TWO
The 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.”
Such 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.
But she was right, too. She could make a place for herself among humankind if she chose.
She smiled as she took the coin like a tribute from her lover’s hand.
She had her own ways of getting what she wanted.
She watched him confer with the shopkeeper; saw more coins exchange hands.
“Thank you, Hobson,” the man said quietly.
The shopkeeper bowed deeply, clutching the money. “Thank you, Major.”
His name was Major, Morwenna noted as he came back to her. She really must make an effort to remember it this time.
“Have you completed your errands?” the man—Major—asked.
She had purchased bread and shoes. Surely that was enough to prove to Morgan that she could function perfectly well onshore.
“Yes. Thank you,” she added, because he and the shopkeeper had both used the phrase and it seemed like the right thing to say.
“Then may I escort you home?”
He was so stiff, so considerate. Something about that strong, composed face, those warm, observant eyes, got her juices flowing.
Her smile broadened. “You may.”
“My horse must carry us both, I am afraid,” he said, a rueful expression in his eyes. “I could lead you, but my leg would undoubtedly give out on the walk over the bluffs.”
She regarded the great gray animal standing placidly in front of the shop and felt almost breathless. He expected her to ride on that? And the animal would allow it?
This day was proving full of new experiences.
“Your leg and my feet,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
She gestured toward her feet, already chafing in their laced leather boots.
His face cleared in comprehension. “Your new shoes.”
Her first shoes, she thought, wiggling her toes cautiously. They were very uncomfortable. Very human. She could not wait to show them to Morgan.
Major mounted with surprising grace for a big man with a bad leg. He leaned down from the saddle. “Take my hand,” he instructed. “And put your foot on mine.”
The horse flicked an ear at her approach.
“I beg your pardon,” she told it and took the man’s hand.
“Steady.” He tugged.
She felt the pull in her shoulders and gasped, more disoriented than alarmed as he swung her up and over. Somehow he lifted and turned her so that both her legs were on one side of the horse and her buttocks pressed his thigh on the other.
Morwenna had never been on horseback before. She clutched the man’s coat as the gray horse tossed its head. The ground seemed very far away.
But his chest was hard and unbudging at her back. The warmth of his body, the strength of his arms, enveloped her.
“Comfortable?” his voice rumbled in her ear.
She nodded, her fingers relaxing their grip on his sleeve. The muscles of his thighs shifted, and the horse stepped forward.
She sat very still, absorbing a swarm of new sensations, most of them pleasant. He was so very close, touching her. Surrounding her.
“Hobson tells me he has not seen you in the village before,” he remarked conversationally.
Morwenna straightened her swaying seat. She must remember not to get too comfortable. Her lover was human and male, which made him tractable, but he was far from stupid.
“No.”
“So you are new to the area,” he said, still in that not-quite-questioning tone.
She had no fixed territory. Unlike the selkie, who alternated between seal and human shape, the finfolk did not need to come ashore to rest. Their ability to take their chosen form in water gave them greater range and freedom than the other children of the sea. But their fluid nature made them even more susceptible to the ocean’s lure. Dazzled by life beneath the waves, they could forget their existence onshore, losing the will and finally the ability to take human form.
Even her brother admitted that time on land kept them safe. Kept them sane.
“I am visiting,” she explained.
“You must have friends nearby, then. Or family. You said you live alone.”
She squirmed on her perch above the horse’s neck. Most men were too distracted by sex to pay attention to anything she said. How inconvenient—how flattering—to find one who actually listened.
“Family.” Was that enough to satisfy him? “My brother.”
The horse lurched up the track that climbed the bluff. Water boomed in the caves as the tide rolled in.
“Older or younger?” the man asked.
Her brow puckered. She could feel his body heat through her dress along one side, his arm, strong and warm across her lap. Was all this chatter really necessary? He had not talked this much while they were having sex. Perhaps she should suggest they have sex again.
She eyed the distance to the ground and the cliffs that plunged to the sea. Perhaps not on horseback.
“We are twins,” she said.
“You are close, then.”
The children of the sea did not bind themselves with family ties as humans did. But she and Morgan were among the last blood born of their kind, fostered together in the same human household until they reached the age of Change. For centuries, he had been her playmate, her companion, her second self.
She nodded.
“This brother . . .” he persisted, following some linear train of thought, as men and humans did.
Morwenna sighed.
“He does not object to your living alone?”
She grinned. “Oh, he objects. Frequently. Recently. Yesterday, in fact.”
The arms around her relaxed. “He was your visitor yesterday. The man you were expecting.”
“Yes. Morgan thinks I should return with him to court to—” Whelp babies, she almost said. “To be with my own kind. He does not think I can make a life for myself here.”
