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Jowan brightened again. ‘No, no, it’s still there, only now it’s a bookshop you can borrow for your ’ol-days. In fact, the lad who pulled you from your boat this morning is staying there at the moment.’
Aldous lazily lifted his head, annoyed that the woman with the cool hands had paused in stroking his back.
‘The blue-eyed one?’ she said, keeping her eyes on her plate, and trying to look for all the world like someone not all that interested to know more, but making polite conversation nonetheless.
A smile hitched a corner of Jowan’s lips. ‘Magnús. From Iceland.’
‘Iceland?’ She couldn’t act cool about this. It was all coming back to her. He’d spoken in his own language as though she too would understand it, and…oh no, she’d fallen on him, sending them both flying.
No matter how much attention she paid her lunch or in fussing the little dog, she couldn’t shake the embarrassment or the sense that Jowan knew what she was thinking (that the man had been so earnest and somehow solid and impressive) and that was what was making his eyes shine.
‘He’s only a hundred yards up the cobbles if you want to take a wander to find ’im,’ he said. ‘Mind you do it before the winds get any higher. Up-along’s a tempestuous place to be when a gale’s howlin’.’
‘Good to know,’ Alex replied quietly.
‘Tuck in, there’s another helping waiting for uz,’ he told her.
Neither of them said a word as they finished their meal, Jowan because he was staring into the fire and taking big bites, and Alex because the simple comfort of this place made her feel like she was in danger of bursting into tears and making an even bigger fool of herself than she already had.
She shuddered. Imagine crashing her boat and needing to be rescued, then making that poor bedraggled doctor come out in this wind to see her when she was completely fine! Only exhausted and dehydrated, the doc had said. He’d prescribed fluids and rest and no more sailing. Some chance, with her ferry beached and broken.
But the fire and the food, along with Jowan’s soft, quiet way made up for some of that shame. And he hadn’t asked any questions, not even pressing her for her name. She liked that about him most of all. So she ate in silence, knowing the questions would come soon enough.
Questions, she thought with a sigh, such as, why had she been at sea all alone for so long, and so underprepared for a voyage, too? What was to be done about the boat? Who even was she and where on earth did she belong? And, the one that upset her the most, was there really nobody out there worrying about her right now and wishing they could reach her?
There was time enough to think about these things later. Right now, she was dry and warm, and there was a friendly mutt, a gentle-mannered host who put her in mind of a pirate that hadn’t put to sea in many a year and, insinuated into everything in the little cottage, there was the feeling of being watched over somehow. It was the presence, Alex thought, of the woman who had once lived here and was loved so much she never really left. Jowan’s Isolde.
The whole thing felt curiously like coming home, so she let herself indulge in the faulty feeling, like a cuckoo chick in a warbler’s nest, singing to be fed.
So what if it wasn’t real and she couldn’t stay? She’d lie to herself for a short while and she could cry later. She was going to hold on to all of her secrets. Nobody was going to pity her or pry into her sorry situation here. They needn’t even know her name. She’d be untraceable, and as soon as she was recovered, she’d be on her way again, to anywhere but Port Kernou.
