Burning Up

This one is for Kristen, to read in a hammock.

And to my wonderful readers—thank you!

ONE

Major John Harris squinted between his horse’s ears, willing himself to ignore the throbbing in his knee and the pounding like hoofbeats in his head.

He had survived the bloody siege of Ciudad Rodrigo. He would not die of a hangover now that he was home.

Now that he had a home.

And all his limbs.

He had not expected either outcome. He was a man used to dealing with life’s harsher realities. But he could not be sorry that life, for once, had frustrated his worst expectations.

He lifted his face, letting the wind tatter the remnants of his nightmare and blow his hangover out to sea. The air smelled of earth and sea, brush and brine. Neptune jingled his bridle, bobbing his massive head in approval. The rawboned gray had carried Jack unflinchingly on the winter retreat from Corunna and through the long, blistering march to Talavera, but the Peninsular war against Napoleon had left the big horse scarred and past his prime.

Like his rider, Jack admitted ruefully. At least Neptune seemed to be taking the transition to civilian life in stride.

Lucky beast.

In the weeks since his cousin’s lawyers had found him in a stinking Lisbon hospital, Jack had learned to walk again without a cane and to sleep again in a room with four walls. But he was as ignorant as the rawest ensign when it came to managing his unexpected inheritance.

He was a soldier, not a farmer, determined to carry out his duty to the best of his ability, grimly aware that his tenants’ lives depended on his decisions as surely as his troops’ had. He only hoped his best would be good enough.

The rutted road meandered over hills as worn as his bones. The land—his land, now—swept in a ragged curve around the harbor, anchored at one end by the peaked roofs and chimneys of Arden Hall and on the other by furrowed cliffs. Fishing boats bobbed in the shining flat water. A bleak, spare church, an unprofitable inn, and a score of small dark houses clung like mussels to the rocks, their inhabitants prickly as barnacles and closemouthed as clams.

Jack was used to bivouacking in hostile countryside. But Spanish bandits had nothing on these stubborn Scots. Almost a third of his tenants were Highlanders driven west by the Clearances and carrying a grudge against all things English.

Including their new landlord.

Jack closed his knees, urging his horse onward, leaving the village behind. His thoughts clamored, restless and strident as the seabirds haunting the cliffs. He could hear their plaintive cries slicing the air, the rush of wind drumming in his ears, the waves curling to shore like distant music, like singing.

Actual singing, he registered in surprise.

A woman’s voice, husky and cool, rising and falling with the breeze, tangling him in lines of music, knotting in his soul.

He stopped, searching the shore below for the singer. Just beyond the reach of the tide, in a patch of tangled garden and blowing grass, a cottage nestled in the shelter of the rock.

Jack narrowed his eyes. Who would choose to live beyond the village outskirts, outside the protection of the harbor and neighbors?

A flash of white at the water’s edge caught his gaze, a billow of movement like a sail.

Not a sail. A woman’s skirts, a woman’s hair, flowing loose in the wind, shining like seafoam in the sun.

His breath caught. Her song plucked his heart from his chest. She was all white and gold like an angel in a dream, a vision concocted of loneliness and spray and too much whiskey.

Neptune snorted, his ironshod hooves slipping on the rock.

Jack tightened the reins, collecting his horse, recovering his balance. The angelic vision became simply a girl without hat or shawl, singing a song he’d never heard in a language he did not know.

Who was she?

One of his tenants, he thought, setting Neptune at the descent. A fisher’s wife, a farmer’s daughter, a serving girl perhaps. No gentlewoman went bonnet-less and barefoot on the beach.

At the sound of their approach, the song ceased. The girl turned, pushing back her tumbled hair with one hand. The pose and the wind molded her gown to her body.

Lust slammed into Jack like a bullet.

She was tall and lovely, her breasts high and round, her skin as pale as pearl. Her face was almost savage in its beauty, her broad jaw and level brow balanced by a full mouth and strong cheekbones.

Jack sat like stone, his blood pounding in his head and his groin. Beneath him, Neptune stood like a monument, iron muscles quivering.

He should say something, Jack thought at last. Reassure her. He was a stranger, after all, and she was alone.

“Major John Harris at your service, ma’am.” His voice grated on his ears.

She regarded him without expression, her eyes tarnished gold.

“From the hall,” he said since she seemed not to recognize his name. “And you are . . . ?”

“Morwenna.”

No surname. A servant, then?

He cleared his throat. He was not accustomed to the company of women. But his years of military service had given him the habit of command and some small store of social conversation. “I saw you from the cliffs,” he said.

And promptly plunged down the bluffs like a sailor diving after a mermaid’s song.

She would think him mad.

Perhaps he was.

“You were singing,” he added. As if that explained or excused anything.

“I was not calling you.”

A dismissal, by God. She did not speak like a servant. Despite the absence of gloves, her hands were tapered and smooth. Her dress . . . Well, he didn’t know much about women’s fashions, but the fabric appeared very fine. Perhaps she was a gentlewoman fallen on hard times.

He should ride on. He could not stay, looming over her like the lord of the manor riding out to debauch village maidens.

She met his gaze boldly, like a woman willing to be debauched.

His blood thrummed. Before he could consider the consequences, he swung from his horse, landing hard and heavily on his right leg. He gripped the saddle and breathed deep and evenly, willing the pain to subside.

“You are injured,” she said behind him.

Scarred.

He turned stiffly. “Nothing to signify.”

She considered him, those strange golden eyes traveling down to his boots and up again, lingering in places no well-bred woman would look. He felt the stroke of her gaze like a smooth gloved hand.

She nodded. “We had better go to my cottage, then. There is a bed there.”

Jack’s mind reeled with shock and possibilities. She was a whore.

Or he was still stupid from a lack of sleep and a surfeit of whiskey. She looked nothing like the prostitutes he had seen on London’s streets or the camp followers he had known in the army.

Yet she was living outside the village. She had invited him to her bed. Surely he had not misunderstood?

He attempted a smile. “A chair would suffice.”

Her face lit suddenly with humor or awareness. “It might suit you,” she said. “It would not suit me.”

As if—the image fired his brain—he had suggested they engage in sexual congress on a chair.

He shook his head to clear it.

“Come.” She smiled at him and turned. “This way.”

She glided toward the bottom of the bluff, all billowing skirts and floating hair.

After a moment’s hesitation, he stomped after her, alert as if he rode into ambush. His riding boots slipped and skidded on the shale. Neptune plodded behind.

Jack had spent the past week riding over the estate, trying to familiarize himself with his new duties. This was not the first time a cottager had invited him to inspect a chimney or a leaking roof, to listen to a list of complaints or take a cup of tea.

Surely she was offering more than tea.

Or was it only her beauty and his own soul-deep loneliness that made him wish for more?

The cottage garden was bright with gorse and heather. Pink roses nodded by the open door. Jack tethered his horse to the front gate and ducked his head to follow her inside.

The single room was cool and bare and dim. No lantern. No fire. Sunlight leaked from the shuttered windows to stripe the room’s wide bed. The covers were tumbled.

He wrenched his gaze away.

A simple plank table teetered in the center of the flagstone floor. He took in the oddly bare shelves, the room’s only chair. “You live alone?”

“Yes.”

The single word dropped into the quiet like a rock into a pond. He felt the ripples to his fingertips.

But he must not misunderstand her. “There is no husband to help you with your holding?” he asked carefully. “No man in your life?”

Those full lips curved. “Many men. None that I would choose to live with.”

Something reckless in him rose to meet the wicked challenge of that smile. But he was never reckless. He had been a careful officer, deliberate in battle, calm under fire, conscious always of the men under his command.

He glanced again at the empty hearth, the lack of furniture, the plain, bare walls. “Then you must tell me how I may be of service to you, ma’am.”

She reached behind her back, her hair sliding forward over her shoulders. He watched as her gown fell away from her bosom and rustled to the floor.

Well. His lungs expanded. There was no misunderstanding that.

She was completely naked, her skin pink and white and gloriously bare. No shift. No stays.

The blood left his brain to pool hotly, thickly, in his groin.

He had never seen a woman more beautiful. He forced his gaze from her long, slim legs to the pale thatch between her thighs, up the curve of her belly to her high, full breasts. Beneath the flowing curtain of her hair, her nipples were pink and tight.

She tossed her head and smiled into his eyes, accepting his stunned silence as the tribute it was. “Serve me.”

All traces of headache vanished. There was only this need pulsing like fire through his veins. He had almost forgotten the relief, the solace, the sweet forgetfulness to be found in a woman’s body. This woman’s body, naked and almost within reach. It had been so long. Not since his injury and his inheritance, long before his return to England.

But he was her landlord.

Jack had not been raised in the ways of the landed gentry. A poor relation without the means to purchase a commission, he had joined the Infantry as a gentleman volunteer, fighting with the enlisted men, subsisting on an enlisted man’s rations, until an opening was created by heavy casualties in the officers’ ranks. He did not know what his cousin, the expected heir of Arden, would have done in the face of such magnificent temptation.

But he did know a man of honor did not take advantage of his dependents.

Even if one of those dependents was a whore.

She lived alone, she had said, without a man to fish or farm for her. Did she fear for her living?

“You are not obliged to do this,” he said carefully. “I will not turn you out. If you owe rent—”

“I owe no one. I please myself. Today I choose to be pleased by a man. By you,” she said clearly, so there could be no doubt.

Inside him something rigid as a scar relaxed. She desired him. Although a woman in her profession must be skilled at making her clients feel wanted.

Her eyes laughed at him. “Unless you are not willing to offer your services after all.”

She must know. She must see. Beneath his breeches, he was hard as a rifle barrel and as ready to go off.

“I believe,” Jack said gravely, “I am up for the task.”

She sank onto the low rope bed, bare feet flat on the floor, naked knees parted. Still smiling, she reached for him, hooking her fingers into his breeches flap to draw him close between her smooth, pale thighs. His heart pounded.

In a kind of fever dream, he stared down at the top of her head. Her lower lip pouted in concentration as she worked the buttons from their holes, the brush of her knuckles sweet agony. A bar of sunlight slid between the shutters, firing her white blond hair to gold.

A little hum—triumph or approval—escaped her throat as she freed her prize. The contrast between her slim white fingers and his dark, thick cock seared his brain. His erection jerked in her hands.

Jack closed his eyes, absorbing her feather touch as she cupped and explored him. His hands rested lightly on her head. How long since a woman had held and caressed him? He could not think. Like this? Never.

Liquid fire swirled. His eyes shot open. She wasn’t . . . She couldn’t. . . .

She licked her lips, tasting him. Apparently she had. With her tongue.

Dear God.

His collar and boots felt suddenly too tight. His mouth went dry. Of course she wouldn’t . . . No woman had ever . . .

His knees nearly buckled as she fit her slick, hot mouth over the head of his cock. She was doing it, sucking him, swallowing him, sliding her full lips up and down his shaft, taking him deep in her throat. His mind blanked. His hips arched instinctively.

He was going to explode. He had to stop her. He would stop her. In a minute.

Or not.

His hands clenched convulsively in her hair. The strands slid cool and smooth as water between his fingers, against his belly. His gaze fell on the arch of her brow, the line of her back, the delicate bumps of her spine. He couldn’t see her face. But, oh God, he could feel her. Her tongue . . .

She was naked, submissive, bending before him, totally focused on his pleasure and yet utterly in control.

It was unbearably erotic.

And oddly unsettling.

He slid his hands to her shoulders and pushed her firmly onto the mattress. Levering himself over her, he settled his weight against her, absorbing the damp heat of her flesh, the womanly softness of her body. His erection lodged against her stomach.

She lay back, her hair fanning over the pillow, watching him with half-lidded eyes, a faint smile on her lips. He wanted . . . He didn’t know what he wanted. Only her.

