“Yeah, well, it put you right out, didn’t it? Having to leave your car there and all. And anyway, it wasn’t just that.” Mal ran a hand through his hair. “About the beach . . . I didn’t have me head on straight. What happened was out of order. So I’m sorry.”
He shoved both hands in his jeans pockets, and looked up at Jory with a sheepish expression, his rumpled hair falling over his eyes.
He’d probably practised that move from an early age to charm his way out of trouble. Even so, something inside Jory twisted and broke at the sight.
“Still mates?” Mal asked with a shy smile.
Christ. Right now, Jory would have happily given him his soul.
But mates was good. Better than . . . not mates. He nodded.
Mal broke out into a grin that had relief written all over it. “You’re aces, bruv. So how’s it going? Caught any mermaids yet?”
“Not yet. But I’m almost certain I’m going to get funding for the exhibition.” Jory knew he sounded more positive than the situation really warranted, but he was just so bloody glad to be on a safe subject.
“Yeah? That’s great. So tell me about the stuff you’ve got in here at the mo. I never got a good look around last time. Seaman Staines, here, he got a story?” Mal waved a hand at the dummy dressed in a replica eighteenth-century naval uniform, which Mrs. Quick had provided the museum with in a burst of enthusiasm last winter. It wasn’t a bad copy of the real thing, which they had under glass, of course.
“That’s Midshipman Staines to you. And yes, but it’s a short one—he went down with the wreck of the Troilus, apparently.” Jory pointed at the painting on the wall.
“Poor bastard. Was that wreckers, then?”
“Just rocks, as far as I know. But we do have a display about wreckers, over here.” He led Mal to a glass cabinet containing an eighteenth-century brandy bottle (empty), a flintlock pistol of uncertain antiquity, and a lurid retelling of the story of Cruel Coppinger, who wasn’t even local and the tales of whose misdeeds were almost certainly apocryphal. “I don’t think there’s a lot of historical truth in the legend,” he couldn’t help apologising. “Most visitors don’t seem to care, and it does make a good story.”
Mal nodded. “Yeah, it’s like all the King Arthur stuff, you know? And Robin Hood, and all that bollocks. Sometimes you just want to hear about heroes. Like, it’s, uh, aspirational?” He said the word as though unsure he was using it correctly, and Jory was unwillingly charmed all over again.
“Yes, I think the medieval concept of chivalry was something to aspire to, rather than a code people really lived by.” He smiled. “Although in fact the wreckers of Cornwall were probably better, and more humane, than the legends would have you believe. There are as many stories telling how they saved sailors’ lives as there are of them causing deaths.”
“What about pirates? I mean, have you got anything on Mary Roscarrock? Uh, the one what ran off to be a pirate?” Mal went pink. “If, you know, you don’t mind talking about it. Her being family.”
“She lived four hundred years ago. I think you can safely say we weren’t close.” Jory paused. “We haven’t, actually, and now you mention it, I’m not sure why. A local legend like that is just what we could do with here.”
“Yeah? Sure your big bruv wouldn’t close you down? Bringing the family name into disrepute and all that?”
Jory cast a glance around for the visitors and was relieved to see they’d wandered into another room. “Bran may like to think he controls everything in Porthkennack, but I can assure you, he doesn’t. I’ll ask Mrs. Quick about it. She’s been involved with the museum a lot longer than I have.”
Mal frowned. “Yeah, I been meaning to ask—she related to the old admiral there?” He nodded towards the bust of Admiral Quick over by the desk.
“Doubly, in fact. She’s the descendant of a cousin, I believe, and obviously she married a Quick.” Jory shrugged. “You get a lot of that sort of thing around here. Or, at least, you used to. These days everyone is a lot more mobile than they used to be.”
Mal grinned. “Yeah, I bet you miss the good old days with horses and carts and inbreeding and all that shit.”
“Thanks. I’m thirty-two, not a hundred and two.”
“You keep telling yourself that, Grandad.”
Jory was spellbound by the easy intimacy of the moment. It was as if nothing awkward had ever happened between them. It would be so easy to lean forward and kiss Mal’s lips—but then the front door creaked open and the sound of voices interrupted.
Mal’s trainers squeaked on the floor. “Looks like I’d better let you get back to work.”
Jory swallowed. “Yes. Right.” He hurried back to his post at the desk and busied himself with the new visitors, handing over a family ticket for the princely sum of five pounds.
Mal dawdled around the museum a while longer, but Jory didn’t feel he ought to leave the desk and go chat with him while there were other visitors who might need his help.
It was probably better not to in any case. He didn’t want Mal to think he was following him around like a lovelorn sheep.
At length, Mal came back to him. “What time do you finish tonight?” he asked in a low voice.
“Five o’clock.” The surge of relief that Mal hadn’t simply waved and gone on his way left Jory a little giddy. “Would you like to go for a drink or something? Um, possibly not in the Sea Bell?”
Mal chuckled. “Yeah, maybe not. I’ll see you back here, and we can decide then, okay?”
“Okay.”
And it will be okay, Jory told himself. Just two men, having a friendly drink.
He could do that.
The heady rush of having more than half a dozen visitors to
