Chapter Eight #2
She takes a deep breath and ducks under the surface, kicking her legs to gain depth.
She begins to swim back to the cove underwater, but a sound makes her turn.
Her dress follows in a slow, twisting billow.
She strains to listen. Yes, there it is again, clearly: a voice, the voice from before, only this time it’s not the breeze or the birds or any such thing.
It’s the river itself, calling: Swim. Come home.
The voice is just ahead, toward the mouth of the creek.
There’s a seductiveness in it and, without quite deciding she’s going to, she swims toward it.
Come home. Fainter, distant now. The river regains its usual sound of moving water mixed with the blood rushing in her ears.
After another few strokes she gives up her pursuit.
The river is a cool, green cocoon as she swims back to the cove, still underwater.
She thought she felt more herself last night at Weatherston, but now she knows she was wrong.
She has become herself here, at last, in the depths of Frenchman’s Creek.
A hand clamps around her arm and yanks. The jolt is so sudden she opens her mouth to scream and it fills with water.
The river has come for her, she thinks, panicking that the shadow has got her.
Kicking, she tries to wrench herself free, and then she’s breaking through the surface, coughing and spluttering.
Jack is holding her up, his feet on the bottom where she cannot stand, a stone’s throw from the shore. “My God, Isabel,” he says.
He’s so close she can see every drop of water on his face and his lips, inches from her own.
She’d only have to lean in to kiss him. He’s still holding her, his arms around her waist now, their bodies as close as they were on the horse, and she wants to kiss him, but instead she says, “Why did you do that?”
His shirt sticks to his chest. She can feel every ridge under it. He says, “I thought you were drowning. I’ve never seen anybody stay under that long.” He looks at her strangely. “Are you certain you’re not half mermaid?”
She laughs, ignoring the uneasiness spurred by the voice she heard in the water. “That was never a part of the story. Half mermaid!”
“You swim like one,” he says, pushing a dripping strand of hair out of her face and tucking it behind her left ear. “You’re beautiful like one.”
“Jack,” she says quietly. Now he’s going to kiss me. They shouldn’t kiss, but they will. It feels inevitable, like night falling at the end of each day, like the tide.
Only he doesn’t. He lets go of her and swims to shore, where he sits on one of the black rocks in the sun.
As she swims back, she watches him pull his shirt over his head and begin to wring it out.
Everything is sharp and distinct in the sun—the water gushing from where his hands tighten around the bunched-up shirt, the clattering sound the water makes as it lands on the rocks, the round shape of his tanned shoulders as he leans forward, a raised line on his left one, where the skin is lighter, the way his hair falls across his brow.
Her eyes fall on the bandage. Oh no.
She steps out of the water sheathed in wet muslin.
The cloth clings to her legs, the outline of her hips, the swell under her stays.
She sees it in the way he looks up at her, the way his smile appears and overtakes him.
She’s as visible to him as he is to her in his wet breeches and with his shirt removed.
There’s no embarrassment, neither on her part or his—or so she thinks. And there’s the bandage.
“Your wound,” she says, sitting next to him on top of the rock. “It’s not meant to get wet, is it?”
“Rowell isn’t going to be pleased with me. Doctor’s orders were to stay out of the water. I do feel it still, with certain motions; it’s sort of stiff. But just now, I clean forgot about it.” He chuckles. “Watching you go for a swim rather pushed all other concerns out of my mind.”
“If you stay in the sun, it’ll soon dry,” she says. Her eyes keep roving over the shape of him. She wants to touch him, to feel if his skin is as hard and taut as it looks. “What’s this from?” She points at the line on his left shoulder, about six inches of raised, light scarring.
Jack glances at it as if he had forgotten it was there.
“That’s from a Revenue Service cutlass. Three years ago, we were becalmed five miles from the coast. An unusual problem in these parts, but it was July and we had not a drop of wind.
Twelve of them rowed over in the launch.
We were like fish in a barrel when they boarded us. ”
“What happened?”
“We fought them off. Most landed in the water and made it back to their boat. The Red Kite was as stuck as we were—this was before the Swallow came into these waters—and when the wind returned, we got away.”
“Most landed in the water?” she says, a feeling of trepidation creeping up.
Jack nods. “You still want to go to sea, Bucca’s daughter?”