Spreading her thighs wide, he mounted her with one strong, deep thrust.

Her sharp inhale echoed his own.

She felt so good, hot and wet and welcoming beneath him. Around him. Lowering his face to the side of her head, he inhaled the clean, salt tang of her hair. She smelled of sunshine and woman, of sex and the sea. For the first time in weeks, he felt he could breathe.

He hunched his back, stroking slowly in and out, feeling her inner muscles clench and quiver in response. But his right knee would not bear his weight for long. With a grunt, he reversed their positions, pulling and lifting her to lie over him while she laughed and rubbed against him like a cat.

He saw the red imprint of a button on her breast and frowned. He should take off his jacket. His boots. Any woman, even a whore, deserved that much courtesy.

But she required no preliminaries. Desired none. Quick as a fish, she straddled him, hot and gloriously wet. Taking him in hand, she impaled herself on his cock. Sensation bolted in a white hot arc from his balls to his brain.

Her name ripped from his throat. “Morwenna.”

In the plain, dim room, she burned above him, her hair a wild halo around her head, her white breasts tipped with coral or with flame. Her smooth thighs squeezed his sides. She set a shallow rhythm, rocking herself, pleasuring herself. Riding him. Her head was flung back, her eyes closed as she ground her wet sex against him. He was buried in her as deep as a man could be, intimately connected and yet apart.

He wanted her with him. Body and soul. Cunny and cock.

Grasping her buttocks, he pulled her down hard as he thrust up.

Her startled eyes met his. Her rhythm faltered.

“With me,” he said harshly. He pressed up, gripping hard enough to bruise. She gasped and tightened around him.

The connection shot him to the edge.

Grimly, he held on, his blood roaring in his ears, as he drove into her, hammered into her, forging links of loneliness, heat, and need. The wet slap of their coupling filled the room. His lungs labored like a bellows. Her lips parted. Her eyes glazed, golden eyes burning to the back of his brain. Hot. Close. The pressure built in his balls and the base of his skull.

So close. The intimacy nearly shattered him. But he did not want to go alone.

He had never knowingly left a man behind. Or a woman, for that matter.

Teeth clenched, he plunged inside her, clinging to consciousness like a dying soldier on the battlefield, until he felt her swell and surge, until he felt her spasm and shake, until she shuddered and came apart in his arms.

Relief swept through him. A single thought spun with him into the abyss. Thank God.

Relaxing his grip, he let the dark sweep over him and carry him away.

That had not gone at all as she had planned.

Morwenna sprawled over the man’s hard chest like seaweed on the rocks, the ripples of her release receding like the tide. Her body floated in delicious languor. Inside, she felt pleasantly tender. Relaxed.

Uneasy.

She raised herself on one elbow. The buttons of his coat were imprinted on her breasts, round red marks like love bites. Morwenna frowned. She was accustomed to wresting satisfaction from her human lovers. She did not tussle with them for control. But this one . . .

She propped above him, studying him in the slatted light from the shutters. He had a pleasing face, she decided, strong and composed even in sleep. His brow was broad and faintly creased, his long jaw shadowed with stubble. A few strands of silver threaded among the brown, reminders of his mortality. With one finger, she traced the air above his face, following the etchings of pain beside his mouth, the lines of laughter lurking at the corners of his eyes.

Not that she actually touched him. Her kind did not. Only to fight or to mate, to demonstrate power or possession.

Yet as she hovered over him, absorbing his strength, breathing his breath, something in her stirred and swayed like kelp below the surface of the water.

His body was broad and solid between her spread thighs. He was still half hard inside her. With very little effort, she could take him again. Warmth bloomed deep inside her at the thought.

No. He had already served her pleasure. She was not a fish wriggling on the hook of sexual desire. Her body was her own. Her life, her own. She would not cede control of either to any male.

Which was why she had sex with humans.

The memory of the man’s face as he pushed hard inside her flashed across her brain, his dark, dark eyes, his hoarse command. With me.

She shivered. Definitely not what she had planned.

She slipped from the bed. Scooping the white dress from the floor, she pulled it over her head.

“If you are cold,” his voice said, husky with humor or sleep, “I would be happy to warm you.”

Blinking, she emerged from the folds of the dress. The man lay motionless on the bed, watching her with heavy-lidded eyes. She felt another inconvenient pull of attraction.

“I do not feel the cold,” she said truthfully.

Even in this body, her blood kept her warm. But she smoothed the dress down anyway, a fabric barrier between her and the man, taking care to cover the parts humans usually kept covered. She noticed he made no move to do the same. His heavy shaft lay quiet against his thigh. As she watched, it lengthened and stirred as if aware of her interest.

She raised her gaze to his face. “You should go.”

His dark brows drew together. “Go,” he repeated.

She met his gaze, conscious of his seed wet between her thighs, the delicious tenderness of her own body. “Now,” she said firmly.

He sat up in bed. “You are expecting someone.”

Morgan.

With a shock, she realized she had not spared Morgan a thought since leaving the beach. Yet she had called him. He would certainly come.

“Yes,” she admitted.

The man’s jaw set. “Another client?”

She did not understand his question. “It does not matter. You must go.”

“It matters.” He stood, the top of his head nearly brushing the ceiling. He tucked himself and his shirttails away, his movements as carefully controlled as his voice. “To me.”

He was jealous. Her heart jolted with pleasure and annoyance. Did he believe because he had been inside her body that he owned her?

“I am flattered.” She smiled, showing the edges of her teeth. “Or I would be if you had any right to an opinion.”

His eyes were grave and steady on hers. “Is it the money? I can pay you.”

She was not offended. She knew humans equated value with gold. “I do not want your money,” she said. “I laid with you for my pleasure. Now it is time for you to go.”

“Come with me.”

Her mouth dropped open. She had not expected that response.

“You don’t have to live like this,” he continued in his deep, earnest voice. “The hall is open again. I will speak to Watts, my butler. If you won’t take money from me, there must be some work you can do.”

He wanted to hire her as some kind of . . . servant? The idea amused and appalled her.

“I do not want to work at your hall.”

“Come anyway,” he urged.

The mad thing was, for a moment she was tempted. He was so very appealing, big and dark, stiff with honor and frustration.

She shook her head. “As what?” Over the past decade or so, she had learned enough about human affairs to know what he proposed was impossible. For both of them. “As your wife? Your mistress?”

He did not answer.

She took pity on him. “I am content as I am,” she told him gently. “I will not give up my freedom. But I thank you for your offer.”

He drew a short, sharp breath. For a moment she feared that he would argue or worse, try to force her.

He nodded once. “Then may I come to you here?”

She smiled at him in relief and approval. “You may.”

Whether he would find her was another matter.

She followed him out of the cottage, watching as he climbed stiffly onto his horse and rode away without another word.

She was not disappointed.

Merely a little letdown.

She had not thought he would give up so easily.

She stood a long time staring out at the bright and restless sea, its surface scrolled by the wind.

A plume of vapor. There.

A round black swell broke the uneven water, its huge dark fin cutting the air like a sail.

Orcas did not swim alone, but she wasted no time searching for the rest of the pod. This was no ordinary whale.

It scythed through the water, too fast, too close, as if it would beach itself on the rocks. Her heart beat faster as the sleek black shape barreled toward the shore, its outlines blurring beneath the water. A wave crested and crashed. Spray shot skyward. Sunlight broke and glittered in a thousand dazzling drops, veiling the barrier between land and sea. The air shimmered.

Morwenna blinked.

A man rose hip deep from the water, tall and leanly muscled, his hair silver white as foam, his pale skin shining from the sea. Water streamed from his shoulders and wrapped his legs, forming itself into the black and silver garments of the finfolk. His chest was bare except for the silver chain and medallion of his office. Tossing back his dripping hair, he waded toward her.

Pale gold eyes met hers.

Morgan, lord of the finfolk and warden of the northern deeps.

Her brother.

Her twin.

“Sister,” he said in greeting. “You called.”

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.

THREE

Jack stared down at the pretty bare foot in his hands. Soft, pale skin. High, smooth arch.

Webbed toes.

They didn’t even look human. The connecting skin shimmered like fish scales, delicate as insect wings.

His stomach cramped. He looked up into Morwenna’s eyes, bright and opaque as the eyes of an animal. A primitive chill chased up his spine and lifted the hair at the back of his neck.

“What is this?” he asked quietly.

She snatched back her foot, curling it under the legs of the chair. “What does it look like?” she asked defensively.

He couldn’t say. He could hardly think. Stories from his schoolboy days—Poseidon and the Nereids, Ulysses and the Sirens—raced through his head, mixed up with memories of Morwenna singing at the water’s edge, her silver hair shining like seafoam in the sun.

Ridiculous.

He took a deep, steadying breath.

“Not like anything I’ve seen before,” he said carefully. Or anything he believed in. “I was hoping you could explain.”

She pursed her lips. “Must everything have an explanation?”

“In my experience, yes.”

She stood, shaking her skirts down over her ankles. “Then you explain it.”

“Morwenna, your toes are . . .” A gentleman did not discuss a lady’s feet. But he had held hers in his hand, and her toes were . . .

Webbed. Shining with rainbow color like a soap bubble.

“Different,” she supplied.

He seized on the word gratefully. “Different. Yes.”

“And anything different must therefore be flawed.”

He straightened warily. She was offended. Hurt? “I did not say flawed.”

“Am I suddenly repugnant to you now?”

“No.”

Her chin tilted at a militant angle. “But you wish to leave anyway. Because of my different feet.”

He shook his head in baffled admiration. Like a practiced swordsman, she had reversed their positions, driving him on the defensive. “Of course not.”

“Then what do my toes matter?”

He could deal with her anger. But the emotion glistening in her eyes caused a quick clutch in his chest.

“They don’t.”

“Ah.” She held his gaze for a long moment, letting his words speak for her.

He knew he was being manipulated. He did not care. She was so beautiful with her flushed cheeks and that sheen in her eyes. Her quick passions had roused his. The memory of their last time together rose like smoke between them, firing his imagination, cutting off all oxygen to his brain. Then she hadn’t faced him from half a room away. Then she had dropped her dress and sat on the mattress, pulling him to stand between her smooth, bare thighs. He wanted it to be then.

He dragged air into his lungs. How could he press her with questions when he could not breathe? He could have her again, he thought. In this room, on that bed, this very afternoon. His shaft hardened. All he had to do was let go of his questions and enjoy the moment.

Accept the moment.

Accept her.

Her challenge thrummed inside him like the beating of his pulse. Is not existence meant to be enjoyed?

Yes. Lust and longing surged together inside him. He wanted this for himself. He owed it to her. Yesterday he hadn’t taken time to enjoy her properly, to do the things a man does for a woman he cares about.

There was more than one way to discover her secrets.

Very deliberately, he took off his jacket and hung it from the back of the chair. He sat down to pull off his boots.

She watched him, her chin raised another notch. “Do you wish to compare feet now?”

“No,” he said calmly. He set his boots side by side under her table before looking up into her eyes. “I want to make love to you.”

Her breath caught.

Slowly, slowly, her lips curved. She reached for the fastenings of her gown.

Thank God. He crossed the room in two quick strides. “Let me.”

He gathered up her hair to lay over her shoulder, out of his way. It smelled like sea and sunshine. Her nape was as white and delicate as porcelain, as rich as salted cream. He untied the tapes of her gown, controlling himself with effort, determined not to grab or tear. Tugging the sleeves from her arms—no chemise, no petticoats—he pressed his lips to her shoulder, opening his mouth to taste the salt of her skin. She made a sound of impatience and turned in his arms, twining her bare arms around his neck. Her breasts pressed against him.

Need churned inside him, greedy, hot.

