Lieutenant Sowerby says, “So you are in need of protection. As a woman, not perhaps of means, but of rank, living alone in what is a rough and dangerous land.”
She thinks of the loveliness of the paradise garden, the flowers, the river. “I’ve only seen very little of it so far, but it doesn’t strike me as rough,” she says. “It looks to me quite lovely.”
“That’s because you’re a woman. You have a romantic heart. But I have seen what this land is truly like. I’ve had to fight its sons upon the waves and cliffs. Lawless, these people are. They’re all in on the smuggling. Fishermen, miners, shopkeepers, farmers. Their wives and children, too! They’re all involved.”
The anger rises in her as if he’s drawing it out with a hook. She thinks of Tom Holder and his son, Richard, and Mrs. Dowling. She has only just arrived in Cornwall, but it seems unfair to accuse the entire population like this. She has no love for smugglers—she imagines they are dangerous. But the farmers and fishermen? Their children, even? She lets go off George’s medal, balls her hands into fists. “Surely it cannot be that bad?”
“It’s worse, madam. I used to think I could bring the men I captured to justice. I had them imprisoned and tried for their crimes. Smuggling, piracy. But nearly all were acquitted. Even the juries are on their side.”
He’s looming over her, his moon face too close. She can smell his breath, which is oddly sweet, as if he’s been drinking spirits; she can sense the anger pulsing under the polite exterior. He hates it here, she thinks. He hates Cornwall; hates its people.
She thinks of his cold lips pressed against the skin covering her knuckles. For the first time, she wishes the rules governing her limited interactions with men before she married still applied. In widowhood, she has far more freedom, but now she wishes this freedom revoked, if only for today. Lieutenant Sowerby would never dream of standing here, alone with her, if she were unwed.
Lieutenant Sowerby says, “These days, I don’t risk a trial.”
“How do you mean?”
“How do you think I mean, madam?” The edge in his voice grows sharper. “I ensure justice takes its course. I have them hanged, as traitors should be.”
“Traitors?” she squeaks, willing away the picture he’s drawn before her eyes. He hangs them? Boys, like Richard Holder?
“You don’t believe smugglers are traitors?” There’s a fury in him, but it’s controlled, simmering under the surface of a polite smile. “Their smuggling aids the French. We’re at war, madam.” His eye falls on George’s medal. His tone, his entire bearing, changes to one of suspicion. “Where did you get that?”
Taken aback, her hand goes to the medal again. “My husband, George Henley, was a midshipman on His Majesty’s ShipNeptuneat Trafalgar. He died of a bullet fired from the top of theBucentaure.” She has spoken these words so many times they have almost become meaningless. They cannot convey how the world turned black when she received word of his death, of the cutting of everyday things, of how much she still misses him and how much she wishes she had known him better.
“Well. A proper hero,” Lieutenant Sowerby says. There’s a hint of sarcasm in his tone and she wants him out, suddenly, with a vehemence that makes her desire to be alone when Mrs. Dowling lingered on her doorstep pale in comparison. Before she has the chance to say anything, Lieutenant Sowerby returns to his officiousness and, placing his hand on the hilt of his sword, says, “I hereby offer you my protection, madam.”
She swallows her sigh. “I’m terribly grateful, sir, but I don’t believe I need it.”
The way his expression crushes—had he really believed she would accept him, then and there, as her protector, whatever he thought the role entailed? “Madam, I must insist. A woman, such as yourself, with your…” He shakes his head as if searching for words. “Your virtue and such purity of character. Do you have any idea, madam, what aband of smugglers would do to a woman like you if they found you here alone?”
He lifts his hand, reaching for her as if he’s about to illustrate his point. A wetness has appeared in the corners of his mouth. “What would your late husband say?”
“My dear sir!” The words fly out in a gasp. She backs up all the way to the door, wrenches it open. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to…tend to the fire. Thank you for calling on me, sir. I shall bear your warning in mind.”
