“Aye, she’s as skittish as a filly that’s not been broken to harness,” Sam said. “I’ve seen her bite her lip a little when you pass by, for she’s very aware of you. She’s nervous, belike—and with a fine set-up, comely young lad like yourself! Now, you’ll not take amiss some advice from an old man, would you?”
Hal looked down to cover his smile. “No, sir. Indeed not.”
“Then you must court her, lad, like you did before you were wed. Especially when you were married in a hurry at Gretna. For all she’s your wife, and now you can take your rights when you please, you must soften her all the time, not just when you want her—like gentling a horse. Give her a kiss or a pat when you pass her. Let her know that you think she’s a pretty thing. She’ll be moving into your arms of her own accord then, soon enough.”
Hal straightened up and glanced back at Prudence. He felt no laughter at all as he replied.
“I do think she’s a pretty thing, sir. I’d not have married her otherwise, would I? In fact, I think she is beautiful. But I believe she has no idea of it. She thinks she is meek and plain, and doesn’t have enough color. She has no idea that she is a woman to inspire passion.”
* * *
The words floated back soft and clear on the quiet water. Prudence felt scarlet color wash up from her neck to stain her face. Oh, dear Lord!
A woman to inspire passion?
The needle jabbed into her finger. She brought the bead of blood to her mouth and frantically sucked it away. Oh, gracious heavens! Hal believed she was desirable? Had he meant to seduce her when he kissed her all those days ago? Was that why he had done it? Had he meant to gentle her, like a horse?
She stopped sewing for a moment and blinked tears away from her eyes. Bobby left her sitting there and clambered up over the canvas cargo cover.
In fact, I think she is beautiful.
He could not have meant her to hear it. With a desperate attempt at calm, Prudence stood up and shook out her skirt. Then she turned around to put away Bobby’s mended suit.
Hal was still busy with the rope.
Light and shadow ran in beautiful patterns over the muscles of his forearms. He laughed at something that Bobby said to him and squatted down to speak to the child. Every movement was lithe and frighteningly masculine.
Prudence stepped into the tiny cabin and closed the door, her breath coming fast beneath her prim bodice. She sank down onto the narrow bench opposite the tiny stove and the clever dresser with its drop-down tabletop, and buried her face in her hands.
Who was he? Who was he?
* * *
“Which would you prefer, angel? Darkness and ease, or light and exercise?”
Hal was standing at the door of the cabin, looking down at her.
“We’re about to pass through a tunnel,” he went on, “known when it was built, according to Sam, as the eighth wonder of the world. It’s well over a mile long and will take about two hours to get through. The horses must go over the top. Shall we walk with them?”
Prudence stepped out to join Hal on the tiny deck.
A ridge of high ground lay ahead, blocking the path of the flat, meandering waterway. Yet the canal ran straight toward it and disappeared into an arched opening. Several narrow boats were lined up along the bank waiting their turn to enter, for the tunnel allowed only one foot of clearance on each side, and a string of boats was coming through the other way.
Sam maneuvered
The White Lady
into the bank to wait her turn.
Prudence watched as a boat slowly emerged into the daylight. A crew of men lay on their backs on each side of her, pushing the narrow boat along with their feet thrust against the walls of the tunnel.
“It’s called ‘legging through’ and I’m going to leave it to the professionals,” Hal said. “Sam will hire these same fellows to take
The White Lady
to the other side. While she disappears underground, shall we walk over the top? Sam and Davie will take Bobby ahead of us with the horses. And no angel should spend two long, dark hours alone underground.”
“I asked you before,” she said. “Not to call me that.”
“Yet I persist. Wrong-headed, mad, entirely lacking in contrition.”
“Are you?”
His blue gaze pinned her. “Am I what?”
“You are certainly lacking in contrition, but are you really mad?”
He laughed. “I hope not, in spite of my vacant brain. Pray, forgive my careless tongue! Yet I hope you will walk with me. There’s something I need to ask you, and this may be our only chance to be private.”
“What could I know that would help you?”
“I don’t know, but I am humbled that you still offer to help me, after—”
He broke off, and took her fingers to help her off the boat.
“No,” Prudence said, stepping onto the towpath beside him. “You are never humble.”