But this wasn’t about greed.

He half walked, half carried her to the bed, made her sit while he stripped off his trousers and drawers. His cock jutted out like a tent pole against the long tails of his shirt. She reached for him, caressing him boldly through the linen fabric. He groaned in pleasure, thrusting forward into her hand. She knew him, knew his body, knew how to touch him and make him respond.

He wanted to do the same. To bring her that pleasure. To share that knowledge. To have that power over her.

He cuffed her wrists, pulling her hands from his body. Easing her back against the pillows, he pushed her thighs wide. She propped on her elbows to watch him, her lips parted, her eyes gleaming. Beautiful. His heart thundered. He traced a line with his fingers from her collarbone to her waist; ran his hand over her sleek belly to the roughness of curls between her legs. She was already wet. She smiled and arched her back, offering her breasts, offering . . . everything.

He could take her now. He was hard and aching. His blood pounded in his ears like siege guns.

But it was a siege he planned, an assault on her senses, an invitation to surrender.

He bent over her, his mouth roaming the trail blazed by his hands, wandering here, lingering there, getting to know her body. Her collarbone, her breasts, the curve of her belly, the crease of her thigh. She sighed and shifted, showing him the way. There. More. Again. He kissed and licked and suckled her, learning what made her flush and moan, what made her clench and sigh, reveling in her response.

She undulated under him, beautiful in her abandon, surging under his hand, against his mouth. Hot, wet woman. Heady. Ripe. He drank her in, her scent, her cries. He was drunk on her response, his head swimming, his control slipping.

Her arms came around him, stroking under his shirt, tickling his ribs. Her fingers danced along the ridges of his scars, making him shiver like a horse tormented by flies.

“Take it off,” she commanded.

He shook his head, used his mouth on her. She gasped, she quivered, but she would not be distracted.

She tugged again at the shirt. “Now.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Reluctantly, he raised his head. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes great pools of black rimmed with gold. He had never seen anyone or anything more beautiful. And he . . .

“I am scarred,” he said bluntly. “Not just my leg, but my back. My side.”

She found his face with her hands, touched his mouth, his cheek. “I want you. All of you.” Her palms stroked down his belly and thighs, cupped his big, square knees, slid up under his shirt. “Naked.”

His heart pounded. “It is not pretty,” he warned.

“I want to see you.” Her voice was a Siren’s voice, lilting, irresistible. She reached him with her hands and with her words, her fingers circling, squeezing, moving higher. Her knuckles brushed his sac. “Let me see you.”

He had never been a vain man. Or a coward. She deserved to see, to know who she lay with. That didn’t stop his mouth from drying as he dragged his shirt over his head. He knelt over her on the bed, braced for her rejection, dreading her pity.

He did not close his eyes.

Neither did she. In the warm light that spilled from the windows, in the clean air that blew from the sea, she studied the damage to his body.

He had been lucky. The Ninety-Fifth had been caught in the breach, trapped between trenches laid with pikes and sword blades and the two big guns filled with canister shot. He had been fighting his way to the guns when the French fired the mines beneath the slope. The earth had vomited rocks and flame. The sky rained dirt and body parts. His world had exploded in death, in darkness and in pain.

But he had survived.

With one finger, she traced the jagged gouge high on his arm. She brushed the red pucker at his hip. She laid her palm against the twisted mass of purple scars where the surgeon had probed for shrapnel.

“This is what you men do to each other in war,” she said.

He could not read her tone.

“Sometimes,” he said stiffly. He fought an absurd inclination to apologize. For his gender? His profession?

She met his gaze, her eyes like tarnished gold. “You do not wish to talk about it.”

He had left his shirt on to shield himself as much as to protect her. He did not want to go down into the pit again, into the pain, into the bloody surgeon’s tent and the long, agonizing time before and after. “A gentleman does not discuss such subjects with ladies.”

He sounded like a prig.

“Even a lady he is naked and in bed with?”

“Especially not a lady he is in bed with,” Jack said firmly.

He did not want to bring those memories here, into this room, into this moment. He didn’t want that ugliness to touch her.

Yet she continued to touch him, her fingers at once soothing and inflaming. She rubbed small circles against his chest, scraped her nails gently across his abdomen. His cock swelled, hard and eager, shameless at her approach. Her hands wandered over his torso, laying claim to him, to all of him, making no distinction between his damaged flesh and the rest.

He swallowed against the constriction in his throat. “You don’t have to touch them.”

Touch me, he thought.

Her smooth shoulders shrugged against the pillows. “Why not? Your scars are part of you. As my feet are part of me. Not the most interesting part,” she added. Her teasing look set him on fire. She circled his erection with both hands, cupping him lightly. He gritted his teeth against the exquisite pleasure of it. “I am sorry you were hurt. But if we want each other, we must accept each other as we are, with all our scars and all our parts.”

He wanted her. He ached for her, with his body and in his soul. He craved her joy, her acceptance, her unabashed appreciation of life.

“I want you,” he said, his voice as raw as his need.

She smiled up at him. “Now.”

Forever, he thought.

He lowered himself to her. They came together in comfort and in lust, her arms lifting around him, her hands sliding down his scarred back to grip his buttocks. Her legs twined with his. Holding him. Touching him. She felt so good, soft, warm, wet. He made a sound deep in his throat and thrust. She surged to meet him. And despite their differences, or because of them, all the parts fit. As if he had found the other piece of himself, the missing half that made him whole. His mind blurred as they moved together, two bodies with one rhythm. One flesh. His breath shortened. His heart raced. Her body rose and strained beneath his, matching him thrust for thrust. He plunged and withdrew, plunged and held himself still inside her until he felt her tense and go lax around him, softening at her climax. He pressed harder, deeper. The tremors that took her shook them both.

She held him, held him close, as he turned his face into her hair and emptied himself.

Slowly, Jack returned to his senses. His knee throbbed like a sore tooth. His thigh ached with strain. He was exhausted and sweaty . . . and more content than he could remember ever being in his life.

He turned his head on the pillow. Morwenna lay half under him, her face perfect in the golden light, smooth and rounded, luminous as a pearl. She smelled like sex. Like sex and the sea.

Webbed toes, his brain reminded him, but he silenced thought and listened to his heart instead.

She was all beautiful. Beautiful and his. Every part of her was his.

He threaded his fingers through her hair, combing the white gold strands from her brow. “Morwenna.”

Her lips curved. “Major.”

Silent laughter swelled his chest. “Under the circumstances,” he said gravely, “I believe you might call me Jack.”

She opened wide golden eyes. “Jack?”

“Or John, if you prefer.”

“Jack,” she repeated. “I like it.”

Tenderness raked his heart. He kissed her again, a long, slow, openmouthed kiss that stirred him all over again.

He cleared his throat. “Your brother was right, you know.”

She blinked. “I beg your pardon.”

“It isn’t wise for you to live alone here. It isn’t . . .” Proper. “Safe,” he concluded.

His weight still pinned her to the mattress. But already he could feel her withdrawing, regrouping, pulling away from him. “It isn’t your concern.”

“I am concerned,” he said honestly. “You obviously haven’t been responsible for managing your own household before. You need help. Protection.”

Her quick frown gave her mouth a sulky look. “I told you once I will not live with you.”

“Not with me.” That would cause even more talk than her living alone. “Your brother is in the area, you said. You can stay with him.”

“No.”

“I will escort you.”

“I am not one of your soldiers. You cannot command my obedience.”

“I would call on him in any case.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You wish to meet my brother.”

“It is customary,” Jack said carefully. “When a couple is . . .”

What? he wondered. Courting?

Could he seriously be considering making her an offer? An unknown woman of dubious background living alone on the edges of his estate?

Yes, his heart insisted.

“Getting to know one another,” he said.

She wiggled under him, making him acutely aware of her naked body. “We already got to know each other. Twice.”

He smiled. “Which makes my introduction to your family the next—the only—appropriate course of action.”

“My brother would not agree with you.”

“Then give me the opportunity to change his mind. Let me ask his permission to court you.”

There. He had said it. Certainty settled into his bones and lightened his chest.

“That is not necessary,” she said.

Not the reaction he hoped for.

Or, truth to tell, expected.

“I am well able to provide for a wife,” he assured her stiffly. “My father was a gentleman. Aside from my cousin’s estate, I have savings of my own which I am prepared to settle on you.”

“Are you trying to persuade me of my great good fortune in attracting you as a partner?”

“No. Maybe.” He rolled away from her, off the bed. “I sound like an ass.”

“Merely human.”

He turned.

She sat on the edge of the mattress, her hair tumbled over her smooth shoulders, watching him. “You would make a good husband, I think. For someone else. I am . . . fond of you. But I have no desire to marry.”

She was rejecting him. His hands curled into fists at his sides. He did not understand. Every woman wanted to marry. What other options did she have?

“You must want security,” he said. “A family, a home of your own.”

“I enjoy my freedom. I wish to keep it.”

He stared at her, baffled and frustrated. “What if you are with child?”

Her eyes were bright as the sun-struck sea. But underneath the golden surface, shadows flickered and swayed. “It is not possible.”

“Of course it’s possible.” His voice was harsh. “We have lain together. Twice.”

She raised her brows at his deliberate appropriation of her words. “And will do so again, I hope.”

“Then marry me.”

The offer slipped out, shocking them both. But he did not take the words back. He wanted this, wanted her.

“Because we pleasure each other in bed?” She tilted her head as if considering. His heart pounded in anticipation. “No. My life suits me. There is nothing you can give me that I do not have. Nothing I need or want.”

Her rejection knocked the air from his lungs. He inhaled past his constricted throat.

He had narrowly escaped committing his life and honor to a woman he hardly knew. A woman without apparent wealth or connection. He should be relieved.

He was not relieved. He was hurt, confused, angry.

“Then I will bid you good day, madam.”

Unfortunately, he could not even exit on that dignified note, bearing away with him his injured pride, his bruised heart, and his rejected proposal. First he must get through the awkward business of dressing. He could only be grateful that he was a soldier and not a dandy. At least he did not require her assistance to struggle into his boots and his coat.

She pulled the blue dress over her head and stood in the doorway of her cottage to watch him mount.

Her words echoed in his empty heart. There is nothing you can give me that I do not have. Nothing I need or want.

A child. He could have gotten her with child.

“You will inform me,” he commanded, “if there are any consequences.”

A flush rose in her smooth, pale, perfect face. “I will inform you.”

With that, he had to be satisfied.

He pressed his heels to Neptune’s sides and rode away.

FOUR

The rising wind rattled the library windows, pushing smoke down the chimney and into the room. The fire fought the gloom outside. Unfortunately, the red flames failed to lighten Jack’s mood or to dispel the chill between him and Sloat.

The estate manager settled deeper into his chair on the opposite side of Jack’s desk, stretching his thin shanks toward the fire. “Everything was done to preserve the wealth of the estate,” he protested. “To protect your interests.”

Possibly, Jack acknowledged.

And possibly Sloat, like a looter on a battlefield, would rob anyone too weak to beat him off.

Jack had spent the last four days reviewing the household accounts, responding to a flood of bills and grievances presented by local fishers, farmers, and tradesmen.

In the past six months, pleas for payment had been disputed or ignored. Improvements had been neglected or denied. Jack suspected some of the money that could have been plowed into the land had gone to line Sloat’s own pockets.

He wouldn’t trust Sloat at his back in a fight. But he had no cause to fire the man. After four days of searching, he could find no proof that the steward had stolen from the estate, no evidence that Sloat had exceeded his authority.

“I do not question your attention to the estate’s profits,” he said. “Only to its people.”

Sloat smirked. “Your cousin never complained.”

An old, sick man without any family about him, dependent on his steward and his housekeeper.

