Mermaid of Penperro

by Cach, Lisa

“I walk with you.”

  “You’ll miss your tea. You wouldn’t want to miss Mrs. Toley’s biscuits and tarts.”

  “That’s quite all right,” Mrs. Toley said. “They’ll keep for another day. You go ahead and walk with Mr. Jobson, Mrs. Hoffman, if that is what you want to do.”

  “We walk,” Hilde said. He was plainly a bit of a shy one, and it would take some coaxing to draw out the animal she sensed beneath. This could be even more fun than she’d thought.

  Matt swallowed and gave a weak smile. “We walk.”

  Konstanze jammed the point of the shovel into the ground, wedged it in further with her foot, then when it had sunk a few inches climbed on with both feet and bounced up and down on the top edge of the blade, trying to force it farther in. It sank another two inches.

  “Stupid, stubborn piece of dirt,” she muttered, hopping off and using her full weight on the shovel to lever out the clump of dirt and grasses. Her back protested as she lifted the shovelful of dirt and flung it to the side. It landed on top of the small pile of such clumps she had made, then rolled down the front and back into her tiny garden patch.

  She sighed and reached down, tossing it back onto the pile with her bare hand. What did a little more dirt on her matter?

  Lacking either books or company, and unable to go wandering about the countryside, Konstanze found that boredom and restlessness had gotten the better of her and she’d decided to do something about the fallow patch of ground behind the cottage that had once been a garden. Hilde was off in town visiting some woman she had met while shopping, and Konstanze hoped to have a respectable showing of turned earth by the time she returned.

  She drove the shovel in again, the blade scraping on a buried rock. The only thing about this confinement to the farm that made it bearable was that she had chosen it herself, as part of her “job” as the mermaid.

  It had been a week since Tom’s visit. Usually she could fill such time—and more—with her own private musings and stories. She could spin away months in daydreams, even without the help of books. Since Tom’s visit, though, every daydream centered on him.

  They were pleasant daydreams, there was no arguing that. However they might start out, they always ended with touching, or kissing, or undressing and letting him explore her body with his hands. It was quite shocking, really, what went on in her head. Thank God no one could see into it.

  It was in part the very fact that she enjoyed those illicit daydreams so much that made her anxious to escape them. She had never thought that she was the type of woman who lusted after men or invited dishonorable attentions. It was the romance of love that had always appealed to her, never the physical aspect.

  Her experiences in the marriage bed with Bugg had confirmed that.

  She had been brought up to be modest and to take care with her honor. The required behavior had come easily to her, and she had never, not once, had cause to consider that she was the type of woman who might one day become an adulteress. A mistress. A wanton on the road to ruin.

  She saw herself living in a small, over-decorated apartment, pillows strewn everywhere. She would spend her days lounging on her bed, half-dressed, waiting for her lover to come use her body. He’d give her gifts of jewelry, over which she’d coo and sigh, and then she’d stash them away against the day he abandoned her, and she found herself alone on the streets with a baby held to her breast. She’d read a novel like that, once, and Mama had warned against such a life, pointing out the singers and actresses who fell into such traps.

  Konstanze shuddered at the thought that she could become one of those women, but that was what her fantasies about Tom were telling her: disgrace was but a few tempting touches away.

  She heaved a shovelful of dirt, sweat trickling down the sides of her face. She was wearing her oldest dress, a faded dark red one that now had holes cut out of the hem from where she and Hilde had taken the material for the nipples. Her skirt and chemise were tied up to the side, her feet bare inside a pair of old leather shoes. Dirt had trickled down inside the shoes, gritty and uncomfortable. It had turned to mud down where her toes were sweating.

  She stood back to survey her work. Pitiful. After what felt to be half a day’s work she’d cleared a space no more than six feet long and three feet wide. It looked more like the beginnings of a grave than a garden. She supposed she’d have to retrieve as much dirt as she could from the clumps she’d removed. Who knew that gardening was so much work?

