Burning Up (28 page)

I am a plain man,
he had told her when he proposed.
With ordinary needs.

And now he did not need her. Did not want her. Could not accept her.

It was as simple, as devastating, as that.

She drew her ragged dress, her shredded pride around her, a shield to protect her broken heart. She was an elemental, one of the First Creation. She would not stoop to beg for his love.

“How fortunate for us both, then,” she said, “that you never proposed properly.”

She slapped the pony’s reins across its broad back. The cart jolted as she turned swiftly away.

“Morwenna!”

Her vision blurred. She did not stop to hear. There was a roaring in her head like the sound of the waves and the bitter taste of salt on her lips.

Her brother was right. Love did not last. Nothing lasted forever but the sea.

She crossed the beach, shedding her clothes, and plunged into the ocean.

SEVEN

“T
he cottage was empty,” Jack said flatly.

He stared out the library window, his mood as bleak as the sky, his back to the room. Against the glass, Edwin Sloat’s image appeared, a darker shadow against the shadow of the trees. Jack’s own reflection swam in the glass like a ghost, gray and hollow eyed, the illusion heightened by the bandage on his forehead.

He’d looked worse stumbling off the troop ship in London. But however terrible his injuries, however dubious his prospects, then he’d had hope.

Now . . .

“She has not returned,” Sloat said behind him, his voice an unctuous blend of sympathy and satisfaction.

Jack’s hands fisted at his sides. His eyes felt gritty and dry. “No.”

He had been back to the cottage three times with increasing desperation and diminished hopes. Morwenna was gone as if she had never been. The air smelled like a deserted campsite, of ash and abandonment. Only the rumpled covers of the bed and scattered gifts from the villagers proved she had been there at all.

He felt her absence like an amputated limb, a phantom pain in his chest where his heart had been.

What had she said after she sang the young fisherman from the sea?
Go back to your sweetheart
. . .
hold her tight for the time that has been given to you both.

Good advice.

So why the hell hadn’t he followed it? He should have relished every day, every hour, every second he had with her.

Now it was too late even to apologize.

She had saved him from death. More, she had made him feel alive.

And instead of thanking her, he had accused her of not trusting him. Of not being what he imagined, when she was so clearly everything he needed.

No wonder she left him.

A cough recalled his attention to the steward standing behind him.

“Apparently no one has seen the girl since your, er, outing the other day,” Sloat said. “It’s caused some talk in the village.”

Jack felt a prickle like a soldier’s warning awareness of danger. He turned from the window. “What are you suggesting?”

“Nothing. Good heavens, nothing at all. Actually, I defended you.”

Cold comprehension pierced Jack’s fog of misery. “What do they think I did? Push her overboard?”

Sloat’s tongue flickered over his lips. “Of course not. Even if, in a moment of passion, you were driven to . . . But no one would ever accuse you of such a thing. Certainly not to your face.”

No one but Sloat, Jack thought grimly.

“Perhaps I should present myself to the magistrate,” he said only half in jest.

“Oh, no, sir.” The steward sounded genuinely shocked. “But perhaps . . . Might I suggest a stay in town would be in order? Only until the talk dies down.”

“You are very careful of my reputation,” Jack observed.

Even more concerned, he guessed, with his own consequence in the household and the neighborhood. Sloat’s activities had been curtailed by Jack’s arrival, his position further threatened by the possibility of Jack’s marriage. The steward must want nothing more than for Jack to go away.

“A change of scene would do you good,” Sloat urged. “The estate provides enough income to support a London residence. More income if . . . Well, enough has been said on that subject, eh?”

More income if Sloat were left in charge to carry on as he had before.

This was overreaching, even for Sloat.

“I will stay,” Jack said.

Even if Morwenna never came back, his duty was here.

“Don’t look for thanks,” Sloat warned him. “These Scots are an ungrateful lot.”

“Excuse me, sir.” Watts, the red-faced butler, shuffled into the room. “There are several gentlemen . . . men . . .
persons
here to see you. From the village.”

“I warned you there was talk,” Sloat said. “Send them away.”

Jack silenced him with a look. Whatever the accusations, he would face them. He nodded to the butler. “Show them in, Watts.”

The butler blinked and wandered off, eventually returning with the delegation from the village: the shopkeeper Hobson in his shabby coat, the broad baker with his orange beard, and the old and young fishermen whose boat had been caught in the storm. They came in tugging their caps and stamping their feet, ill at ease as dray horses on a racetrack.

“Gentlemen,” Jack said politely. “What can I do for you?”

Sloat sneered. “Isn’t it obvious? They’re here to extort money.”

“I don’t think so,” Jack said, watching their faces. “Two of them have already presented their accounts and been paid.”

The sharp-faced shopkeeper nodded. “That’s right. That’s why we came. Partly why we came.”

“Because they want more. I told you how it would be,” Sloat said to Jack. “Once they recognize a soft touch, they rob you blind.”

The young fisherman flushed and took a step forward. “We’re not thieves.”

“Not like some,” the baker rumbled with a dark look at Sloat.

“Why don’t you tell me your business,” Jack said in his command voice.

Hobson, apparently the designated leader, tugged on his waistcoat. “Young Colin here found something on the beach and he thought, we all thought . . .” Looks and nods were exchanged. “You should know about it.”

“It’s your boat, sir,” Colin said.

“The boat sank,” Sloat said.

Jeb, the older fisherman, nodded. “Aye, we heard. But there it was on the beach when we come in at the end of the day, whole and dry.”

“Not whole,” the baker said.

“Of course not,” Sloat interjected. “It capsized.”

“Sprang a leak on the way back from the island,” Jack explained.

