Mermaid of Penperro Read online

  “That’s rather farfetched, don’t you think?”

  “I do not believe that plotting was the point of the thing.”

  He gave a grunt of assent. That was clear enough. “And what of your father?” he asked. It was a delicate question to ask of anyone whose mother had been on the stage. She might not even know who he was. As long as she was in the mood to talk, though, he was happy to take advantage of it to learn what he could of her.

  “His name was Rene Crécy. He and my mother had been married for less than a year when I was conceived. He was an actor, and worked as a stagehand when he was not in a role. Mama said he could have been great, if he hadn’t had such a fondness for drink. He died in a brawl three months after I was born, so of course I don’t remember him. Mama came home to Mousehole, and left me in the care of my grandparents until she had enough money to send me to boarding school in Switzerland. From then on I spent my holidays with her.”

  “That must have been quite a change from the boarding school.” He surprised himself by feeling a bit of envy for her colorful past. What must it have been like to be raised in Europe, traveling with a group of opera singers during one’s holidays, moving from country to country?

  “It wasn’t like you think,” Konstanze said. “Everyone assumes that opera singers are women of questionable morals, and that the stage is peopled with wicked, hedonistic types who are unworthy of respect. It’s not true. There are some like that, but there are some like that everywhere. My mother, for all her liveliness, was never loose or casual in her behavior. Evenings in our apartments were far more sedate and ordinary than I think you would imagine.”

  “I really hadn’t thought about it,” he said, in a slight bending of the truth.

  They walked a few minutes in silence; then she said, “I didn’t mean to bore you with all that.”

  “On the contrary. You’ve led a fascinating life. Most of the people in Penperro have never been farther from home than Liskeard, if they’ve made it even that far.”

  “Are you a native of Penperro, yourself?”

  “No, Marazion,” he said shortly. The town was halfway between Penperro and Land’s End, and held a wealth of unhappy memories.

  “Why did you leave?”

  “I was looking for new opportunities,” he said. There was no need to say any more than that. She doubtless thought him scoundrel enough without hearing his dismal history. “I should think it perfectly safe to remove your veil if you wish. I don’t know how you see the path in front of you with all that netting.”

  “‘Twasn’t a problem, but it is getting dark now,” she said, unwrapping the veil and then giving a sigh. “This is much better, although the veiling does help keep one’s face warm. What type of opportunities were you seeking?”

  That was a safer topic than his past in Marazion. “I thought to start a small school, but the venture failed. People did start coming to me to draft letters or help manage their affairs, however, as they apparently thought that anyone educated enough to teach must know more about the world in general than they themselves.”

  “And was that the case?”

  “I kept them fooled long enough for me to make up the difference. Desperation makes for a quick-witted student. The business with the smuggling grew out of that, but I assure you the bulk of my work is perfectly legal. Especially now with the war.”

  “How do you mean? I thought the war was pushing you further into smuggling.”

  “It’s not the only way to turn a profit upon the seas. Piracy becomes privateering once you lay hands to a letter of marque.”

  She looked at him aghast, her rosy lips parted.

  He laughed. “I’m not a pirate. I have invested in a few sloops that have taken French prizes, though.” He regretted the words as soon as he spoke them. Why had he told her that? He realized that he was bragging, trying to impress her—though it was stupid to think she’d be impressed by legalized piracy—and immediately sought a change in subject. “Have you had time to work on the costume?” he asked. They were drawing near to the cottage.

  “Hilde and I have sketches awaiting your approval. Do you wish to see them, Mr. Trewella?”

  His little comment about the privateering seemed to have brought back her formality. “If you are to be Konstanze to me, please call me Tom, as my friends do.”

  The look she gave him held no softening, and she did not reply.

  “Yes, I’ll see the sketches. I can get you whatever materials you need to construct the costume, the sooner the better.”

