Tall. Broader across the shoulders than she'd registered from the cottage window the night before, bronzed skin and sandy hair tied back from a jaw that hadn't seen a razor in a few days. Work-worn, river-worn, with the particular posture of someone accustomed to standing on a surface that moved under them. He turned slightly while she was looking and she got the profile of his straight nose, a mouth set in a line and dark tattoos winding up both forearms.
"That's the Ashvane's captain," Rufus said, without looking up from his ledger. "Came in rough last night."
"I heard."
"Significant damage, from what Corwen's office is saying. Could be here a while."
Isla picked up her bag. "Thank you, Rufus."
She took the long way to her next stop, which brought her past the bakery rather than across the open square, and spent fifteen minutes discussing a bulk order of dried chamomile with the woman who supplied her with grain, and by the time she came back out onto the side street, the captain was nowhere visible and the pressure she had felt had dropped to nothing.
She'd almost talked herself out of the stop at the inn. But she needed to ask Diana about a delivery timing issue, and the inn sat at the east end of the square, and it would take only five minutes.
Diana was behind the front desk when Isla came through the door, blonde hair up in a knot, ledger open, looking like a woman who had three things on the go and was keeping track of all of them. She'd taken over the Hearth and Hollow a bit ago she had told Isla, and had put her particular kind of warmth through every corner of it, amber light and honeyed wood and the smellof something always baking. She looked up and smiled in the easy way she had with most people.
"Isla. What do you need?"
"My linen order. The supplier said he'd route it through your receiving dock this week and I haven't had a confirmation."
"I have the note somewhere." Diana was already flipping through a stack of papers beside the ledger. "Give me a second —"
The door opened behind Isla.
She knew before she turned. The pressure at came back in full, close enough now that it wasn't ambient attention from across a square but direct, immediate, and aimed entirely at her.
He was bigger up close. She registered that first, then the storm-gray eyes, then the set of his jaw. He glanced at Diana briefly, then at Isla, and she watched him understand she was exactly who he'd been looking for.
"You're the one on the western bank," he said.
It wasn't a question. Isla turned to face him fully.
"That depends on what you're referring to," she said.
"My ship. My cargo. Eight weeks of contracted delivery that is currently in pieces in my hold." He stepped inside and let the door close behind him. "You want to tell me that wasn't yours?"
He was close enough that she could see the wave tattoos climbing his forearms, the wear in his jacket, the particular kind of anger that lived behind steady eyes rather than in raised voices. Controlled aggression, all of it.
"I'm not going to have this conversation in Diana's lobby," Isla said.
"Then step outside."
She went. Not because he'd told her to, but because she agreed and because the alternative was a scene, and she'd caused enough of those this week.
Outside, the morning had turned overcast, the square mostly empty, a breeze moving up from the lake. She stopped on the inn's front step and turned to face him and the full weight of his attention hit her and she felt the pull that she'd felt for the first time the night before, sitting in the connection while his hull moved through the water she'd stirred.
"I know what you're going to say," she said.
"I doubt that."
"You're going to tell me your ship is damaged, your cargo is ruined, and someone needs to be responsible for that."
"Someone does."
"And I'm telling you that I know what happened and I'm sorry for the damage and it wasn't aimed at you." She held his gaze. The wind moved off the lake and she noticed the sky above the square stir faintly in response to the effort that was costing her. "But if you're planning to stand on my doorstep and deliver a verdict, save yourself the trip. I've had that speech before and I survived it. I'll survive it again."
He observed her. The anger was still there, clear and present, but something underneath it had shifted and gone very, very quiet.
"Your doorstep," he said.