  Too tired to continue for the moment, she stabbed the shovel upright into the ground and stepped around her pit to the lush grasses growing on the bottom slopes of the hill that came down to the edge of the yard. She collapsed there, kicking off her shoes and lying back, staring up at the puffy white clouds in the blue sky.

  As she had done a hundred times already, she replayed in her mind those long moments when Tom had stood up next to her, his hand cupping her head, his mouth so close she could almost feel his lips on hers. She’d been angry and hurt at the implications of what he’d said, but those emotions had transformed themselves quickly into a longing for his kiss, her desire to kick him turning to one to hold him.

  She was a stupid, lustful girl. All she’d been able to think as he had lowered his head was yes, yes, yes. How easily pacified she was! He had insulted her, and she’d forgiven him the moment he put his hand on her and said he was sorry.

  She was the one who should be sorry. She should be apologizing to dear dead Mama right now for letting her teachings fall so easily by the wayside.

  She closed her eyes and felt again his hands in her hair, his mouth coming down to kiss her cheek, her own lips pressing against skin made rough by shaven whiskers. A liquid rush of desire ran through her, pleasantly thrilling, but not as strong as it had been the first few days. She’d conjured the image too often, and was wearing it out.

  At her boarding school the teachers had once given a vague, embarrassed lecture about the evils of self-pollution. She had not understood it, and it was only a few years later when the girl in the bed next to hers started making strange movements under her covers that she had gotten an inkling of what their teachers had been speaking about. The next time she had bathed she had taken more time and care when she washed, paying attention to what she felt as her soap-slick hands slid over herself. Her body’s response to her own touch had startled her, and she’d quickly moved on to scrubbing legs and arms. During the nights she’d been tempted to try what her classmate had, but the thought of anyone catching her at it had been enough to stop her.

  Now Konstanze wondered if her recollections of Tom’s kiss hadn’t become her own touchless form of self-pollution. She was a wicked girl.

  And wicked as she was, she could not help but wonder what it would be like to share a bed with Tom. Would it feel as terrible as it did with Bugg, or would it be more like those times she let her hands linger while washing?

  She threw her arm up over her closed eyes, embarrassed even to be thinking about it. Wicked, wicked, wicked.

  “Digging your own grave?” a familiar voice asked.

  O Gott. Her heart gave a painful thump, and she pressed her arm a little more tightly over her eyes. Would the man never leave her in peace? If Tom wasn’t in her mind, he was in her presence. She didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to talk to him when her mind had so recently been on such intimate imaginings, and yet she could not deny that she was glad he was here.

  But how was one supposed to behave with a man who had held one’s head and gently kissed one’s cheek the last time one had seen him?

  Perhaps if she just kept her arms over her eyes he would go away, and she wouldn’t have to worry about it. Maybe he’d think she was sleeping.

  “You look ready to be rolled into that hole over there. Want me to give you a shove?”

  The mood between them was to be one of teasing, was it? Perhaps she could face that.

  She brought her arm down and squinted up at him where he stood above her. After having h
er eyes closed, he and everything else in the bright sunlight looked queerly washed out. “It’s to be a garden.”

  “A very small sort of garden, to be sure.”

  “I’ve spent all morning turning that soil, and I’ll not have you casting aspersions upon it. It’s a beautiful garden, and will give me all the cabbages, carrots, and peas that my heart could desire. And flowers, too. There will be a lovely knot garden over by the chicken coop when I’m finished,” she said, waving vaguely in that direction.

  “It’s a long hole in the ground. You’ll be lucky to get so much as a turnip from it.”

  Konstanze pushed herself into a sitting position, saw her knotted skirts, and quickly undid them, covering her bare feet and calves. “As if I should take your word on gardens. I doubt you’ve ever done so much as pull a weed. What are you doing here, anyway? Is there a boat coming in?”

  “No, I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d see how you were doing.”

  She gave him a doubtful look.

