Burning Up (21 page)

She was not offended. She knew humans equated value with gold. “I do not want your money,” she said. “I laid with you for my pleasure. Now it is time for you to go.”

“Come with me.”

Her mouth dropped open. She had not expected that response.

“You don’t have to live like this,” he continued in his deep, earnest voice. “The hall is open again. I will speak to Watts, my butler. If you won’t take money from me, there must be some work you can do.”

He wanted to hire her as some kind of . . . servant? The idea amused and appalled her.

“I do not want to work at your hall.”

“Come anyway,” he urged.

The mad thing was, for a moment she was tempted. He was so very appealing, big and dark, stiff with honor and frustration.

She shook her head. “As what?” Over the past decade or so, she had learned enough about human affairs to know what he proposed was impossible. For both of them. “As your wife? Your mistress?”

He did not answer.

She took pity on him. “I am content as I am,” she told him gently. “I will not give up my freedom. But I thank you for your offer.”

He drew a short, sharp breath. For a moment she feared that he would argue or worse, try to force her.

He nodded once. “Then may I come to you here?”

She smiled at him in relief and approval. “You may.”

Whether he would find her was another matter.

She followed him out of the cottage, watching as he climbed stiffly onto his horse and rode away without another word.

She was
not
disappointed.

Merely a little letdown.

She had not thought he would give up so easily.

She stood a long time staring out at the bright and restless sea, its surface scrolled by the wind.

A plume of vapor.
There.

A round black swell broke the uneven water, its huge dark fin cutting the air like a sail.

Orcas did not swim alone, but she wasted no time searching for the rest of the pod. This was no ordinary whale.

It scythed through the water, too fast, too close, as if it would beach itself on the rocks. Her heart beat faster as the sleek black shape barreled toward the shore, its outlines blurring beneath the water. A wave crested and crashed. Spray shot skyward. Sunlight broke and glittered in a thousand dazzling drops, veiling the barrier between land and sea. The air shimmered.

Morwenna blinked.

A man rose hip deep from the water, tall and leanly muscled, his hair silver white as foam, his pale skin shining from the sea. Water streamed from his shoulders and wrapped his legs, forming itself into the black and silver garments of the finfolk. His chest was bare except for the silver chain and medallion of his office. Tossing back his dripping hair, he waded toward her.

Pale gold eyes met hers.

Morgan, lord of the finfolk and warden of the northern deeps.

Her brother.

Her twin.

“Sister,” he said in greeting. “You called.”

TWO

T
he next bright morning was market day in the village of Farness. The wind chased the clouds across the sky and harried the sparkling breakers of the bay toward the long stone jetty. A shepherd urged his flock of fat,
baaing
sheep along the narrow street between whitewashed cottages. Giggling children chased a lamb between the market stalls.

It was only up close that Jack could see the thatch on the cottages needed patching and the villagers lost their smiles at his approach.

His steward, Edwin Sloat, had urged him not to come.

“They’re a surly lot, these Scots,” he’d said, smoothing a hand over his thinning hair. “Liars and cheats, most of them. Let Cook do the shopping. Or the housekeeper, Mrs. Pratt.”

But Jack was determined to gain a better understanding of this place and his new responsibilities. To do his duty, he must get to know his dependents.

So here they were, he and Sloat, stopping by a fish stall to survey the day’s catch. The fisherman stood back, his gaze fixed on his cracked boots.

“Fine catch,” Jack remarked pleasantly.

The man did not answer.

Sloat considered the gleaming row of fish. “That big one would do for our dinner. Send it to Cook in the kitchen,” he instructed the fisherman.

The steward did not offer to pay for the delivery, Jack noticed. Nor did the vendor seem to expect him to.

“What do I owe you?” Jack asked.

The man gaped until he resembled the spangled salmon in his arms.

Sloat coughed. “No need to trouble yourself, Major. He’ll put it on account.”

Jack frowned. Some of the officers he had served with lived on credit. They owed tradesmen for everything, their boots, their shirts, their wine. But Jack came from trade on his mother’s side. He knew the burden this placed on the vendors who depended on the gentry for a living. “Surely we can spare the ready better than he can.”