  She nodded, and he followed her through the back door into the cottage. Hilde the harpy was there, and the two women exchanged a brief, heated conversation in incomprehensible German as Konstanze removed her hat and spencer. Hilde set her jaw and gave him a dirty look, then went to the pile of papers at the end of the table and pointed something out to Konstanze, apparently explaining. She then scooped up the entire pile, thrust it into Konstanze’s arms, and returned to tending her cooking.

  They went into the sitting room, and he took his usual place on the settle. To his unspoken delight she sat down next to him, the papers in her lap. Her lips were pursed in displeasure.

  “What was that all about?” he hazarded to ask.

  “It’s just Hilde being Hilde.”

  That actually explained things quite well. He wondered how Konstanze stood living with the woman. He’d take his food-obsessed housekeeper Mrs. Toley over Hilde any day. “Let’s see what you have,” he said, and reached for the sketches.

  She pulled them away from his outstretched hand, and thumbed through them herself, choosing and pulling out a sheet that she handed to him. “There, this is my first choice,” she said, pointing to the circled drawing in the corner of a sheet covered front and back with sketches.

  “What’s this on her chest?”

  “A shell bodice.”

  “Mermaids don’t wear bodices, shell or otherwise,” he said with exaggerated patience. He’d suspected she would try to pull something like this.

  “How would you know? No one knows what mermaids wear.”

  “You don’t see carvings or drawings of them with shells on their chest,” he pointed out. “Mermaid figureheads on ships are bare. The carving on the church bench is bare.”

  “That doesn’t mean that this mermaid can’t wear shells. Figureheads are nothing to go by. They’re carved for a bunch of sailors stuck out at sea with no women.”

  “But mermaids don’t wear clothes,” he insisted. It was such an obvious point, he could hardly believe they had to discuss it. “We have to stay with what is known.”

  “I think you’re confusing fact and fantasy. Mermaids aren’t real. They can be however we want them to be.”

  “Foweather saw a mermaid without shells or anything else covering her chest.”

  “He didn’t see a real mermaid.”

  “You know what I mean. That’s what we all expect,” he said, and couldn’t help looking at her breasts, high and full beneath her gown. “I want you bare-breasted.” He paused. That hadn’t come out sounding quite like he intended it. He glanced at her face and saw that she had narrowed her eyes at him, her lips pressed tightly together.

  “You’ve made your point,” she said, “and quite clearly.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “I’m talking from a man’s perspective, from what a man wants to see.” Oh, God, he was digging himself in even deeper. “I can’t expect you to like it, but I can expect you to try to understand it.”

  “Oh, I understand well enough.” She riffled through the papers, then pulled out another sheet and thrust it at him. “This, then. At least it’s not a bodice.”

  The drawing showed a mermaid wearing such a profusion of necklaces that her breasts were completely buried. “Konstanze. You know this won’t do.”

  “She’s naked. Mermaids are known to like jewelry, and perhaps she plundered the necklaces from a sunken treasure ship.”

  “You are
forcing me to be blunt. Have you ever once seen a depiction of a mermaid where you did not see both her nipples?”

  She stared at him, cold and silent.

  He shifted, uncomfortable under her gaze. She looked as stern as Hilde. “Have you?” he asked again. He was beginning to feel like a boy caught thinking about sex while in church.

  “I can see we’re not going to agree on this today. Shall we move on to the tail? What do you think of this tail?” she asked, holding out a piece of paper.

  She was doing it again! She was changing the topic as she had when he had wanted her to apologize in the fern valley. He gritted his teeth, irritation crawling up his skin. Couldn’t she just admit she was wrong? “I’m the one who will be paying your wages. I think my opinion is paramount in this.”

  “And I am the only mermaid on offer. Hilde designed some interesting fins for my feet. What do you think?” she asked, thrusting a new sheet of drawings beneath his nose.

  “Breasts. Two bare breasts,” he said, and slapped the sheet down.

