The House at Mermaid's Cove(66)

“I . . . I don’t know.” I writhed inside. “I’m sorry. It was a stupid thing to say.”

“You think I’m still in love with her? That I see you as some sort of substitute?”

“No . . . I . . . it’s just . . .” The words withered in my throat. He’d said exactly what I was thinking. But if I admitted it, he’d know how I felt about him, that I was jealous.

He huffed out a breath. “I shouldn’t have burdened you with it. It wasn’t fair.” The beam of the flashlight swept the sand as he turned away from me. I was flooded with a sense of what might have been. Would we be kissing now, if I hadn’t ruined the moment with my foolish imaginings?

Something swelled inside me, a new determination that made me bold. I grasped his hand. “Please, don’t go. I can’t bear to think that I’ve hurt you.”

He didn’t try to pull away. He took my other hand in his, closing the distance between us. “I don’t deserve your sympathy, Alice, or anything else, for that matter,” he murmured. “Is it something they taught you in the convent—how to break a man with tenderness?” His lips brushed my forehead. “I’ll see you in the morning.” A moment later he was gone.



I stayed awake long after Jack had melted into the darkness. I sat on the log pile outside the boathouse, a blanket draped over my shoulders, listening to the breaking waves and the night sounds from the woods behind me. I went over everything he’d said, again and again, trying to make sense of it.

I don’t deserve your sympathy. What had he meant by that? He’d left me feeling that there was something he wasn’t telling me—something beyond the secret he’d asked me to keep.

You think I’m still in love with her? The contempt in his voice when he’d said that was unforgettable. But he hadn’t denied it. Perhaps what had made him sound so incredulous was not that question, but the one that had followed—about him seeing me as some sort of substitute. As if the very idea of him thinking of me in that way was ridiculous.

I wondered if he’d told me the truth about what had happened to Morwenna. Could it be that she was still alive? That he was waiting for the day the war ended to go and reclaim her? But surely he wouldn’t have lied about that? To say that someone was dead when they were not would be a wicked thing to do.

I was staring at the sky, at the bright constellation of Orion sinking to the west. The flash of shame that flared inside me was as hot as those stars. Wasn’t that exactly what I had done? Pretended to the world that I was dead when I was still alive?

As the whisper of the encroaching waves grew louder, a veil of mist drifted up the beach. I shivered, pulling the blanket up around my neck. The mist swirled about me like a living thing, as if something had come up from beneath the water to grab at my feet and drag me in. I had a fleeting vision of the mermaid in the church, eyes burning as she rose from the sea, her features melting into the face of the girl in the photograph. And the lips mouthing words I could not hear, only feel in my heart: Keep away from him. He’s mine.





Chapter 19

I had no idea how long I’d been outside. When I dragged myself off to bed, the luminous hands of the little travel clock showed five past two. The alarm went off less than four hours later. I went through the motions of washing and dressing, all the time listening for the barking of Brock as he came tearing out of the trees on the edge of the cove. But there was no sound of the dog. By the time I was ready to go up to the farm, Jack hadn’t appeared.

The water in the estuary had an oily, sinister look. I stood for a moment, watching the waves break, relentless and indifferent, lapping at the carcass of a gull and pulling it under. The tide was like a living thing, but immortal, a tireless, ravenous beast that consumed any dead creature in its path, scouring the bones white. I thought of Jack, his head in his hands, as he’d described diving into the murky water, fighting the swell, desperate to save Morwenna. The lifeboat went out looking for her. They searched for days. But her body was never found.

I pictured her lying dead on the ocean floor, her hair floating out from her body, swaying in the current like eelgrass. And Ned—darling Ned—crying for his mother, too young to understand that she was gone forever. It struck me, more forcefully than ever, that if Jack cared for me at all, in whatever way, I must try to make him listen to me, somehow persuade him to soften his attitude toward Ned. But how on earth was I going to do that unless he had a change of heart about the estate and everything that went with it?

I thought I might meet Jack on the path up to the house. But my only companions on that walk were the birds that rustled in the dark recesses of the leafy canopy that enveloped me. The heady scents of the flowers and blossoms were soporific. If I’d sat down, even for a moment, I’m sure I would have fallen asleep.

I trudged into the milking shed, wondering how I was going to summon the energy to get through the day ahead. The Land Girls were already there, chatting away as they bent beneath the dusty bodies of the cows. Edith’s head popped up as I plonked down beside one of the waiting animals. Her eyes were bright, her lipstick a perfect purple bow. No one would have guessed what I suspected: that she’d been up all night, cavorting in the field behind Constantine’s village hall with an American soldier.

“Shame about the power cut, wasn’t it?” She gave me a devious smile. “You looked like you were enjoying yourself.”