“Ask,” she says, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. With her hand, she leans on the kitchen table, brushing the wool of Mrs. Dowling’s shawl.
“Do you love him?” Harriet says.
It’s strange how just a few words can make the flood surge inside her. She struggles to keep still, to not start weeping again. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, I do.”
“As you loved your husband?”
“More.” She waits for the slap of guilt, but it doesn’t come. She and George were children, she thinks, or very nearly so. They had so little time in which to know each other. It’s different with Jack. The way they talk together, it’s as if they’ve managed to fit several years of understanding in the span of weeks.
“And does Mr. Carlyon love you?”
“Yes.” So simple—and she’s so certain, though he has never saidit.
Harriet sighs behind her. “I envy you, Isabel.”
“You envy me? You must be mad.”
“I don’t envy the situation in which you find yourself, naturally. I can only imagine the despair you must feel on account of Mr. Carlyon’s impending fate. Only…I always dreamed of that. Of true love.” Another giggle, this one short and a little flat. “I’m such a dolt, aren’t I? I believed in fairy tales, too, for the longest time. Sometimes I think I haven’t done enough growing up yet. That’s what Sir Hugh says, that I’m in many ways like a child, still. But you see, I don’t have that with Sir Hugh. Love. There is a certain level of affection, but nothing like what you have with Mr. Carlyon. I wish…I wish there was something I could do to help.”
Isabel sucks in her breath sharply. “You would help me?”
“If I could.”
“Could…” She barely dares to ask. “Could Sir Hugh not pardon Jack?”
“Oh, Isabel. Sir Hugh doesn’t have that sort of power. And I’m afraid he wouldn’t want to if he did.”
Her mind races through the different steps—the ship, the horse, Jack’s clothes, the story she’ll tell them on board theHornet,about how she wants to volunteer…“There is something,” she says. It takes her the remainder of the haircut to explain.
“You’d like me to forge a special license?” Harriet says, placing the knife on the kitchen table with a clang. “You want me to break the law to help a smuggler? You don’t deny he is a smuggler, do you?”
“I don’t,” she says. “But hanging him without a trial for a murdercommitted in self-defense also constitutes a breach of the law. It’s up to you to judge which crime you consider the more egregious.”
Harriet is silent for a moment. Her cheeks are rosier than usual against the pale canvas of her face; her mouth, rose red, moves as if in prayer. Eventually, she says, “I’ll do it, on one condition. You write to me, once you have gotten away. Tell me about all your adventures. I shall be living them through your letters, dear Isabel.”
“I’ll write. I promise,” she says.
“These documents, they have to be in Mr. Carlyon’s name?”
“And bear your husband’s seal.”
“Very well. Could I bring them to you tomorrow?”
“Could you take them to Mr. Harry Tremayne at Roskorwell, please, as soon as you possibly can? He lives in the white thatched cottage at the end of the estate. I won’t be here.” She takes up the pile of Jack’s clothes and unfolds the pair of breeches.
Harriet is looking at her strangely. “You plan to wear these garments?”
“Yes,” she says. “They belong to Jack.”
Harriet starts. “Do you mean to say you and him—actually, don’t tell me.” A small smile, then, “You may have wondered why Sir Hugh and I are childless. He’s too old for that sort of thing, he says.”
“I’m sorry, Harriet.”
“It’s just as well, I suppose.”
With her left hand, Isabel touches the ends of her hair. They only reach to her chin. She has never worn her hair this short before, not since she was a child. “Thank you for cutting my hair. I would’ve cut off my ear, probably.”
Voice low, Harriet says, “Isabel, what is it you mean to do?”
