Flora stirred, locked into a deep sleep. In all her eighteen years, she had never slept in a room alone before, much less in one that rocked her like a cradle. The waves slapping against the hull were familiar, but so close to her ear on the pillow, lulling her back into the depths again . . .
A creak of hinges told her a door was being swung but she had heard it before and the echo of familiarity roused her again: words, faces, this place, drifted into her consciousness and she realized the ghost of a knock on her door still tremored in her mind.
Someone had knocked.
Blinking, she opened her eyes into a darkened landscape, a rippling moonbeam on water framed in a perfect circle . . . She gasped as everything came back to her.
Edward.
She had fallen asleep on top of the covers, she realized, waiting and waiting for a knock . . . What time was it? She looked out of the tiny porthole and saw that the moon had curved around the isle in an embrace, Connachair now basking in her glow and the sleeping village cast in a pale haze. Not a single light flickered from any of the cottages; not even Old Fin’s, and he barely slept, often napping in his chair by the fire instead.
It had to be an hour past midnight, she guessed, draping her red shawl over the light cotton nightdress and scrambling off the bed. She pressed her ear to the door, listening for the sound of anyone else being up, but she could hear only distant snores and the groan of the yacht tugging on its anchor chain.
The door opened soundlessly, and she tiptoed along the corridor and up the turning staircase. All lights had long been turned off but as she carefully cracked the door open, trying to limit its creaks and groans, she saw the oil lamps on deck still flickering on a low flame, offering pinpricks of light. She stood for a moment, allowing her eyes to adjust; unfamiliar shapes hulked in the shadows. This was an alien landscape for a girl who had never spent a night off her isle before.
Pulling her shawl tightly around her shoulders, she padded silently out of the lee of the cabin, walking past the dining table onto the open deck where the shuffleboard was painted and the tender stowed.
No sign of him. Had she missed her chance? Again she felt a flutter of ambivalence – she could still go back to her cabin, let this moment pass – but if her heart told her one thing, her feet did another.
She turned and walked the other way instead, feeling the wind pick up as she passed by the cabin and stepped in front of it. Suddenly, a tiny light glowed ahead, dancing and seemingly disembodied in the darkness. Tendrils of cigarette smoke reached her, curling like cats’ tails around her nightdress.
She watched him for a moment, still unseen. Over his shoulder, her village – her entire world – slumbered, unaware that her future stood on a precipice. Would he be her new horizon now? Could she trust her head, if not her heart?
She watched the cigarette tip dance, swooping up and down in fluid arcs, as she silently walked over and tapped him on the shoulder.
He turned.
And she gasped.
‘You?’ she whispered. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I could ask you the same thing,’ James replied, raising the cigarette to his lips and drawing on it again. He offered it to her too but she shook her head, trying to understand how this could have happened. Where was Edward? She looked around them, searching for another inky figure, a dancing orange firefly on the midnight bay.
‘He’s fast off, I’m afraid,’ he said, reading her mind. ‘The wine always does that to him. He’s snoring like a train – you might have heard?’ He rolled his eyes. ‘It can be somewhat testing, sharing a room with him.’
Flora looked back at him, sensing a difference in his demeanour – a casual diffidence that sat at odds with the po-faced earnestness he had presented all day.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about . . . I just came up to get some air,’ she murmured, her hair blowing freely now that she had unbraided her plait. She saw his eyes watch it dance around her face before his hand rose to his lips again and he took another drag.
‘Is that so?’ he asked after a moment, openly sceptical.
‘. . . Aye.’
‘Trouble sleeping?’
‘No, I . . .’ She remembered she had been sleeping, deeply; that it was the knock at her door – as agreed – that had roused her. But if Edward was still asleep, he couldn’t have knocked. She looked at James – he wouldn’t have knocked for her, surely? If his plan had been to catch them together, the two of them asleep in their cabins would have been just the result he was looking for. He had no reason to wake her.
‘. . . Yes. Trouble dropping off.’
‘Mm. I should imagine your mind was racing with all the possibilities my dear friend posited before you today.’ He shrugged. ‘I can see how it would be easy to have one’s head turned by that. It’s a lot to take in for most young women, much less—’ He waved an arm in the direction of Village Bay.
Flora swallowed, feeling her indignation begin to flow. ‘He has been nothing but kind and courteous to me. He has made no promises.’
‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ he said abruptly.
And there it was. The disapproval. She jerked her chin in the air at the outright slight. They were alone; manners held little importance for her now. Her eyes flashed and narrowed. ‘I’m sure you are.’
Bemusement hovered in his eyes as he waited for her to speak, sensing too that they were past daylight decorum.