“My cousin is dead,” Jack said. “You report to me now.”

“His executors charged me to run his estate,” Sloat said.

“While they searched for an heir.” News of his inheritance had come as a surprise to Jack. Presumably it was a shock to Sloat as well. “The estate is my responsibility.”

“You cannot manage without me.”

“Let us hope,” Jack said steadily, “that won’t be necessary. Or are you proffering your resignation?”

Silence fell. A sudden squall lashed the windows.

Sloat sniffed. “You are, of course, free to do as you please.”

No, he wasn’t.

He was bound by his responsibilities, trapped by his obligations and a gentleman’s code of behavior. If he pleased himself, he would overcome Morwenna’s objections and carry her off to his bed. Instead, he was stuck in this smoky room with his hostile steward going over figures until his eyes blurred.

He plucked another bill from the pile on his desk, scanned another column of numbers. “Dougie Munro wants a hundred pounds for horse feed.”

“He’ll be lucky to get half that.”

It cost more to feed a horse than to keep a servant. The stables at Alden housed four farm animals, Sloat’s cob, and a couple of carriage ponies. “The charge seems reasonable to me,” Jack said.

“He is a tenant. He owes rent.”

“He cannot meet his obligations if we don’t meet ours.” Jack put the bill on the stack to be paid.

Outside, a bell rang, tolling against the storm, penetrating the rush of wind and rain.

Jack raised his head, glad of the distraction. “Who died?”

“No one. Yet,” Sloat said. “They ring the church bell to guide the boats in to the harbor.”

Jack glanced at the windows, where a hard rain streaked the glass. “The fishermen went out in this weather?”

Sloat shrugged. “It wasn’t raining when they went out.”

They continued to work with the rain beating at the glass and the fire hissing in the hearth. The bell tolled incessantly, jangling on Jack’s nerves.

He drummed his fingers, glanced outside at the thrashing trees and turbulent sky. He thought of the men on the boats, braving the storm, and the families waiting for them onshore. “I’m going to the village,” he announced abruptly. “We need to help.”

Sloat huddled closer to the fire. “Why?”

He eyed his steward with dislike. “Because we can. Load a wagon with blankets, brandy, firewood. Have Mrs. Pratt make up some baskets and bring them down with you.”

“Bring them where?”

Where did people gather in times of trouble? The church?

“The tavern,” Jack said. “Hurry.”

A wet and worried-looking groom led Neptune from the stables. Outside the yard, the wind pounced, shrieking, biting, pelting them with rain. The horse shuddered and shook his head in protest. Jack steadied him with hands and voice. Neptune responded to his reassurance, putting his head down, forging forward through the sucking mud. The rain slashed down like knives. Trees tossed and bent. Branches creaked and flew.

Jack raised his face to the slashing wind and rain. Despite the freezing discomfort, it felt good to be out, to be doing, to pit his strength against something as substantial as the storm. Neptune emerged from the illusory shelter of the wood onto the track that spilled to the harbor.

The ruthless wind, the brutal view, snatched his breath away. The ocean raged as loud as an army on the move, gray and violent as a battlefield. Huge breakers rolled between the swelling sea and the lowering sky, flinging themselves onto the rocks in a fury of spray and foam.

The shuttered houses clung to the rocks like a colony of oysters, dark and closed. Slits of yellow lamp light edged the tavern windows. The church bell tolled, Come . . . back. Come . . . back.

A boat spun and tumbled in the turbulent waves like a leaf in the gutter, beyond reach, beyond help, beyond hope. Half a dozen men clustered onshore, brandishing a rope in the wind. Their shouts rose thin and piping as gulls’ cries. Jack watched as the weighted rope coiled over the water, fell short, and was reeled in again.

The small craft pitched and tossed without sail or oars, up and down, up and . . . A wave crashed down and drained away, leaving a single man inside clinging to the side of the boat.

Jack’s heart thundered. He spurred Neptune forward, hooves clattering on the wet stone.

They reached the strand. The man in the boat had caught a wild toss and somehow tied the rope to the prow. The men onshore hauled and cursed, the wet rope yanking through their hands.

Jack slid from the saddle and stumbled down the beach into the teeth of the wind and the cold, cold tide. The air was thick with salt and fear. Water slapped his face, filled his boots, dragged at his thighs. He slogged through the churning surf and grabbed hold of the rope between two other men.

“Pull!”

The boat leaped liked a shark fighting at the end of a line. Jack’s shoulders wrenched. His boots scraped shale.

“Pull.”

A waved crashed over them, almost knocking Jack from his feet. The man in front of him went down. He hauled him up by his collar, wrapped white knuckles around the twisted rope.

“Pull.”

They staggered back, fighting the savage sea and angry tide for possession of the boat. It wallowed and rolled, ungainly in the shallows, banging ribs and shins, smashing fingers. They towed it through the long white breakers and onto the shore.

The man inside sprawled against the bench, dark and limp as seaweed abandoned by the tide.

Jack’s leg throbbed like fire. Blood crawled across his knuckles. He couldn’t feel his fingers or his feet. He ran to Neptune, a big, gray shape against wet, black rocks, and led him to the men whipped by the rain, huddled around the boat.

“How many more?” he shouted against the wind.

A burly man with an orange beard—the baker—looked up. “All in. Jeb’s was the last boat.”

“Put him on my horse. We’ll take him to the tavern.”

Sloat would be there soon with a cartload of brandy and blankets.

Or he’d fire the bastard.

They limped and lurched from the beach, a sodden line of men buffeted by the gale and bolstered by their small victory over the sea.

The taproom enveloped them in warmth, noise, and light. Half the village of Farness crowded the bar or clustered around small tables. The smell of wet wool, smoke, and onions hung on the air.

Jack’s head swam. He needed to sit down.

The rescued man leaned on his companions, stumbling across the wet plank floor to a place by the fire.

“Da!” A pretty, rounded young woman with swollen eyes rushed forward and threw her arms around him. She drew back, her gaze fixed painfully on his face. “Colin?”

Quiet fell on the taproom.

“Sorry, lass.” Her father’s voice was hoarse with salt and sorrow. “He’s . . . He was trying to save the nets when . . .”

“No! Colin.” Wailing, she sank to the floor.

“Whiskey,” Jack ordered.

He was tired of death. He had sat by too many dying soldiers, stood in too many sitting rooms to deliver unwelcome news to grieving mothers and wives. Sliding an arm about the girl, he raised her from the floor. “Let me help you to a chair.”

She sobbed noisily and collapsed against his chest. The tavern keeper reached for a bottle.

The door to the taproom burst open in a rush of rain and a gush of cold air.

Jack glanced up, expecting Sloat.

Morwenna materialized from the storm, framed by wet timbers against the stormy sky. Her fair hair was plastered to her head by rain. Her blue dress clung to her body. She looked like the figurehead on a sailing ship. Like a mermaid.

Jack felt a crackle like lightning zing along his nerves and lift all the little hairs on the back of his neck.

“I heard the bell,” she said. “What is happening?”

No one answered.

She was not one of them, Jack realized. She shone among the villagers of Farness like a fine wax taper, slender, straight, and pale. She did not belong in this grimy taproom. How could he ever have thought she could belong to him?

Her gaze swept the room like a flame, lighting on his hand where it rested on the girl’s back. Her brow pleated. “You are hurt.”

He had forgotten his bloody knuckles. “I’m fine.”

Morwenna took a half step forward out of the rain, toward him. “I could help.”

Her offer seared him like the drag of the wet rope. There is nothing you can give me that I do not have, she had said. Nothing I need or want.

“There is nothing you can do,” he said.

Her breath rasped like a match against the silence. Her gaze narrowed. “Who is that?”

He glanced down at the crying girl in his arms. He didn’t even know her name.

The tavern keeper’s wife crossed her padded arms against her bosom. “That’s our Jenny Miller. She just lost her man.”

“Lost,” Morwenna repeated blankly. As if the young fisherman were a halfpenny or a sheep.

“In the sea,” Jack said harshly.

She cocked her head, listening to the wind and the sad, deep notes of the bell: Come . . . back. “I could find him for you.”

Jenny’s father stirred by the fire. “He went down with the nets,” he said dully. “He will not be found until this storm is past.”

His daughter gave a muffled sob.

Jack’s helplessness pushed like a thumb on his windpipe. “There’s nothing you can do.” He forced the words through his tight throat. Nothing he could do. “Nothing anyone can do.”

She met his gaze, her eyes running with borrowed colors like the sea. Without a word she turned and walked into the rain.

The tavern keeper’s wife sniffed. “She’s a fool to go back out in this weather.”

Jack stared at the closed door, his throat aching, his heart burning in his chest.

Yes.

And he was a bigger one for going after her.

Morwenna strode to the harbor in a welter of rain and unfamiliar emotion. The storm was raw and turbulent outside her, inside her, churning in her chest, pulsing in her fingertips.

The memory of Jack’s dark, weary eyes, his hard, strained face, jabbed at her heart.

She had offered her help, and he had dismissed her.

She could not blame him. She had spurned him, after all. And he had no idea what she could do. What she was.

Once her kind had been revered, feared and worshipped. But as their numbers dwindled and they withdrew deeper into the wild places of earth, their encounters with humankind became less frequent. Reverence had faded to superstition and fear to unbelief. Now even the legends were fading from human memory.

Better that way, her brother insisted. Safer that way. There were so many of them . . .

And Jack was one of them, one with them, the men with their wet clothes and weathered faces, the girl with the red-rimmed eyes.

She lengthened her stride, unhampered by the pelting rain and gusts of wind. She was not jealous. What she wanted, she would have. She was an immortal child of the sea, part of the First Creation.

And yet . . .

Standing alone outside the circle of the fire, she had been achingly aware of something outside and separate from herself, the web of human experience. All those others in the taproom had come together in the face of the storm, bound together by some human need, united by a shared understanding of death and love and loss.

Humans died.

She would not die.

But she could do something they could not do.

She walked the long stone jetty that protected the harbor. Waves crested and crashed around her, pouring their might onto the rocks, sending up shoots and plumes of spray, drenching her hair and her skirt. The sea pounded through the soles of her feet and within her chest.

Dimly, she heard shouting behind her. She would not have chosen to reveal herself. She did not want to prompt questions she was not prepared to answer. Not yet.

But she would not let human considerations, human fears, distract her from her magic. She closed her mind to consequences and embraced the water’s power. She breathed it in, licking it from her lips, absorbing it through her skin. She was drunk on the smell of brine, blinded and deafened by the beauty of the tempest.

Lifting her arms to the wind, she raised her face to the rain and sang in the storm.

Her notes pierced the heavy sky, soared like drops of vapor into the clouds swirling and combining high above the earth. Bright shards of music ripped from her throat and flashed like lightning among the currents of air. The energy of the storm pulsed inside her, welled inside her, spilled from her eyes and her heart like song. Like blood.

She felt the clouds shift and break, felt the sea surge and respond, and trembled in the marrow of her bones.

It was not enough.

Voices fretted her, plucking at her peace, stirring her to the depths like the wind moving over the waters.

She lost her man.

He will not be found until this storm is past.

There is nothing you can do.

Resolve stiffened her spine. She anchored her feet on the slippery wet stone and sang in the seals from the sea.

She summoned them by name and by magic, and they came, streaking dark and brindled out of the deeps, racing in response to her song. Leaping, diving, seeking, finding . . .

There. A young man drifting in a fisherman’s smock and boots, his dark hair flowing like weeds. A heartbeat, thin and thready beneath the surface of the water. Her own pulse fluttered in response.

Rain spattered and sank on the surface of the ocean. She felt his breath rising like a chain of silver bubbles, barely linking him to life. Her lungs emptied. Was she too late?