He looks at her for a creeping moment, his jaw working as if he’s chewing down a protest. His breath is coming too fast; the sweetness of the liquor on it surrounds her like a cloud. She’s nearly pinned to the door, he’s that close. She watches in horror as his hand goes up again, reaching for her. His eyes are fixed on a point below her chin—her chest, she realizes. A cry escapes her. The lieutenant blinks. Stepping back, he wipes beads of sweat from his forehead and makes a stiff bow. “Very well,” he says. “I have done my duty.”
“So you have, and I thank you for it.”Now go, please. Leave mebe.
“If it doesn’t inconvenience you, I shall call on you from time to time as I pass by on patrol, to ensure you are safe.”
“I’d be much obliged to you, sir,” she says, her voice wavering.
He nods, as if her answer is satisfactory, though barely so. She waits in the doorway as he gets on his horse, a strong-looking brown mare. The rain has slackened a little. She thinks of the smugglers he likes to hang. The sensation of his cold lips lingers on her hand. It’s only when the greenery of the coastal path swallows Lieutenant Sowerby’s overlarge shape and she turns to the swirling river that she can breathe freely again. The shudder in her limbs subsides as she watches the rain pelt the surface.
Back inside, she sits down at the table, her fingers around George’s medal. Perhaps she should call on Mrs. Dowling and ask her how to make tea.The wife of my friend the deputy lord lieutenant will call on you soon,Lieutenant Sowerby said. She wants to both laugh and cry at the thought of the wife of the deputy lord lieutenant of Cornwallknocking on the door of her cottage. She wouldn’t know what to serve the woman. Not tea, that’s for certain. She lives in a different world now.
The hours ahead seem as long as those she used to spend waiting for a letter from George. She glances at her travel case on the floor in the nook by the door of the sitting room. It looks as if it’s yawning. Inside its mouth are cottons and linens, and the silk chemise she bought for when George would come home. At the time, she pictured the scene over and over, how she’d come into the room wearing only the chemise, the look on his face; how it would be when they weren’t nervous because it was the first time or because he had to go back to sea the next day. She doesn’t know why she has brought the chemise. It doesn’t belong in a place like this. She has never worn it and now she never shall. The familiar sting inside at the thought; the screwing shut of her throat.
She pushes the chemise back into the case, and shutting the lid, replaces the memory with a happier one: the two of them, walking in Hyde Park, arm in arm. How he’d say something funny and laugh at his own joke. She wants to reach out and pull him to her, to smell the mix of cologne and after-dinner brandy on him and the wool of his jacket as she pushes her face into the crook of his neck.
Then she’s crying, as if it happened that week, as if she’s only just had the news. She gives in to the tears, crossing her arms on the table and putting her face on them, letting the sobs run through her. She loved him, but sometimes she worries she did not love him enough.
After a few minutes, she wipes her face. She needs to get out. She looks out of the door to make sure Lieutenant Sowerby really has gone and goes to inspect the shed. The door to it is latched but unlocked. Light filters through two narrow windows at the back and along the wall runs a single shelf, waist high, with a wooden work chest on it. Closer inspection of the chest reveals a hammer, a handful of nails, and a tool with a flat end that she thinks may be a chisel. She imagines the shed still smells of fish, but that’s impossible. The innkeeper’s son told her it’s not in use anymore; it hasn’t been for years.
She turns back to the door, and in the light falling through theopening, she catches a glint on the wall. A padlock, almost the size of the palm of her hand, hangs from a hook in the wood. It’s locked and there isn’t a key. She wonders who put it there. The padlock isn’t rusted.
Upon leaving the shed, the coastal path beckons. The rain has stopped and the sun tries to escape the clouds as she walks. Everything smells new. After a few minutes, the path starts to hug the cliff. In some places it’s so narrow she has to step into the grass on the hillside so as not to get too close to the edge. God knows how the riding officers of the Revenue Service negotiate the path on horseback.