“This weren’t like any leak I ever saw,” Jeb said. “This was a big hole cut in the bottom of the boat, all nice and round and even.”

The shopkeeper nodded. “I saw it myself. New hole. You could tell by the edges.”

Jack narrowed his eyes, his soldier’s instinct returning, sharper than before. “We had no problems rowing out.”

“You wouldn’t,” Jeb said. “There was pitch on the edges of the hole with threads in it. Like somebody patched it soft, see, to hide it, maybe to hold it until you got out in deep water.”

“A repair,” Sloat suggested.

The young fisherman, Colin, snorted. “Nobody would be daft enough to repair a boat with a plug like that.”

Jack didn’t know anything about boats. But he understood barrels. “Wouldn’t a plug swell in the water? Like a cork.”

“A wood plug, aye,” Jeb agreed. “But those threads . . . This weren’t a proper plug at all. Just rag and pitch.”

“And sugar, maybe. Or salt,” the baker said. “Something that would dissolve in the water.”

“You’re suggesting someone deliberately sabotaged the boat.”

“Someone with a grudge,” Hobson said.

“Someone from the village,” Sloat said.

The baker shook his head. “Major’s liked in the village.”

There were more shuffles, more nods.

“That’s why we came,” Hobson said.

Jack looked at Sloat, anger cold as a blade inside him. “You knew where I was going. I told you to ready the boat.”

Sloat bridled. “After which it sat unattended for hours on that beach. Anyone could have tampered with it.”

“Only one man did.”

Sloat showed his teeth in a ghastly smile. “You can’t do anything. You can’t prove anything.”

“I don’t require proof to do this,” Jack said and threw a hard right hook that knocked him to the ground.

The large, soft man sprawled on the carpet, his lip bleeding.

Jack stood over him, knuckles throbbing and face set. “Get up.”

Sloat touched a hand to his bleeding mouth and shook his head.

“You deserved to be thrashed,” Jack said. “For what you tried to do to me and for what you have done to others. But until this moment you were technically in my employ. Get up. Watts will stay with you while you pack a change of clothes. One of the grooms can drive you to the stage in Kinlochbervie.”

“But my things—”

“Will be packed up and sent after you. Get out of my sight,” Jack said in an even voice that had made hardened soldiers flinch. “If you are wise, you will stay out of my sight and off my land for the rest of your life.”

The steward turned white and red and white again. Without a word he scrambled to his feet and lurched from the room.

“Nice hook,” said the baker.

“And good riddance,” Hobson added.

Jeb spat in the grate and then looked sheepishly at Jack. “Beg pardon, Major.”

Jack was surprised to find himself smiling. “Not at all. I share your sentiments.”

“He could have murdered you in your bed,” Hobson said with more relish than the prospect warranted.

“I doubt he would go that far,” Jack said dryly. “He obviously has little stomach for outright violence. He is a villain, but an opportunistic one.”

“Cowardly weasel,” the baker said.

“Still, I am grateful to you.” Jack extended his smile to them all. “I am lucky the boat washed ashore as it did and even more fortunate in my neighbors.”

Grins and nods answered him.

Colin stuck his hands in his belt. “It didn’t wash up. The lady brought it.”

Hobson looked embarrassed. “Now, lad . . .”

Jeb elbowed the young man in the side.

Jack’s heart banged in his chest in sudden, wild hope.
The lady.
Morwenna. “Did you see her?”

“Nay,” the young fisherman admitted reluctantly.

No, of course not. She had left him.

“But it stands to reason it was her.” Jeb spoke up. “Boat was full of water at the bottom of the bay. It didn’t empty itself and drag itself ashore.”

Colin nodded, as if the boat being dragged ashore by a mermaid was somehow more plausible.

The baker scratched his jaw. “One way or another, things are better with the lady around.”

“She’s our luck,” Jeb said simply.

“The luck of the village,” the shopkeeper said.

They all looked at Jack then. As if he could do something to bring her back.

Too late.

He’d lost his chance when he’d thrown her confession back in her face. He had accused her of a lack of trust, when the true problem was his own lack of faith.

These men believed in her, he realized.

Could he do less?

She still cared enough to try to protect him. She had raised the boat and left it on the beach as a warning.

The question now was, what could he possibly give her in return?

T
he sun went down in a blare of color as bright as a trumpet blast. The sea shimmered silver and gold.

Jack marched the length of the jetty in the green coat and red collar and cuffs of an officer of the Ninety-Fifth Rifles, as well turned out as if he reported for parade, as grimly determined as if he rode Neptune into battle. His polished boots slipped and crunched on the weed-fringed rocks.

The villagers hung back at a respectful distance along the seawall, witnesses to his public show of faith.

Or spectators at his public humiliation.

His jaw set.

He stopped where the stone ended, where the land met the sea and the waves running along the rocks gleamed and foamed like Morwenna’s hair. The march, the show, were for the watchers onshore and for atonement.

But his words, spoken quietly to the sea, were for her alone.

“You told me once there was nothing I could give you that you do not already have. Nothing you need.” He swallowed against the ache in his throat. “But you took something of mine when you returned to the sea. You took my heart.”

The wind sighed. The salt air touched his lips like a cool kiss, like the taste of tears.

He took a deep breath. “Everything I have, everything I am, is yours. My lands, my life, my love. My trust. Morwenna . . . Will you marry me?”

Long moments passed. The clouds moved swift and full as sails before the wind. A bell rang in the harbor, tolling a warning to lingering ships.

No answer.

Jack waited, his heart full and his gut churning, while the sea murmured and the sun slipped further in the sky.

Onshore, a few sensible folks stopped watching and went home to their chores or their suppers.

Still no answer.

Or perhaps her answer was No.