In a burst of notes and panic, she sent the seals scything through the water to bring him up, to bring him in. They curled around him like cats, bumping him with their whiskered heads, prodding him with their flippers, rolling him on to his back like an otter. They turned his white face to the clearing sky and bore him up, making a raft of their broad, sleek bodies to carry him toward shore. She smoothed the waves in their path to a grumble, a ripple, a flourish of foam.

Her power was running out like water from a cup, leaving her emptied, her throat raw, her legs as heavy as wet sand.

She heard cries, raucous and indistinct as the kittiwakes on the cliff. The human inhabitants of Farness straggled along the seawall, watching the seals come in on the tide.

Jack . . .

Even from a distance she recognized him, his broad shoulders, his straight soldier’s posture, and everything inside her shifted and flowed like the changing shore. As if he had power over the very landscape of her heart.

The young fisherman raised his head and coughed. Or was that the barking of a seal?

Her vision wavered. Her mind grayed. She blinked, watching as a figure with flying skirts and braids detached from the huddle onshore.

“Colin!” The girl dashed to the water’s edge like a curlew darting in the tide.

Morwenna smiled.

Then the stones rose up sharply to take her, and the world faded away.

When she woke, she could not hear the sea any longer, only the murmur of human voices.

She recognized the smells of the taproom, beer and smoke, sweat and onions, and the clean soap-and-man scent that was Jack. His hard shoulder pillowed her cheek. His arms and legs supported her as if she rode before him on his horse. She felt cradled. Protected.

Off-balance.

“Never seen anything like it,” a rough male voice pronounced.

Oh dear. She opened her eyes.

Immediately Jack’s arms tightened around her. “Morwenna.”

Only her name, but she felt another shift in her chest as everything readjusted. His lean, strong face was very close, his deep brown eyes concerned.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “What were you doing out there?”

More than she could ever tell him.

She sat up cautiously, aware of the villagers gathered around the fire. She recognized the baker with his curling orange beard, the dark and nervous shopkeeper, the nasty man with the crow’s voice and the weasel’s name. Stoat? Sloat, that was it. The young lovers cuddled in the corner, the fisherman’s muscled arm around the girl’s round waist.

Jack was waiting for her answer. They all were waiting. She was truly a part of their circle now, the focus of all eyes. She fought the urge to hunch her shoulders, to hide from their attention.

“I suppose I must have fainted.”

Jack’s mouth compressed. “Before that.”

“I went outside.”

“Into the storm,” he said flatly.

She glanced out the windows to avoid meeting his eyes. In the wake of her magic, the setting sun had painted the sky orange and rose. “The weather is clearing, is it not?”

“It is now,” Jack acknowledged. “What about the seals?”

She moistened her lips. “They must have washed ashore. In the storm.”

“Washed ashore.” His voice was stiff with disbelief.

She smiled at him. “Like that lucky young man saved by the tide.”

An old fisherman spoke from his place at the bar. “It wasn’t the tide that saved him. It was the selkie.”

Morwenna’s heart beat faster. The seals she had called to her were ordinary harbor seals. But the old man’s guess was uncomfortably close to the truth. The selkie were water elementals like the finfolk, all children of the sea.

Jack’s brows drew together. “The what?”

“The seal folk. They live in the ocean as seals, see, and when they come ashore they put off their sealskins and walk around no different from you and me.”

“Except better looking,” put in another. “And naked.”

“Superstitious nonsense,” Sloat said.

The fisherman stuck out his jaw. “I’ve seen them out there in the waves. Guided me home once in the fog.”

The young man, Colin, lifted his head from the girl’s brown hair and looked at Morwenna.

“My grandda said if you find a selkie’s pelt and hide it, the selkie must bide with you as man or wife,” the second fisherman said.

Sloat sneered. “Your grandda was at sea too long. I knew you Scots had sex with sheep. But seals?”

Jack silenced him with a look. “It’s a pleasant story.”

Morwenna released a relieved breath. Story. He did not believe a word of it.

Colin left his corner and stood before Morwenna, fumbling beneath the open neck of his shirt. He wore a leather thong around his throat and the silver sign of the mortals’ murdered Christ. He pulled the thong over his head and offered her the cross in his broad palm. “Thank you,” he said simply.

The ache in her throat grew to a lump. She swallowed hard. “You owe me nothing.”

Stubbornly, he held out his hand. “I know what I know.”

She shook her head, aware of Jack watching them. But she could not spurn the young fisherman’s earnest thanks. Nor could she take his offering and send him away empty-handed.

She curled her hand around the cross and traced a spiral in his palm, the sign of the sea. “I will treasure your gift and remember,” she said. “Go in peace over the waters and return in safety to the land.”

His smile almost blinded her with its brilliance.

“Now go back to your sweetheart,” Morwenna told him. “Thank her, if you must thank someone, and hold her tight for the time that has been given to you both.”

He ducked his head in shy acknowledgment and retreated.

“An interesting blessing,” Jack observed quietly.

She shrugged, not daring to look at him for fear he would find the truth in her eyes. “It did not hurt me to say and may do him good to hear. Their lives will be short and hard enough. They should love each other while they can.”

“Excellent advice,” he said.

Finally she met his gaze. What she saw in his eyes made her pulse pound. Not distrust, not suspicion, but warmth and acceptance and desire.

“Oh,” she said with a foolish lurch of heart, “do you think so?”

“Yes.” He stopped and took her hands in his. Warm, steady hands. Strong, human hands. “Marry me, Morwenna.”

Her heart turned over completely and her whole world shifted again. She felt grit in her eyes like sand in an oyster and blinked. A single pearl rolled down her cheek.

She smiled tremulously. “Perhaps we could start with dinner,” she suggested. “You did say you would court me.”

FIVE

“This charade has gone on long enough,” Morgan said.

Her brother stalked the confines of Morwenna’s neat little cottage like a shark trapped by the tide, all sleek power and frustrated energy. “How long has it been now? Four weeks?”

“Three,” Morwenna said defensively.

Three weeks of this odd human process known as courtship. Dinner at Jack’s house, with her hair piled up and a bewildering array of cutlery on the table. Sex at hers, sweaty, sweet, and satisfying. He took her for a ride in his carriage. She took him for walks along the beach. They even sat side by side in the church one Sunday morning while the preacher droned like a drowsy bee and the sun cast colored patterns on the stone floor.

Only three weeks.

Not that the actual number of days mattered except as a measure of her brother’s concern. If Morgan was counting time by human standards, in weeks rather than seasons and centuries, he was worried indeed.

She watched him pace to the cupboard and turn. The once-empty shelves behind him were littered with items she had received since the storm, left at her doorstep or pressed shyly upon her when she walked into town: a pitcher of flowers, a package of candles, a loaf of bread, a shawl. She accepted the villagers’ offerings as she accepted the gifts of the tide and gave them fair weather and good fishing in return.

Yet somehow the trade had become more meaningful than a simple transaction.

She tried to explain. “I have a place here.”

Morgan threw her an impatient look. “Your place is on Sanctuary. Among your own kind. Not with . . . with . . .”

She raised her chin. “His name is Jack.”

“Does he know who you are? What you are?”

She hesitated. She was venturing further and further from who she had been. Once she told Jack the truth, there was no going back. One way or another, their idyll would end. “He does not need to know. He accepts what he sees.”

“Then he is blind. Or stupid.”

“He is not stupid.” She remembered the warm perception in Jack’s serious gaze, the strength of his steady hands. “He loves me.”

Her brother looked down his long, bold nose. “Humans fear what they do not understand. And what they fear, they hate. He is not capable of loving you.”

His words touched her deepest fears. Her brother knew her too well. And yet . . .

“You do not know him,” she said.

Morgan stared at her, baffled, and shook his head. “Say that he loves you. It cannot last. He is mortal. He will die eventually. That is his fate, his nature. And you will go on. That is ours.”

“Unless . . .” She drew a shaky breath, daring at last to speak the possibility burning like a coal in her breast. Knowing her words would hurt and anger Morgan. “He has asked me to marry him.”

If they married, if she lived on land with Jack as a human, she would love as a human. Age as a human. Die as a human.

“Wenna.” Morgan’s voice was shaken. Her throat tightened at his use of her old childhood name. He was her brother, her twin. In their carefree existence, in their careless way, they had always cared for each other. “You would give up immortality? You would give up the sea?”

Yes.

No.

“I do not know.” She bit her lip. “I might.”

“For what? For him?”

Could she give up the sea for Jack?

She admired him: his quiet strength, his bone-deep sense of responsibility, his constant heart. She liked him.

But more, she liked the person she became when she was with him. Someone softer, more open, more aware of others’ emotions, more capable of feeling.

Less alone.

The children of the sea were alive to sensation. With Jack, she felt another part of her stir to life, like a long-dead limb responding to the pricks and tingles of returning circulation.

She sought a way to put her feelings into words, searched for an answer that would satisfy her brother. That would satisfy them both.

“For Jack, yes.” The words came slowly, dragged from the depths of her consciousness, from the bottom of her heart. “And perhaps for . . . love?”

Morgan’s face closed. “We are finfolk. What do we know of love?”

You love me, she thought.

The realization struck like a fishhook into her heart, barbed and unexpected. They never spoke of their bond. It was not their way. But if she turned her back on Morgan and the sea, he might never recover. Would never forgive.

She swallowed past the ache in her throat. “Enough to know how precious love is,” she said quietly. “And how rare.”

“Love does not last, Morwenna.” Her brother’s gaze met hers, golden and implacable. “Nothing lasts forever but the sea.”

The sea shone as smooth as glass. Sunlight poured like honey over the green and gold hills as Jack handed Morwenna into the pony cart and walked around the horse’s head.

She twisted on the seat to regard the basket packed behind her. “A picnic?” Her voice rose with pleasure.

Jack climbed up. Stiffly, because of his leg. “You said I should enjoy life more,” he reminded her.

“And I am delighted you listened,” she responded promptly. “But didn’t you eat off the ground often enough as a soldier?”

He loved the way she laughed at him with her eyes. He picked up the ribbons, clicking his tongue at the pony. “Cook never prepared a basket for me in the Peninsula.”

“Champagne and sweetmeats?”

“Meat pies and lemonade.” He grinned. “I’m a man of basic appetites.”

He had a simple soldier’s desires. For a home, a wife, children. And after years of wandering, he was finally on the road to achieving them all.

These past few weeks with Morwenna he’d felt more at home, more at peace, than ever before in his life. Last night across the dining table at Arden, she had glowed in the light of the candles, her silver gold hair arranged in tousled curls. Like she belonged there, mistress of his heart and of his house. The servants all liked her. The villagers liked her.

And he . . .

He’d wanted to lay her down among the silver and china, between the puddings and the gravy, and lick her all over. He’d burned to take her upstairs to the master bedroom with its big, curtained bed and touch her, take her, own her.

Of course he’d done none of those things.

Sloat and the servants had been around to keep his lust in check. Whatever circumstances had driven her from her brother’s home and protection, she was a lady. He would not show her less than respect in front of his dependents.

Now, sitting in the open carriage with her hands folded demurely in her lap, she gave him the slumberous look he loved. “If you wished to satisfy your basic appetites, we could have stayed at the cottage. I have two chairs now,” she informed him smugly. “And a bed.”

His blood heated even as he laughed. She might be a lady, but he was still very much a man. He was urgently, painfully aware that he could have her back at her cottage and naked in under five minutes.

But he wanted more from her than civilized dinners or stolen rendezvous.

He turned the cart down the narrow track that meandered to the cove and the boat he had waiting. He was sensitive to every shift of her body on the narrow bench, of her thigh warm beside his. Beneath his tailored coat, he was sweating, his body as hard as the brake handle.

