Chapter Fifteen #2
“Me?” Harriet puts her hand to her chest. “I didn’t tell Mr. Carlyon anything.
But as I had only just heard the news of your shameful conduct in London from my dear friend Violet Hartley, it was at the forefront of both my and Sir Hugh’s minds.
So when Mr. Carlyon mentioned he owed you a debt for the use of your shed and asked Sir Hugh to direct a portion of the payment for the horses to fulfill it, Sir Hugh wasted no time in telling him exactly what sort of woman you are. ”
Her breath comes faster. The black-and-white-diamond pattern of the floor whirls under her feet. Jack was here. She wants to speak, but her throat has closed up.
Harriet says coolly, “Sir Hugh told me Mr. Carlyon was scandalized, as anyone would be, but he did not show any particular interest in the news. So you see, I don’t believe a word of you being his fiancée, Mrs. Henley.
He would not have acted as he did if you were.
I believe you were after him, the way you went after that sailor, because you are what you are—a hussy.
I only hope your husband was spared the knowledge before he was killed. ”
“It’s not true!” The words free themselves from the cage of her throat. “None of this is true! I—”
“Of course you’d say that. I should like you to leave now, Mrs. Henley.
I shall neither receive you in my house, nor call on you again.
” When she merely stands there, staring, Harriet says, “Goodbye.” Turning to the door of the drawing room, she calls, “Davis! Mrs. Henley is leaving. Do see her out, if you please.”
Harriet is blurring at the edges. Her mouth is a smear of rosebud-pink as she says, “Sir Hugh will send a man with the money for the lease of your shed. If you had any decency, you’d refuse it. Mr. Carlyon won’t even be here to use it. But I believe decency is a foreign concept to you.”
Harriet turns and goes through the door of the green drawing room, her back a blur.
The tiles in the hall are blending together, too, and the front steps, the beds full of roses, a few so heavy they droop on their stems, the sky heavy with the scent of them, and the long winding drive—they are all a blur.
The entire way home, she expects something to happen.
Harriet will realize her mistake and come after her.
The men of the Revenue Service will charge down the path, ready to question her about the events at Roskorwell.
She’ll wake up in Jack’s arms in the hammock aboard the Rapide, crying tears of relief.
At the cottage, her heart jumps: the door stands wide open.
Someone is here. But no—she left it open in her hurry to go see Harriet.
Inside, it’s cool and dark. There’s no food except for a bag of dried beans.
She can’t eat, so it doesn’t matter. On the kitchen floor are Jack’s breeches, shirt, and neckerchief.
She folds them before placing them on the table.
After that she trails through the sitting room and out the back door into the paradise garden.
Nothing has changed here. There’s maybe a little more fleabane blooming on the wall, but that’s all.
The grass is the same, the well, the trees.
She sits on the whitewashed bench and pulls up her knees, wrapping her arms around them.
She sits very still. If she moves, she’ll cry again.
A robin lands on the table, pecking at a crumb or maybe a flake of paint. She watches the bird until it flies away, listening to the lapping of the sea-river at the foot of the wall and hearing the voices in it. Come home, they say, but there is no going home, because her home is where Jack is.
She misses him; aching, hollow. It’s only been a few hours. She isn’t sure how she’s going to get through the next day and the one after that.
But the next day she does know how—by keeping busy.
The pink-gray dawn has brought new clarity.
She doesn’t know where Jack is, but he knows where she is.
Once the worst of the storm has passed, Jack may send word and she could join him, wherever he is.
If he would want her to. The rumors about her and James—surely they won’t matter to him after everything that’s happened.
After they lay together in the hammock, too, skin pressed to naked skin.
Maybe they never mattered. He’ll send word eventually; she will hold on to that.
Keeping busy will make the time pass until then.
First, she must eat. It has been over twenty-four hours and she feels it in her stomach, a slumbering nausea.
She soaks the beans and wants to light the fire to boil them but realizes she doesn’t have her tinderbox.
It was in the bundle of things she took to sea, which is sitting in the entrance hall at Roskorwell.
“Damn,” she mutters. The revenue men will have found it by now.
Is there any way they might learn it belongs to her?
Nothing in it had her name on it, but the gowns are finely made.
