She glances at Jack, but to her surprise, he doesn’t seem irritated by the interruption and proceeds to engage Lieutenant Sowerby in conversation at once. For a few minutes, she feels the hurt of the slight and barely listens to the two men, but then she catches Jack saying, “And do you have any sense, my dear sir, of where those dastardly criminals may be landing their cargo next?”
“I do not at present, but we keep a close patrol all along the east side of the Lizard Peninsula, particularly on the night of the new moon when smugglers are bound to attempt a landing. We hope to catch them red-handed, but it’s a difficult thing, as you might imagine.”
Jack puts his hands behind his back. He speaks casually, but Isabel hears the note of interest in his voice. “You must find great satisfactionin thwarting their efforts. If I may ask, what are some of the difficulties you run into during this admirable pursuit?”
Lieutenant Sowerby glows with pride as well as perspiration. Pushing his fingers into the folds of his necktie, he loosens the cloth. “Well, sir, there’s the problem of their ships, which are fast, and they do not mind standing out to sea for days on end, while our men, wanting their beds, don’t wish to stay aboard a small vessel for long. Do you know they sometimes hide their cargo on the bottom of the ocean, fastened by long lines, and haul it up later? It makes it a difficult proposition to catch them, and as you may be aware, the law demands we catch smugglers with their cargo or the crime cannot be proven in court. Of course, that’s only if it comes to a trial—I have my own means of preventing such a travesty from taking place.”
“Do you indeed?” Jack says. He still speaks casually, but there’s a tension in him, visible in the way he’s squared his shoulders.
“I do, sir. They’d be acquitted at trial, but I see them hanged for treason. They are aiding the French, after all. In fact, that’s the most difficult problem we run into—the level of complicity.”
Jack darts a glance at her. It lasts no more than a second, but it’s enough: Tom Holder told him about the shed. “Complicity?” Jack says, keeping Lieutenant Sowerby on the subject.
“Why, yes. The entire population is in on it, sir!” His voice rises. Taking a lace-edged handkerchief from his pocket, he dabs his forehead and utters a dry laugh. “We in the Revenue Service say in order to stop the crime of smuggling entirely, we’d need to pay half the inhabitants to keep an eye on the other half!”
Isabel’s nerves are taut like the skin of a drum. If the lieutenant learned of Jack’s secret identity, he would see him hanged. She thinks of the woman in the stained dress at the crossroads to Manaccan; of the crunch, the scream.You’re playing with fire,she wants to tell Jack.Please, please be careful.
They have reached the point at which the path ends and the field begins. Advancing into the meadow, Jack steps into the hollowbetween two clumps of grass. She sees the pain bloom in his face as he catches himself, then vanish with the brush of his hand across his forehead.
Lieutenant Sowerby has seen it, too. Sucking on his lip, he says, “Are you ill, sir?”
Jack says, “I pulled a muscle going after a deer. Got her in the end, though.”
Isabel’s hands become fists, tight around the muslin of her gown as she lifts the hem over a tuft—as tight as her chest feels suddenly.
“Perhaps we should hunt together someday,” says Lieutenant Sowerby at last.
She lets out her breath slowly. Jack says, “I should like that.”
When Lieutenant Sowerby takes out his pocket watch, she looks away, gazing at the low sun carving out the shape of the folly to hide her relief as he says, “Is that the time? We are expected at dinner, my friends.”
The dinner is a long succession of delights. It is servedà la française,with every dish on the table at once, and consists of no less than thirty different offerings. For a while, Isabel concentrates only on eating—it has been too long since she tasted food like this. The dinner talk wafts around her like a fine drizzle. Jack sits at the other end of the table from her, where he continues to wheedle information from Lieutenants Sowerby and Sullivan. Sir William Tredinnick, besides being a mine owner, is also a naturalist and holds forth about his collection of specimens until Sir Hugh redirects the conversation to the rising copper prices and their effect on the market, a move that allows the quiet and apparently shy Mr. Pickford to joinin.
Harriet sits diagonally across the table from Isabel, far enough to make conversation difficult, which she doesn’t mind at the moment as Harriet is talking over Mr. Pickford’s shoulders with Mrs. Tredinnick on the subject of local shops and the meager selection of fabrics in Cornwall as compared to that in London—or something to that effect. Isabel catches only shreds of their conversation until Mrs.Tredinnick’s voice rings out, the sound of it as large as her bosom: “Mrs. Henley, I have heard a positively astonishing rumor about you! You shall have to tell us if there’s any truth to it.”
Isabel’s spoon clatters onto her plate. All conversation stops; only Mr. Pickford is still saying, “depending on the situation in Bodmin,” and then he, too, falls silent.
She can hear the sea in her ears, the crash of the waves; she wishes she was underwater, untouchable, free. She wants to look at Jack but finds she cannot. She can’t give away how, stupidly, he means too much to her; how it hurts to know she’ll lose his good opinion. Harriet’s, too—she’s a friend, but she won’t be any longer once Mrs. Tredinnick tells them what they’re saying about Isabel in London.
The food on her plate looked so appetizing before. Now it’s a swamp of meats, gravy, vegetables, pudding, potatoes—peeled to perfection by the cook, she thinks, and then: what an odd thing to think when she’s about to be ruined for the second time, at the very moment of her reentrance into society. “I…I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she says. Sweat drifts under her dress. Her thighs stick together.
“Oh, I am sure you do, Mrs. Henley. Everyone is talking about it.”
It’s hard to hear Mrs. Tredinnick through the crashing waves. The woman is laughing, her red-velveted body is shuddering with it. “I…”
Harriet says, “What is this about, Isabel?”
“I shall tell you, if Mrs. Henley won’t,” says Mrs. Tredinnick. “Will you believe, my dear friends, that a story goes around that Mrs. Henley here is a foundling, who is none other than thedaughterof amerman.” She stresses the wordsdaughterandmermanas if they’re sweetmeats she wishes to savor.
They’re all laughing. Sir Hugh has lost some of his sternness as he slams his hand into the table, exclaiming, “Do they say this, truly?”
The crashing in her ears continues.Daughter. Merman.The words filter through the waves. Mrs. Tredinnick’s rumor isn’t about her andJames. The swamp on her plate begins to take the shape of food again. She hears Jack say, “Ah, that story. Indeed, I’ve heard it, too. They say Mrs. Henley is the daughter of the Sea Bucca.”
“The Sea Bucca?” Harriet says. “Pray, what is that?”
“It’s a fabled creature, a sea spirit, whom many call a merman. It stands about two feet high and has the skin of a conger eel, with seaweed for hair—so the story goes,” Jack says.
“And my dear friend would be the creature’s daughter? What stuff!” Harriet says.