  “How are you doing?” he asked, sitting down beside her and resting his arms across the tops of his knees.

  “Fine, thank you,” she said, wary of his close presence and her own reaction to it.

  He gestured to her trench. “Are you truly trying to dig a garden?”

  “I don’t have much else on which to spend my time.”

  “I should think you would enjoy being a lady of leisure, lolling about with nothing to do all day.”

  “Leisure, I’ve found, is best enjoyed when there is work elsewhere in one’s day. I shouldn’t imagine that you yourself would do well confined to a cottage without visitors for weeks on end.”

  “I might surprise you there,” he said. “I sometimes think I would enjoy such a retreat very much indeed.”

  “Nonsense. You’d be so desperate for lives in which to meddle that you’d resort to messing up your own affairs just to break the tedium.”

  “I am not a meddler.”

  “Of course you are, and the worst kind, too,” she said. “You convince yourself you are doing it for the good of others.”

  “I should like to think my efforts help people.”

  “There! You’ve proven my point.”

  “That does not prove I’m a meddler. You make me sound like an interfering old woman.”

  She smiled. “I like that image.”

  He looked at her. “You’re in a strange mood, Konstanze.”

  “Am I?”

  “Most strange, indeed. Are you feeling quite well? Headache? Stomach troubles? Bad dreams?” He reached over and pressed his hand to her forehead. “Fever?”

  Her breath caught at his touch. She knew he was still teasing her, but some intuitive sense suspected that he was using his words as an excuse to touch her. The skin all over her body came alive, tingling with awareness and expectation.

  “No, no fever,” he said, “although you are a bit warm.” His hand moved down to briefly touch her cheek, then withdrew.

  She had to stop herself from leaning after that departing hand. She didn’t say anything, her meager ability to be witty vanishing with the desire his touch had roused. It was hard to be clever when all she could think was that she could not let him know how very much she wanted to touch him right now. She was, she realized, on the dangerous verge of making eyes at him.

  The slippery slope was beckoning, and oh, how very enticing it was.

  She tried to remind herself of his true nature: he was a smuggler, a liar, a criminal mastermind. He hired women to swim half-naked. He partook in the profits of privateering. And he was, she hoped, dishonorable enough to make advances toward a married woman.

  No, no, no! She must stop thinking that way!

  “I should get back to work,” she said, standing up and stepping into her shoes, the leather heels crumpling as she tried to wiggle her sockless feet back in. She bent down to slip a finger behind her heels, easing them on. “I tell you, I have a whole new respect for farmers,” she said into her skirts.

  “I don’t know any farmers who till soil with a shovel. Isn’t there a plow in the barn? I thought your uncle had one,” he said, standing as well.

  Konstanze straightened. “I saw one when I went to find the shovel, but I haven’t the first idea how to use it.”

  “How big a garden were you planning?” he asked. “Truly. No more talk of yew mazes or reflecting pools.”

  “It was a knot garden,” she said. “I was originally thinking to dig something about five feet by fifteen.”

  “It will take you until winter to get that done, at your present rate.”

  “I’m quite aware I was overly ambitious in my thinking, thank you. I’d be happy with something half that size.” She frowned at the shovel standing upright in the dirt. “Or a quarter.”

  “I doubt you’ll be able to manage even that.”

  “Thank you very much for your input,” she said crisply. “If you’re not going to be either helpful or encouraging, then why don’t you run along and go play in your caves?” She made shooing motions. “Go on, run along.”

  “But my dear, I do intend to be helpful,” he said, and began taking off his coat.

  “You’re going to dig?”

  “Of course not. Do I look like a fool?”

  She narrowed her eyes at the implied insult. “Then what, dear sir, do you propose to do?”

  “You have a donkey and a plow. I see no reason not to put them to work.” He began marching off toward the barn.

  She trailed after him. “You know how to use a plow?”

  “No,” he replied over his shoulder. “But how hard can it be? I should think I have sufficient intelligence to figure it out.”

