‘She wouldn’t mind me using it?’
‘No, not at all. She’s the least fussy person I know and one of the nicest.’
An hour later Emerald barely recognised herself. She stood in front of a full-length mirror in Lucy’s room and stared. This dress was the first one she had ever worn that actually nearly fitted her. Gone were the sagging bodices and the false hems. Gone were the short not-quite-fit-me sleeves and the hideously high or dangerously low necks.
But it was the colour that owed the most to the transformation. Deep midnight blue with a hint of silky grey on its edge, the fabric showed up the line of her body and the gold of her skin. In this she did not look insipid or washed out. In this her eyes were bright and her hair, carefully combed by a maid, was for the first time placed in some semblance of order. Even her ears looked different, for Lucy had found some topaz drops that had been her grandmother’s.
‘You look wonderful,’ she said as she hooked the earrings in place. ‘But you have more than one pierced hole?’
Emerald took in breath. ‘It is the way in Jamaica.’
‘And your gloves? Is it the way there to wear gloves all the time?’
Perfect blue eyes met her own.
‘No. That is my choice. I like to wear them.’
‘Then you should make it into a fashion statement.’ Rattling around in her cupboard, Lucinda came up with some fine white lace elbow-length gloves, looking enquiringly at her when she did not remove her old ones.
There was little else to do but to peel off the grey pair. Quickly. She turned her palms upwards as she pulled the new ones on and took a peek at Asher’s sister.
She had seen.
She knew it as soon as she looked.
‘I burnt myself once.’ It was all that she would admit. She was pleased to see the lace was lined in fine cream silk and that no trace of the reddened scar tissue could be seen. Flame left the sort of mark with its bone-deep ravages that made people turn their eyes away. And her hands had been on fire for all of a minute before she hit the sea.
‘I would prefer that you said nothing of my scars to anyone.’
‘I promise you I won’t.’ Lucy made much of folding away the discarded petticoats and chemises before asking quietly, ‘Do they hurt?’
‘No.’
Her mind ran backwards to a battle in the waters off Jamaica about a year after her first meeting with Asher Wellingham. Azziz had been behind her and Solly Connors out further under the yardarm. Morning fog had engulfed the Mariposa and the flash that came from nowhere was strangely magnified by the closeness. She remembered Solly’s head flying past her, his body curled around the footrope as if his fingers had a mind of their own, the last ingrained act of survival imprinted in their being. And shouts from below as a fireball whirled up the mast and hit them, the main-course sheets soggy from the night-time rain sheltering them from the sheer force of it. She had reached out for the shroud and shifted her weight. But her fingers did not grip, could not grip, and she had fallen, fallen, fallen into the ocean.
When she woke up all hell had claimed her.
Thornfield came into view after a good fifteen minutes in the carriage and Emerald was glad to see it. Asher had hardly spoken to her and certainly had not complimented her on the gown or her hair. Chagrin was a strange emotion, she decided, a feminine art form of guilt that she had always despised. But here in the folding darkness of Fleetness Point she found herself pouting at his negligence.
With a sigh she shifted position, bringing the fullness of the skirt out from beneath her. Lucy had told her to do so for the material was heavy silk and liable to crush. In the dusk its silver shimmer was more noticeable, like a living moonbeam come to rest in her dress. She absently shaded her fingers over the lightness and glanced at Asher Wellingham from the corner of her eye.
He sat as far away from her as he could manage, his hands tightly bound on his lap. Tonight he had barely looked at her.
‘I need to make a small detour to the harbour, for my draughtsman in London is in need of some plans.’
Irritation dropped away to sheer delight.
‘We will go aboard your ship?’ She tried to make her voice as indifferent as she could. But it was hard work.
‘You can wait in the carriage, if you would rather. I will take just a moment to find the drawings and then we’ll be on our way. Annabelle said six and it is not yet half past five, so there is still plenty of time.’
‘I would be interested to go aboard.’ She could not quite hide the excitement.
‘Very well. Though I must warn you it is cramped and difficult to negotiate.’
‘Difficult?’ She opened her fan and hid a smile. ‘I am sure I shall be able to manage, though I should not wish to be a nuisance…’
He did not answer as the carriage veered towards the harbour.
He helped her across the gangplank and the swell and ebb of the sea beneath her feet was like a caress.
Closing her eyes she savoured it, breathed it in.
‘Are you all right?’ There was urgency in his voice, and for the first time that night he touched her, his hand cupping her elbow as if to hold her up. She swayed into him, her body reacting before her mind warned her away.
‘All right?’ She was disorientated by sheer longing.
‘Seasickness,’ he clarified. ‘It can sometimes hit quickly.’
‘No, I am in good health.’ With the greatest of will she broke the link between them and looked around, glad to feel her heart settling down to a more normal pace. ‘It’s a beautiful ship.’ Her fingers reached out to the belayed halyard that led to the main lower topsail, so familiar she could have trimmed the sheet with her eyes closed.
‘That’s the rope that lets the sail drop. Without that we can’t furl it.’
She smiled at his explanation, given to her in such simple terms. ‘You have sailed a lot?’
‘I used to.’
‘But you don’t any more?’
‘I lost the taste for it,’ he returned shortly and bade her follow him down the companionway. ‘The chartroom is this way. Mind your step.’
It was the skirt, she thought later. In her haste she forgot to raise it properly and the toe of her shoe caught in the thick folds of silk and simply tipped her up. Asher caught her. Closer this time. The whisper of his breath touched her cheek and his hand fell across the swell of her bottom as he guided her to the master’s cabin where they were cocooned in the quiet lap of the ocean, the smell of oil lamps mixing with the stronger scent of teak.
She felt the hard wooden ribs of the hull behind her back and the warm planes of his body at her front, pressing against her, closer. In the half-light only the snowy white of his
