Page 7 of The Cornish Mermaid

Surely, she hadn’t been out on an actual fishing boat?

Kit narrowed his eyes, puzzled that she could have fallen off some passing boat he hadn’t seen while he was out fishing. He needed to get to the bottom of this. “What was the name of your vessel?”

She gave an eloquent shrug of her shoulders, the blanket slipping to reveal her thin undergarment. “I can’t remember its name, but it was one of those trip boats from Penzance. My boyfriend persuaded me to go with him.” She snorted in a very unladylike way. “Against my better judgement. Today’s the last day of our holiday, and he loves fishing. Like an idiot, I agreed to go. He’s not going to be my boyfriend for much longer, I can tell you.”

What? Kit’s frown deepened. What was she talking about now? Holidays? Trip boats? Tourists? He fancied himself something of a man of the world, despite his mere twenty-seven years, but these were terms he’d almost never come across in daily speech. What on earth did she mean? Well, he knew what a holiday was, but a trip boat? And a boyfriend? He’d never heard that word before, although it was reasonably easy to infer its meaning. Could she mean she had a suitor who’d taken her out on a ship and then lost her overboard? Perhaps someone she was engaged to, who liked fishing?

The thought that anyone would take their gently bred, possibly affianced, lady friend out on a rough fishing boat from Penzance and then not leap in to save her when she fell in, shocked him to the core. The blanket slipped a little more as she shifted her position and her odd, breeches-clad legs protruded. A lady friend so inadequately dressed as well.

The thought that he might have rescued not a mermaid, but a young lady whose lot in life had forced her into a career as a woman of ill repute, surfaced. Kit swallowed. However, one look at her convinced him she couldn’t be either. She was far too sweet faced—not that being sweet faced meant anything, really. He just refused to believe a girl as beautiful as this one could be anything other than what he wanted her to be—a highborn lady who’d been unlucky enough to fall off her ship unnoticed.

At that moment, the front door swung open with a bang, and a burly figure strode into the room. Damn it.

“Uncle Jago,” said Kit.

Chapter Four

Morvoren

The man standing on the threshold of the kitchen, an overly generous word for this primitive room, filled the doorway with his bulk. Under a voluminous and ancient leather waistcoat, he wore a not-all-that-clean, collarless cream shirt, the sleeves rolled up over hammy and hairy forearms, and a loose red scarf was knotted about his neck. A faded black tricorn hat tipped forward over his eyes, and in his right hand he held a gun that might well have been a museum piece.

A vision indeed.

Morvoren closed her mouth, which had dropped open at the sight of him, with a snap, unable to drag her eyes away from this apparition. If she’d thought her rescuer oddly dressed, this man took the biscuit. Maybe the BBC were filming a period drama and this man was an extra. Or perhaps this was indeed one of those religious cults where everyone wore old fashioned clothes and didn’t use modern gadgets—like the Amish or Plymouth Brethren.

Her rescuer had jumped out of his chair the moment the newcomer arrived, letting the blanket fall from pleasingly broad shoulders. Now, he stepped toward the man he’d called his uncle. “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.”

“So I see.” The man’s voice was a gravelly rasp. “What’s this, Kit? Who be this young… lady?” The last word came out as though he doubted very much it applied to her. As though any woman who turned up soaking wet and wrapped in a blanket in his kitchen was to be scorned. As though he suspected Morvoren of being something she wasn’t.

She bristled at his implication, but, with a wary eye to the gun he was carrying, kept her mouth firmly closed. No point in riling a strange, armed man when you were stuck in a remote farmhouse where quite definitely no one would hear if you screamed.

Instead, she clutched the blanket closer to conserve the warmth she was building up. It felt like a shield against the penetrating and accusatory gaze this Uncle Jago had fixed upon her.

“We have a guest,” Kit said, his tone defensive.

The newcomer stepped further into the room. With his free hand, he took off the old tricorn hat, placing it on the table without taking his gaze from her.

Feeling bolder, Morvoren returned his stare.

Several days’ growth of grey beard adorned a square jaw, and dark, hawklike eyes regarded her in open hostility. She swallowed her fear down, determined not to let him see how much he scared her.

“So I can see,” he rumbled.

Some small familial resemblance to her rescuer clung to the newcomer. Grizzled curling hair, similar to his nephew’s, had been confined with a thin black ribbon in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. But whereas Kit’s face might have a smile lurking somewhere just out of sight, Jago looked as though no smile would dare touch his.

“A mermaid,” Kit elaborated, with an unmistakably wry glance in Morvoren’s direction. “I fished her out of the sea thinking she was drowned, but she very handily revived and spilled her seawater. And here she is, warming herself by our hearth.”

“A mermaid?” growled Jago, going to the table, where he threw down a brace of large rabbits he’d had tucked inside his capacious waistcoat. He leaned the gun against the table and gave a snort. “Mermaids bring only bad luck.” His voice was heavily accented Cornish, unlike Kit’s more refined tones.

Kit shook his head. “She’s not a real mermaid.”

Morvoren stared at her rescuer. Was that a glint of amusement in his solemn dark eyes? Did he, despite his apparently serious demeanor, find her predicament amusing? She had a sudden urge to burst out laughing, despite her feelings of unease or maybe because of them. Bubbling hysteria, no doubt. The disapproving scowl on Jago’s face kept her under control.

Kit moved closer to his uncle, dropping his voice but not so low she couldn’t hear every word. “She must have fallen off a ship and been washed inshore to where I fished her out in my net. It was pure chance that I cast a final time before coming in. Otherwise, she’d be floating out there, dead.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But, for just a moment, I thought I’d fished a real mermaid out, and strangely, her name means mermaid in Cornish.”

He cleared his throat, glancing back at her. “Uncle, may I present Miss Morvoren Lucas.” He turned back to her. “And, Miss Lucas, this is my favorite uncle, Jago Tremaine. My mother’s brother.”

Ignoring Morvoren, Jago gave another snort and stumped over to the liquor cupboard where he poured himself a generous tot of brandy. “Aye, and your only uncle now, boy.” He shook his head. “D’you not think it strange she’s turned up here today? That she might be a king’s spy?”