But he would not be distracted again. Every time in the past few weeks he had tried to broach the subject of marriage, Morwenna had turned the conversation aside, diverting him with a look, a touch, a whispered invitation.

Not that he had been that difficult to distract, Jack admitted ruefully.

He had planned this outing with all the care of a general plotting battle strategy. Out-of-doors, where she was most comfortable. By the sea, where he saw her for the first time. On an island, picturesque and private. He gave instructions for the basket, the blanket, the boat. His mother’s ring was in his waistcoat pocket. He had even directed Sloat to draft a letter to his lawyer.

This time everything was prepared.

Everything was perfect.

This time she would say yes.

Morwenna sat in the front of the boat, trailing her hand over the side. The water flowed between her fingers, rippling along her nerve endings, murmuring her name. Beneath the stiff fabric of her dress, her breasts peaked. Her toes curled in her tight new shoes. She longed to be naked in the ocean.

And yet she would not have given up her place in the boat for anything.

She looked at Jack, his dark hair lifting in the breeze from the sea, the sun reddening his nose and cheekbones, and felt a rush of love for him so intense her heart stumbled.

It cannot last, her brother had warned.

But didn’t that make the present even more precious?

This moment must be enough. She would make it be enough for both of them. She would fashion a string of perfect moments like a necklace of pearls—her gift to him. He would never regret loving her. While she . . .

Her throat felt suddenly tight.

We are finfolk. Her brother’s words echoed harshly in her ears. What do we know of love?

She had no experience with love, no example to guide her. Few pair bonds among their kind lasted through the centuries. Children were rare, grudgingly born and quickly fostered.

And yet . . .

She watched the muscles of Jack’s arms bunch and stretch, his big hands grasp the oars, and she lost her breath, falling into the creak and the rhythm of the oars. His scent, soap and linen, salty sweat and clean skin, tugged at her senses. He rowed strongly if not particularly well, digging deep into the water. One paddle caught a swell and shot a plume of spray into the boat.

He grinned ruefully. “Army men are better in the saddle than at the oars.”

“I love you in the saddle,” she assured him, and he laughed.

The sound warmed her heart and eased her doubts. He was so different. Different from her, yes, but also unlike any man she had ever known before.

All the men she had observed over the centuries were sea-faring men, Vikings, sailors, fishermen.

“You did not learn to row growing up?” she asked.

“Not in Cheapside. London,” he explained. “My mother’s family lived in Cheapside.”

Over his shoulder, she could see the island rising like a green wave from the blue and silver sea.

She wrinkled her forehead, struggling to recall what she knew of London. “There is a river in London.”

He glanced over his shoulder, angling the boat toward the narrow beach. “A very dirty one. Not for boys in boats and definitely not for swimming.”

“You cannot swim?” She could hardly fathom such a thing.

“I can paddle. Or I could.”

Before the injuries that scarred his leg, she guessed.

He turned back to her, his gaze lazy and amused. “I suppose you swim like a fish.”

“I can swim,” she admitted.

Her belly hollowed. Exactly like a fish.

The boat rocked in the shallow water. A tumble of gray rock protected a pale sickle of sand. Above the beach the hills swelled, covered in long grass and white and yellow flowers, yarrow and meadowsweet.

The paddles gleamed in the sunlight. The round hull scraped bottom. Morwenna stood, holding on to the side of the boat.

“I’ve got you.” Jack swung her into his arms.

She clutched at his shoulders. “You will hurt your leg.”

“You’ll soak your hem.”

“No matter. I—”

But he was already striding through the ankle-deep water. He set her gently on her feet, his broad hands lingering at her waist before he left her to fetch the basket.

She sighed and spread the blanket on the grass. The sun was very warm. She straightened, stretching her back, looking longingly at the bright blue water. She wished now she had waded ashore. Her dress chafed. Her boots rubbed. For a moment, she felt as confined by her human role as by her human clothes.

“Show me,” Jack said.

The sight of him, dark and muscular in his tight blue coat, soothed her. Steadied her. “Show you what?”

“How to swim.”

Longing surged under her skin. She resisted the temptation. “I cannot Change. Um. My clothes.”

“You don’t need to change.” A smile creased the corners of his eyes. “We can swim naked.”

Her heart tripped.

He had seen her naked many times. This was no different, and yet she felt curiously exposed. The ocean was hers, her life, a part of herself she had kept carefully separate from him. Now he was asking her to share it, to bring him into her world.

Jack stripped off his jacket and tossed it on the blanket. “There’s no one to see.”

He pulled his shirt over his head.

Her gaze traveled the heavy definition of his muscles, the pattern of his scars, the dark hair that fanned across his chest and narrowed to a line below his navel. Lust stirred, easy and familiar.

“We do not need to swim,” she said.

He unbuttoned his breeches. He was already half aroused, dusky and thick. “It will be fun.”

She did not need fun. She needed . . . She was no longer sure what she needed.

“The water will be cold,” she warned.

Jack glanced down at his erection. “That’s probably a good thing.”

She smiled in acknowledgment, reaching slowly for the front closure of her dress.

“I can do that.” His hands were there, between her breasts, slipping the delicate buttons from their holes. “Let me.”

His breath was warm against her face, his expression intent.

She trembled, undone by more than his hands. “I can manage.”

“You can do anything,” he murmured. Her bodice sagged open. Her breath caught. “But let me.”

He cupped the soft weight of her breasts, his thumbs skating over her nipples. “Let me take care of you, Morwenna.”

Desire clenched her insides. An unfamiliar ache lodged in her throat. No one in her life had ever wanted to take care of her. Even Morgan knew better than to try.

Jack’s fingers brushed her throat, traced her collarbone, found her wildly beating pulse in the hollow below her jaw. Sliding the pins from her hair, he combed the smooth strands over her shoulders, arranging them over her breasts, caressing her through the long curtain of her hair. His touch made her feel attended. Cherished.

Loved.

He nudged her dress from her shoulders. It pooled at her feet.

They stood together in the sunlight like the first man and the first woman, naked and unashamed. His arousal brushed her stomach, silky and hot. She flushed with anticipation, her skin blooming.

He laced his fingers with hers. “Take me swimming with you.”

Her heart hammered. She glanced down at the blanket, sideways at him. “Don’t you want to . . .”

His smile lit his serious eyes. “There will be time later. Time for everything.”

The memory of her own words haunted her. Their lives will be short and hard enough. They should love each other while they can.

How could she refuse him this? How could she refuse him anything?

She would not Change in front of him. But she could give him this much of herself.

“All right,” she said.

They walked hand in hand to the water’s edge, the boundary of her world.

Jack grimaced. “Damn, that’s cold.”

She laughed. “Better to go in all at once.”

She ran forward, kicking up spray, and dived into the cold salt sea.

Joy.

The force, the shock, nearly forced her Change. Water enveloped her, embraced her, slid over her limbs, flowed through her hair.

She dived, free from gravity and the planes of earth, dizzy with freedom, feeling the magic bubble through her veins, wrap her sinews, stretch her flesh, soften her bones. Her thighs fused. Her toes spread. She opened her mouth to drink, to inhale, intoxicating briny gulps.

In the sea, she was free, she could be . . . anything. Anything at all.

“Morwenna!” A voice, louder than the cry of the gulls or the pounding of her heart or the rush of water in her ears. Jack’s voice, calling her back to shore.

Disoriented, she drifted, caught between Change and thought.

Jack.

Her hair floated around her in a cloud. She righted herself, found her feet and the direction of the light. The surface. There. She kicked, feeling her legs, bone and muscle, respond.

Sunlight and air broke on her face.

She forced herself to breathe. To be. To be human.

She turned, blinking the water from her eyes. Jack stood waist deep in the cold water, his wet hair molded to his skull. Water ran down his chest, emphasizing the masculine shape of him, the sleek, hard muscles, the tension of his broad shoulders.

The tension evaporated when he saw her. His face relaxed. “You were under a long time.”

Time. They had so little time.

She glided back to him. “I am here now.”

Let it be enough, she prayed. Let me be enough for him.

They played together like otters or children, bobbing, laughing, splashing in the water. He chased her, shrieking, diving, until she let herself be caught. Breathless, she floated in his arms, twined around him like kelp. Her hands drifted over him, enjoying the textures of him, rough and smooth, under the water. In that moment she had everything she wanted, Jack and the sea. Inside she was melting, flowing, brimming with love.

He trapped her hands; held them. “Come with me.”

“Yes.”

“Lie with me.”

Oh, yes.

They waded dripping from the water and lay side by side on the blanket, lacing their fingers together. Turning her head, she pressed her lips to his shoulder. His skin was cool and tasted of salt.

“You are cold.”

He shrugged. “The sun will dry me quickly enough.”

She rolled to face him, smiling, draping her leg over his hip. “I can warm you.”

“Better than the sun.” He turned on his side toward her, combing her damp hair from her face with his fingers. His brown eyes were steady on hers. “My light. My love.”

He covered her mouth with his. Soft and quiet, wooing her. Her heart lurched and then raced. He touched her gently and with purpose until she trembled in his arms.

He smiled. “Cold?”

“No.”

Her skin flushed as he continued to touch her, to taste, trailing his fingers from throat to breast, from hip to thigh and everywhere in between. His hands left fires in their wake, a bone-deep glow, flash points of pleasure.

“Jack.”

He gathered her close, body to body, skin to skin, heat to heat. Their mouths met and explored before he grasped her hips and nudged forward. She gasped, her fingers biting into his shoulders. He thrust.

Ah. She shuddered, her teeth biting down on her lower lip. “Again.”

He paused. “Are you asking me or telling me?”

She wriggled. “Which will get you to do what I want?”

“Either,” he admitted frankly. His neck arched, the cords straining as she touched him. “Oh, God, Morwenna.”

She melted against him. “Please. Do it. Now.”

He surged.

She cried out in passion, in possession, in joy. He was in her, part of her, as she clenched around him and made him hers, as he thrust inside her and made her his, all their boundaries blurring, all their divisions melting away. They moved together, flowed together, fused together by sweat and heat and need.

One.

Tenderness cracked her heart.

“You are the first,” she told him.

He focused on her face, his pupils wide and wild. “What?”

She touched his cheek. “My first love.”

Her last.

Her only.

“Good,” he said with masculine satisfaction and sank into her again.

The ripples began inside her. He held himself deep and still as she shuddered, as she shattered, feeling him everywhere inside her, surging inside her, in her blood and in her loins and in her heart. She wrapped her arms around him to hold him closer, wrapped her legs around him to bring him deeper, felt him push into her, pound into her, until he plunged with her into the heart of the whirlpool and they both were swept away.

They floated, drifting in each other’s arms. The sun was warm on her naked hip, golden behind her eyelids.

He raised his head and kissed her so sweetly she shivered again in longing and delight.

“I am a plain man with ordinary needs. I want to give you my life and my love. To share a home and children with you. Marry me, Morwenna.”

She felt the prick of real tears, hard, human tears in her eyes. She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Are you asking me or telling me?”

But his emotions ran too deep for teasing. His gaze was straight and serious. “Which will get you to do what I want?”

“Either,” she answered honestly. “I love you.”

His hands tightened. His eyes blazed. “Yes?” he demanded. “Say yes.”

“Yes!”

Neither spoke again for a long while.

SIX

The sun slid toward the sea. Pink and purple clouds fled across the sky, herded like sheep by the wind. The tide rolled in, long, flat breakers edged with dirty lace.

Morwenna sat in the prow as Jack rowed the heavy wooden boat back to the mainland.

She loved.

And was loved.

The knowledge was a warm glow in her chest, radiating outward to her fingers and toes like the rays of the afternoon sun.