“You’re not in London any longer,” Sloat said. “Or even the Peninsula. It will take time for you to understand how we do things here.”

But as Jack watched Sloat stroll the market, patting, prodding, assessing, he thought he understood very well.

The steward accepted two pints in the tavern’s silent taproom, helped himself to an apple from a stall. At the baker’s, he poked holes in two loaves before deeming a third fit to eat. No one questioned, no one protested his actions.

Jack looked from the crumbs littering his steward’s waistcoat to the baker’s frown in his orange beard and laid a shilling on the counter.

The baker’s gaze darted from the money to Jack to Sloat. “What’s this, then?”

“Payment,” Jack said.

The baker wiped floured hands across his wide middle. But he made no move to touch the coin.

Sloat swallowed his bread. “Our credit is good here.”

“No longer,” Jack said. “We pay ready money from now on.”

Sloat’s cheeks puffed. “I really cannot advise—”

“I am not asking your advice,” Jack said. “Inform the other merchants in town I expect them to send their bills directly to me. We will settle our accounts before beginning business on the new footing.”

“You will regret this,” Sloat said.

“To me directly,” Jack repeated. “By the end of the week.”

Their eyes met.

The steward’s gaze fell. Without a word, he turned and slammed his way out of the shop.

“Well,” said the baker in the silence he left behind. “That’s two things I never thought to see all in one day.”

They were the first words anyone had directed to Jack all morning. He turned from the door. “Two things?”

“Woman came in before you,” the baker said. “Wanted to buy a loaf with a pearl. Big as an egg, it was.”

Jack’s brows drew together. He was half convinced the baker was gammoning him. But why make up such a story? “Did you sell her the bread?”

“I did not.” The baker picked up the shilling from his counter. “I had no change to give her for her pearl.”

Jack met his gaze in acknowledgment. “Perhaps next time you will not have to send her away empty-handed.”

The baker scratched his hairy jaw, half hiding a blush behind his floury hand. “Nay, I gave her a bun,” he confessed. “Face like an angel, she had.”

Face like an angel . . .

Jack’s pulse kicked like a pack mule. “Morwenna.”

“Who?”

He exhaled. “The . . .” But he would not call her a whore. “The lady who was in here.”

The baker looked blank.

“From the cottage beyond the bluffs,” Jack said.

“That cottage has been empty a dozen years or more.”

“But she was here,” Jack said. She must have been.
A face like an angel.
“You must know her.”

The baker shook his head. “Never seen her before in my life.”

Perhaps he needed an incentive to remember.

Jack pulled out sixpence and set it on the counter. “For her bun,” he said. “Let’s settle all accounts today. How much more do I owe you?”

The man rubbed his beard again, leaving matching white streaks along his jaw. “I do not do the fine baking up at the hall. Only bread for the staff. Say, six quartern loaves a week, one shilling sixpence?”

A quartern loaf weighed four pounds. The price was more than fair. Jack nodded.

“Then . . .” The baker’s lips moved as he calculated. “Nine shillings a week for six months.”

“Six months,” Jack repeated. A slow burn ignited in his gut. “You have not been paid in all this time. Since my cousin died.”

Since Sloat took over the management of the estate.

The baker nodded warily.

Grimly, Jack began to count out sovereigns on the counter.

A commotion in the street outside filtered through the stone and daub walls.

“Thief!” The cry penetrated to the shop.

Sloat’s voice.

Jack’s head shot around. Through the dirty windows, he could see his estate steward’s broad, round-shouldered back nearly blocking the view of the street. And beyond Sloat, at the center of a tightening knot of villagers, was a woman in a sky blue dress with a cloud of hair pale as moonlight and floating like thistledown.

The fire in Jack’s gut shot to his chest.
Morwenna.

Dropping the money on the counter, he strode to the door.

“I am not a thief.” Her voice rose above the crowd, clear and cool and edged with irritation like ice. “I offered to pay.”

“With stolen coin,” Sloat blustered.

