“He has yet to catch any of us. Though he did hang poor JedFerries, the bastard.” He finishes his coffee and sets down his glass. “I suppose most of all, I belong on the deck of theRapide.”
“That’s where I should like to belong, too,” she says softly.
Jack raises his eyebrows. “There’s a fine line between stubbornness and lunacy. I’d say you’re on it.”
“Just as there is between bravery and foolishness?”
“Let’s see how your stomach handles the waves of the Channel first, shall we?” Jack gets up from his chair and says, “The horse will be up for another sortie. May I offer you a ride to the old pilchard shed, Isabel?”
She can’t help but giggle. “There’s a contradiction in sentiments. So gallant the offer, so base the destination. Not even the pilchard shed, but theoldpilchard shed. When do the pilchards come, anyway? I’ve heard much about them but have yet to encounter a single one.”
“You never encounter a single one,” says Jack, offering her his arm as they step out the front door. “You encounter them by the thousands. Millions, sometimes. You’ll know when they’ve arrived—the whole village helps get the catch in when they come.”
Jack shuts the dog in the house, saying, “She’s had enough exercise for a day; she’s too young for another trot to Helford and back.” The stable hand, a boy of about sixteen, brings Jack’s horse to him. She’s a large gray mare named Myra, one of four horses he owns, and looks strong enough to carry two. “I don’t have a saddle for two,” Jack says. “Nor a sidesaddle. Are you able to ride without?”
“I think so. I haven’t tried it.”
“I’ll hold on to you,” he says.
It’s as if all the heat of her body pours into the bottom of her stomach. “That’s good,” she murmurs, and then he helps her up onto the horse’s back and climbs into place behind her. He hasn’t bothered with a coat in the heat of the day, and through the cotton of his shirt, she can feel his chest rise and fall against her back, his thighs touching the backs of her legs and his breath on her hair. She imagines she can feel the beating of his heart.
“Are you comfortable there?” he says, clicking his tongue to the horse.
She wonders if he’s teasing her. “Yes,” she says, but the word comes out chopped in half by a hitch in her voice, so she tries again. “I am, thank you.”
He chuckles, and they set out at a trot along the road to Manaccan, which presses inland for some time before turning back to the coast. For a while, neither of them speaks. Isabel wonders what he’s thinking. Is he annoyed with her for having pushed him to agree to take her to sea? Or is he thinking about their physical proximity, just as she is; is it making him feel equally confused?
She thinks of what her mother would have said, had she seen her ride like this, so close to a man, without a sidesaddle. As a widow, the constraints placed upon unmarried women don’t apply to her, but riding like this with Jack is outside the bounds of propriety, as her mother would no doubt have pointed out.
After a while, they take the turn to Helford and Jack says, “So how do you find your new life here? It must be very different from what you’re used to.”
“It is. I confess I hated it at first. The difficulties I had doing the simplest things—it was infuriating. But then I found there’s a certain satisfaction to be had in doing things oneself. I don’t mind it much now, unless something goes dreadfully wrong. And Helford is a lovely village. The people are very friendly.”
“Have things gone wrong?” Jack says, sounding concerned.
“Not much,” she says. “Apart from Lieutenant Sowerby calling several times, I suppose. Odious man. Other than that, the only thing has been the pulley breaking on the well. It needs to be reattached to the beam, but I can’t reach it without risking a tumble. I dare not use it at the moment for fear the entire thing will come loose.”
“I’ll take a look at it,” Jack says, as if it’s the most normal thing. She revels in this sense of normality, as she does in the way his chest rises and falls against her back. Her stays are pasted onto her with sweat,her gown sticks to her thighs and it’s riding up awfully high on one side with her sitting on the horse like this, but none of this matters; all that matters is the rising and falling, rising and falling.
“Oh, I didn’t mean—” she says.
But he says, “I know you didn’t, but it sounds an easy fix, and I can’t have you risk a drop down the well now that you’re a part of my crew.”
She feels strangely floaty, as if the air around her is lifting her. Biting down on her lip to keep from smiling too much, she says, “I am, aren’t I? A part of your crew.”
“For the one voyage,” he says. And then, “Tell me about your family. Your husband—what was he like? Would he approve of your desire for seafaring?”
Desire for seafaring. This, too, makes her smile, despite thecut, cut, cutinside at the memory of George. “I believe he may have,” she says. The remainder of the ride passes quickly as she tells Jack about George, her parents, Greenwich, Woodbury House. It’s only as the cottage comes into view, nestled between the tall grass and clouds of fleabane, that she realizes she hasn’t asked him about himself. He has told her only that his family has lived at Roskorwell for many generations, that his mother died of a fever when he was a boy of six, and his father, who never remarried, when he was sixteen. He has three sisters, all married and living in different parts of Cornwall. Surely, she thinks, there’s more to Jack Carlyon than this sliver of his family tree?
Chapter Eight
“Would you bring me a hammer and nails?” Jack is leaning over the well, inspecting the pulley. “There should be some in the shed.”
“Do be careful,” she says, thinking of his wound. “What about—” Then she breaks off, registering his words. “How do you know there’s a hammer?”
He smiles. “How do you think?”
A split second, then she laughs. “You’re the one who left it there.”