Jack hauled on the oars, his lean brown face open and relaxed despite the restive sea. She had done that for him, she thought smugly. She had erased the lines from his face and put that lazy, satisfied glint in his eyes.

She smiled.

“Wind’s picking up,” he remarked.

She could feel a shimmer of vapor in the air, a powerful current flowing from the west. “It must rain sometime,” she said apologetically.

“We’ll be home before then,” he assured her.

Home. Such a round, firm, settled word. The warmth inside her grew.

“I want to go to Arden,” she said.

He nodded. “I told Cook to prepare a special dinner for us.”

She was touched by his thoughtfulness; amused by his appetite. “After that lunch?”

The empty picnic basket rested between the seats. She nudged it with her foot out of the water that had collected in the bottom of the boat.

“We should celebrate. I have something to give you,” Jack said.

She looked at him, instantly diverted from the puddle at her feet. “What?”

“My mother’s ring. A cabochon sapphire.” He cleared his throat. “Of course you might prefer a different stone. Or a larger one.”

She did not care about the size or the stone. The look in his eyes meant everything. “I would love to wear your mother’s ring.”

Pleasure shone in his dark eyes, but he only said, “Wait until you see it.”

“Tonight.”

“Actually, I have it in my pocket. I still haven’t proposed to you properly.”

She arched her eyebrows. “There is a proper way to propose?”

“Generally the man goes down upon one knee.”

“I think I might quite like you on your knees. Just think of all you could do . . . down there. But the way you proposed was better.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Without ceremony?”

“Naked,” she explained. “And inside me.”

His gaze kindled. “Most improper. But since it persuaded you to say yes . . .”

A pop.

A lurch.

A rush.

Morwenna stared, bewildered, as a black rag washed between the seats. The bow dipped suddenly beneath Jack’s weight. “What . . . ?”

Water gurgled in the bottom of the boat. The picnic basket listed on its side in a rapidly growing pool of water.

“Jack?”

A wave washed over the side. Her seat slanted under her.

“We’ve sprung a leak.” His voice was calm and sharp. “Stay with the boat.”

The water gushed to his boots. There was a hole, she realized. Under his seat. She was not frightened, only bewildered and annoyed.

“Hold on to the boat,” Jack ordered. “The hull will float if—”

Another wave rushed the boat. He dropped the oars and grabbed for her.

She reached for his hands as the world went suddenly, wildly awry. The boat pitched, the bow plunged. The sudden weight of the water flipped the solid hull, throwing her into the cold salt sea. Brine filled her mouth, blurred her eyes . . . She heard a splash, a thunk, as her head bobbed under the surface. Sputtering, she raised her face, raking streamers of wet hair from her eyes. Her skirts mushroomed, billowing around her. And Jack . . .

Her heart clenched like a fist.

“Jack!”

He floated a few yards away, arms thrashing feebly. His eyes were open. Dazed. A great bloody gash streaked his forehead.

He was hurt. In danger. Something—the hard wooden edge of the hull as it flipped or the end of an oar—must have struck him when they capsized.

She kicked toward him, hampered by her skirts. Her legs were tangled, heavy, her half boots full of water.

He groaned. “Morwenna.”

“I’m here,” she called frantically. “It’s all right. I am—”

Terrified.

His eyes rolled back in his skull. His head dropped forward.

He slid beneath the water.

“No!”

She lunged for him, reaching, reaching . . . Her fingers brushed something. His hair. His sleeve. She gripped tight and tugged, hauling him to the surface, turning his face to the sky. Was he breathing? His face was pale, his lips slack.

A wave smacked into the hull and broke over them. They both went under. Morwenna kicked her sodden skirts, struggled to support Jack’s head. Her breath burst from her lips in an absurd staccato rhythm like a song or a prayer: Please, please, please.

Water was her element. But she was trapped by her clothes. Trapped in this body. Jack was easily twice her size and weighted by his boots. The gash on his forehead was red, wet, and open like a mouth. Her heart drummed in panic. She could call the seals. She did not have the strength to save him.

Or time to wait.

“Jack.” She spoke sharply, urgently, into his ear, willing him to respond. “Hold me.”

His lids lifted. His bleary eyes slid over her.

“Do you hear me?” She shook him. “Hold on. Hold on to me.”

“No,” he slurred. “Drag you . . . down.”

“You won’t.”

Not if she Changed. Now. Quickly.

“You must hold on,” she said fiercely.

His gaze found hers. “Love . . . you. Save . . . yourself.”

He sagged.

Sank.

With a little cry, she seized his hand and pressed it to her shoulder. Please. His fingers fumbled. Squeezed. Her relief rose like a sob.

She had never attempted to Change like this, with clothes plastered to her body and shoes on her feet. With urgency beating in her blood and panic squeezing her heart. No plunge, no dive, no wild surge of spirit becoming one with the sea. She gritted her teeth, wrenching power from her uncooperative flesh, forcing magic along constricted veins and sinews.

It hurt.

Pain lanced through her, unexpected, shocking. She spasmed, writhing like a fish out of water. Jack drifted beside her—breathing?—his touch a brand, an anchor on her flesh. Quickly. Now.

Her blood drummed in her ears as she Changed, as her muscles rippled and popped and her bones erupted and dissolved. Seams popped. Fabric tore.

Jack.

She nudged against him, glided under him, felt his hands slide and grip, felt his weight shift and roll.

Hold on, she said or thought or sang and carried him safely to shore.

He could not breathe. He was drowning. Dreaming. Delirious.

His head was on fire and his chest burned and his limbs were cold, at once heavy and weightless. His blood rushed in his ears.

Hold on, someone said, as they’d said in the surgeons’ tent when they’d placed the pad between his teeth and probed his wounds for bits of bone and shrapnel. The world whirled as it had then, and the pain shot through his head.

They were taking him somewhere, carrying him swiftly, away from the battlefield.

Hold on.

So he did, clinging grimly to life. There was something he had to do, someone he had to see, some . . .

Morwenna.

The sea gushed and bubbled around him. The world fractured in a blaze of light, a blast of sound, a burst of agony. Air knifed his lungs. He gasped and choked. On blood? Or brine?

He felt a nudge, a shove, as he lay like a felled log in the surf, cold, hard sand under his cheek, water running through his fingers.

Morwenna. He turned his head to find her, struggled to push to his knees.

She was there—and not there—in the shallow water.

He closed his eyes. Opened them again. There was a dolphin. He saw it, the sleek barrel shape, the distinctive fin.

And there was Morwenna, shining like the mist, insubstantial as the foam, her wet hair around her shoulders . . .

A wave rattled in and drained away, taking the last vestige of the dolphin with it.

But the double image, Morwenna’s face superimposed on the fin, the tail, seared the back of his eyes.

Better if he had not seen her at all.

She rose from the water and ran to him, her dress clinging to her in rags.

His heart pounded. She was safe. He was relieved. He was . . . He opened his mouth, but no sound emerged.

He tried again. “I didn’t see you out there. In the water. I thought you were dead.”

“Are you all right?”

“Hallucinating,” he explained.

She kneeled beside him, her face inhuman in its perfection, beautiful in its concern.

He could not breathe. He could not think. His brain was on fire. “Are you . . .”

“I am fine.”

“Morwenna?”

“Yes. Let me help you to the cart.” She reached for him and he saw—he saw—the faint iridescent webbing between her fingers. Even as he watched, it faded, it melted away.

Turning his head, he threw up onto the sand.

He lay there a long time, his face pressed to the ground, listening to nothing but the rasp of his breathing and the water running over the rocks.

He raised his head, bile bitter in his mouth. “What are you?” he asked hoarsely.

Morwenna flinched. He was afraid. Disgusted. Disbelieving.

Or perhaps he had simply swallowed too much seawater after a bump on the head.

But the wary, searching look in his eyes, the memory of Morgan’s words, quickly disabused her of that hope. Humans fear what they do not understand. And what they fear, they hate.

She sat back on her heels and folded her hands, no longer trying to touch him. “What do you think I am?”

He shook his head. Winced as the movement jarred his wound. “You don’t want to know.”

His rejection jabbed like a sea urchin’s barb. He was hurt, she reminded herself, the gash on his forehead still bleeding. Hurt and confused. “Let me help you,” she said again gently.

“You helped me . . .” His eyes focused as he struggled to remember. “That was you in the water, carrying me.”

She sighed. “Yes. Come now.” She slid an arm around him, urged him to his feet. “We need to get you home.”

He weighed on her, his arm heavy and damp around her shoulders, his body shaking as if with fever. “You’re a mermaid.”

She arched her eyebrows, injecting what she hoped was the right amount of amusement in her voice. “Half woman, half fish? There is no such thing.”

She coaxed him a few steps toward the cart, water squelching from his boots.

He staggered and recovered. “But I saw . . . And your toes . . .”

He stopped.

She could not put him off forever, she realized with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She would not apologize for who she was or for what she had done. She had saved him.

Besides, he clearly wasn’t budging until he had an answer.

“I am finfolk,” she said clearly. “An elemental of the water.”

He swayed. “I need to sit down.”

Wonderful. Her eyes burned. Her throat ached. First she made him throw up and now he had to sit down. “We are almost at the cart,” she said. “Lean on me.”

They shambled toward the cart and the patient pony. Jack managed somehow to pull himself into the rig before collapsing onto the seat. Beneath his tan, his face was lined and bloodless.

“What is . . . An elemental, you said?”

She swallowed past the constriction of her throat. She did not want to quarrel with him. Not when he was injured, half drowned, and in shock. “We are the children of the sea, formed when God brought the waters of the world into being, the first fruits of His creation.”

“Not . . . human?”

“We can take human form. The finfolk can take any form under the sea.”

He was silent, staring at the horse’s ears.

Her heart hammered. “Do you believe me?”

Jack stirred and looked at her, his eyes dull. “I don’t know what to believe. You lied to me.”

She untied the hitch with jerky motions. Of course he would see it that way. He was a man of rigid honor. He saw the whole world in black and white.

But she was not of his world. “I did not lie. Not really.”

He frowned. “Misled me, then.”

She raised her chin, driven on the defensive by hurt and guilt. She was responsible for her evasions. But he bore some responsibility, too. “You were eager enough to be misled. You did not want to see anything that did not accord with your notions of who I should be. The clues were there. You did not want to know.”

His face was closed. Stubborn. “A man doesn’t imagine the woman he’s in love with is a mermaid.”

“Finfolk.”

He ignored her distinction, focused on his own human logic. “You should have trusted me.”

“You said you accepted me. You said you loved me. Would my telling you have made any difference?”

“Of course it makes a difference. I wanted to marry you.”

Ah. Pain pierced her heart. Wanted, not want.

She was a fool.

I am a plain man, he had told her when he proposed. With ordinary needs.

And now he did not need her. Did not want her. Could not accept her.

It was as simple, as devastating, as that.

She drew her ragged dress, her shredded pride around her, a shield to protect her broken heart. She was an elemental, one of the First Creation. She would not stoop to beg for his love.

“How fortunate for us both, then,” she said, “that you never proposed properly.”

She slapped the pony’s reins across its broad back. The cart jolted as she turned swiftly away.

“Morwenna!”

Her vision blurred. She did not stop to hear. There was a roaring in her head like the sound of the waves and the bitter taste of salt on her lips.

Her brother was right. Love did not last. Nothing lasted forever but the sea.

She crossed the beach, shedding her clothes, and plunged into the ocean.

SEVEN

“The cottage was empty,” Jack said flatly.

He stared out the library window, his mood as bleak as the sky, his back to the room. Against the glass, Edwin Sloat’s image appeared, a darker shadow against the shadow of the trees. Jack’s own reflection swam in the glass like a ghost, gray and hollow eyed, the illusion heightened by the bandage on his forehead.