‘You’ve looked at me like I’m the cat’s stink all day. You don’t think I’m good enough for the likes of him.’
‘I’ve never said that.’
‘But you think it. I can see you don’t approve of me.’
‘It’s not you that I don’t approve of. That’s not how I feel at all. I just don’t think you know him. You’re strangers.’
‘We spent the day together.’
‘Then you’re strangers who spent a day together. You still don’t know him.’
She arched an eyebrow, challenging him with a fierce look. ‘You have no idea how well I know him – you don’t know what he talked about with me, or . . . or the things we did.’
There was a brief silence and Flora could see she had scored a point at last, a flesh wound. His eyes swept back up to hers and she felt again the locking of their gaze that she had experienced that morning. His mouth opened, but there was a pause before the words came. ‘Edward can be . . . impulsive.’
‘You say impulsive. I say he’s a man who knows what he wants – and I like that. He wants to show me the world, introduce me to people. What’s so wrong with that?’
‘It’s ridiculous. You’re planning a life with him when you only met him this morning?’
‘Time is a luxury we don’t have.’ She shot him another sly look. ‘And besides, does that really have anything to do with it? By that reasoning you must be wildly in love with Miss Rushton, seeing as you’ve known her for years. And yet you let her go to bed crying this evening . . .’
James’s eyes flashed at the sudden turning of the tables and she flinched a little as he took a final hard suck on the cigarette before flicking it into the air. She watched the bright stub dive in a high arc towards the water.
‘You know full well you disappointed her by not proposing tonight,’ she said defiantly.
‘Yes, I do know,’ he agreed. ‘And it pained me to see, but I acted in her best interests. It wouldn’t have been right.’ His mouth had settled into a flat line.
‘Because I was there?’
He looked at her levelly. ‘Yes, in part.’
She swallowed. Though she had baited the answer, it still somehow hurt to hear it.
They were both silent for a moment, the wind making her nightdress flap like a skua’s wings, and she saw his gaze fall to the outline of her body. He looked back at her.
‘Believe it or not, I’m trying to help you. It would never work out with the two of you – back in the real world.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘You don’t know me.’
‘Don’t I?’ His eyebrow arched fractionally and she felt it again, that instinctive connection, a pull in her belly she couldn’t understand.
‘No.’
He looked away. ‘Well, I do know Edward, far better than you, and I can say with utmost confidence that although he will promise you the world – and he’ll mean it, while he’s here – over that horizon, he’s a different man, with far too many prospects. I told you this morning that he’s easily bored. He would hurt you and I guarantee that within the month, he would abandon you. He’s as quick to fall out of love as he is to fall into it. I’ve seen it happen many times.’
Flora stared back at him, stung by the wretched picture. Was that true? Would Edward forget her? Not keep his promises? Falter at the first real sign of his parents’ objecting to their match? Abandon her?
‘How can you call yourself his friend when you talk of him in such a way?’ she asked instead.
He stared at his feet for a moment. ‘Good question. I know I’m being hard on him. And over that horizon, I too am a different man; over there, I do not interfere with his carousing ways. I will defend him in almost every situation because he’s my friend, and because the women he meets over there are perfectly able to understand what he is.’
What he is? She frowned. ‘But I’m not?’
‘I don’t believe so, no.’
‘You think me naive.’ She almost growled the words.
‘Yes.’
‘I am no such thing!’
‘Do you know what a playboy is?’
She stared back at him, glowering, before she was forced to shake her head.
‘No, of course not. I doubt there are many of them here.’ He sighed, looking back to shore at the slumbering village. ‘Well, let’s just say that with his money and “boyish good looks” – the Tatler’s words, not mine – he has his pick of romantic partners. No one is off limits to Edward Rushton. Even the prettiest, richest young ladies, with fathers in powerful positions, succumb to his . . . charms.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said hotly, turning her face away from him.
‘Ask Sophia’s debutante friends. Or indeed, many of their mothers.’
Flora gasped, shocked by the insinuations and slanders. ‘That’s easily said,’ she hissed. ‘When you know he can’t prove otherwise here.’
There was a pause as he watched her. ‘Do you recall the girl who served us dinner?’
‘Tilly . . .?’ Flora’s mouth dropped open as she realized what he was telling her. She remembered how no one would even look at the girl. ‘Tilly?’
He stuffed a hand into his trouser pocket, watching as her mind raced. ‘Many a thing drops from the man who often flits, Flora – isn’t that the saying?’ he murmured.
Flora took a step back, hardly able to believe her ears. How could she have been such a fool? To have been fed all those sweet, pretty lies and believed them?
