Chapter Twelve

T he path Jack was following opened out onto rough moorland, leaving the small, stone-walled fields of grazing sheep behind them. Overhead, clouds dotted the blue arc of the sky, and the sun, warm for late September, beat down on his back. He took a quick, sideways glance at his companion. A soft sea breeze blew, gently ruffling the wispy curls on the nape of her slender, all-too seductive neck. That she’d been of two minds about riding out in his company had not escaped him, and even now he could sense the tension zinging through her body whenever he rode too close. What did she think he was going to do to her out on a perfectly simple ride? He felt a little insulted that she so blatantly didn’t trust him. He might have a bit of a reputation with women, but never for illtreating them, nor taking what they weren’t perfectly happy to give. And the mystery about her only made him the more interested.

“Your mother’s horse is truly a pleasure to ride, Captain Trevelyan,” she said, turning to look at him, seemingly unaware of his scrutiny. Her cheeks had flushed a becoming pink, and her hazel eyes shone, although Jack doubted for the same reason he was feeling that way himself. As he met her eyes, an inexplicable warm glow that he couldn’t fathom started in his stomach and spread through his body in a tidal wave of unaccustomed emotion.

She dropped her gaze in a hurry, as though she might have divined his reaction and been disturbed by it. Even, that she was afraid of it, and him.

He needed to pull himself together; she was just another pretty woman, and he’d known plenty of them. In the Biblical sense. He should make some innocuous conversation to put her at ease. “As we are to be neighbors, and perhaps come to know one another a little better.” He kept Shadow at a respectful distance from Peggy, aware that he might sound as though he was gabbling but unable to stop himself. “Would you perhaps feel comfortable in calling me Jack? Everyone else does, and Captain Trevelyan sounds so formal. I should be honored if you would.”

Damn it. He’d gone too far. This was a gently brought up and obviously shy young widow he was talking to, not some Breton girl in a bar in Roscoff. Although he’d always been quite happy for girls like that to just call him Capitan in their lilting, sing-song accents.

She blinked at him, possibly considering the connotations of agreeing to this. Such as having to allow him, in return, the freedom of her own first name. After a long pause, she bowed her head in what he took to be acquiescence. “I own I am a little reticent at such informality. However…” She pressed her pretty lips together. “As I am already friends with your mother, and she has invited me to call her Talwyn, I see no insurmountable barrier to my addressing you as Jack.” She regarded him out of solemn eyes. “And I suppose you are hoping that you might call me Harriet?”

Of course he was. That was the whole point. He almost laughed. She was, he had to admit, beguiling, especially in her snug blue riding habit that showed off her still slender waist and the delightful curve of her breasts. He had an urge to put his hands around that waist and pull her towards him; an urge prevented by the fact they were both on horseback and by the thought that it was a move she wasn’t likely to be in the least happy about. Best to still those thoughts. She might be impoverished, but she was not one of the light-moraled women he was used to. “Only if you are comfortable with it… Mrs. Penhallow.”

A chough flew across their path towards the coast, too far away to startle the horses, as she appeared to be giving this some thought. At last, she gave a little, almost careless, toss of her head, indicating that despite her apparent wariness of him, she still possessed some daring spirit. “I have decided that you may call me Harriet, if you so wish.”

This caused Jack such pleasure that he felt his own cheeks color. Again. What was he? A green boy? He hadn’t considered himself one of those since he was fifteen. To distract her attention, he nodded ahead towards a distant outcropping of granite. “We can canter to that pile of rocks, if you like. Harriet…”

She needed no further telling, and, with a momentary delightfully wicked look in her eyes, she sent Peggy galloping up the track between the banks of heather and yellow gorse, crouching forward over her horse’s neck to encourage her speed.

Shadow pranced under Jack’s tight hold, eager to join in.

Hadn’t he said canter ? The pleasurable thought that he might have taken on some sort of human Valkyrie flashed into Jack’s head as he sent the over-eager Shadow in pursuit.

He reached the granite outcropping neck-and-neck with Harriet and Peggy and pulled up to a walk as she did. Both horses’ sides were heaving, but Harriet’s eyes shone with the excitement of the gallop as she put a gloved hand to her flushed face and windblown hair. At least she hadn’t lost her hat, which must have some powerful witchcraft to keep it still fixed to her head like this. Unlike Jack’s, which had blown off right at the start, hatpins not being a normal convention in men’s wardrobes. He’d send one of his servants out later to find it. Peterkin, the gardener’s boy.

