“That’s just a story.”
Dick says, “You know what happened to theLeda? She sank off Milford Haven five months ago. Caught in a gale. The crew managed to get off, but the ship was wrecked.” He gives her a meaningful look. “Something tells me theRapidewon’t share her fate. Not on this voyage.”
She tilts her head, studying the seaman’s face. There are lines of laughter around his dark brown eyes, but he’s not laughing now. “How do you mean?”
“Winds like we had last night and not a single spar lost? They say a woman on board brings ill luck, but not you. With you on board, I’ll wager we can weather any storm. I think your father is protecting you.”
“My father, the admiral?” she says, knowing it’s not what he means.
He only looks at her, long enough that she has to look away, up along the mainmast. She climbed it. She’ll do it again, too, she thinks. Maybe if you do it enough you get used to the sting of the rope in your hands, the swaying of the mast, the dizzying height.
Dick follows her gaze. “You’re a born sailor, Mrs. Henley,” he says. “Climbing to the top like that.”
“I was quaking the whole way up,” she says.
“Everyone is their first time.”
She turns to the stern of the ship. Jack is talking to Oppy, shielding his eyes with his hand while he’s looking at something—the horizon, she thinks, for there’s nothing else to see. The blue of his jacket is only a shade lighter than the uniform jacket George used to wear. Jack’s doesn’t have the gilt brass buttons, but copper ones, tarnished by the salty sea air. He’s taller than George, his hair is darker, and he wears it longer. But if she squints, she can almost see George, the way he may have looked on the quarterdeck of theNeptune.
Jack would’ve made a good naval captain, she thinks, if he wasn’t so determined to break the law. The men like him and he seems to handle the ship well—not that she really knows what a well-handled ship looks like. George would have known. He would’ve been able to explain to her what all the different lines were for.
Jack catches her looking and beckons for her to come over. Behind her, Dick says, “I’m not the only one who thinks it. About you and the merman.”
“Then I hope it’s not put to the test,” she calls over her shoulder. “Because I’m not who you think I am.” A twinge of doubt—but she couldn’t be, could she? Her mind swivels back to that moment in Frenchman’s Creek, the words she thought she heard drifting along the current:come home.The way she felt she was home already in the cool, dark water.
When she reaches the stern of the ship, Jack says, “Next time you decide to monkey up the rigging, let me know so I can have a net spread.”
“I didn’t do too badly,” she says, smoothing down her dress. “Dick says I’m a born sailor.”
“You slipped on your gown. I couldn’t forgive myself if you took a tumble.”
She says, “I’m not your responsibility, I should think.”
“I’ve made you it when I let you join the ship.”
“Then let me wear a pair of your breeches next time I climb the rigging. It’d be of more use to me than a net.”
He looks at her in surprise and begins to laugh. “You hear this, Oppy? Mrs. Henley should like to wear a pair of breeches.”
“She’d look very fine in them, Captain,” Oppy says. “Proper ship’s boy and all.”
“She would, wouldn’t she?” Jack says, and then to Isabel, “Very well. You can have my spare pair for the duration of the cruise. It probably is safer.”
They’re laughing, but it doesn’t matter. She likes the idea of this, of looking like one of the crew and not merely a visitor or passenger, taken on board for one journey only. Tomorrow she’ll climb the rigging again and this time she’ll do it in breeches.
She eats an early dinner with Jack in his cabin and then goes back on deck until nightfall wraps theRapidein shadows. A million stars come out, more than she has ever seen before. The waning moon rises, huge and bright. She’s so comfortable where she’s sitting, her back against a massive coil of rope, that she thinks maybe she can sleep up here, under the stars, with the breeze playing with her hair, the rope for a hard mattress. But eventually she rises, stiffly, and goes to the stern of the ship, where Jack has taken the helm from Oppy.
“Are you turning in?” he asks, and when she says she is, he calls Oppy and tells him to take over again for a couple of hours.
She goes down the ladder slowly, watching the back of Jack’s legs as he follows her. The hammock in the cabin sways as the ship pitches. It’s different being here with Jack now. When she went to sleep in the early hours of the morning, she was so tired it hardly mattered that he would join her in the hammock later. But tonight he’s in the cabin with her, and she’s so wide awake it’s as if she has slept for a hundred years.
She feels absurdly aware of him, of the space he takes up as he moves about the small cabin, taking off his jacket and draping it acrossthe back of the chair. She remembers what the beating of his heart sounded like when she woke with her cheek to his chest, and she turns to the stern of the ship, her face aflame, her skin hot, all of her burning, burning. She places her hand against the smooth, polished wood to cool herself. In a man-of-war such as George sailed on, there’d be windows here, tall ones looking out across the sea, but in the cutter all they have is the skylight.
Jack says, “Will you not come to bed?” and it sounds so ordinary the way he says it, but it’s not, it’s the opposite of ordinary and she’s afraid to speak lest her mouth runs over with feeling. The deck creaks as he comes to stand behind her. “You’re apprehensive about sharing the bed,” he says, and there’s a low, almost hoarse quality to his voice, hinting at the hunger she saw in him before at Roskorwell.
“The hammock. Yes.” She keeps her gaze on the wood, examining the grain in it, which is only just visible by the light of the moon.
“You weren’t last night. Or rather, early this morning.”
