Harry escaped the oppressive atmosphere of the castle and did as Matthew Kent had asked, taking to the lanes to slowly reacquaint himself with the countryside and the landscape of smuggling.
The coast of Cornwall was a free trader’s delight, fringed with high cliffs and hidden coves laced with flat, shingle beaches. Beaches that Harry could not, in his present state of injury, climb down to, damn the cramped ache in his leg.
But he could still see that the sheltered cove on the edge of Banfield lands, with high, formidable cliffs rising up like a paling, was perfect for smuggling brandy or lace, or tuns of cheap claret. Yet it was a long way to come to smuggle secrets—Harry would have thought the French would prefer to use the coast of Devon for closer proximity to the sources of such information in both Paris and London. Perhaps the quieter coast of Cornwall was held to be less closely watched, but they were watching now, weren’t they—Harry on the land, and Matthew Kent on the sea.
Harry set his slow, cane-aided course up the serpentine path along the coast, counting the coves, searching for telltale signs of the places that smugglers might find useful to hide and store their cargoes until they could be moved inland. Exactly like the stone cottage hunched into the hillside ahead, as if it were trying to turn its back to the ever-blowing westerly wind.
The witch’s cottage. The voice in his head was Nessa’s, whispered in his ear as they had once lain hidden in the meadow on the other side of the stile.
And as if he had conjured her out of his memory, Nessa Teague came walking out of the wood into the field, her long loose stride scything through the tall grass like a benevolent force of nature. The wind made billowing sails of her skirts and hair, pulling the long, wheat-straight locks out of her tidy, vicar’s daughter pins. The damp October air pinked her nose and cheeks, and she looked wild and fey and bloody marvelous.
Until she saw him and came to a complete stop in the middle of the meadow, all traces of easy confidence vanished as if the sun had shunted behind a cloud.
“Nessa.” He raised his hand in greeting, willing her to move again. To move toward him.
She did so slowly, her footsteps far less confident through the long meadow grass. “Harry.”
He liked how she still called him simply “Harry” without any my lording, or captaining. As if to her he was simply Harry and that was enough.
“Come out for a good long walk, have you?” He wanted to tease one of those solemn smiles out of her. “Or are you on your way to see the witch?”
“No,” she answered almost too quickly, before she colored to the root of her sandy brown hair. On her face, wind-pinked spots turned a deeper red as she retreated into stammering silence for a moment before she finally spoke. “Why…would you think that?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” In the face of such pretty embarrassment, he decided not to tease her anymore. “I suppose I just wondered if the old witch still lived there.”
“She does. I mean she’s not a witch at all, really. Just a widow who’s good with herbs—decoctions and such.”
“And are you in need of such a nostrum?”
“No.” She turned to face the cliffs, as if that had been her original destination. “Just out for a walk before it rained.”
As afternoon rainstorms were a near daily occurrence along the coast in the fall, Harry decided to let the weather be his motivation as well. “I am doing the same, reacquainting myself with the area while I’m here. I’d love some company. Especially your company,” he clarified. “We didn’t get a chance to chat much at the fête.”
“No.” She looked down at her feet and then out to sea. “Well, you’d Elowen Gannett to talk to.”
“Yes. Strange, that. Did you know about this Allantide apple nonsense?”
“Everyone does.” She shrugged in apology. “It’s a local tradition that the apple can pick your true love. Or true love will lead your love to the right apple. Or—” She retreated again into that stammering silence.
“But you don’t believe in all that, do you?” he prompted. “Enchantments and true love?”
She tipped her head in the other direction, so the wind blew her hair across her fair face, obscuring his view. “Of course not. But it’s been going on for ages—since the dark ages, to be more exact, when Roman Britain collapsed. The land and the people here have long memories.”
She had always known her history in this casual fashion, as if it were a living thing for her and not just words out of a dusty book. “Doesn’t your father feel compelled to preach against such paganism in his Sunday sermons?”
“Not him.” She shook her head and smiled. “It’s been this way for as long as any of us can remember. He’d say it was good fun and that there’s no harm in an apple—you have to believe to fall victim.”
Harry didn’t believe and he had somehow fallen victim, but that’s not what she meant. “And you don’t believe either, thank goodness, or people would have been feeding you apples all day.”
She did not take it for the compliment he meant it to be. “No one tries to give apples to girls. It’s only for the lads to do the choosing.” She drew in a breath and steered the conversation into safer waters. “How’s the leg?”
How like her to be so considerate. And now that he considered it, his leg didn’t seem to ache so much. Perhaps it was the short rest. Or perhaps it was the easy camaraderie he felt with Nessa that relaxed him. “Coming along. Getting stronger but not strong enough for the cliffs, yet. This is the farthest I’ve come on one of my walks.”
“You’re a long way from the castle. Haven’t they got a spare horse for you to ride?”
