Chapter Fifteen
She’s still walking. This is good, it means there is a destination somewhere, a place to go.
It means she’s not sitting by the side of the road weeping.
She’s on the coastal path; after a few minutes on the road, knowing she couldn’t catch up with Jack, she decided to head back to Helford.
The path is dry. The small streams coming from higher up on the cliff have mostly dried up in the warm weather.
One foot in front of the other. She needs to think.
There must be something she can do to help Jack. She caused this—now she has to fix it.
She was about to tell him I love you. I didn’t want to tell you before, but I do.
She was going to tell him and now she may never see him again.
She thinks of the empty cottage waiting for her in Helford.
The cold, empty bed under the rafters. The hollowness of not knowing where he is and whether he is safe.
She has been walking for a while; she’s about halfway home.
This means it has been an hour since she left Roskorwell.
Sixty minutes, approximately, since she last saw Jack.
Seventy-five since he shot Lieutenant Sowerby.
She’s nearly at the spot where she met the lieutenant two weeks ago, when she was on her way to Roskorwell and he came to call on her.
How she hated his intrusion at the time, the delay he caused her; how she feared missing the ship.
Now she hates herself for not seeing what Jack saw all along: that Lieutenant Sowerby had a far sharper mind than she thought.
He followed her and discovered Jack’s identity because of her, and Lieutenant Sowerby lies dead in a puddle of blood on Jack’s doorstep, also because of her.
She has to fix this. There must be something, or someone…
Harriet. She will go to Harriet and say—she doesn’t know what, not yet, but she’ll think of something.
There has been an accident. Yes, that’s what she’ll say.
There’s been a terrible accident. A misunderstanding, too.
Lieutenant Sowerby believed Jack to be the captain of the smuggling vessel Rapide.
Can you believe it, Harriet? What delusions the poor man suffered before he turned his pistol on himself?
It may just work. Lieutenant Sowerby was holding his pistol, after all, and had fired a shot.
He’s holding the weapon still, unless the revenue men coming to arrest Jack have removed it.
Harriet’s husband, Sir Hugh, is the deputy lord lieutenant of Cornwall.
Harriet will tell him the story—Lieutenant Sowerby awfully confused, a terrible tragedy, Mr. Carlyon unfairly accused, and so on.
Sir Hugh will be able to help, won’t he, if Isabel can make the story believable?
But Harriet will ask her why she was at Roskorwell.
She must have a reason. She had come to Mr. Carlyon for his advice about…
a reconfiguration of the old pilchard shed into a stable.
Yes, that’s what she’ll say. She must go to Harriet before the real story can spread.
She’s already turning back when she stops abruptly.
Jack’s breeches—she’s still wearing them.
Damn, she thinks, the way the men on the ship say it sometimes: Damn.
She can’t knock on Harriet’s door in a pair of men’s breeches.
It’ll take another hour, at least, to go home and change.
She sucks the salt-tinged morning air into her lungs and begins to run.
Even now, even in this most dreadful of moments, she notices how much easier it is to run in breeches than in a gown.
She runs until her breath sears her throat and her sides sting as if someone is pushing the blade of a knife into them.
She hurtles into the cottage, pulling the shirt over her head and untying the neckerchief that holds up the breeches, fast as the wind, dropping everything onto the floor.
Her hands shake as she ties the back of her striped cotton dress.
Then she’s out on the path again, sand and dirt flying as she runs to a rhythm made of his name: Jack, Jack, Jack!
The last stretch before she gets to Weatherston she forces herself to slow, walking up the drive instead of running.
She pulls some of her hair down to cover the cut on her head and wipes the sweat from her face, her neck; she steadies her breath.
If she looks a little ruffled it’s fine, she thinks.
It’s only to be expected; it’ll lend credence to her story about Lieutenant Sowerby shooting himself.
At last she mounts the steps to the entrance and knocks.
The doors stay shut. She’s about to knock again when a footman opens them and admits her into the black-and-white sanctity of the entrance hall.
“I’m here to see Lady Darby,” Isabel says, and her voice echoes in the space, an octave higher than usual.