She turned away from him and walked over to the bow rail, angry tears stinging her eyes. But if her pride had gotten the better of her in allowing her to believe that she could, in the course of a single day, tempt a handsome, rich man to propose to her – that she was destined for the life that was his birthright – then pride would also stop her tears from falling. For several minutes she stood alone, the wind making a sail of her dress and a pennant of her hair as she composed herself, looking back at her home, the place she belonged after all.
‘Well, you must be very pleased to have delivered your message with such precision,’ she said, gripping the rail a little more tightly as he came to stand by her.
‘Not in the least. I take no pleasure from it,’ he murmured. ‘I’m only glad I was able to talk to you freely in time. I thought he’d never drop off.’
She looked back at him quizzically. ‘You were waiting for him to fall asleep?’
‘Naturally. I knew he would propose meeting you here.’ He shrugged. ‘It was something of a battle of wills, but the wine got the better of him in the end. Usually does.’
Usually does? Flora frowned as she remembered how James had taken it upon himself to serve the wine at dinner. Had the measures been unusually generous? ‘. . . You tried to stop me from drinking any,’ she recalled.
‘Correct.’
‘I thought you were suggesting I’d had too much, that I was behaving improperly.’
‘Quite the contrary.’
‘Excuse me?’
He glanced down at her. ‘When you sang, it was beautiful to watch. You were enchanting.’
Enchanting. Flora savoured the word. She had been called beautiful many, many times, but enchanting? Never.
‘I was simply trying to . . . protect your virtue. I knew what he might have suggested if he’d got you alone up here. And it wouldn’t have been marriage.’
Flora stared at him in horror.
‘You wouldn’t be the first,’ he shrugged. ‘Or, worse, the last.’
She turned to face him, her elbow on the bow rail. ‘So, you mean to say, all day you’ve been trying to save me from him?’
‘. . . As best as I could. It’s tricky, of course, when I’m his guest. But I didn’t want to see you get hurt.’
He looked up at the stars again, and she stared at his handsome profile. If Edward wasn’t the man she’d imagined him to be, nor was James. Neither of them spoke for several moments.
‘Perhaps you ought to spend less time worrying about me and more time looking after Miss Rushton,’ she said finally, pulling her thoughts back in again.
He looked down at his hands and she could see his jaw clench. ‘Sadly, I think her brother should be warning her off me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t love her.’
Flora’s eyes widened. ‘You don’t?’
He didn’t reply immediately, and she could see the pain on his face as thoughts travelled through his mind. ‘I thought I did – or could, anyway. I have a great abiding . . . affection for her and I want to see her happy – but today I realized that I love her as a sister and nothing more.’
Flora stared at him, remembering the young woman’s plaintive expression at dinner. ‘But perhaps if you just give it time?’
He looked across at her. ‘We’ve had plenty of that – as you pointed out yourself,’ he said dryly.
‘But she would love you enough for the both of you,’ she argued.
‘That would be unfair to her and wholly unreasonable.’
‘But you’re a perfect match! It all makes sense. You fit. You’re the same sort and her family wants the marriage.’
‘As I’m sure your family wants to see your marriage with one of the village boys. But can you make yourself fall in love with them?’
Flora was silent.
‘No,’ he said, answering for her. ‘Exactly. The heart wants what it wants, Flora. Logic and the right sort has little to do with it.’
Flora caught the way he was staring at her, the way his body had angled in towards her as he spoke. Today I realized . . .
Why had he realized it today?
He turned to face her squarely, as if reading the thoughts in her mind. ‘You asked me just now if your presence tonight stopped me from proposing to Sophia, and I told you that it did, in part. It wasn’t because I was angry you were there, but because . . .’ He sighed heavily. ‘Because when you walked into the salon this evening, I knew that if I had proposed to Sophia, I would have been proposing to the wrong girl in the room.’
‘What?’ she whispered. She blinked as the moment stretched out, seeing now the look in his eyes. ‘But . . . you don’t even like me.’
‘Would I have gone to all this trouble for someone I don’t like? Besides, how could any man not like you?’ He shook his head, looking irritated. ‘You’re dazzling Flora – beautiful inside and out.’
‘But you didn’t believe any of the boys here want me!’
He laughed, his face relaxing into a completely refreshed version of itself. ‘Well,’ he said after a moment, giving a guilty look as if conceding the point. ‘. . . I had to do something to keep you on your toes. If I had told you I thought you the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life, I would simply have joined a very long list of men who had said exactly the same thing.’
It was true, she realized. ‘So you were just pretending?’
