Chapter Seven #2
“We had the same idea,” he says. “I was at the old pilchard shed waiting for you. I wanted to talk to you. After a while, I realized I was on a fool’s errand—Lady Darby might well have asked you to stay another day or you may have decided to linger long enough to secure a second dinner.”
She blushes at the insinuation; yes, she enjoyed the food immensely, because at home she only had her badly peeled potatoes, bone-filled fish, and mismatched soups.
Watching her expression, Jack says gently, “I understand the fare you’re accustomed to is not the fare you get in your present situation.
It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” He wipes his brow.
“By God, it’s hot for May. In any case, I rode back and Tom told me there was a lady waiting for me.
I knew it must be you. You’ve come straight from Weatherston, then? ”
“I have,” she says. “It pleases me that we each thought to meet the other. May I call you Jack again now?”
“You may call me that anytime. Though you were right to take care last night. That Lieutenant Sowerby is a sharper knife than he appears.”
“You seemed to gain quite a lot of information speaking with him.”
He smiles ruefully. “You see why the dinner was important.” He reaches behind her and lifts the book from the seat of the chair. Voyage de La Pérouse autour du monde, publié conformément au décret du 22 avril 1791, the title page reads. “You read French?”
“I try.”
“He’s been all over the world, La Pérouse. It’s an interesting story.” He sounds wistful.
“Is that what you’d like to do?” she says. “Sail across the world?”
“Only men sponsored by His Majesty’s Navy get to do that, if they don’t end up on blockade for years on end. Or ones who have the capital to finance such a voyage.”
“Is that why you’re a smuggler, so you may raise the capital for a journey of exploration?”
He laughs. “You’ve a too-romantic picture of me, Isabel.
I smuggle so that I may repair the roof and my tenants may put bread in their children’s bellies with their share of the profits.
Many of them are a part of my crew; they can use the extra income, especially if we have another poor harvest.” Still laughing, he hands her the book.
“You may borrow it, if you’d like to continue reading about La Pérouse’s adventures. ”
“Thank you. I should like that.” She runs her fingers over the leather cover, then looks up at him again. “You really shouldn’t be riding about the country. You should be resting.”
“I’m fine. I sail to France in five days.”
“So soon?” she says, ignoring the flutter of nerves. She’s going to have to ask him. No, she thinks, not ask—demand. Secrets come at a price.
“We need to be back in time to land the cargo when the moon is new. Now, before we discuss business matters, let me ask you this. Has Tom offered you any refreshment?”
“He has, thank you.”
When she doesn’t say anything else, he asks, “Well, what did you have? Tea? Coffee? Brandy? I don’t believe it’s too early in the day.
We’ve plenty of that, though most of our recent cargo has been watered down and sold.
” At her look, he hastens to add, “It’s not what it sounds like.
We ship it overproof so we can get more across in one run.
It’s too strong to drink—it’d burn your throat.
So what did Tom get you and can I get you some more? ”
“I enjoyed a glass of water.”
“You enjoyed it, did you? The scoundrel. Should you like a glass of coffee or port? We have some things to discuss. Chief among them the fact that you’re now one of the few people not actively part of our operation who knows I’m the captain of the Rapide.”
Ten minutes later they’re sitting in two brocade armchairs by the empty hearth in the drawing room, which like Jack’s study looks out across the sea.
The dog, Jib, lies at Jack’s feet. The breeze wanders in through the window, accompanied by the crashing of the waves.
The coffee smells a little burned. The weather is almost too hot for it today.
“Here’s what I propose,” Jack says.
The way he keeps resting his gaze on her is distracting, as is the look in his eyes and how it makes her feel. There’s something raw in it, as if something about her makes him hungry.
“Isabel?”
“I beg your pardon. You were saying?”
“I propose another two percent cut of the profits, on top of the two percent you’ll get when we use the shed for storage. That’s two percent for keeping mum about my name and two percent for the use of the shed. Tom Holder told me you’re on board regarding the latter.”
She’s shaking her head. Taking a deep breath, tasting the sea air, she says, “I don’t want another two percent cut.”
“You drive a hard bargain. Three percent, then, for your silence and two for the shed. That could add up to as much as twenty-five pounds for a single run.”
