“Your wound,” she says, sitting next to him on top of the rock. “It’s not meant to get wet, is it?”
“Rowell isn’t going to be pleased with me. Doctor’s orders were to stay out of the water. I do feel it still, with certain motions; it’s sort of stiff. But just now, I clean forgot about it.” He chuckles. “Watching you go for a swim rather pushed all other concerns out of my mind.”
“If you stay in the sun, it’ll soon dry,” she says. Her eyes keeproving over the shape of him. She wants to touch him, to feel if his skin is as hard and taut as it looks. “What’s this from?” She points at the line on his left shoulder, about six inches of raised, light scarring.
Jack glances at it as if he had forgotten it was there. “That’s from a Revenue Service cutlass. Three years ago, we were becalmed five miles from the coast. An unusual problem in these parts, but it was July and we had not a drop of wind. Twelve of them rowed over in the launch. We were like fish in a barrel when they boarded us.”
“What happened?”
“We fought them off. Most landed in the water and made it back to their boat. TheRed Kitewas as stuck as we were—this was before theSwallowcame into these waters—and when the wind returned, we got away.”
“Mostlanded in the water?” she says, a feeling of trepidation creepingup.
Jack nods. “You still want to go to sea, Bucca’s daughter?”
She fights off the queasiness and says, “I should like it of all things.”
He picks up a pebble and sends it sailing through the sky. It lands in the creek with a plop. “Come, how did you really do it?”
“Do what?”
“Where did you learn to swim like that? To stay underwater for so long? Or do you have a set of gills concealed under those pretty locks of yours?”
She lifts the mass of wet hair drooping down the right side of her face. “No gills. Nor flippers or the skin of an eel.”
“That I can tell. But how do you do it?”
“I don’t know,” she says truthfully. “I’ve always been able to do it. My parents swore they never taught me how to swim. Whoever did teach me taught me well.”
“And you’ve not a single memory from before your parents found you?”
“No. I’ve tried to remember, but…” She lifts her hands, palmsup.
Jack throws another pebble. This one skips on the water twicebefore going under. “I always considered myself unfortunate to have lost my mother at such a young age, but at least I remember her.”
“But you see, I do remember my parents, for they’re the ones I had since I was found.” How different her situation would’ve been now, had her parents still been alive. Years of command taught Admiral Farnworth to trust his own judgment, and that judgment could be harsh. But he had loved her deeply, and she feels certain he would’ve been able to look beyond the rumors about her and James. With her parents gone, she has nobody to fall backon.
Another pebble goes flying. Jack’s voice brings her back to the present: the turquoise water, the tall trees rustling, the hot, rocky beach. “And staying underwater that long, how do you do that?”
“You’re all too interested in my swimming abilities,” she says.
“Naturally. Around here, people believe you’re the Sea Bucca’s daughter. I discounted it as nonsense for the most part, but now I’ve seen you swim.”
“Jack, you don’t really believe there’s anything to it? There’s no such thing as mermen or mermaids. What of Voltaire and Rousseau on your bookshelves? Are you not a creature of reason like them?”
He laughs. “You saw those, did you? I like to think I’m a man of reason, but one cannot grow up in Cornwall and not accept that there may be some truth in the old stories. Reason doesn’t mean terribly much when your ship is caught in a November storm and makes it through by the grace of God, or if you’re far down a mine and something or someone protects you when there’s a cave-in. There are too many stories of ghosts and piskies for me to discount every single one of them outright.” His gaze trails down her wet, clinging dress, coming to rest on her bosom. “If there’s no magic involved, you must have a prodigious set of lungs in there.”
“Jack!”
“What? I’m merely stating the facts.”
The sun burns a hole in the day. They eat oatcakes on the rocks and wash them down with wine from Jack’s bottle, talking as their clothesdry. When, after several hours, they get up to leave, Isabel’s face glows with sunburn. “Thank you,” she says as he helps her climb back up the cliff to the trail. “I haven’t spent such a lovely afternoon in a long time.”
“Neither haveI.”
Back at the old pilchard shed, they part ways. Jack has Myra by the reins and leads her up the gravel path. “The next time I see you, it’ll be to board your ship,” Isabel says.
His expression clouds over. “You haven’t changed your mind?”
