Mermaid of Penperro Read online

  “But your business, the smuggling, your house—”

  He smoothed her hair back from her face. “It meant nothing without you. I’ve liquidated what I could, and Matt will oversee selling off the rest. Some of the shipping contracts I will be able to retain. We have enough to make a new start for ourselves in a new world.”

  “I thought you never wanted love to overrule work. Why did you sell everything for which you’ve worked so hard?”

  He held her face between his hands and kissed her firmly on the mouth before replying. “There’s no point to working for wealth if I have no one upon whom to spend it.” He grinned. “And besides, I hear there are all manner of opportunities for enterprising men in America.”

  “Will you promise me one thing?”

  “Anything.”

  “No more mermaids.”

  He laughed. “I promise. No more mermaids.” He eased her back down and picked up the damp rag, rinsing it again in the basin before replacing it on her forehead. “Do you suppose they have banshees in America? You could do that wailing quite well. Perhaps—”

  She flung the damp cloth at him.

  He caught the cloth and gave an exaggerated sigh. “So it’s honest citizens we’re to be?”

  “To our dying day.”

  “For you, I can do anything. Even that.”

  Epilogue

  Penperro

  The midsummer fair was in full swing, the streets crowded with visitors. It had been nearly fifteen years since Hilde had first seen the fair, and at long last the associations she had with it had begun to weigh more heavily on the positive side than on the negative.

  “I want a good seat,” she said in German to Matt, to whose arm she clung. He had grown stockier in the time she’d known him, and his hair had gotten wilder. He was a good husband, and she did not regret her decision to let Konstanze go to America without her. There was a time when you had to let your ducklings swim off into the world on their own. Konstanze was singing on the stage now in America, with Tom providing financial support for her preferred productions.

  “You’ve seen this play a dozen times,” Matt complained in English. Their conversations were always held this way, with each speaking their native tongue.

  “Don’t play the sour-faced old man. You want to see it as much as I do.”

  “Woman, when have I ever been sour-faced?”

  “When are you not?”

  He grunted, and she smiled. She liked his grumpiness, and sometimes suspected he played it up to please her. He was the type of man children liked to pretend to be afraid of, but they followed him around like stray dogs after a bone.

  She needn’t have worried about the seats. The same as every year, there were two places in the front row of the temporary outdoor theater reserved for her and Matt. They were the living link between the present and a past that had become a fairy tale, even to those who had been adults when the mermaid had come to Penperro.

  “I wish Foweather could have seen this,” Matt said. He would repeat the sentiment when the final curtain came down on The Mermaid and Her Lovers. It was part of their tradition.

  Foweather had died eight years ago, during the heroic rescue of a foundering fishing vessel during a storm. A bronze plaque in the harbor wall commemorated his bravery, as well as his part in the now much-altered mermaid story. He had become the tragic figure in a legendary love triangle, his character in the play sighed over by young girls.

  “I think he watches,” Hilde said. “He’s immortal now.”

  About the Author

  Lisa Cach is the award-winning author of more than twenty romantic novels and novellas, ranging across sub-genres from Paranormal, Historical, Contemporary, and Chick Lit, to Young Adult. Her novel “Dating Without Novocaine” was named one of Waldenbooks’ “Best Books of 2002,” and she is a two-time finalist for the prestigious RITA Award from the Romance Writers of America.

  Ms. Cach was raised in the moss and mud of the Pacific Northwest, where she still suffers through the long grey winters today. She has used travel to inspire her fiction for decades, and in service to her art has hiked the foothills of the Himalaya, picked leeches off her legs in the jungles of Borneo, eaten dinner in the childhood home of Vlad the Impaler in Transylvania, and worn out her feet following an ancient pilgrimage route in the southwest of France. She has sailed the Caribbean as a working crew member of a research schooner, and taught writing aboard the MV Explorer on a voyage up the Amazon. Her professional background includes teaching conversational English in Japan, an M.A. in counseling psychology, and several years working the graveyard shift on a mental health crisis line.

  When not writing or traveling, you’ll find her gardening, drawing, hiking with her husband, or digging for treasures at estate sales. And, of course, reading.

  Visit her online at http://lisacach.com, or like her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/lisacachbooks.

  Books by Lisa Cach

  The Changeling Bride

  The Raven Witch (original title: Bewitching the Baron)

  Phantom Bride (original title: Of Midnight Born)

  The Wildest Shore

  The Mermaid of Penperro

  The Dragon, the Virgin, and George (original title: George & the Virgin)

  Come to Me

  Dream of Me

  Dr. Yes

  The Erotic Secrets of a French Maid

  A Babe in Ghostland

  Have Glass Slippers, Will Travel

  Dating Without Novocaine

  Great-Aunt Sophia’s Lessons for Bombshells

  Wake Unto Me (Young Adult)

  Novellas:

  The Flirting Season

  The Trouble with Truffles

  My Zombie Valentine

  A Rose by Any Other Name

  Get all four of the above stories together in:

  Crazy 4U

  Warm your chestnuts with three romantic, humorous Christmas novellas under one cover:

  Mistletoe’d!