Burning Up

“Er . . .”

Morwenna thrust her chin at Sloat. “He took it.”

“For safekeeping,” Sloat insisted. “The coin is evidence. It must be preserved until this woman can be brought before a magistrate.”

“Let me see,” Jack said.

Sloat dug in his waistcoat pocket and abstracted his prize.

Jack turned it over in his palm. Rather than the guinea he expected, the coin was roughly stamped on one side with a cross and on the other with two pillars. A Spanish doubloon, like the pirate treasure he used to dream of when he was a boy. He looked at Morwenna. “This is yours?”

She shrugged. “As much as anyone’s.”

Jack had a sudden vision of her confronting him in her cottage, the outlines of her body revealed through her loose white dress. I do not want your money, she had said. I laid with you for my pleasure.

“She’s a liar as well as a thief,” Sloat said.

Jack kept his hand from fisting on the coin. “I would not throw around public accusations of thievery if I were you. Go back to the hall. I want the household accounts for the past six months on my desk when I return.”

Sloat wet his lips. “I only want to see justice done.”

“So do I,” Jack said grimly. “The accounts, Mr. Sloat.”

Sloat’s gaze darted around the circle of interested and unsympathetic faces. A soft catcall carried through the ranks of the villagers. A snigger. A hush. For months the steward had been the power here; it would take time to establish Jack as master of Arden Hall.

Sloat delivered a jerky bow and stalked toward their tethered horses.

The tension loosened in Jack’s shoulders. He held out the gold piece to Morwenna. “I believe this is yours.”

“His now,” she said, with a nod toward Hobson. “He gave me shoes.”

Jack glanced from her new boots to Hobson’s avid face.

“It is too much,” Jack explained. “Nor can he spend it here. I will pay him for the boots.”

Such a fuss over a coin, Morwenna thought.

The children of the sea flowed as the sea flowed, free from attachments or possessions. What they needed they retrieved from the deep, the gifts of the tide, and the shipwrecks of men.

She regarded the tall, dark-haired human with the hard mouth and gentle, weary eyes, holding out the treasure from the sea. Her lover from yesterday. How amusing.

How adorable.

He had come to her rescue. Anyway, he thought he had, which was unexpectedly appealing.

Her brother had been right. There was much she did not understand about human ways. She had blundered with the pearl, she acknowledged. Floundered with the gold.

But she was right, too. She could make a place for herself among humankind if she chose.

She smiled as she took the coin like a tribute from her lover’s hand.

She had her own ways of getting what she wanted.

She watched him confer with the shopkeeper; saw more coins exchange hands.

“Thank you, Hobson,” the man said quietly.

The shopkeeper bowed deeply, clutching the money. “Thank you, Major.”

His name was Major, Morwenna noted as he came back to her. She really must make an effort to remember it this time.

“Have you completed your errands?” the man—Major—asked.

She had purchased bread and shoes. Surely that was enough to prove to Morgan that she could function perfectly well onshore.

“Yes. Thank you,” she added, because he and the shopkeeper had both used the phrase and it seemed like the right thing to say.

“Then may I escort you home?”

He was so stiff, so considerate. Something about that strong, composed face, those warm, observant eyes, got her juices flowing.

Her smile broadened. “You may.”

“My horse must carry us both, I am afraid,” he said, a rueful expression in his eyes. “I could lead you, but my leg would undoubtedly give out on the walk over the bluffs.”

She regarded the great gray animal standing placidly in front of the shop and felt almost breathless. He expected her to ride on that? And the animal would allow it?

This day was proving full of new experiences.

“Your leg and my feet,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

She gestured toward her feet, already chafing in their laced leather boots.

His face cleared in comprehension. “Your new shoes.”

Her first shoes, she thought, wiggling her toes cautiously. They were very uncomfortable. Very human. She could not wait to show them to Morgan.

Major mounted with surprising grace for a big man with a bad leg. He leaned down from the saddle. “Take my hand,” he instructed. “And put your foot on mine.”

The horse flicked an ear at her approach.

“I beg your pardon,” she told it and took the man’s hand.

“Steady.” He tugged.

She felt the pull in her shoulders and gasped, more disoriented than alarmed as he swung her up and over. Somehow he lifted and turned her so that both her legs were on one side of the horse and her buttocks pressed his thigh on the other.

Morwenna had never been on horseback before. She clutched the man’s coat as the gray horse tossed its head. The ground seemed very far away.

But his chest was hard and unbudging at her back. The warmth of his body, the strength of his arms, enveloped her.

“Comfortable?” his voice rumbled in her ear.

She nodded, her fingers relaxing their grip on his sleeve. The muscles of his thighs shifted, and the horse stepped forward.

She sat very still, absorbing a swarm of new sensations, most of them pleasant. He was so very close, touching her. Surrounding her.

“Hobson tells me he has not seen you in the village before,” he remarked conversationally.

Morwenna straightened her swaying seat. She must remember not to get too comfortable. Her lover was human and male, which made him tractable, but he was far from stupid.

“No.”

“So you are new to the area,” he said, still in that not-quite-questioning tone.

She had no fixed territory. Unlike the selkie, who alternated between seal and human shape, the finfolk did not need to come ashore to rest. Their ability to take their chosen form in water gave them greater range and freedom than the other children of the sea. But their fluid nature made them even more susceptible to the ocean’s lure. Dazzled by life beneath the waves, they could forget their existence onshore, losing the will and finally the ability to take human form.

Even her brother admitted that time on land kept them safe. Kept them sane.

“I am visiting,” she explained.

“You must have friends nearby, then. Or family. You said you live alone.”

She squirmed on her perch above the horse’s neck. Most men were too distracted by sex to pay attention to anything she said. How inconvenient—how flattering—to find one who actually listened.

“Family.” Was that enough to satisfy him? “My brother.”

The horse lurched up the track that climbed the bluff. Water boomed in the caves as the tide rolled in.