Chapter Eight
“Would you bring me a hammer and nails?” Jack is leaning over the well, inspecting the pulley. “There should be some in the shed.”
“Do be careful,” she says, thinking of his wound. “What about—” Then she breaks off, registering his words. “How do you know there’s a hammer?”
He smiles. “How do you think?”
A split second, then she laughs. “You’re the one who left it there.”
“We used it with the crates we stored.” He pushes against the pulley.
When she hands him the hammer a few minutes later, she asks, “How did you learn to do that?”
“Don’t I have servants to do it for me, you mean?
” He grunts as he twists sideways to hammer a nail into the beam.
“Hand me another nail, will you? We have to repair our own things on the ship. It’s not as if I can afford to have a carpenter on board.
Besides, I like to fix things around the estate when I’m not trading or sailing. I can’t stand idleness.”
Ten minutes later, she gives the crank a turn: the pulley holds. “Thank you, Jack.”
“It’s nothing.” He hands her back the hammer and wipes his hands on his breeches.
“Could I offer you some refreshment? I could make tea. I don’t know if you have time before you meet with Mr. Holder?
” Before he has the chance to answer, a thought hits her.
“Wait. If you’re meeting Mr. Holder this afternoon and you were waiting for me here this morning, why did you come all the way back to Roskorwell? ”
Almost shyly, he says, “I got cheated of the chance to accompany you home last night. I wished to claim the honor today.”
“You’re not meeting Mr. Holder?”
“I am, but not until seven this evening.” A smile; no, she thinks, a grin. “You caught me.”
“Well, what were you going to do in the meantime? You’ve got the entire afternoon.”
“Besides fixing your well? I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I suppose I could see if Tom has got time now.”
She picks at some of the moss growing between the stones of the well. It comes loose and crumbles in her hand.
“Isabel…”
Something about the way he says it, low and full of meaning. It gives her the courage to say, “Should you like to spend the afternoon with me? We could take a walk.”
His smile settles in her chest. “A walk would be splendid. If you don’t mind a longer one, I could show you one of my favorite places on the coast.”
She says, “I should like it very much, but what about Myra?”
“I’ll stable her in the shed, if she could have a bucket of water.”
“Naturally. But as for the shed, I’m afraid there isn’t a lock. Well, there is, but it isn’t mine and I don’t have the key to it.”
He laughs. “And who do you think does?”
She stares at him, then she begins to laugh, too. “Oh!”
She goes ahead of him into the house. Lifting a round tin off the shelf in the kitchen, she says, “Shall I take some oatcakes? I baked them only two days ago. It’ll be like having a picnic.”
“Is that my shirt?” Jack says behind her.
She whirls around, skirt flying, hands fluttering. She says, “No. I mean…” She’d forgotten about the shirt. Why did he have to see it? She tries to take it from him, but he holds it high above his head.
“Why, I believe it is.” He shakes out the shirt and holds it up in front of him, inspecting the cloth. “You’ve mended it.”
“I…it was foolish. I thought you might have need of it, but that was before…I did not realize you’re a man of independent means and…
and I should’ve realized it, of course, because you did tell me of the profits you make smuggling, but quite apart from that, your estate…
” She runs her hand along her cheek. “Suffice to say I was mistaken. I never got the stains out completely, you see, and the tear was very large. It’s not good for wearing.
” She forces a smile. “It kept me busy. Like you, I don’t enjoy being idle. ”
“I hardly think you have time for idleness here,” Jack says unexpectedly brusquely. He refolds the shirt and she thinks he’s going to hand it back to her, but he doesn’t. “Thank you for your efforts. It’s mended very neatly.”
When he goes out, she quickly takes two oatcakes and wraps them in cheesecloth before getting a bucket of water, which she takes to the shed and places on the floor.
Jack has tied the horse to the shelf at the back.
“Don’t forget this,” he says, taking the book about La Pérouse’s voyage from his saddlebag and handing it to her.
The sun is still high in the sky when they set out.
They follow the coastal path into the village, around the water’s edge and the houses hugging the cliffside, past the Shipwrights Arms. To Isabel’s surprise, they don’t continue on the coastal path, nor do they wait for the ferry, but instead they strike out into the thick forest covering the banks of the river.
