“You saw what she drew tonight.”
Buchan said, “I cannot accept that she prefers to forsake her people to remain on Burnt Island.”
“I doubt it’s as simple as what she would prefer, Captain. It’s rarely that simple for any of us, wouldn’t you agree?”
“In the main,” he said quietly, “I would agree.”
“Her only use of the English language at first was to talk of returning. But in the last weeks she seems to have lost her fire for the Indian way of life.” They stared at one another. Cassie said, “She’s afraid of going back there is what it seems to me.”
“And why do you think that might be the case?”
“She has been with us a long time now. Maybe she’s afraid they’ll think she left of her own accord.”
“A man was killed,” Buchan said.
“Some might think that all the more reason not to have walked out with the killers. And stayed with them this long.”
Buchan bowed his head to stare at his feet. He had come down without shoes or stockings and it now seemed a ridiculous intimacy, as if he was interrogating a stranger in his small clothes. “What happened out there, Cassie?”
She smiled at him. “Do you ever think of me?” she asked.
He looked up, startled. “I beg your pardon?”
“When you were icebound in the Arctic and you lay alone in your bunk in the dark, did I ever come to your mind?”
“Cassie,” he said. He felt a swell of panic rising. “It’s been years since we’ve spoken.”
“Of course.”
“I think of our time fondly —”
“No, forgive me. Please don’t,” Cassie said. Her voice had the urgent, soothing inflection of an adult comforting a child afraid of the dark. “It’s just I go months without seeing a soul that doesn’t belong to this household, Captain. Do you see what I mean?”
He cleared his throat. “If I hadn’t fallen in love with Marie before I met you,” he said.
“Oh,” Cassie said. She placed her hand over her mouth. “Oh no. No, you misunderstand,” she said. And she started to laugh, using her hand to muffle the sound as best she could.
“What is it,” Buchan asked, smiling. He was enormously relieved by her laughter and the relief fuelled a peculiar giddiness of his own. She waved her free hand to quiet him but couldn’t manage to quiet herself. Moments later John Peyton appeared in the doorway in his nightshirt.
“I heard voices,” he said. He looked them over as they tried to compose themselves. He felt as if he had caught them kissing. The officer’s feet, he noticed, were bare.
“My apologies,” Buchan said and he coughed out a last stupid giggle. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. The bristle of hair at the wrist made a brief rasping sound that seemed inappropriate and somehow distasteful and immediately sobered their mood. He said, “I wasn’t able to sleep and came down to sit in the kitchen. I seem to have awoken Miss Jure in my wanderings.”
“I’ve always been a light sleeper,” she said.
“Yes, well,” Peyton said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Not at all,” Buchan told him. “It would seem more to the point that we have interrupted you. My apologies, again. However, now that you’re up and about you would be welcome to join us.”
John Peyton was staring at the back of Cassie’s head. She hadn’t turned to look in his direction since he first appeared in the doorway. “Thank you, Captain, no. I’d be best to go back to bed, I’m sure.”
“As would we all, no doubt,” Buchan said.
After he’d gone Cassie said, “I believe I’ll do the same,” and she rose from her chair and placed it at the table. She paused with her hands still on the back of the chair. “I wanted to thank you,” she said. “For the letter.”
The thought of her father in his coffin wearing his ill-fitting suit surrounded by drunken mourners embarrassed Buchan, on Cassie’s behalf, and he simply nodded.
As she was on her way to her room he said, “Miss Jure,” and then corrected himself. “Cassie,” he said.
She turned to look at him over her shoulder.
“Would you help me speak to her?” he asked. “She seems to trust you. You seem to understand her better than I am able.”
“If you like,” she said. “I will talk to her.”
NINE