“So you went to the village today to prove him wrong.” His voice was dryly amused.
“Something like that,” she admitted. She turned her head to smile at him, pleased by his perception. His brown eyes were steady on hers, flecked with green and gold like the surrounding hills.
She felt a quiver in her stomach deeper than desire. Inside her something clicked like a key turning in a lock, like a door opening on an undiscovered room. Her heart expanded. Her breath caught in dismay.
Oh, no.
He did not know her. He could not know her. He was human and she . . .
“Tell me about your family,” she invited hastily.
Get him talking about himself. Men liked to do that. She would rather be bored than intrigued by him.
“There isn’t much to tell,” he responded readily enough. “My father was a gentleman—a distant connection of the Ardens, as it turned out—who married a merchant’s daughter. I was their only child. They died together of a fever when I was sixteen, and, having no other prospects, I ran off to be a soldier.”
So he was essentially alone. Like her. She pushed the thought away.
“Do you like being a soldier?”
He was silent so long she thought he would not answer. She told herself she was not interested.
“I liked the order of it,” he said at last. “The sense of purpose. The responsibility.”
To have a purpose . . . She could hardly fathom it. “My existence would seem very frivolous to you.”
“Ladies are more restricted in their occupations.”
“I am not restricted.” She saw the frown forming on his brow, the questions gathering in his eyes, and added, “But I can see the appeal of feeling a part of something larger than oneself.”
“Yes,” he said. “I did not always like my job. Killing is an ugly business. But I liked doing my job well.”
How very odd he was.
How attractive.
The gray horse crested the bluffs. The sea sparkled to the western isles and beyond. Morwenna lifted her face, letting the wind snatch away her thoughts. The briny breeze mingled with the wool of his coat, the sweat on his skin, the scent of his horse. Sea smells, earth smells, animal smells, blended like water and wine. She drank them in, holding them inside her until the sky spun around her and she was dizzy with lack of oxygen.
She released her breath on a puff of laughter.
The man Major was watching her, a bemused expression on his face.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “It’s just . . . It’s you.”
She raised both eyebrows in question.
“You seem to enjoy things so much,” he said.
“Things?”
He gestured at the sunlit hills and bright water. “Everything. Life.”
She did not understand. “Is not existence meant to be enjoyed?”
“Not for most people.”
“Not for you,” she guessed.
He did not speak.
An unfamiliar tenderness unfurled inside her. She cupped his face in her hand, tracing the line beside his mouth with her thumb. “We must see what we can do to change that.”
His chest rose sharply with his breath. He angled his head, brushing her mouth with his. He kissed her once, again, warmly, softly, sweetly enough to steal her soul through her lips. She trembled.
Assuming she had a soul.
He raised his head, a curve to his lips, a troubled expression in his earth brown eyes. “I did not escort you home to seduce you.”
Her pulse pounded. As if he could, she thought with desperate pride.
“Then I suppose I must seduce you.” She paused before adding wickedly, “Again.”
Her heart lurched at his slow, wry smile. “I am at your service always.”
She chuckled against his mouth.
They rode down the hill together, his arm holding her secure against him, the horse swaying beneath them. They did not speak. Morwenna felt oddly breathless. She was used to lust, to the rush to rut. There was something new and delicious about this slow, sizzling delight, this gradual buildup to the act of sex. Her blood hummed in anticipation. Riding cocooned against his strength, she had time to savor her arousal.
And his. When he helped her from his horse, she felt his desire for her hard against her stomach.
Drawing back, she smiled into his eyes. “Will you come inside?”
She cast a hasty glamour over the cottage as he pushed on the latch and opened the door, banishing sand and cobwebs, masking the disorder and neglect of years. Her body was sending her all sorts of urgent signals: Him. Hurry. Now. But the sweetness of his kiss stayed with her, warm and flowing through her veins like honey. Time itself slowed, trapped in this golden moment.
She sat in the room’s only chair to remove her boots as he bent to light the fire. For some reason, her hands were shaking. The laces tangled.
“Let me,” he said and knelt at her feet to deal with the knot.
Sweetness filled her heart to overflowing.
He picked at the laces and eased the boot from her foot. Angry red lines creased her toes and ankle where the leather had chafed her flesh. He cradled her foot in his hands.
“What are you . . . oh.” She sighed with relief, closing her eyes in pleasure as his strong hands pressed and rubbed all the sore and tender places.
“That feels . . .”
His hands stilled.
Her eyes opened.
“Oh,” she said again and tried to pull away.
He held her foot trapped in his big hands, staring down at the faint, iridescent webbing between her toes.