Isabel looks up. “You haven’t.” She squeezes the warm porcelain of her cup. Should she risk it? Mrs. Dowling knows everyone for miles around. And she can be trusted, can’t she? “Mrs. Dowling, if you happen to hear of the smuggler—that is to say, Mr. Carlyon’s whereabouts, would you be so good as to tell me?”
“Would I…! Whatever for?” Mrs. Dowling gapes at her, her cup suspended a hand’s breadth below her mouth. “You know the man?”
Isabel swallows hard. “Mrs. Dowling, may I rely on your discretion?”
“Of course, Mrs. Henley. Always.”
“Mr. Carlyon is my fiancé. He shot the officer of the Revenue Service in self-defense. To defend me.” Quietly, she says, “He’s the man Joe Winters saw me with in the creek that day. It’s very important I learn where he is.”
Mrs. Dowling closes her mouth, opens it again, and closes it once more, like a fish. When she finally speaks, she surprises Isabel by notasking a single question. She only says, “I see it’s of the utmost importance that you reach Mr. Carlyon. Very well. I’ll ask around and see what I may learn.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Dowling. I’m terribly grateful.”
Mrs. Dowling drinks her coffee, then says carefully, “Do you know what you’re doing, my dear? If they find him, he’ll hang.”
“I know.” The tears come then, but only a few. She brushes them away with her sleeve. “I have no choice.”
“You love him, you mean,” says Mrs. Dowling, reaching out and giving Isabel’s hand a small squeeze. “Well, I know how that is, though Mr. Dowling never had as exciting an occupation as that.”
She smiles again. “That’s a good thing, Mrs. Dowling.”
“I know it, my dear.”
—
She walks home carrying a cloth in which Mrs. Dowling has wrapped a chunk of bread, a small, round cheese, a piece of ham, and her spare tinderbox with enough tinder to last her a week. As she prepares a simple evening meal of beans, ham, and bread, she’s feeling slightly more hopeful. Mrs. Dowling may find out something or Jack may send word, either in a letter or through one of his crew or maybe Tom Holder. She simply has to wait.
The days lengthen until they push deep into the nights. She waits three weeks, four weeks, five. The cut on her forehead heals, leaving a tiny scar. No word comes. Mrs. Dowling hasn’t heard anything of Mr. Carlyon’s whereabouts, she regrets to say. Neither has Tom Holder when Isabel stops at the Shipwrights Arms to ask if he’s had any news from his friend from the cove. The Revenue Service never knocks on her door. She doesn’t hear from Harriet, either, but she didn’t expect to. She considers visiting some of Jack’s tenants who are part of the crew of theRapide,but worries about attracting unwanted attention.
Every day she walks the coastal path looking out to sea, wondering where Jack is. Is he thinking of her? Does he miss her the way she misses him, as if some vital part of herself has vanished? It seemsimpossible that their time together consisted only of weeks and she lived all of her life before without him. It’s impossible that it should be so again.
One night she wakes in a sweat, emitting a thin, almost whistling cry as she wrestles with the sheet. In her dream, they had caught Jack and killed him. Upon waking, she doesn’t remember how he died, but the fact of his death was certain and her screaming, which started in the dream, carried over into the confused state in which she opened her eyes to the dark bedroom.
When morning comes, she walks to Frenchman’s Creek and climbs down to the water. The tide is halfway out, making the cave at the top of the creek accessible from the beach. The contraband is still there, all the kegs and crates and boxes. Nobody would dare move it now, not with the Revenue Service out in force searching forit.
Something about the quiet of the creek and the overgrown, sparsely used trail leading to it strikes her as eerie. If any voices call to her from below the water, she doesn’t hear them. She no longer has a desire to swim, not without Jack. On her way home, she keeps looking over her shoulder, feeling as if someone walks behind her. The tall grass whispers along the hem of her gown. Bumblebees flit among the wildflowers, gulls cry overhead. The water is still—stiller than any water she’s seen. If you threw a stone in it, you wouldn’t break the surface, she thinks, but shatter a looking glass.
Another week passes. By now it’s midsummer and the heat whips up the clouds until it thunders for three nights. Still she waits. And then one evening when it’s still bright out, there’s a knock at her door and when she opens it, she finds Tom Holder standing there.
Her heart leaps and the words pour out, “I’m so very pleased to see you, Mr. Holder,please, come in,I hope so very dearly that you may have some news for me.”
Her words play leapfrog. They put a frown on Tom Holder’s face. She steps aside to let him through and he seats himself at the table in the kitchen. Late-evening gold drops in through the window, a soft light that makes everything appear lovelier. Tom Holder’s face, too:there’s something noble about his tall, lined forehead, the deep-set eyes and the way they move from her to the stone counter and back. But he’s looking grave, she sees now.
“Has something happened?” she says uncertainly. “Is it Richard? Has he been taken by the press gang?”
Tom Holder has his hat in his hands and is turning it slowly. “I bring word from my friend from the cove.”
“From Jack! I knew it.” She feels like taking Tom Holder’s hands and dancing around the kitchen with him.
Tom Holder says, “They’ve captured him, Mrs. Henley.”
Chapter Sixteen
Tom Holder is still talking, explaining something, but all she hears isthey’ve captured him.She looks down at her hands. How odd that just a few weeks ago Jack held them. How odd that he may never hold them again. “What?” she says after a moment. “I beg your pardon, I didn’t quite hear…”
“I said, I regret to be the one to tell it to you, Mrs. Henley. My friend from the—oh, what the hell—Jack managed to send a note. He paid one of the hands on HMSHornetto deliver it. He didn’t want to send it directly to you in case they’re keeping an eye on you.”
“Please, could I see this note?”
