She held out something blue and jagged. She’d said on her arrival she was hoping for a pearl.
“Sea glass.” He took the piece and held it up to the light, its green tint visible. “Likely from a bottle of spirits. Pearls suit you better.”
She smiled at him, her upswept hair pillowing a bit loosely about her face, two long curls over her shoulder. “I’ll keep looking.”
Farther down the beach he heard laughter. Cyprian was on hand, entertaining the maidservant, who had an egg basket on one arm. No doubt he’d visited the hens roosting at the Flask and Sword as a way of introduction. Clever, that.
“Tell me your maidservant’s story,” he said, falling into step beside her.
Esmée kept her eyes on the sand. “Lucy is but eighteen, orphaned after her parents died of fever. She was at the almshouse long enough to take a dislike to it. Being skilled with a needle, she was on her way to being bound out to a mantuamaker. When I gave her the choice to come with me, she readily assented. But I do wonder about keeping her isolated here long.”
“At the moment she seems happy enough.”
Laughter erupted again, Lucy’s mingled with Cyprian’s.
“Is that a monkey I spy on the shoulder of your cabin boy?” Esmée asked. “The renowned Hermes, I take it.”
He chuckled. “You’ve yet to be formally introduced. Cyprian is my steward and has charge of Hermes for the time being.”
“I’ve never seen a better dressed youth.”
“Once he laid eyes on fair Lucy, he must have decided to bedeck himself in the finest garments to be had from the common chest.”
“Ah, the slops chest, Father called it. Plunder.”
“Aye, from seized enemy vessels.”
The lad did look a tad ludicrous, having traded his humble working trousers and shirt of yesterday for ruffles and silk. But Lucy seemed to be enjoying the attention, and Henri would rather they be here than in the alleys and gin shops ashore.
“Tell me his story.” Esmée looked at him, another wisp of hair tumbling down. With a gloved hand she looped it behind her ear, jarring the bonnet that matched her gown.
He was having a devil of a time trying to stay his hand and not right it for her, staunching his urge to throw her hat to the wind, take out all the pins, and tumble her hair further. “Cyprian is Portuguese. I found him begging at the port of Lisbon. He’s served aboard the Relentless for several years and is well into manhood, though he looks younger.”
“They’ve known such hardship already.” Esmée’s expression turned pensive. “Their laughter does me good. Let them have their amusement while they may.”
They walked on in silence for a time, pausing now and again to examine something interesting on the beach. When he gave a little bow and held out another piece of sea glass, she curtsied prettily in return, making them both laugh.
“’Tis the blue of your gown,” he remarked. “The one you wore when we first met.”
She looked at him, near disbelief in her eyes. “I still have it but haven’t worn it since—”
Since you left.
He’d tried to pin that blue down a thousand times in the last decade. Caribbean blue. Delft blue. Egyptian blue. Marine blue, the official color of British naval uniforms. Cobalt blue.
Lapis lazuli. Aye, that was it.
She squinted into the sunlight, and he looked to the sea and then the lighthouse when she said, “So shall we kindle the light tonight, you and I?”
How romantic she made it sound. A joint effort. The first of many, he hoped. “Aye, I want you to shadow me for a sennight or so, till we know the ins and outs of the tower and its workings and you’re comfortable enough to handle it on your own.”
“Will you be here a sennight more?” The shadow he’d found in her face when he’d seen her at Lady Lightfoot’s ball returned, eclipsing her loveliness.
“I know not.” How he wanted to throw any future cruise to the wind and remain right here. Even now he sensed there was more to her arrival than keeping the light. His appointing her as lightkeeper had been far from objective.
Would it all play out like it had years before when they’d first parted?
He sent his concerns heavenward, the sunlit moment weighed down by dark thoughts.
“Then we shall make the most of the time given us.” Her smile was soft, a bit sad. It tore at him in a way little else did.
Gone was the spirited girl who had objected so strenuously to his going to sea. He hardly knew what to do with the composed woman in her place.
She took his extended hand, and he helped her over a rocky outcropping. “Is it true you forbid married men from joining your crew?”
He gave a nod. “Mostly out of respect to you.”
Her green gaze came back to him. Tears stood in her eyes. His own throat closed and threatened to choke him.
At last he said, “I took to heart all you said back then—the toll on your family with your father away, your mother especially.”
She leaned down and picked up a cracked shell. “I wish I’d known. It might have softened my regard of you.”
He took a breath and revealed the rest. “I had a small chest of letters I wrote you but never sent.”
The shell was discarded. “Do you have them still?”
His aye earned such a bittersweet look it sank his stomach to his boots.
“Might you give them to me after all?”
Would he? “The heartsick ponderings of a sailor?” He’d nearly thrown the chest overboard on more than one melancholy occasion. “Mayhap when I sail again.”
“Please.” The entreaty in her voice decided the matter.
“Do you forgive me for leaving?” He looked toward the line of smoke that marked the Flask and Sword’s chimney. “For forsaking what we had?”
A gull swooped in, shattering the air with its cry.
“Only if you’ll forgive me for making it an all-or-nothing arrangement.” The mist in her eyes returned. “That was unconscionable.”
“We were young. Foolish.”
“And now?” Pensiveness limned her words. “We are . . .”
“Older. Wiser.” He said the last word with a shake of his head. “Friends.”
“Friends.” Her echo came soft, a bit disappointed, he thought.
Hope took hold. “Unless you want to be otherwise.”
She halted then and looked up at him, her sandy fingers full of beach treasures. “I scarcely know how to start over, if that’s what you mean.”
His heart began to pound. A deluge of emotion akin to a tropical monsoon swirled inside him. Never did he imagine this turn of events—having her here beside him, removing the distance between them in one stunning move. And now looking as if they might reconcile, fall in love again.
If they’d ever stopped loving each other to begin with.
“I want what you want, Henri.” She began walking again, her full skirts dragging on the wet sand. “Maybe ’tis a bit like dancing,” she said, a beguiling light in her eye. “I shall simply follow your lead.”
He caught up to her, wanting to take her hand again yet wanting to be careful with her. Not wreck the both of them like before. How did one let go of the past and risk love again?