“With gold, yes.” She drew her shawl more tightly over her elbows. “I thought he would prefer it to jewels. The other man said—”

“And where does the likes of you get gold or jewels?”

“Enough,” Jack ordered.

The word dropped into the crowd like a stone, sending ripples through the square. The villagers eddied and ebbed away, leaving him a clear path and a clear view of Morwenna. She stood in the street, straight as a Viking maiden at the prow of her ship, her loose hair tousled by the wind.

His heart slammed into his ribs. She was even more beautiful than he had remembered.

A face like an angel
, the baker had said. Yes. But the cool perfection of her features only offset the wicked awareness of those eyes. She saw him and a slight, very slight smile lifted one corner of her mouth.

His breath stopped.

Sloat, the great, fat idiot, was too intent on his target to understand he had lost command of the situation. “Answer me, girl. Where would you get gold?”

She turned those wide, bright eyes on him. “I found it.”

He sneered. “Stole it, you mean.”

“Mr. Sloat.” Jack did not raise his voice, but any man in his battalion would have recognized and responded instantly to his tone. “You have no evidence of a crime, only of an offer to pay. Which I understand is more than you have managed these last six months.”

His estate manager flushed. But he did not back down. “No honest woman would have such a coin in her possession.” He scanned the circle of witnesses before beckoning forward a dark, thin man in a shabby brown coat.

Jack recognized the shopkeeper.
Hodges?
Hobson, that was his name.

“Tell him,” Sloat said.

The thin man fidgeted. “Well, she came in wanting some shoes, you see. I had some half boots ready-made. Not fine, but serviceable for a lady, and—”

“The coin,” Sloat snapped.

“Right.” Hobson looked once, apologetically, at Morwenna, before addressing Jack. “It was gold. And, er, old.”

Jack held out his hand. “Show me.”

“Er . . .”

Morwenna thrust her chin at Sloat. “
He
took it.”

“For safekeeping,” Sloat insisted. “The coin is evidence. It must be preserved until this woman can be brought before a magistrate.”

“Let me see,” Jack said.

Sloat dug in his waistcoat pocket and abstracted his prize.

Jack turned it over in his palm. Rather than the guinea he expected, the coin was roughly stamped on one side with a cross and on the other with two pillars. A Spanish doubloon, like the pirate treasure he used to dream of when he was a boy. He looked at Morwenna. “This is yours?”

She shrugged. “As much as anyone’s.”

Jack had a sudden vision of her confronting him in her cottage, the outlines of her body revealed through her loose white dress.
I do not want your money,
she had said.
I laid with you for my pleasure.

“She’s a liar as well as a thief,” Sloat said.

Jack kept his hand from fisting on the coin. “I would not throw around public accusations of thievery if I were you. Go back to the hall. I want the household accounts for the past six months on my desk when I return.”

Sloat wet his lips. “I only want to see justice done.”

“So do I,” Jack said grimly. “The accounts, Mr. Sloat.”

Sloat’s gaze darted around the circle of interested and unsympathetic faces. A soft catcall carried through the ranks of the villagers. A snigger. A hush. For months the steward had been the power here; it would take time to establish Jack as master of Arden Hall.

Sloat delivered a jerky bow and stalked toward their tethered horses.

The tension loosened in Jack’s shoulders. He held out the gold piece to Morwenna. “I believe this is yours.”

“His now,” she said, with a nod toward Hobson. “He gave me shoes.”

Jack glanced from her new boots to Hobson’s avid face.

“It is too much,” Jack explained. “Nor can he spend it here. I will pay him for the boots.”

S
uch a fuss over a coin, Morwenna thought.

The children of the sea flowed as the sea flowed, free from attachments or possessions. What they needed they retrieved from the deep, the gifts of the tide, and the shipwrecks of men.

She regarded the tall, dark-haired human with the hard mouth and gentle, weary eyes, holding out the treasure from the sea. Her lover from yesterday. How amusing.

How adorable.

He had come to her rescue. Anyway, he thought he had, which was unexpectedly appealing.

Her brother had been right. There was much she did not understand about human ways. She had blundered with the pearl, she acknowledged. Floundered with the gold.