“May I offer you a slice of ham?” he asked coldly.
“Thank you.”
He laid a slice on her plate, then said in the same cool tone, “One of the crew who has family on the island will take you ashore, where you’ll be met and driven home. The story you will tell will not be far from the truth. You lost your footing on the cliff and fell to the underpath. The farmer, Jake Barker, found you, took you back to his cottage, where they tended you. Mistress Barker has some experience of physicking. She has more children than I’ve ever been able to count.”
A smile flickered in his eyes for a bare instant. Then it was gone and he was continuing in the same cold tone. “You will say that you had no recollection of who you were for several days. When you regained your senses, they drove you home. You will, of course, be suitably grateful to the Barkers for their care and attention, and will, I trust, ensure that Lord Granville rewards them.”
It was as if he were giving her a lesson in noblesse oblige because she couldn’t be trusted to recognize such obligations herself. Olivia flinched at the frigid tones but she could do nothing to change this atmosphere. She couldn’t begin to frame the words. Her skin seemed to have shrunk on her skeleton and become too small for her.
“My father is not at home.” But they would have sent for him, she thought. As soon as she had disappeared, Phoebe would have sent for him, so he could be there now. And however difficult it was going to be to face him and to deceive him, nothing could be worse than being with the pirate now.
Olivia had no knowledge of this man. The master of Wind Dancer was once again transformed. She couldn’t imagine this man laughing. Showing tenderness. His face had changed, the skin drawn tight over his cheekbones and around his jaw. That golden hair, caught once more in the ribbon at his neck, threw his face into harsh relief under the bright sun. There was no softness in this man. No laughter.
“Well, I trust you or his wife will honor his obligations in his absence.” Anthony lifted his tankard to his lips.
His tone was so insulting, Olivia wanted to dash the contents of her own tankard into his cold, sardonic face. She pushed back her chair and stood up. “Excuse me.” She stalked off the quarterdeck, her head high, her cheeks flushed with anger.
Anthony gazed out over the railing towards the island. It was taking greater shape now, and he thought he could distinguish the vicious rocks of the Needles at its farthest western point. They were approaching the maelstrom around St. Catherine’s Point, but on a brilliant summer day there was no threat from those hidden rocks.
He had an appointment in the Anchor with the brain behind the wreckers. He took a slow sip from his tankard. Was it a brain or just a vicious, greedy man who had struck lucky?
A cynical smile touched his lips. If the man was a greedy fool, then he’d be easy to outwit. A sharp brain… that was another matter.
Olivia no longer interested him. She had failed him. Or he had failed her. It had ceased to matter. Interludes, however pleasant, could not be allowed to influence decisions.
“I’ve finished the dress. Not quite up to me usual standard.” Adam interrupted his master’s reverie, holding up Olivia’s gown. He gave a disdainful flick at the work he didn’t consider satisfactory. “Not much else t‘ do wi’ it, though.”
“I’m sure Lady Olivia will be suitably grateful,” Anthony said distantly.
“Oh, so that’s the way it is.” Adam regarded Anthony with a knowing eye. “So what ‘appened, then? Thought all was sweetness an’ light wi‘ the lady.”
“Take her her clothes, Adam.”
There was a weariness to the instruction that Adam recognized. Recognized and hated to hear. He hesitated. “What’s amiss?”
“I wish I knew.” Anthony stared across at the island. Then he shrugged. “What does it matter? I thought… but I was wrong.” He gave a short laugh. “There’s always a first time, isn’t that right, Adam?”
“If’n you say so.”
“I thought that was what you said,” Anthony declared savagely. But he made the declaration to empty air. Adam was already climbing down the ladder to the main deck.
Olivia stood over the chart table. She puzzled over the notations Anthony had made beside the charts, trying to make sense of them. They related to the sextant and the compasses, that much she knew. The island was there on the charts, as were other bodies of land that didn’t mean anything to her. And the water was in different shades of blue marked with numbers. She lost herself in the puzzle. It was safe, clean, numbing. When the door opened, she was so absorbed she didn’t notice immediately.
“Did what I could wi‘ yer clothes.”
Olivia turned from the chart table, saying with as much warmth as she could muster, “Oh, I’m sure they’re perfect, Adam.”
“Doubt ye’ll think that when you look at ‘em.” He laid her gown and petticoats on the bed.
Olivia went over to look at them. “They do seem rather short,” she said doubtfully.
“By the time ye’d finished yer tumblin‘, there wasn’t much left to work wi’.”
Olivia heard his disappointment and picked up the sadly reduced garments. “No, of c-course not. You’ve done wonders, Adam. At least I’ll be able to go home looking halfway decent.” She gave him a brilliant smile.
Adam nodded. He didn’t like that smile. The girl was at some edge and it wouldn’t take much to push her over. She hadn’t been on that brink before. Probably explained Anthony’s dark expression. The master of Wind Dancer hadn’t looked like that in quite some time.
“Well, put ‘em on an’ see ‘ow they do,” he said, turning to one of the bulkhead cupboards.
“How long before we land, Adam?”
“Bless ye, we don’t land.” He turned back with the shoes she had been wearing at the time of her fall. “These’ll still do, but the stockin’s were in shreds. Reckon ye’ll ‘ave to manage wi’out.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Olivia said impatiently, taking them from him. “Why won’t we land?”
Adam regarded her in silence. He didn’t know how much Anthony had told her of the chine where Wind Dancer had safe haven, and he wasn’t about to blurt out their secrets.
Of course, Anthony had said that she would be taken ashore, Olivia remembered. “Is there a cove, then?” she pressed.
“Not fer me to say.” He gave her a nod and left.
Olivia, once more alone, knelt on the window seat watching as the island grew clearer. She would never see the pirate again once she’d left Wind Dancer. It was as it must be. As she wanted it to be. As she needed it to be.
She got off the window seat and went to the bed to examine her mended clothes. They would do. Once out of the pirate’s nightshirt, clothed in her own garments, she would feel like herself again. This thing that had happened between herself and the pirate would cease to exist.
And then she began to shiver. Once before she had tried to make a thing that had happened cease to exist.
She threw off the nightshirt and scrambled into her clothes. Gown and petticoat ended at midcalf, but Adam’s needle was skilled and the rents were almost invisible. She thrust her bare feet into her shoes. They felt strange, unnatural almost, after the time she’d spent barefoot… so carefree, so lost in entrancement.
She went to the window again, kneeling up to watch their approach to the island as it grew more and more distinct. She recognized St. Catherine’s Point. She often walked along the cliff path to the headland above the point. Just a few days ago, before the wreck, she and Phoebe had taken a picnic up St. Catherine’s Hill. It had been a steep climb to the top of the down from where they could look out across the Channel to the Dorset coast.