  “We’ll not discuss it now,” she said, and her jawline firmed. “I think a gray-green material would suit best for the tail—”

  “You can’t just discard our discussion because it’s not going the way you like!”

  “This drawing right here I think shows best what I—”

  “Konstanze!” he shouted, trying to break through her intentional disregard. He leaped to his feet, knocking his head on a low beam. “Ow! Dammit!” he cried, raising his arm to feel for the sore spot.

  Her eyes suddenly went wide and she cringed away from him, her forearms raised protectively over her face, the sheets of paper spilling from her lap onto the floor.

  “Konstanze?” He stared at her in surprise. She looked as if she thought he was going to hit her. He slowly lowered his arm, despite the urge to rub at the tender spot on his head.

  Is that what her husband had done when upset? Hit her? It was hard to imagine anyone striking that big-eyed face, but it would certainly explain her eagerness to escape the man.

  She must realize he was nothing like that. Or did she? She knew him as a smuggler, a liar to the law, and now as one who profited from privateering, as well. He did not think there had been anything amiss in his treatment of her, but he had to admit that she had perhaps not seen the best side of him.

  “Konstanze?” he asked softly. “Are you all right?”

  She straightened, a flush coming to her face. “I am not accustomed to being yelled at.”

  “Did your husband beat you?” he asked. The question was intrusive in the extreme, but he had to know.

  Her eyes widened. It looked like a confirmation. He felt a slow burn of rage start in his chest that anyone could have treated her so. “Did he strike you when he was angry? Is that why you cringed, because you thought I’d do the same?”

  “He never struck me in anger,” she said.

  “But he hit you,” he said, a little less certainly. The man had plainly done something to her to make her shy away from an upraised arm.

  “I really can’t see that there is any reason for us to discuss it further. It has no bearing whatsoever on our arrangement.”

  “I would never harm you,” he said. Whatever had gone on with her husband, he could not bear the thought that she might fear him because of it “Surely you know that. I have never done anything to make you think I would physically hurt you.”

  “What worth does that have?” she asked, the bitterness in her voice taking him by surprise. “I haven’t known you long. You haven’t had much opportunity.” He started to protest, but she held up her hand, stopping him. “Let me continue,” she said, the bitterness replaced now by exacting precision, each syllable careful and emotionless. “I was startled by your shout and your leaping up, that’s all. It won’t happen again. My reaction was nothing to do with you, and I am quite recovered.”

  He was tempted to believe her, as she looked entirely in control of herself, as if that moment of cringing fright had never occurred. Still, he wanted her to have no doubt about her safety in his company. He reached out and lifted her chin with the tips of his fingers, looking steadily into her eyes, trying to communicate the sincerity of what he was about to say. “I swear to you I will never harm you. Not under any circumstances. You have my word.”

  As he watched, a fine sheen of tears coated her eyes, making them glisten in the candlelight. She had not been as self-possessed as she had appeared, and the realization gave his heart a gentle wrenching. “I believe you,” she said.

  He gave a firm nod and dropped his hand, affecting a tone as businesslike as hers had briefly been. “All right then. The tail. Is it a single or a double tail you have in mind?”

  She gave him a weak smile, and with a faint unease he recognized that that small curve of the lips, so shakily given, was worth more to him than winning any number of arguments on breasts and nipples.

  Chapter Ten

  Konstanze was deep asleep, nestled warmly under her covers, when a pounding at the door woke her. It took her several seconds to make sense of the sound and to separate it from her dreams. She threw back the covers and ran barefoot over the warped floorboards to the window that looked out over the front of the house. A grumbling Hilde joined her as she unlatched the window and pushed it open into a night blanketed heavily by fog.

  “Who’s there?” she asked, although there was only one person it was likely to be.

  “It is I, Tom! Konstanze, we need your help. Get dressed and come down at once.”

  “The costume isn’t finished!”

  “You won’t need it tonight. Be quick!”

  “But what will you have me do?”

  “I’ll explain on the way. There’s no time now. Will you come?”