The footman leaves her. She expects him to return and tell her Lady Darby will receive her, but instead the door to the green drawing room opens and Harriet herself enters the hall.
Her face is paler than usual, her mouth a rosebud, tight and small.
Could she have heard the news already; could the story have spread that quickly?
Isabel folds her hands together to hide their shaking. “Harriet,” she says, masking her anguish with a forced lightness. “How pleased I am to see you!”
“Mrs. Henley,” Harriet says, her voice as small as her mouth. “I wish so very dearly I could say the same.”
At first she doesn’t catch Harriet’s tone. Or maybe she does, but the words don’t register. Her mind is racing ahead, following the same rhythm as her feet did earlier: Jack, Jack, Jack. “There’s been an accident,” she says. “Jack—Mr. Carlyon is in trouble. He—”
“Jack? Jack? Really, Mrs. Henley,” Harriet says, and now Isabel catches her friend’s tone: layers of disappointment and disapproval.
Harriet says tightly, “I wasn’t aware you were on such familiar terms with Mr. Carlyon.
As far as I knew you had only met him the one time, when you both dined here at Weatherston.
But I see now that I was mistaken. I suppose…
” She falters. “I suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the news I have had from London. ”
A wobbling pause, then Harriet bursts out, “I thought we were friends, Isabel! I thought I had at last made a friend my own age and of my own rank here in the wilderness! How could you not have told me? How could you have let me tarnish my reputation by associating with you, without warning me why you left London?”
That is what this is about? She cannot have this, not now. She cannot let the rumors about her and James come between Harriet and herself, endangering her one chance to help Jack. “Harriet, whatever you’ve heard—”
“No.” Harriet holds up her hands, palms out, as if to ward off a dangerous creature.
She shakes her head again. “No, Isabel. I feel such a fool. Of course there was a reason you came here. Why would anyone choose to leave town and move to this godforsaken corner of the world if she wasn’t hiding something? I’m such a dolt.”
“Harriet,” she says through the tightness in her throat. “You’re not a dolt. Believe me, there’s nothing—”
“And now this with Mr. Carlyon,” Harriet says. “How could you be so—so loose, Isabel? So entirely devoid of respect for morality and for God’s laws?”
“Oh!” Through the pounding refrain in her head, realization dawns on her. “It’s not like that, Harriet dear—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Jack—Mr. Carlyon, he’s my fiancé. I know it’s quick, but we both feel a very strong attachment.
I couldn’t hide my happiness from you, my dear friend, so I called him by his familiar name when perhaps I shouldn’t have—not yet.
But I’m afraid he’s in trouble, which is why I’ve come to ask for your help. ”
“I should say he’s in trouble, if he were indeed engaged to you,” Harriet says. “Pray, does he know you carried on with a common sailor in London? One who served under your late husband, no less? Did you tell him before he proposed to you? If he even did, which I highly doubt.”
“Harriet, I…no, I mean…” She’s stuttering, unable to answer her friend’s charge.
Harriet is right. She did not tell Jack about James.
She should’ve told him when he proposed.
But all that matters now is that Jack stays out of the hands of the Revenue Service while she tries to repair the situation.
Please let Harriet see sense and help her.
Harriet says, “I thought so. How could you so ill use a friend of mine, Isabel! Well, you may rest assured, he isn’t in trouble any longer on that account. Sir Hugh has availed him of the truth.”
“The truth? Whatever do you mean?”
“Mr. Carlyon paid us a visit not two hours ago.”
Isabel stares, her mouth open. Her breath is coming too fast, it burns in her throat, which still feels raw from when she ran the distance between Helford and Weatherston.
Harriet continues, “He came to beg a favor of Sir Hugh. He had just had some bad news from family up north and had to travel there at once. He was going away for a long time and was in need of pocket money for the journey. There was no time for his bank to arrange it, so he asked if Sir Hugh would be interested in purchasing any of his horses. Sir Hugh was so good as to buy all three that were to remain; the fourth, Mr. Carlyon rode north.” She clicks her tongue as if impatient.
“But if you truly were his fiancée, you would know all of this and not look so thoroughly surprised, Isabel.”
“But I am his fiancée! What did you tell him?”