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‘Did you see that, Papa? Did you? It was enormous!’
Benneit laughed. He was stiff, cold, wet, tired and every mile they closed on Lochmore added what felt like a year to his life, but Jamie’s joy was winning against all the rest. It was so pure and simple. Just joy.
Had he been like this as a boy? He must have been, at least a little, but for the life of him he could not remember. He certainly had no memory of his father holding him. His mother, yes. In the garden of The House as she read to him, or on the sofa in the Map Room as she showed him her latest addition to the wall. He hoped Jamie would remember this. He should do more to give him moments such as these to balance against all he could not give him.
‘Jo! Jo! Did you see that?’ Jamie struggled to snake a hand out from Benneit’s grasp and Benneit turned his head to see Mrs Langdale, cloaked but bareheaded, holding the railing as she made her way in their direction. A shaft of alarm coursed through him. She should be below decks where it was safe. He tightened his hold on Jamie, afraid he would try to run to her.
The ship pitched again and she stopped, turning to watch the surge of the wave as it closed on them. For one panicked moment Benneit thought she would let go of the railing and retreat, which would be the worst possible thing to do. But she held firm, silhouetted by the rise of spray, a grey-on-grey figure except for the flash of her flaxen hair about the elfin face raised to the elements. As the wave fell away she turned to them, but instead of the fear he expected he saw a mirror of the exultation he felt in every muscle of Jamie’s body. Her eyes were laughing and her lips parted. She looked nothing like Bella’s drab and silent cousin or the prim and proper Widow Langdale.
She managed the final yards to their more sheltered hideaway, lowering herself to sit on the deck beside the coil of rope. Her face was wet with spray, her eyelashes spearing drops of mist.
‘Do you like it, Jo?’ Jamie’s question was so loaded with yearning she laughed.
‘It is amazing. I thought the whole ship would turn over like a tortoise on its back!’
‘You should have stayed below,’ Benneit said above the roar of the wind.
‘I could not bear it any longer.’ Her hand tightened on the rope as the ship began to tip again, but her eyes were bright and laughing still. ‘It was like being inside a barrel rolling down a hill. I would rather have to run atop it than be bounced about inside.’
Jamie laughed as well and swiped the damp from his face. Benneit tucked his son’s arm back inside the cover of his cloak.
‘Here comes another, hold on.’
* * *
At some point in the hour that followed, as they were buffeted by waves coming around the sound, he began laughing with them. The sailors, hurrying about their business, gave them a wide berth. The sensible passengers were where they ought to be—cowering below decks. The weak-minded and the young and the foolish could do as they wished and be washed overboard if that was what God and Neptune willed.
The waves calmed as they approached Crinan, and Jamie snuggled deeper into the cavern of Benneit’s cloak, resting his cheek against his chest, his eyelids drooping. Benneit stroked the damp from his cheek and Jamie sighed. The clouds, too, lost their vigour, thinning and showing blue at their edges, and even the sun struck through occasionally, raising chestnut lights in Jamie’s dark hair. Benneit was so tempted to kiss his son’s head, but held back. What he did in private was different from what he showed in public. Instead he turned to Mrs Langdale.
‘Your clothes must be soaked through. You can ask Angus to bring your portmanteau so you can change before we proceed.’
It was a perfectly practical statement, but somehow it felt far too intimate. The thought of her plain grey dress soaked with sea water all the way to her skin, the spray she wiped from her pink cheeks mirrored elsewhere, soft and curved and moist... He shifted his leg and turned away, shocked by the surge of heat that struck through him at the image, the sensation of his hands joining hers in peeling back the damp fabric from her shivering skin. She made it worse by laughing, the same warm tumbling laugh like the fall of surf on the beach. He moved Jamie away slightly as if to remove him from the contamination of his thoughts.
