She gazes at Harriet, wondering if she can be trusted or if she’ll run straight to her husband and tell. But she needs Harriet’s help—she has already involved her by asking her to get the ship’s documents. “I mean to volunteer to join His Majesty’s Navy,” she says, deciding.
Harriet shrieks. “You never! Isabel, do you have any idea what you’re doing?”
She explains. By the time she has finished, Harriet’s cheeks are like polished red apples, her eyes bright as if she’s in a fever. “Oh, the daring of it!” she says, clapping her hands as if she’s just watched the conclusion to an exciting play.
Isabel says, “I’m going to see in the looking glass if I may pass for a boy.”
“Put the breeches on first,” Harriet says. “And you shall need a weapon.”
Glancing up sharply, she says, “A weapon?”
“You don’t mean to go without, do you? You’ll need to be able to defend yourself. I appreciate you can’t take a pistol or a sword, but you ought to take this at least.” She lifts the meat knife from the table and holds it out to Isabel.
She takes it, turning it over in her hand, inspecting the blade. “I suppose you’re right. I hadn’t thought of it.” She checks Jack’s breeches: thank heavens there are pockets. Deep ones, too.
Harriet says, “What would you do if it weren’t for me? Your hair would look an absolute fright. It looks dreadful as it is. But what’s this?” Knitted lace spills from her hand as she lifts Mrs. Dowling’s shawl from the table. “Oh, Isabel, this is exquisite! Wherever did you get it? From London?” She caresses the wool as if it’s Buttons’s gleaming neck.
“It was my landlady’s wedding shawl,” Isabel says. “She thought perhaps I might be able to make use of it.” It’s the first time she blushes in Harriet’s presence. The first time, too, that she grasps the extent of Harriet’s confinement in what she calls her walled garden. Suddenly, she understands what her friend meant when she said she envied her.
“It’s simply wonderful. Did she make this?”
“Her mother did. I won’t be able to take it, however.” She takes the shawl back from Harriet, refolds it, and places it on the table with reverence.
Harriet tries to help her with the ties on the back of her dress, but not having the experience, she’s slower than when Isabel does it herself. The dress falls to the floor in a waterfall of cotton. Up in thebedroom, Harriet angles the looking glass in such a way Isabel is able to see most of herself in small, broken images: a length of buckskin-clad thigh here, a swish of chin-length hair there, the blue knit cap completing the picture.
Everything but the cap is too big: she has rolled up the shirtsleeves and has tied the breeches at the top with the neckerchief. It’s strange wearing Jack’s clothes again. She spent the happiest time of her life wearing his shirt and breeches aboard theRapide,and also the most desperate after Jack shot Lieutenant Sowerby.
“You’ll pass,” Harriet says, surveying her. “You might want to slump a little, with your shoulders like this.” She demonstrates the stance. “Just to ensure no one sees the shape of you underneath that shirt. It will make you look younger, too, if you appear uncertain.”
“You have deception down to an art, Harriet,” she says.
Harriet giggles. “I’ve had much practice, living with Sir Hugh. Now, when have you last eaten?”
“I couldn’t eat. Not now.”
“As I thought. You must eat, Isabel, or you’ll be too hungry to rescue Mr. Carlyon.” Harriet’s hands fly to her cheeks, cradling her face. “I can’t believe I’ve just said that! I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
She likes how Harriet says,we’re doing this,as if she, Isabel, doesn’t have to do it alone.
“I shall make you a pot of tea,” Harriet says decisively. “It can’t be difficult, surely.”
“The fire isn’t lit. It’ll take far too long.”
“Why ever have they not kept the fire lit?” Then, realizing: “Oh! Of course. A biscuit then or perhaps some bread?”
“I have an end of a loaf left. Thank you, Harriet.” She glances at the clock in its walnut case. It’s a few minutes before three.
Harriet lifts her skirts. From atop the stairs, she glances back at the bedroom door. “What an odd little bedroom you have.”
—
The coastal path is damp; it has rained short but hard while she was inside. The green tunnel drips rain and bright flecks of sunlight. The air is sticky, but she’s remarkably cool in the thin leather breeches.
There was something forlorn about Harriet when she left. Isabel didn’t wait for her friend to ride off on Buttons before she set out. Now that she has dressed the part, she’s eager to go play it, a mix of hope and dread whirling inside her.
When she’s nearly at the cove, a terrible thought stops her abruptly. What if theHornethas moved? She breaks into a run, her breath shallow in the prison of her stays, which she has fastened as tight as she could to flatten her bosom. Two more turns of the path, one, and there she yet lies, thank heavens, guarding the mouth of the river, her sails furled, some of her rigging unexpectedly slack.
Catching her breath, she removes her shoes and leaves them on the beach before she gets into the water. The flat of the blade in her pocket pushes against her hip as she swims, Jack’s shirt billowing around her like a cloud. The sea is cold, but not as cold as it was when she swam in Frenchman’s Creek with Jack.
