Page 33 of The Cornish Widow

“You must have been a child bride.”

She hesitated, that haunted look back in her eyes. “I was seventeen.”

“A child indeed.”

She made a little moue with her mouth. “It was that or say goodbye to the man I fancied myself in love with.” Her hand went to her mouth as though she hadn’t meant to say this, and she shook her head. “Perhaps you have experience of the hot-headedness of girls?”

He barely heard her last words. Fancied herself in love with? Had she not, then, loved her husband? Might she not be as deeply in mourning as he had thought? With his scanty knowledge of marriage, gleaned only from his working-class friends, he had little idea how those from the upper classes undertook it, but he’d always understood marriage to have been for love. He’d learned that at his mother’s knee, and from watching his friends like Sam and Ysella and the Treloars. His mother had loved his father all Jack’s life, and still did, more fool her.

He slid down from Shadow and came around to help Harriet down from Peggy. She slid into his arms and, for just a moment, he allowed himself to hang onto her, the urge to crush her to his chest waxing strong.

Beneath his hands, her body stiffened at his touch, and she stepped out of his hold, her cheeks a little pinker than they had been. “Thank you so much… Jack, for allowing me to indulge my love of horses.” The words came out stilted, as though forced between her teeth, and she took another step back from him, her eyes lowered, all the old barrier built back even higher than before. “I very much enjoyed our ride.” She hitched up the spare fabric of her habit and turned away.

“Will you be all right walking that far in your habit? You won’t trip?” Now he sounded like an idiot, babbling on, when clearly, she was in firm control of the situation. Just for a few minutes, he’d felt a kind of ease beginning to grow between them, and now she was all bristling hedgehog again, curled in a fetal ball to keep him away.

She hitched her skirts a little more. “I shall be quite all right. It’s not far, and the walk might ease out any aches and pains that are creeping up on me after my ride.” She bobbed her head to him in a dainty curtsey, still without meeting his eyes. “Thank you again for this treat.”

And she set off down the track without a backward glance. He watched her out of sight around the bend by the farm, willing her to turn around and look back at him, but she didn’t. She must have put him out of her mind straight away. No doubt with ease. He stood a little longer considering how he was feeling, the two horses swishing their tails at a few flies.

Confused. Puzzled by her sudden change. Had it been when she’d felt his hands on her waist? Had that done it? Had she perhaps sensed his desire to hold her close and been shocked?

He shook his head in frustration. What was it about her that had him this way? His first instinct, on hearing she’d taken Keynvor Cottage, had been one of horror at finding some outsider right on the doorstep of the two hidden coves where he usually brought ashore his contraband. His next instinct had been to involve her family in their deeds in some way and thus frighten her into keeping silent, in the nicest possible way. This third instinct, which had overwhelmed the other two at startling speed, was not one he was used to. An instinct to protect her that he’d never felt towards any other woman.

She’d be heading down the hill now and nearing where the track forked, going right towards her cottage and Old Tummel’s hovel on the headland. Turning away from the left fork, which led towards Bessie’s kiddley and Will’s house at Porth en Alls above Prussia Cove. The bits he didn’t want her prying into, for all their sakes.

His mind wandered. That maidservant of hers, Bertha, would be waiting for her with the kettle singing on the hob, wanting to know how her ride had gone. Her children too, perhaps with eager questions about where she’d been. Would she tell Theo what his great-aunt had in mind for him? Probably not.

The children placated, she’d be going upstairs to take off her habit… Here, Jack’s imagination began to run away with him somewhat, his tight breeches becoming uncomfortable and sweat standing out on his brow. No. She was a lady, not some girl from a tap room with morals looser than her drawers. He’d best not go there.

Shadow nudged him in the back, dragging him out of his speculative musings and back to reality. Grabbing Peggy’s reins, he led the two horses in at the gates of Rosudgeon and up the gravel drive, steeling himself for his mother’s inevitable inquisition.