  “I didn’t ask for your help.”

  “Certainly you did,” he said, entering the stone barn, then stopping for a moment to gaze around the dim, dusty place. The plow was in a corner with other forgotten equipment and junk, covered in cobwebs and a fine layer of dirt. “How could a gentleman see a lady prostrate from exhaustion and not offer to be of assistance? I seem forever to be coming to your aid,” he said, smiling beatifically.

  She rolled her eyes. “You have more to do with creating my difficulties than with solving them.”

  “Nonsense. I consider myself your benefactor, as well as your employer.” He grabbed hold of the plow handles and began to pull. When the plow didn’t budge he braced his feet against the ground and hauled with all his weight, a long groan of exertion coming from between his clenched teeth.

  “My Samson! My Hercules!” Konstanze said, and clasped her hands together between her breasts. “My heart is all aflutter.”

  He gave her a dirty look, and stopped straining. He stepped around the long handles and peered at the pile of junk.

  “It’s probably caught up on something,” Konstanze said, coming closer.

  “Thank you for that astute observation.”

  “Getting testy already, are you?” Konstanze said. “I shouldn’t like to see you in half an hour’s time.”

  He shook his head at her. “You are in the damnedest mood today.”

  “You’ve informed me of that once already.”

  “And apparently there is no explanation forthcoming.” He began moving tools and farming implements away from the plow.

  She wasn’t about to tell him that she was expecting her monthly any day now. It wasn’t that she was put into a foul temper by it, but whatever emotions she did feel seemed to be amplified at this time, and her tolerance for irritations was minimal. She didn’t know why precisely she was being so unpleasant to him, unless it was to drive him away so she wouldn’t have to feel this annoying attraction to him. She didn’t want to be lusting after a man, or finding it queerly touching that he was trying to help her with her garden.

  And maybe as well she was being unpleasant to see how he dealt with it, to see if he would put up with her at her worst. She pursed her lips, not liking that thought.

  Or maybe she was being unple
asant because if she seemed to reject him first, she would save herself the humiliation of being rejected herself, later. She liked that thought even less. What if she had misread his gestures, and he had no interest in her at all? What if she made eyes, and embarrassed him by it? He had not wished to stay for tea after their night in the rowboat, after all. He had seemed positively eager to get away.

  Damn it, stuff it, bugger it all, she cursed in her mind, using privately the words she would never be caught uttering aloud. Her mind was all a muddle where Tom Trewella was concerned.

  He lifted away an empty crate, in the process knocking loose a heavy old ax head. The blunted corner fell direcdy atop the toes of one foot. “Good Christ!” he cried, hopping about with the injured foot raised off the ground. “Frig—” he started to say. “Blood—” he tried, then bit down on the words, and furious, half mumbled, unintelligible curses caught behind his teeth as he hopped madly around the barn, one hand holding on to his foot.

  “Are you all right?” Konstanze asked worriedly, her irritation with both herself and Tom immediately forgotten.

  “Frig—”

  “Put your hand on my shoulder and come out into the light,” she urged, anxious that he might have done himself a serious injury. Had he managed to lop off a toe?

  “It’s nothing,” he gritted out.

  “Don’t be stupid. Let me take a look.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder and hopped alongside her out into the yard, then dropped down to the ground and pulled his shoe and stocking off. Konstanze knelt down and took his foot into her lap, gingerly inspecting the reddened toes. The nail bed of his big toe was turning a dark, ugly red. She gently wiggled each toe in turn.

  “Ow,” he complained.

  “Can you move them?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to. They hurt.”

  “I’m trying to see if any are broken. Be a hero and wiggle them for me.”

  He curled his toes under, the digits barely moving. “Is that all you can do?”

  “I’m not a monkey.”

  She gave him a look from under her brows. Mama had always maintained that men were babies when it came to pain, and turned petulant at the least little ache. “I don’t think you broke any, but you’re bleeding under the nail of your big toe.”