Page 16 of The Cornish Widow

“And you’d best watch your boy around that girl.” Jack meant young Harry, twenty years old, good-looking in a rather wild way, and already popular with the womenfolk on both sides of the channel.

Will grimaced. “That boy’d chase anything in a skirt with a pretty face. Maybe wouldn’t even need to have a pretty face.”

Bessie let out a guffaw of laughter. “You could dress that table in a skirt and he’d run after it.”

Jack’s turn to laugh. “I rest my case. I can’t see our widow-woman being best pleased to have a sailor boy coming sniffing round her daughter. Not one with no respectable intentions, that’s for sure.”

Will huffed in mock umbrage. “A girl with nothing to bring to a union could do no better than to look to my Harry. One day he’ll have all of Porth en Alls and Prussia Cove and be a rich man.”

“I doubt her mother’d see it that way. And since when was he the marrying kind?”

“Well, it’s not happened yet, so I’m not about to start worrying about it. Harry’s round to Penzance right now with The Fly, in harbor, I hope, if Daniel Bussow’s got the sense he were born with. When they’ve taken a cargo down to Plymouth, you can take Harry on your next run with you across to Roscoff and keep him out o’ harm’s way. He do lack a lot in the caution department where girls is concerned, that I’ll allow.”

Jack nodded. “Wise move.”

“And the little lad?”

“He can come aboard when we’ve done the run, and everything’s stowed away neat and tidy where no one’ll ever think to look. I’ll leave The Fly at anchor until morning then take him and young Yves aboard together. Time young Sir Yves got his sea legs now he’s growing. Nat’ll be happy for me to do it. He told me the boy’s itching for adventure.” He rolled his shoulders to ease the muscles. “You know that last year the boy set off exploring the mines under Wheal Jenny through that old adit on the beach? Fell in a water-filled mineshaft and had to be rescued by Nat and his wife, before she was his wife, that is. None the worse for the adventure, so Nat told me. By the look of this other boy, they’ll hit it off well.”

Will shrugged. “Let’s hope they do then.” He rubbed his temples as though the effort of bookkeeping had tired him. “It’ll be good to have a couple of lads aboard for a jaunt. Take us back to our own young days, eh? Not that yours are too long gone.” He reached out and ruffled Jack’s hair, much as he’d done when Jack was a boy eager to curry favor. “You need a haircut, lad, if you’re goin’ a-courting.”

Jack opened his mouth to speak but no words came out for a moment. He cleared his throat. “I most certainly am not going courting.”

Will’s blue eyes twinkled. “You think not? ’Tis written all over your face, lad. She’s got you smitten.”