  “I’ll be but a minute,” she said, and pulled the window shut. She stood there dumbly for several seconds, heart pounding, not believing it had already started.

  “What does he want, pulling you out of bed at this hour?” Hilde asked.

  “I’m not certain, but I think the smugglers are having trouble.”

  “Then you should stay here. There’s no reason to put yourself at risk for them. Let the thieves do as they will, and hang as they will.”

  Konstanze brushed the comments aside. Her own grandparents had on occasion been such “thieves.” Tom’s explanation of the plight of the people of Cornwall had touched her sympathies.

  The chill of the night was already setting her skin to goose pimples, and she felt a deep longing to return to her comfortable bed. But no, she had agreed to do a job, and this was her first chance to prove herself.

  “Light a candle and help me dress,” she ordered.

  By the time she was dressed and opening the front door she felt as if she’d been running in a footrace, her heart was beating so rapidly. It was a wild mixture of fear and excitement she felt, the one emotion urging her to stay safely at home and out of trouble, the other entrancing her with the adventure ahead.

  “I’m counting on you to keep me safe,” she warned Tom as she stepped out of the cottage. “Whatever it is that’s going on, don’t make me regret doing this for you.”

  “There are no guarantees,” he said, and before she could protest he took her hand and pulled her after him into the dark and the fog.

  “Sei vorsichtig!” Hilde called after her. Konstanze turned and could see only the faint yellow light of the candle Hilde held, its illumination diffused through the fog.

  “What did she say?” Tom asked.

  “She says to be careful,” Konstanze said, jogging after him, her hand still held firmly in his strong grip. She held up her skirts with her other hand, her braid flopping on her back. The fog was a cool mist against her face. “Where are we going?”

  “To the cove. Sounds carry well in the fog—you’ll have to keep your voice down once we come ’round the hill.”

  She didn’t know how she’d be able to tell when that was. She could see next to nothing, an
d was surprised she hadn’t already tripped and fallen. Tom, however, seemed to have no trouble finding his way.

  She was panting by the time they reached the cove, too anxious to catch her breath to try to talk. Tom helped guide her down the rocks, reaching up to grip her around the ribs and half lift her down. She clung to his coat and his shoulders, more concerned with slipping and breaking an ankle than with propriety or even her unwilling attraction to him. There was no time for either, and in a few moments they were down on the narrow rim of sand.

  “Into the boat,” Tom whispered, leading her to the gunwale of a small wooden rowboat that was pulled up on shore.

  She wanted to question him—surely it was not wise to go paddling about in such lightless conditions?— but thought better of it. It was pointless to quibble when she knew she would agree to get in anyway.

  As soon as she was seated he hunched low and put his strength behind sliding the boat into the water, and she felt a small jolt of nostalgia as the water took the boat’s weight and it began to float, gliding easily over the surface. Tom jumped in a moment later, the boat rocking as it always had when her grandfather took her out. She knew she was smiling in the dark, thrilled despite her better sense. If she were the proper girl she was supposed to be, she wouldn’t be itching to take the oars into her own hands or eager to head bow-first into a good, splashing wave.

  Tom unshipped the oars and with a few expert moves had them turned around and heading out of the cove, the paddles making only the faintest of noises as they slid in and out of the water, a few drops hitting Konstanze where she sat in the stern. She guessed he had wrapped cloths around the oarlocks to keep them so quiet. The sea was calm in the still fog, with no waves to impede their progress.

  “Can you tell me now what’s going on?” she whispered, her voice barely audible even to her own ears.

  “A lugger loaded with goods from Guernsey is offshore, but it can hardly move in these windless conditions. Its men are pulling as well as they can on the long oars, but the going is slow. Foweather and his crew are out in their cutter, in similarly becalmed conditions, only he has put his crew in a small-oared boat and has them towing the armed cutter. It makes for a slow chase, but if Foweather stumbles across the lugger, they’ll be caught.”