“I don’t want money. I want something that will cost you far less.”
He leans forward, his elbows on his knees, curiosity alive in his face. “Do you? And what would that be?”
“I want you to take me with you when you next go to sea.” This is what she wants, what she needs—to go where George used to, and her father. To satisfy, at last, the unwieldy yearning she feels for a place so far from shore the horizon all around is made of ocean.
For perhaps ten seconds he merely continues to look at her, the corner of his bottom lip caught between his teeth. And for that short moment she believes he’s going to say yes. The intrigue in his face, the—dare she think it?—fondness. Hunger, too. Then he shakes his head and says, “No.”
“No?” she echoes, stupidly.
“Under no circumstances will I do such a thing.” His fingers dance on his knee. “Preposterous notion.”
She flinches as if slapped. “But, Jack—”
“Do you have any idea how dangerous it is? How many ships are lost each year, gone down in storms or run aground where it shoals? That’s nothing to say of the risk of an engagement with a ship of the Revenue Service.
” He jumps up and begins to pace the room.
“I can’t believe you would ask it of me, Isabel! ”
Something in her bristles. “You do it! You go to sea all the time! George and my father used to. Why shouldn’t I? What makes you think I’m made of such weak stuff I couldn’t withstand the danger the same as you?”
He stops and turns back to her. “As if any man would want to have the death of a woman at sea on his conscience. Or anywhere.”
He sounds so bitter she shrinks deeper into the armchair. “What of women who go abroad, to America, to India?” she says. “Do they not board a ship?”
“Those sorts of voyages can’t be avoided. You’re mad if you think I’ll take you on a smuggling run to France.” Seeing her expression, he sits down again and says, more calmly, “I say this for your own sake. Why should you wish to go to sea, anyway?”
Looking down at her hands, clasped tightly around the coffee glass in her lap, she says, “Why do you do it?”
“To trade. Evidently.”
Her glass has a smudge on it where her lips have touched it. She wipes it away. “I’m sure that’s not the only reason.”
“It’s different for me. You’re a woman. Why would you want to go sailing?”
Glancing up at him, she says softly, “Maybe it’s because I’m the Sea Bucca’s daughter.
” She doesn’t mean it, of course. She’s only trying to lighten the mood.
Or is she? Listening to the distant crash of the waves, the desire is so strong, so undeniable, she must press ahead.
She must make him see reason—at all cost.
“The sea is calling you, you mean,” Jack says, and there’s a tinge of a smile now, chasing away the bitterness. “Like a siren calls a mariner.”
She thinks of the first time she swam in the river; of the voice she heard in the shrieks of the gulls and the rustle of the breeze.
“That’s what it feels like.” She says it very seriously and he smiles and says, “But if the sea is a dangerous mistress, can you imagine what sort of parent she makes?”
The playfulness of his words emboldens her. She says, “It would only be the one time. Please, Jack. I’ve always wanted to go to sea.”
He taps his coffee glass. “This may come as a surprise to you, but I care not what you want.”
Her hands squeeze together in her lap. She hates herself for what she’s about to say.
The thought of Lieutenant Sowerby alone makes her cower under the weight of her guilt—just for saying it, for implying she would betray him.
She would never do it. Still, Jack has got to believe she just may.
It’s the only way she can make him agree.
She says, “It’s in your interest to care what I want, if you wish to prevent me speaking to the Revenue Service. ”
Silence, apart from the waves. Then Jack says measuredly, “You’ll want to tread carefully, Isabel. There are other means by which I might prevent that.”
She thinks of the pistol in his hand when he lay wounded in her bed, at how quickly he woke and aimed it at the door at the slightest sound. For the first time, she thinks of him as a dangerous man. She hates this, too. Swallowing down something thick, she says, “You wouldn’t.”
He holds her gaze. Her heart runs, jumps. The carriage clock on the chimneypiece ticks away half a minute, then another. “No,” he says at last. “I would not.”
She takes a shuddering breath. “So you’ll take me with you?”
“It appears I shall. God help me.” He locks eyes with her, and there’s something else in them besides resignation. Concern, running deep, and that same affection she spied before. “What happened to not wanting to aid the French?”