“Now that,” she exclaimed, “is why I said I would come riding with you. For moments like this.”

Was this her true self suddenly on show? A confident, laughing girl taking pleasure in the speed of the gallop, instead of the wary, skittery young woman who looked as though she thought disaster about to strike at any moment.

Jack had to laugh. “I had no idea you were such a neck-or-nothing rider.” Shadow pranced under him again, eager to keep going now he’d been given his head once. “Someone after my own heart. You must have been feeling quite deprived when you lived within the confines of Bath.”

Her expression sobered as though a cloud had obscured the sun, as though she’d suddenly remembered the persona she was meant to be projecting. She didn’t answer as they started downhill towards Mount’s Bay, where the little, rocky island of St Michael’s Mount could be seen with its grand house clinging to the summit. The tide was right out, and the raised causeway to the island lay visible with a laden string of packhorses trudging across it.

“Is that a real castle?” Harriet asked, her change of subject marked.

Jack shrugged, glad to be able to discuss the view and not have to think how attractive his companion looked with her windblown cheeks and hair. “In a way, I suppose it is. More of a country seat now than a defensive structure, although I believe it’s withstood the odd siege in its time. It belongs to the St Aubyn family to whom I’m distantly related.” He grinned. “Very distantly, which is how they prefer it.”

She shot him a curious look, a little less wary than before, but had to turn her attention back to where Peggy was picking her way between the scattered lumps of weathered granite lying half-hidden in the heather. A bloom of deep purple covered the hillside and the inland hills, only here and there interrupted by the vivid greens of clusters of small, enclosed fields.

The horses reached the foot of the slope, where a grassy track led up to the Penzance Road at Marazion. Jack gathered his slack reins. “Are you ready for another canter? And by that, I mean just a canter, this time, not a flat-out gallop.”

The confident girl was back again, as though her other self had been momentarily forgotten and being on a horse had been the catalyst that had brought out what must be her true self. “Was our last gallop a shade too fast for you, perhaps?”

“On the contrary. I feared it might be too fast for you, as you’ve not ridden for so long.”

“Peggy is such a sweet goer I already feel quite at home in the saddle, as though no time at all has passed since last I rode.”

She looked it too. If he hadn’t known she had a daughter of fifteen, he’d have thought her a girl herself, with her flawless skin and still shining eyes. He’d never known a woman so enamored of riding, apart from Kit’s mother, of course, as most saw it as a necessary evil to get from place to place. This was a woman who saw it as the ultimate of pleasures. Well, perhaps not quite the ultimate, but he refused to think about that. He cleared a throat gone suddenly dry. “All the same, just a canter this time.”

Her smile widened. “Why, of course, Jack, if that is what you’d prefer?”

The sound of his name on her tongue sent a shiver of glorious excitement ricocheting through Jack’s body. What on earth?

But he had no time to ponder on this as she set Peggy into the most collected of canters that seemed scarcely faster than the walk they’d been doing down the hill. Damn her, she really was an accomplished horsewoman. She could easily give Lady Ormonde a run for her money. He hadn’t quite expected that of her.

He kept Shadow in a more workaday trot beside her until they reached the road, where a ramshackle gate had to be negotiated, something he did from the saddle with casual aplomb, glad, in a way, to show off his own skills as a horseman. She gave him a round of applause as he finally pulled it shut and looped the ragged rope over the gatepost again. “Bravo. You have a certain skill on a horse, I’ll own.”

“Such praise, from a veritable centaur.”

“I like to think I can spot a real rider, and I can see you’re just that.” Her gaze slid past him, out to sea, where a ship could be seen breasting the small waves and heading east along the coast.

Jack would have known the ship anywhere. But then, after a lifetime at sea, he could recognize most ships from further away than they were at this moment, especially the St Ives revenue cutter. But this wasn’t the revenue cutter. No mistaking The Fly , her search for a cargo done, with all five of her sails up as she left Penzance behind. From the way she was breasting the waves, he could tell she had a good load on board, most likely of herring and mackerel stored in barrels, to be delivered as quickly as possible to Plymouth’s markets. She’d be returning to her mooring in Bessie’s Cove via Jersey in the Channel Islands where she’d pick up a cargo of duty-free tobacco. Then she’d return to the cove to pick Jack up and they’d be off to France to trade the baccie for the brandy that was so expensive here in Britain. The itch to be on board The Fly , with the wind in the sails and his hair, and the smell of tarred ropes and the sea in his nostrils, gripped Jack hard.