He laughed at the idea. “No. I’ve been at sea too long, I suppose—I’m a sailor, not a cavalryman—I’ve lost the knack for it. I’d probably fall off and break my other leg.”
He amused her just as he had hoped—the ghost of a smile drifted across her face. “Not you, who used to race ponies across the sands at low tide?”
The memory came back to him in a gust—the streaking wind and the shrieking laughter, the pounding euphoria and the reckless joy. “And you?” Harry tilted his head down to get a better look at her face behind the veil of blowing hair. “Are you still racing ponies?”
“Me? No.” Her smile was quick and bittersweet. “What a sight I would make with my long legs hanging down like ribbons below the pony’s belly.”
What a sight. Those long legs that could wrap around a man and pull him tight. Those arms that could hold a man close—
Thought was instantly suspended as the blood vacated his brain and rushed straight to another, less governable, part of his body. And in his present somewhat weakened physical condition, his self-discipline was not equal to quashing a cockstand of surprisingly strong proportions.
Damn his eyes and the images that were now seared into his brain. But he could not damn the notion that sweet, funny Nessa Teague was a damnably attractive young woman.
“I think it would be charming.”
She was not a girl for compliments. “I’m grown up now,” she stated with a firm attempt at conviction. “Those days are gone.”
“I liked those days.” They had been some of the happiest he had known. “I liked that girl. She was rather extraordinary, as I recall. She used to tease me quite unmercifully. And beat me at those pony races.”
This compliment was too obvious for her to avoid—she colored a vivid shade of pink. “That’s because I knew the sands. And you didn’t cheat.”
“I still don’t.”
“No.” Her shy smile was his reward. “You wouldn’t.”
But they were talking far too seriously if he hoped to charm her into telling him more about the village and its secretive ways. “Do you still sail?”
“Aye.” She turned her face toward the sea. “I like the air and the wind.”
He felt his smile broaden. There was something about being in her presence that made him comfortable and happy. “You’d have made a wonderful sailor.”
She shook her head as if she were trying to ward off the compliment, but he could see her private pleasure by the light in her eyes. “What’s it like out there,” she finally asked, “on the open sea?”
Like breathing. Like living.
“It is my life.” The entirety of his hopes and dreams and ambitions and life all packed into one sea chest of a career. “It is hard and lovely and rough and tough and the closest thing to true freedom I have ever felt, commanding a ship.” And it was the only thing he could do. “It is what I do best.”
She nodded, as if he had spoken sense. As if his voice had not taken on that edge of fervor. And desperation.
God, he missed it. He had missed a clear sense of purpose—but helping Kent was giving it back.
“You’ve been so far, while I’ve never been out of sight of the shore,” Nessa mused, never taking her eyes from the wide expanse of blue-green water rolling endlessly toward the rocks below. “I wouldn’t know my direction, or how to get on without orienting myself from the land.”
“You’d get used to it. And you’d learn navigation—all those maths you helped pack into my brain, as a matter of fact.” Her expressive face was just changeable and interesting as that ocean. “I don’t think I ever could have conquered trigonometric projections without your assistance, so I must thank you for that.”
A small, pleased smile pursed dimples into her cheeks. “You’re welcome.”
“And you know what else you could do that would make me eternally grateful?”
Her eyes met his in an instant, full of expectant trepidation. “No.”
“Do you still have that little boat you used to keep in the harbor?”
“The sailing dory? Aye.”
“Take me for a sail.”
“What, today?” She put her face back into the wind. “It smells like it’s coming on to storm.”
A previously unknown piece of his internal rigging went taut, like a sail snapping full of wind. It was a physical feeling wonderfully close to pleasure. To desire. “I’ve never heard anyone say they could smell a storm. Feel it in their bones or see it in the sky, yes. I can often sense it in the air—the change in wind directions, the tufts of wind at different temperatures. But smell it? No.”
A smile that seemed equal parts pleasure and embarrassment broke across her face like a summer dawn, rosy and brightening, before she tipped her head to hide behind her streaking hair.
“But tell me,” he prompted before she could retreat into that stammering silence. “Describe to me this smell.”
“Wet and heat mixed together in summer. Today, cold heated by brimstone. And a bit like geraniums.”
His laugh was carried inland by the wind. “Geraniums?”
“We’ve some in the garden at the manse. You can give them a smell and tell me what you think.”
“I think you’re a rather extraordinary girl, Nessa Teague.”
Her blush warmed her cheeks and put a rather lovely light in her wide blue eyes.
Funny, he’d never noticed their color before, her eyes. Or the marvelously variegated colors—autumn wheat and amber—of her long, straight hair that had escaped from her pins. “Say you’ll take me sailing.”
“All right.” She raised her gaze and looked at him. He could see something that wasn’t quite confidence, but certainly wasn’t hesitation, warm the soft blue corners of those lovely eyes. “On the next fair day, I will.”