She fights off the queasiness and says, “I should like it of all things.”
He picks up a pebble and sends it sailing through the sky. It lands in the creek with a plop. “Come, how did you really do it?”
“Do what?”
“Where did you learn to swim like that? To stay underwater for so long? Or do you have a set of gills concealed under those pretty locks of yours?”
She lifts the mass of wet hair drooping down the right side of her face. “No gills. Nor flippers or the skin of an eel.”
“That I can tell. But how do you do it?”
“I don’t know,” she says truthfully. “I’ve always been able to do it. My parents swore they never taught me how to swim. Whoever did teach me taught me well.”
“And you’ve not a single memory from before your parents found you?”
“No. I’ve tried to remember, but…” She lifts her hands, palms up.
Jack throws another pebble. This one skips on the water twice before going under. “I always considered myself unfortunate to have lost my mother at such a young age, but at least I remember her.”
“But you see, I do remember my parents, for they’re the ones I had since I was found.
” How different her situation would’ve been now, had her parents still been alive.
Years of command taught Admiral Farnworth to trust his own judgment, and that judgment could be harsh.
But he had loved her deeply, and she feels certain he would’ve been able to look beyond the rumors about her and James.
With her parents gone, she has nobody to fall back on.
Another pebble goes flying. Jack’s voice brings her back to the present: the turquoise water, the tall trees rustling, the hot, rocky beach. “And staying underwater that long, how do you do that?”
“You’re all too interested in my swimming abilities,” she says.
“Naturally. Around here, people believe you’re the Sea Bucca’s daughter. I discounted it as nonsense for the most part, but now I’ve seen you swim.”
“Jack, you don’t really believe there’s anything to it? There’s no such thing as mermen or mermaids. What of Voltaire and Rousseau on your bookshelves? Are you not a creature of reason like them?”
He laughs. “You saw those, did you? I like to think I’m a man of reason, but one cannot grow up in Cornwall and not accept that there may be some truth in the old stories.
Reason doesn’t mean terribly much when your ship is caught in a November storm and makes it through by the grace of God, or if you’re far down a mine and something or someone protects you when there’s a cave-in.
There are too many stories of ghosts and piskies for me to discount every single one of them outright.
” His gaze trails down her wet, clinging dress, coming to rest on her bosom.
“If there’s no magic involved, you must have a prodigious set of lungs in there. ”
“Jack!”
“What? I’m merely stating the facts.”
The sun burns a hole in the day. They eat oatcakes on the rocks and wash them down with wine from Jack’s bottle, talking as their clothes dry.
When, after several hours, they get up to leave, Isabel’s face glows with sunburn.
“Thank you,” she says as he helps her climb back up the cliff to the trail.
“I haven’t spent such a lovely afternoon in a long time. ”
“Neither have I.”
Back at the old pilchard shed, they part ways. Jack has Myra by the reins and leads her up the gravel path. “The next time I see you, it’ll be to board your ship,” Isabel says.
His expression clouds over. “You haven’t changed your mind?”
“Never in a hundred years. You’re stuck with me, I’m afraid.” She feels her heart in her throat. Please don’t tell me you’ve changed yours.
After a moment, the clouds clear. “I wish you’d see sense, but as you’re determined to persist in this folly, don’t let this pleasant afternoon of ours stand in the way of you obeying my orders on board the Rapide.”
“Obeying your orders?” she says. “You sound as if you mean it, Jack.”
He mounts the horse and, looking down at her from Myra’s back, says, “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t. I told you, you’re to work the same as the rest of the crew.”
“But doing what?”
He waves his hand dismissively. “Hauling up the mainsail, reefing the stay, turning the capstan.” When he sees the look on her face, he laughs. “I jest. These are a sailor’s tasks, not a woman’s.”
“I’ll do them,” she says, jaw set. “I’ll learn.”
“I’m sure you would, too, but I’ve got a better job for you. I could use your help with the books—I’m too busy myself half the time. Do you know how to do arithmetic?”
“I had a governess.”
“Very well. You can be my bookkeeper for the run.” Lowering his voice, he says, “I’ll give you the specifics on what we carry and where we plan to sell it when you present yourself for muster.”
“Aye, Captain,” she says, and he laughs again and says, “We’ll make you a free trader yet.”