‘Not falling under your spell seemed to me the only way I could get your attention. How else could I compete against Edward? He’s richer, funnier, more charismatic and more handsome.’
That’s not true, she thought, staring back at him and seeing the fire in his eyes now; remembering his strong hands and feet, this man who was so much more than he showed.
His gaze ran over her face like musical notes on a score. ‘I’ve been trying to get you alone all day, Flora.’ His voice had softened, become more intimate, and she felt a rush of goosepimples brush along her spine. She felt disarmed by his confession. She had spent the day thinking he disapproved of her; that he actively disliked her. To have to turn it all on its head . . . Nothing had been as it seemed.
‘So . . . the fossils?’
Another laugh. ‘I don’t give a damn about them. I did a geology course for one term but would struggle to tell a diorite from a peridotite. I just needed an excuse to talk to you.’
A ghost smile hovered on her mouth. ‘. . . And the picnic?’
‘Our intrusion was no accident. Edward was furious with me for not going back to the boat this morning. When he saw me talking with you on the rocks, he guessed – correctly – that I’d bluffed him to go and be with you. That’s why he got Cook to make up the fancy picnic.’ He shrugged. ‘I knew he’d up the stakes somehow. So I paid Effie to take me to where the two of you were sitting. If I couldn’t prevent it from going ahead, I could at least sabotage it.’
Flora was amazed. She had picked up flickers of the tension between the two men but she had thought it had been that they were fighting because of her, not over her.
James took a step closer. ‘Look, Flora . . . Flossie,’ he smiled, bringing back to mind his eavesdropping on her conversation with Bonnie that morning. ‘I know this is a lot to be told in the middle of the night, and I know we don’t know each other very well yet – but I also feel that somehow, we do . . . That our souls are not strangers.’ And he pinned her with that look again, reaching out a hand and lightly tracing her jawline with his finger. The touch made her shiver. ‘There’s something here, between us, that I’ve never felt before – a spark – and I think you feel it too.’ He locked his eyes upon her. ‘Do you?’
She nodded, feeling helpless in the face of his plain words and bold plan. He didn’t sweet-talk her like Edward, but there was something more compelling about his lack of guile. Edward might have seemed a prize to be won, but her attraction to James felt honest and real. He seemed to see her – truly see her, not just her pretty face – and she realized she wanted him to kiss her. Her gaze fell to his mouth. She really wanted him to kiss her.
‘Then I’m . . .’ He paused. ‘God, don’t look at me like that.’
‘Like what?’ She looked up at his eyes and he gave a small exhale as if trying to steady himself. He swallowed. ‘I’m asking you to give us time to explore this. I expect Edward will come to your door when he stirs later. Don’t answer it if he knocks. Don’t marry him if he asks. Don’t marry anyone . . . Give me some time.’
‘But how . . .? You’re leaving in a few hours . . . You’re going on your expedition and anyway within the month, the seas will be too high to get over here.’
‘Then we’ll write – as often as we possibly can. We’ll share our stories and get to know one another across the sea, so that by the time I return from Greenland, I can come back here and take you away with me, properly. And then we’ll know each other as well as if I had spent the summer here, walking with you every day – looking for fossils.’
The smile that played on his lips jumped to hers. ‘How do I know you won’t tire of me and disappear forever?’
He took a step closer to her. ‘Flora, I would posit even the devil himself couldn’t tire of you. You’re a woman who could rob a man of his soul and he’d gladly give it up for a sweet kiss from you.’
Her gaze fell to his mouth again as she wondered what it would feel like to be in his arms, to be kissed by him . . .
He gave a tiny groan, as if she’d taken something from him, and as she looked up at him again, she saw the open longing in his eyes. She realized how close they were standing now, toe to toe, bodies almost touching. His eyes swept over her face as he placed his hands on her cheeks and bent down towards her, the very kiss already in the offing: her lips for his soul, their twin hearts conjoined.
Heart pounding, limbs tingling, her eyes closed as she waited to feel his lips upon hers. Her body felt electrified with yearning for his kiss.
But it didn’t come – and the air between them grew suddenly frigid. Expansive.
‘Wait!’ she heard him exclaim.
Her eyes flew open just in time to see a fist fly and James was thrown back, sprawling on the deck. There was blood on his face and shirt, vivid scarlet even in the twilight, the vignette streaked with black as her hair flew in front of her face like Medusa’s snakes, whipping and striking in the wind. Her white nightdress still flapped angrily, pressing against her body in one moment and leaping from it in the next. Anger and rage swirled around them in a tempest and she already knew what she would see when she turned – wild blue eyes, angry reddened eyes, boring into her, lust turned in an instant to hate.