Harriet spoke without looking at him, her eyes squinting at the glare of the sun on the sea. “Are you as adept with a ship as you are with a horse?”

He gave himself a mental shake, remembering how he didn’t like to be aboard at the same time as a cargo of fish. “I like to think I am. But you’d best ask my Bo’sun, Dan Bussow, that one.”

She cogitated for a moment, her eyes on the neat outline of his ship. “What kind of a ship is that one? It’s such a pretty little thing with all its sails billowing full like that.”

Jack smiled to himself, strangely pleased that she liked his ship. “ The Fly . My own ship, commanded right now by my Bo’sun. She’s called a lugger.”

This time she did turn to look at him. “A lugger? A pretty ship with a not-so-pretty name.”

The Fly was raking across the sea, as sleek as the dolphins they often had chasing along beside them. “It’s from the name of her sails. See their shape? Four-cornered with none of the sides parallel.”

She nodded.

“Those’re called lug sails.”

Another nod. “She looks quite small.”

Ignoring the apparent insult to his precious ship, Jack shook his head. “No. For a lugger she’s large. Bow to stern she’s forty-five feet. Add in the spars, and she’s nearer eighty, with a beam of thirteen feet and a draft of seven.”

“I know nothing about ships. What is she for? I mean, what is her purpose? What do you do with her?” She frowned at him as though trying to connect him to the doings on a small ship in Cornwall, and probably coming up with the wrong answer. Hopefully.

“She transports goods—such as the fish others have caught as she’s so swift. And sometimes other goods.” Ha. That was an underestimation of what she carried most frequently. “Like you on a horse. She’s a flyer.”

“Oh.” She gazed again, one hand up to shade her eyes, as though the harder she stared the clearer her vision might become. “What is it about the sea that made you want to own a ship of your own?”

Now she was prying, but for the life of him he couldn’t dislike her questions. He should, because he didn’t want her to know any of this. And yet… the fact that she was showing such an interest pleased him. “I’ve sailed since I was a boy younger than your Theo. The sea’s in my blood. I hear it calling and I can’t resist.”

Her eyes widened. “Like the call of Cornwall?”

Yes. She understood. He nodded. “Just like it. I could no more live elsewhere than I could give up my ship.”

She nodded. “I see.” A little frown furrowed her brow.

Perhaps in her head she couldn’t see him as captain of a carrier, no matter that The Fly was larger than most of the others. He cleared his throat. “I think we’ve had long enough gazing at my ship. Shall we continue?”

They started down the road in a trot, avoiding the many potholes and stony patches, and the small fishing village of Penzance, beyond the Mount, drew closer. He found where the path twisted down onto the beach, and soon Peggy’s and Shadow’s hoof beats were muffled by the soft sand the tide hardly ever touched. The beach stretched out before them towards the village, where all the fleet would at present be out at sea, working.

Shadow pranced under his steady hand, and even the well-mannered Peggy skittered and danced, kicking up sand, eager to stretch her legs. “Best to gallop on the damp sand where it’s easier going for the horses,” Jack said. “But keep her steady to begin with until we’ve crossed the Red River where the sand can be quite soft and deep.”

With the causeway to the Mount and its surrounding rocks behind them, they maintained a steady canter, one behind the other, to where the Red River spilled out over the sand, trotted through its brackish waters, then gave the horses their heads along Long Rock beach, only pulling up when the horses began to flag. Ahead of them, Penzance lay a lot closer now, her stone harbor wall curling out into the sea. To their left the distant waves rolled up the beach, and to the right, beyond the low dunes, the flat river valley spread out green and lush toward the higher, heather-clad inland hills.

Jack swung Shadow around to face back up the beach. “Come. It’s best if we return to the road into Penzance to see your Mrs. Bolitho. It’s only a short distance from here, and I know Causewayhead where you’re aiming for.”

Her face, that had been flushed with the enjoyment of the gallop, blanched, and she visibly stiffened her spine. “Very well.” But she didn’t sound enthusiastic.

What was she so frightened of? Jack knew very little of Mrs. Bolitho, bar the fact that she was a known skinflint just like her late husband had been. Well… perhaps if he’d been going to meet her for the first time, he’d have been as timorous as Harriet appeared to be.