“Never in a hundred years. You’re stuck with me, I’m afraid.” She feels her heart in her throat.Please don’t tell me you’ve changed yours.
After a moment, the clouds clear. “I wish you’d see sense, but as you’re determined to persist in this folly, don’t let this pleasant afternoon of ours stand in the way of you obeying my orders on board theRapide.”
“Obeying your orders?” she says. “You sound as if you mean it, Jack.”
He mounts the horse and, looking down at her from Myra’s back, says, “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t. I told you, you’re to work the same as the rest of the crew.”
“But doing what?”
He waves his hand dismissively. “Hauling up the mainsail, reefing the stay, turning the capstan.” When he sees the look on her face, he laughs. “I jest. These are a sailor’s tasks, not a woman’s.”
“I’ll do them,” she says, jaw set. “I’ll learn.”
“I’m sure you would, too, but I’ve got a better job for you. I could use your help with the books—I’m too busy myself half the time. Do you know how to do arithmetic?”
“I had a governess.”
“Very well. You can be my bookkeeper for the run.” Lowering his voice, he says, “I’ll give you the specifics on what we carry and where we plan to sell it when you present yourself for muster.”
“Aye, Captain,” she says, and he laughs again and says, “We’ll make you a free trader yet.”
She wraps her hand around George’s medal as she watches Jack disappear down the green gloom of the coastal path. Then she turns to the river and gazes at a late fishing boat pulling into the inlet. The low sun casts gold onto the water and a breeze has picked up, rustling the trees on the bank. To her relief, there are no voices in it and the water is clear of shadows.
Her gown dried long ago, but her hair is still a little wet. She has only to close her eyes to feel Jack’s hands on her waist again, his chest pressed against hers. Apart from George, she was never this close to a man. The way Jack talks to her so freely, she feels almost as if they are closer. But that’s a terrible thought, isn’t it? A betrayal of George, of his memory.
She presses her fingers to her temples, willing herself to stop thinking like this. Jack is a friend, that’s all. A friend who has vowed he’ll never marry. She cannot be caught in a situation again where tongues begin to wag, as happened with James, forcing her from her home. Unlike James, Jack is her equal in terms of social rank and wealth—or was, before she lost everything—but that doesn’t mean she can risk the sort of proximity that will cause rumors again. She has made a new home here in Helford and she’ll not let anything take it from her. Jack will be her captain aboard theRapide. He can’t be anything more to her.
Twenty minutes later she’s knocking on Mrs. Dowling’s door.Please be in,she thinks, and mercifully, after another volley of knocks, the door creaks open. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Henley,” says Mrs. Dowling. “Or is itgood eveningalready? I was knitting and I’ve entirely lost track of time.”
“It is evening,” Isabel says. “And a good one, indeed. I hope you’re well, Mrs. Dowling. I’ve come to tell you that I am to go away soon.”
“You are? Oh dear. Not back to Greenwich, already?”
“Oh no, not at all. I shall be visiting relations in…in Penzance for about a fortnight. I shall take the post from Helston.”
Mrs. Dowling tuts. “That’s an awfully long way. I wasn’t aware you had any relations in Cornwall, my dear Mrs. Henley.”
“They are only distant relations. Second cousins of my father’s,” she says, lying.
“I see. So you have no other Cornish relations, apart from…” A crease appears between her eyes.
“Apart from who?”
“Oh, I don’t know if I should say. It always seems to discomfit you when I mention him—I do hope you don’t mind me saying it. I believe we’re good enough friends now.”
“Naturally, but of whom do you speak?”
“Why, the Sea Bucca, of course.”
This time it makes her smile, despite the voice in the creek—or maybe, she thinks suddenly, because of it. Everything this evening makes her smile. She says, “I don’t mind you saying it, Mrs. Dowling. Sometimes I wonder if there isn’t something to it after all.”
“Oh, child,” Mrs. Dowling says with sudden motherly affection. “It’s the Helford air bringing it out in you, I’m sure.”
—
The very next afternoon, Mrs. Dowling knocks on the door of the old pilchard shed, looking unexpectedly grave under the configuration of curls and hairpins. Isabel wipes her brow; she has been trying unsuccessfully to chase a bee out of the kitchen. The outside air is as warm as it was the day before. She can smell the coming summer on it—flowers and the dry scent of grass and always, always the salty and weedy smell of the inlet.
“Mrs. Dowling,” she says. “What a pleasure. Please, come in.”