“Come,” he said. “And we’ll see.”
Still holding her hand, palm to palm, he strode off up the path as if with no care in the world. Her blood racing, Prudence hurried at his side.
At the top of the ridge he stopped and allowed her to catch her breath. She watched as Bobby and Davie rode the tow horses away down the hill to rejoin the canal, Sam leading the way.
“Now,” Hal said. “Please tell me about Dunraven.”
Prudence spun about to face him. “Why?”
“Because the very word is haunting me. I have no idea why. Ever since I learned it was Bobby’s title. Sometimes it even echoes in my dreams.”
“Do you think you have heard it before? That you come from a world where peers are your friends?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Well, I think that you do,” she said, gathering courage. “So I won’t tell you anything. What if you’re an earl yourself? What if you’re an enemy? It’s already bad enough that you’ve enthralled Bobby with your tales and your attention. He found you on the beach. He thinks you’re the silkie. And he’s right. You’re bound to abandon him.”
“The silkie abandons his lover, not his child.”
“Yet you swim, even when it’s cold or raining or pitch dark. You swim in the canal every night. Why?”
“Ah!” He glanced away. “If you don’t understand why I do it, angel, that’s exactly why I must.”
“But you swim for hours. You swim like a madman. You exhaust yourself.”
“Perhaps that’s the idea.”
“And perhaps I understand more than you know,” she said, her heart full of pain. “Perhaps I’m not quite as naive as you think. But you’re never really honest with me, are you? And now you want me to tell you about Bobby and Dunraven? I will not. I will not. Leave me alone!”
Leaving him gazing after her, she ran away down the hill after the horses.
* * *
That night they arrived in Stoke-on-Trent, where the cargo was unloaded and replaced with crates of finished pottery. It was very late when they finally tied up alongside several other boats.
Once again, Prudence crawled alone into their little bed.
It rained all night. As if she wept with the heavens, for no reason she could fathom, silent tears slipped down her cheeks until she fell asleep.
Yet Hal did not swim in the canal that night. The water here near the warehouses was hardly inviting. Instead, he disappeared into the town, and did not reappear until morning.
* * *
The next day they traveled steadily southeast in the broad, shallow valley of the Trent, through Stone and the Haywards toward Rugeley. The simple repetitive tasks of the canal occupied everyone’s time. Hal talked with Sam about what he had learned in Stoke: Napoleon had escaped Elba and landed in France.
Prudence barely listened to the news. When
The White Lady
arrived safely in Oxford, she would send word to her sister. She would never see Hal again. This long, slow torment would be over. Plain, uncomplicated Prudence Drake could regain her common sense and her equilibrium.
When Hal joined her that night, she had already undressed and slipped into the tiny bed. Once again, he had first gone for a swim in the cold canal. Chill emanated from his skin. Yet his silent presence burned her heart as if she had a fever.
Prudence lay with her back to him, her eyes tightly shut, and pretended to be asleep.
“I think I would very much like a payment, angel,” he whispered softly, as if to himself, with a wry, dreamy edge to his voice. “For God’s sake, I am working so damned hard, and getting nothing for it, but your frowns and disapproval. Just one sweet payment. A very gentle, innocent, friendly payment, if you like. Just once more, before you disappear into your sister’s respectable household. But, devil take me! Better yet, I think I would like a kiss, freely and passionately given, and offered from the heart.”
Prudence sat up, drawing the blankets up under her chin.
“It’s not fair,” she said.
“Oh, dear God!”
Hal slipped instantly from the bed and sat down on the edge of a canvas-wrapped bale. He put his head in his hands.
“It’s not fair,” she insisted desperately. “I did not ask you to come with us from the Manse.”
“Forgive my careless words, I pray! I thought you were asleep.”
“I didn’t agree to any payment. You work our passage out of some idle whim of your own, and from your own free will.”
Hal dropped his hands and looked up at her.
In the shifting light she couldn’t see his expression, but his wet hair curled back from his pale, moon-washed face like the slick coat of some wild beast.
“And so I do, angel. Forget that I spoke. It was only the folly of fatigue. Go to sleep.”
There was the edge of something close to anger—or close to despair—in his voice.