Not many women around here have gowns like that.
She’s going to have to tell the revenue men the story she planned to tell Harriet, if they come.
For a sliver of a moment, she wonders if she should go to the Revenue Service instead. She could knock on the door of the customhouse at St. Keverne and speak with Lieutenant Sullivan. But no, better not. Her story is full of holes—likely it would take him only a few questions to discover the lie.
Jack’s breeches and shirt are still sitting on the table in the kitchen. She holds the shirt to her cheek as she takes the garments up to her bedroom. The shirt doesn’t smell like him, it smells like her. Through the small window, she can see the water of the inlet rippling.
The sight calms her and she senses again the strange familiarity of the sea.
She wishes she could remember the moment she came out of the water as a child, but her first memories are of her mother’s silk skirt, the scent of the garden at Hardwick—a pervasive apple smell—and the way her wet shift chafed at the skin above her knees.
And something else—a cool, dark quiet, smooth as silk, comforting like her mother’s hands, lifting her.
The sea. Could she truly have survived a shipwreck at the age of four that killed all others on board?
She shakes her head, shoving the breeches and shirt under her bed. Downstairs, the beans are floating in their cold bath. What day is it? Friday. She won’t be able to buy a new tinderbox until the market tomorrow morning.
—
Mrs. Dowling opens the door at her first knock. “Mrs. Henley! You’ve returned. How is your family?”
Isabel takes in the woman’s kind, lined face, the inquiring expression lifting the gray eyebrows.
“My family?” she says wonderingly. For the briefest of moments she believes Mrs. Dowling is talking about the Du Pont family in France.
How could she possibly know? Then the lie comes back to her.
It seems a thousand years since she told Mrs. Dowling she was going away to visit family in Penzance. She says, “They are well, thank you.”
“Have you only just returned?”
“Late last night,” she says.
“You must be clean out of food,” Mrs. Dowling says, stepping aside. “Please, come in. I’ve some bread and cheese to spare.”
“Oh, thank you!” she says, moved. “I shall pay you back, Mrs. Dowling.”
“No need whatsoever, my dear. Why, you must be famished after such a long journey. Do you have anything in the house at all?”
“I’ve got some beans,” Isabel says, stepping into the large, low-ceilinged kitchen. “Only I seem to have misplaced my tinderbox.”
Mrs. Dowling says, “My, what sun you’ve had on the road. Oh, I nearly forgot! I have a treat for you, Mrs. Henley. Last week I managed to buy some of the best coffee and at a very good price, indeed. I shall make you a cup directly. Here’s some bread, dear.”
The bread is still warm from the oven, the coffee hot and sweetened with more sugar than Isabel can afford herself.
“If you like the coffee, I could get you some at the same price,” Mrs. Dowling says.
“I bought it—well, off market, shall we say.” She lowers her voice. “It was smuggled from France, you see.”
“Oh.” Isabel feigns shock.
“It’s simply impossible to buy decent coffee at the regular price,” Mrs. Dowling says. “Do let me know if you’d like me to purchase some for you when the opportunity presents itself.”
“Thank you. It’s very good coffee.”
Mrs. Dowling smiles so widely Isabel sees she’s missing several teeth in the back of her mouth. “It is, isn’t it? Speaking of smugglers, have you heard the news?”
Gooseflesh rises on her arms at the mere mention. “What news?” she says, blowing on her coffee to hide her interest.
“There was a murder in the early hours yesterday morning, not far from here. A smuggler shot and killed a man of the Revenue Service—an officer he was, too. Can you believe it? I have it from Tom Holder at the inn.”
Mrs. Dowling is silent, waiting for Isabel’s reaction. After a moment, Isabel says, “But what a terrible thing.” She says it too tepidly, she thinks, her voice as flat as the surface of her steaming coffee.
Mrs. Dowling appears to think so, too, for she raises eyebrows again and says, “Now, I may feel prices aren’t fair, but I don’t hold with murder.
The smuggler has fled, a man by the name of Carlyon.
He’s a squire, owns an estate down at Roskorwell.
The Revenue Service is searching for him, as is the navy.
” She drops another spoonful of sugar into her coffee and stirs.
Isabel is still blowing into her cup. If she keeps doing it, perhaps she won’t weep.