you lonely, living here by yourself?”
“I am, a little,” she says after a moment. “But I suppose one gets used to it.” Her voice wavers, belying the sentiment. She thinks of George, of how she used to pass the months waiting for him. She was on her own then, too, although there were the servants, of course. But it was different, because she knew he’d be coming back. Until he didn’t.
The tears rise in her so suddenly she makes a choking noise in her attempt to hold them back. She tries to turn it into a cough, but it’s useless: Harriet has seen her distress and reaches for her hand, pattingit lightly. With effort, she manages a smile. “It’s not that bad, truly. And…” She hesitates, unsure if she could make Harriet understand.
“And what, Isabel?”
“This may sound strange, but there’s something appealing in being on one’s own. I’ve never really had the chance to do things for myself or make my own decisions. It was always Father or George who decided for me, and after I lost George, the house was always bustling with people, friends, servants, and so on. It’s quiet here. I feel I’m able to think more easily. And while I still have much to learn and sometimes barely manage, I do feel as if for the first time I’m…well, truly independent.”
“Oh.” Harriet breathes the word like a sigh, her mouth round withit.
Isabel looks down at her cup. “That must sound awfully strange to you.”
“Oh, but it doesn’t. On the contrary.” Harriet colors; she brings up her hand, pushing unseen hairs from her face. “I think it sounds heavenly, my dear Isabel. To be in control of one’s decisions, why, it must be so very freeing. I only wish…oh!” She clasps her hand to her mouth. “Oh no, I did not mean for it to sound as though—I love Sir Hugh dearly and I could never…”
“Of course.” She places her hand on Harriet’s kidskin-clad wrist. “I do understand you. Marriage, even under the best of circumstances, can make one feel hemmed in, can it not?”
She had never put it in those words before, not even in her own mind, but now that she says it, she feels it’s true. There’s value in her new independence, she sees suddenly—she’s poor, yes, but she’s free. She hadn’t considered remarrying the past three years, despite two offers by well-respected, if slightly older gentlemen, because the pain of losing George was still too raw. Her stepmother urged her to accept the second offer, but she didn’t see how she could be another man’s wife if the motions of everyday life still cut inside her. Of course, at the time, she still believed the prize money forthcoming; she did not realize what George’s debts meant.
Now she thinks there may be another reason not to remarry, if she were given the chance. Maybe her independence is too valuable a dowry to pay.
Sounding relieved, Harriet says, “Yes, that’s what I meant. ‘Hemmed in’ is a good way to describe it. Not like a gilded cage, nothing so dire as that, but perhaps a garden, free to grow and flower as it will as long as it stays within its walls and hedges. I suppose you have moved beyond your hedges, Isabel. Mine are rather prickly, I’m afraid. Sir Hugh can beveryexacting. Which is why I should probably…”