“Sam is becoming suspicious that I don’t behave as a fond wife should, isn’t he?”
“It doesn’t matter. If Sam puts us off because our marriage is in ruins, we shall no doubt find another narrow boat. Though it would be easier to stay with him as far as Oxford, of course.”
“And after Oxford?”
“Let us just get so far! In the meantime, can’t we do a little playacting? For Bobby’s sake? You don’t need to kiss me again. But for God’s sake, couldn’t you meet my eyes once in a while, or smile at me when I sit down to dinner, or speak to me without being spoken to first?”
Her fingers closed tensely on the blanket. She felt wary, even afraid. “Perhaps.”
“You don’t believe in subterfuge, Miss Drake, even in a good cause?”
“I shall try to be more friendly in front of Sam and Davie. I’m sorry if I have seemed cool, but it’s not a very amiable situation, is it? To pretend to be wed, when we are strangers.”
He laughed with a sudden, strong passion.
“
Strangers?
You are a sane, unpretentious, and benevolent person, with a real existence in a real world. It is only by accident that you find yourself in such an odd predicament. Only I am the stranger—with nothing but a head full of verses and book-learning, and a body with unknown skills I discover daily—I can shoot, I can box, and I know how to handle the ribbons. But I don’t seem to have any personal history, or even a name.”
“You remembered the name of your brother, didn’t you? John?”
“Ah, yes, so I did. But the name has no face, and I can’t place the feelings connected to it.”
“And a woman’s name?”
“Yes, Helena!” A deep raillery edged his voice. “I have dreamt about her, but I don’t know who she is. In the meantime, if I see myself in a mirror, an intruder stares back and wonders what the devil he is doing there. My own face shifts meaning with my mood, as if I changed shape with the tides. I can’t know what I might do next, because there’s no anchor in what I have done before. Nothing but confusion glares at me out of a mirror.”
She sat frozen, feeling small and flawed. “Not benevolent. I am not kind.”
“Yes, benevolent. You have no idea how kind your heart really is. For when you look in the glass, you see the familiar features of Miss Prudence Drake. You have grown so used to them that you hardly notice the way your eyes are sometimes green and sometimes brown, or that your eyelashes are two shades darker than your brows, or that when you smile there is the most enchantingly severe dimple in your left cheek. You only worry in case your hair isn’t parted quite perfectly, or if your mouth is not just a little too straight. And the lady behind that face is someone you even believe you understand. What do you want out of life, Miss Drake?”
Prudence stared at him. The breath seemed stuck in her throat. Her voice came out as a hoarse whisper. “What do you mean?”
“How do you envisage your future?”
“I don’t know. I’m a governess. I’m very happy taking care of Bobby.”
“Which is a form of slavery. You will never earn enough to gain independence. Old age will await you with the degradation and pain of real poverty, or the mortification and pitfalls of being taken in by charitable relatives. Meanwhile, although you are a lady, you’ll always be trapped in a humiliating position halfway between the family and the servants, belonging nowhere. There will never be love, except that of children.”
“You think that’s not real?”
“Too real! That’s the problem. You give your heart to Bobby, even though he may be taken from you at any time. In a few years, he will be sent to school, or handed over to a male tutor. Then what? Another post taking care of another child, until your heart breaks again? Don’t you want a husband and children of your own?”
Prudence felt desperate, as if the future were closing about her in the dark.
“I don’t think about it. Governesses don’t usually have those kinds of choices. What about your future? What do you want?”
“How can I know?” He laughed, but his voice almost betrayed him. Beneath the light, cynical amusement, Prudence sensed something quite different. “How can a man without a past plan a future? Unless we know where we’ve been, how can we make sense of where we’re going? For all I know, my future lies in Newgate among the debtors, or the thieves, or the murderers.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” Prudence said with more conviction than she felt. “If you had murdered someone you would know it—in your bones. You would feel the enormity of it every day weighing down your soul.”
Hal pushed up from the cotton bale. Thin muslin drawers covered him from waist to knee—the fine undergarments of a gentleman, as her father had worn under his knee breeches. The three-inch waistband was tightened at the back with tapes. Three small vertical buttons fastened the front.