Jack carries the bundle with the oatcakes as well as a bottle of something—wine, she thinks—which he took from Roskorwell in his saddlebag.
“It was meant for Tom,” he says. “But I daresay we’ll put it to good use. ”
They walk single file, and for about half a mile, Isabel cannot make out any sort of path, but Jack seems to know where he’s going.
After a while the grass drops back to reveal a trail, tucked among the brush.
It’s so narrow it could be an animal track.
From time to time, Jack calls something over his shoulder about the land or the vegetation, but mostly they walk in silence.
Just as she’s beginning to wonder where he is taking her, the trail turns and then she sees it.
In front of them lies a branch of the river, with tall, rocky banks covered in flowers and giant trees dipping their roots into the water, which is impossibly blue under the faded, sun-filled sky.
“Heavens!” she says, taking in the hushed beauty of the place.
Jack turns and gives her a smile. A canopy of leaves shields them as they follow the trail along the side of the creek, which cuts deep into the land. “They call it Frenchman’s Creek,” Jack says. “We anchor here sometimes.”
After another half mile, Jack stops and points at a rocky climb down to a small cove, with a strip of pebbles for a beach. The water babbles around the stones. “Do you think you can get down?”
“I think so,” she says. “If you’ll go ahead of me.”
“It’s easier to get here by boat.”
The black stone is warm under her hands, the way down steeper than she thought.
Once, her foot slips and she catches herself by gripping a piece of rock jutting out, as Jack takes hold of her ankle and guides her to a better foothold.
She still feels the pressure of his fingers by the time she reaches the bottom.
Jack puts the oatcakes and bottle on top of a flat stone and wipes first his forehead and then his neck. “Absurd weather for the time of year.”
“Thank you for bringing me here,” she says.
“It’s a handsome little cove, isn’t it?” A grin, half hidden behind his fingers. “Handsome like you.”
“Jack, stop,” she says. She’s laughing and blushing and her heart is soaring the way it used to around George when they first met.
It shouldn’t, but it is. How different Jack is, she thinks, from how he was in her bed, when he suffered through the operation to remove the bullet from his side.
And how different, too, from how he was during the dinner at Weatherston.
Even when he was in pain, he was quick to laugh, but now there’s a constant smile playing on his lips, which turns into a grin readily. Most of all he appears freer.
To distract herself, she says, “It’s far too hot to be standing here.” Unbuttoning her shoes, she pulls them off and trips to the water. The pebbles burn the soles of her feet, but the river is mercifully cool. She wades in deeper, calling, “It’s wonderful!”
She watches Jack take off his riding boots and turns back to the river, squinting a little against the diamond glimmer of the surface. The muslin of her dress fans out around her. How lovely it would be to go for a swim, she thinks, feeling the tug of the sea—but what would Jack say?
She splashes water on her face and neck, and the impulse flies at her, too strong to resist. Flinging her arms out, she dives in, dress, chemise, stays, and all.
The water is biting cold, as it was before; it’s biting her flesh and grabbing her breath and twisting it, but oh, the feeling of it, the freedom.
“Isabel!” Jack calls, and she turns belly-up in a swirl of cotton and waves at him.
“Come swim!”
“You’re mad!” he shouts, but he’s laughing and wading in, then he, too, dives in. He’s a strong swimmer, she sees at once; he’ll catch up with her in seconds, unless…
The river envelops her as she glides through the water, her arms and legs moving as if they’ve never done anything but swim. And maybe, just maybe they haven’t, because to swim in a cool sea-river on a day like today with Jack swimming alongside her must surely be the loveliest thing in the world.
The water swooshes, laps, sings; she’s one with it, swimming like a fish. The ribbon with George’s medal on it drags at her neck. Her gown flows around her like a second skin, like scales, and all of a sudden, she thinks: I’m home.
She doesn’t know if she’s thinking it because of the river or Jack or the village of Helford, in which she was found nineteen years ago. It’s not even truly a thought. It’s a feeling, a sense of homecoming.
“Isabel!”
She turns to look at him. To her surprise, she’s some distance away, along the length of Frenchman’s Creek. The arm of the river isn’t very wide, but Jack is waving at her and calling to her as if it is.