He’d looked worse stumbling off the troop ship in London. But however terrible his injuries, however dubious his prospects, then he’d had hope.

Now . . .

“She has not returned,” Sloat said behind him, his voice an unctuous blend of sympathy and satisfaction.

Jack’s hands fisted at his sides. His eyes felt gritty and dry. “No.”

He had been back to the cottage three times with increasing desperation and diminished hopes. Morwenna was gone as if she had never been. The air smelled like a deserted campsite, of ash and abandonment. Only the rumpled covers of the bed and scattered gifts from the villagers proved she had been there at all.

He felt her absence like an amputated limb, a phantom pain in his chest where his heart had been.

What had she said after she sang the young fisherman from the sea? Go back to your sweetheart . . . hold her tight for the time that has been given to you both.

Good advice.

So why the hell hadn’t he followed it? He should have relished every day, every hour, every second he had with her.

Now it was too late even to apologize.

She had saved him from death. More, she had made him feel alive.

And instead of thanking her, he had accused her of not trusting him. Of not being what he imagined, when she was so clearly everything he needed.

No wonder she left him.

A cough recalled his attention to the steward standing behind him.

“Apparently no one has seen the girl since your, er, outing the other day,” Sloat said. “It’s caused some talk in the village.”

Jack felt a prickle like a soldier’s warning awareness of danger. He turned from the window. “What are you suggesting?”

“Nothing. Good heavens, nothing at all. Actually, I defended you.”

Cold comprehension pierced Jack’s fog of misery. “What do they think I did? Push her overboard?”

Sloat’s tongue flickered over his lips. “Of course not. Even if, in a moment of passion, you were driven to . . . But no one would ever accuse you of such a thing. Certainly not to your face.”

No one but Sloat, Jack thought grimly.

“Perhaps I should present myself to the magistrate,” he said only half in jest.

“Oh, no, sir.” The steward sounded genuinely shocked. “But perhaps . . . Might I suggest a stay in town would be in order? Only until the talk dies down.”

“You are very careful of my reputation,” Jack observed.

Even more concerned, he guessed, with his own consequence in the household and the neighborhood. Sloat’s activities had been curtailed by Jack’s arrival, his position further threatened by the possibility of Jack’s marriage. The steward must want nothing more than for Jack to go away.

“A change of scene would do you good,” Sloat urged. “The estate provides enough income to support a London residence. More income if . . . Well, enough has been said on that subject, eh?”

More income if Sloat were left in charge to carry on as he had before.

This was overreaching, even for Sloat.

“I will stay,” Jack said.

Even if Morwenna never came back, his duty was here.

“Don’t look for thanks,” Sloat warned him. “These Scots are an ungrateful lot.”

“Excuse me, sir.” Watts, the red-faced butler, shuffled into the room. “There are several gentlemen . . . men . . . persons here to see you. From the village.”

“I warned you there was talk,” Sloat said. “Send them away.”

Jack silenced him with a look. Whatever the accusations, he would face them. He nodded to the butler. “Show them in, Watts.”

The butler blinked and wandered off, eventually returning with the delegation from the village: the shopkeeper Hobson in his shabby coat, the broad baker with his orange beard, and the old and young fishermen whose boat had been caught in the storm. They came in tugging their caps and stamping their feet, ill at ease as dray horses on a racetrack.

“Gentlemen,” Jack said politely. “What can I do for you?”

Sloat sneered. “Isn’t it obvious? They’re here to extort money.”

“I don’t think so,” Jack said, watching their faces. “Two of them have already presented their accounts and been paid.”

The sharp-faced shopkeeper nodded. “That’s right. That’s why we came. Partly why we came.”

“Because they want more. I told you how it would be,” Sloat said to Jack. “Once they recognize a soft touch, they rob you blind.”

The young fisherman flushed and took a step forward. “We’re not thieves.”

“Not like some,” the baker rumbled with a dark look at Sloat.

“Why don’t you tell me your business,” Jack said in his command voice.

Hobson, apparently the designated leader, tugged on his waistcoat. “Young Colin here found something on the beach and he thought, we all thought . . .” Looks and nods were exchanged. “You should know about it.”

“It’s your boat, sir,” Colin said.

“The boat sank,” Sloat said.

Jeb, the older fisherman, nodded. “Aye, we heard. But there it was on the beach when we come in at the end of the day, whole and dry.”

“Not whole,” the baker said.

“Of course not,” Sloat interjected. “It capsized.”

“Sprang a leak on the way back from the island,” Jack explained.

“This weren’t like any leak I ever saw,” Jeb said. “This was a big hole cut in the bottom of the boat, all nice and round and even.”

The shopkeeper nodded. “I saw it myself. New hole. You could tell by the edges.”

Jack narrowed his eyes, his soldier’s instinct returning, sharper than before. “We had no problems rowing out.”

“You wouldn’t,” Jeb said. “There was pitch on the edges of the hole with threads in it. Like somebody patched it soft, see, to hide it, maybe to hold it until you got out in deep water.”

“A repair,” Sloat suggested.

The young fisherman, Colin, snorted. “Nobody would be daft enough to repair a boat with a plug like that.”

Jack didn’t know anything about boats. But he understood barrels. “Wouldn’t a plug swell in the water? Like a cork.”

“A wood plug, aye,” Jeb agreed. “But those threads . . . This weren’t a proper plug at all. Just rag and pitch.”

“And sugar, maybe. Or salt,” the baker said. “Something that would dissolve in the water.”

“You’re suggesting someone deliberately sabotaged the boat.”

“Someone with a grudge,” Hobson said.

“Someone from the village,” Sloat said.

The baker shook his head. “Major’s liked in the village.”

There were more shuffles, more nods.

“That’s why we came,” Hobson said.

Jack looked at Sloat, anger cold as a blade inside him. “You knew where I was going. I told you to ready the boat.”

Sloat bridled. “After which it sat unattended for hours on that beach. Anyone could have tampered with it.”

“Only one man did.”

Sloat showed his teeth in a ghastly smile. “You can’t do anything. You can’t prove anything.”

“I don’t require proof to do this,” Jack said and threw a hard right hook that knocked him to the ground.

The large, soft man sprawled on the carpet, his lip bleeding.

Jack stood over him, knuckles throbbing and face set. “Get up.”

Sloat touched a hand to his bleeding mouth and shook his head.

“You deserved to be thrashed,” Jack said. “For what you tried to do to me and for what you have done to others. But until this moment you were technically in my employ. Get up. Watts will stay with you while you pack a change of clothes. One of the grooms can drive you to the stage in Kinlochbervie.”

“But my things—”

“Will be packed up and sent after you. Get out of my sight,” Jack said in an even voice that had made hardened soldiers flinch. “If you are wise, you will stay out of my sight and off my land for the rest of your life.”

The steward turned white and red and white again. Without a word he scrambled to his feet and lurched from the room.

“Nice hook,” said the baker.

“And good riddance,” Hobson added.

Jeb spat in the grate and then looked sheepishly at Jack. “Beg pardon, Major.”

Jack was surprised to find himself smiling. “Not at all. I share your sentiments.”

“He could have murdered you in your bed,” Hobson said with more relish than the prospect warranted.

“I doubt he would go that far,” Jack said dryly. “He obviously has little stomach for outright violence. He is a villain, but an opportunistic one.”

“Cowardly weasel,” the baker said.

“Still, I am grateful to you.” Jack extended his smile to them all. “I am lucky the boat washed ashore as it did and even more fortunate in my neighbors.”

Grins and nods answered him.

Colin stuck his hands in his belt. “It didn’t wash up. The lady brought it.”

Hobson looked embarrassed. “Now, lad . . .”

Jeb elbowed the young man in the side.

Jack’s heart banged in his chest in sudden, wild hope. The lady. Morwenna. “Did you see her?”

“Nay,” the young fisherman admitted reluctantly.

No, of course not. She had left him.

“But it stands to reason it was her.” Jeb spoke up. “Boat was full of water at the bottom of the bay. It didn’t empty itself and drag itself ashore.”

Colin nodded, as if the boat being dragged ashore by a mermaid was somehow more plausible.

The baker scratched his jaw. “One way or another, things are better with the lady around.”

“She’s our luck,” Jeb said simply.

“The luck of the village,” the shopkeeper said.

They all looked at Jack then. As if he could do something to bring her back.

Too late.

He’d lost his chance when he’d thrown her confession back in her face. He had accused her of a lack of trust, when the true problem was his own lack of faith.

These men believed in her, he realized.

Could he do less?

She still cared enough to try to protect him. She had raised the boat and left it on the beach as a warning.

The question now was, what could he possibly give her in return?

The sun went down in a blare of color as bright as a trumpet blast. The sea shimmered silver and gold.

Jack marched the length of the jetty in the green coat and red collar and cuffs of an officer of the Ninety-Fifth Rifles, as well turned out as if he reported for parade, as grimly determined as if he rode Neptune into battle. His polished boots slipped and crunched on the weed-fringed rocks.

The villagers hung back at a respectful distance along the seawall, witnesses to his public show of faith.

Or spectators at his public humiliation.

His jaw set.

He stopped where the stone ended, where the land met the sea and the waves running along the rocks gleamed and foamed like Morwenna’s hair. The march, the show, were for the watchers onshore and for atonement.

But his words, spoken quietly to the sea, were for her alone.

“You told me once there was nothing I could give you that you do not already have. Nothing you need.” He swallowed against the ache in his throat. “But you took something of mine when you returned to the sea. You took my heart.”

The wind sighed. The salt air touched his lips like a cool kiss, like the taste of tears.

He took a deep breath. “Everything I have, everything I am, is yours. My lands, my life, my love. My trust. Morwenna . . . Will you marry me?”

Long moments passed. The clouds moved swift and full as sails before the wind. A bell rang in the harbor, tolling a warning to lingering ships.

No answer.

Jack waited, his heart full and his gut churning, while the sea murmured and the sun slipped further in the sky.

Onshore, a few sensible folks stopped watching and went home to their chores or their suppers.

Still no answer.

Or perhaps her answer was No.

At long, long last he bowed his head, blinking moisture from his eyes. “You will always have my love,” he told the tide. “And my pledge. Take this, and remember me.”

Drawing back his arm, he hurled the ring over the ocean. The last rays of the sun fired the gold as it plunged in a glittering arc to the sea.

Jack fell to his knees on the rock, a strong man undone by love and grief.

Later, when they told the story, the watchers left onshore argued about what happened next. They all agreed that a woman appeared out of the sea. Some said she was naked, and some saw a silver dress that sparkled like fish scales in the sun, and a few claimed she wore an actual mermaid’s tail as she came out of the water. But all agreed she was the most beautiful sight they had ever seen, their lady, the luck of Farness.

Her long pale hair streamed over her shoulders as if carried by the tide. On her left hand she wore a gold ring with a blue stone that flashed in the sun.

She walked to their major and touched him on the shoulder, and he rose and took her into his arms.

She was here.

She was real and warm and back in his arms, her wet, sleek body pressed to his uniform coat, her wild, pale hair tickling his throat.

A wave of love and relief washed over Jack so great he trembled and felt her trembling in return.

She kissed him and drew back, gazing into his eyes.

“You do have something I want,” she told him gravely. “Something I need and never had before.”

He caught her hand, pressing his lips to her palm and then to his mother’s ring gleaming around her finger.

“Your love.” A smile wavered on her lips as he helped her to her feet. “Although now that you have asked me properly, you can never take back the ring. Or your proposal.”

“I don’t want to take it back,” he told her hoarsely. “I meant every word. I love you.”

Her golden eyes glistened with laughter and tears. “Then give me your coat, my love, and let us go home.”

He took off his green uniform jacket and tenderly wrapped it around her. Together, they began the long walk over the jetty and home.