he could scent the spiced air that flowed around her, he thrust the shovel into the dirt.
‘Careful,’ she said, her hand shooting out, resting on his arm. Even through the coarse cloth of his shirt, she could feel the muscles. Quickly, she pulled her hand away. ‘She’s near the surface.’
He used the shovel more to push earth aside than to dig and in seconds he revealed a torso.
‘She’s...not wearing a dress?’
‘No.’
He turned to her, tilting up one side of his lips. ‘She might be worth more than I thought.’
‘Dig,’ she said.
The shovel slipped. He gave a shake of his head and looked up at her, apology in his eyes. ‘I broke off a sliver of nose.’
‘I would not care at all, except she does look like our mother.’ Thessa knelt beside him and used her hand to clean more dirt from the face. She pulled her hand away and stared. ‘I know Mana was beyond others in good appearance. Father loves beauty. He would never, ever marry a woman who didn’t appeal to an artist’s eyes. Art. Not one piece of it is worth one moment of my mother’s sadness.’ She looked at Benjamin. ‘If the stone in the ground did not have my mother’s face, I would take a chisel to it myself if I thought my father wanted it. But I cannot destroy my mother’s face.’ She looked at him and her voice faded into the wind. ‘And you broke her nose.’
‘I did not mean to, Thessa.’ He stepped closer to her. ‘It was an accident. There are men who can restore these statues.’
‘I understand. But it is rock. Hard on the inside as well as outside. Do not worry that you hurt her. Men made her and then they let her fall to the ground alone.’ As her father had done to her mother, quoting poetry and speaking of devotion, and then ignoring her for days while he painted. And finally leaving, with sadness in his words, but his eyes looking to the ship and his steps quick. It was better not to love than to live with a man who didn’t care enough to stay. Statues could be restored. Hearts could not.
Benjamin crouched, one hand moving the dirt, then he brushed back a lock of his hair and left a smudge high on his cheek. His shoulder brushed hers. His coat held a scent she recognised from when she’d walked on board a vessel to tell her father goodbye. Pine, from the material they used to waterproof the boat.
He studied the carving, then her face, and she stilled. She knew he compared the two and rose to increase the distance between them. He stood, wiped his hand across the duck trousers he wore and carefully put a finger beneath her chin, tilting her face up to his. ‘You are many times the loveliness of her.’
His eyes moved, tightening as he studied her face.
Wind danced around them, as if spirits caressed them with their breaths, and the air caused shivers on her arms.
He released her face, but the breezes kept tousling his hair.
‘No one could compare the two of you, though. You’ve the dark gift of the islands and skin as flawless as perfectly crafted marble. The statue should be of you.’
‘No.’ She shook her head, shuddering. ‘I want nothing to do with art. It lies.’
‘Perhaps.’ He didn’t smile. Silenced lengthened. ‘But a statue of you would be no lie.’
She wanted to brush away the smudge on his face, but to touch his skin could be dangerous and she must remain true to Stephanos in all ways. She was betrothed to him—a man of her own heritage. One who shared the same soil she had always walked on. Even though Stephanos made his own sea voyages, he never stayed long, and called the same land home that she did. His relatives lived on Melos. He would never desert his children.
‘You must wipe the dirt from your face,’ she instructed, stepping back, pulling herself from his captivation.
He brushed at his face, not taking away the smudge at all. Completely missing it.
She firmed her lips, but her fingertips softened. She wanted to touch him, but could not be so bold. His hand reached out to move the spot away again, but still he did not dislodge it.
‘Stop,’ she said and grasped the sleeve of his coat, enclosing his wrist under her hand, but keeping the barrier of the fabric between them. She guided him to smooth the dirt away. He stilled, as if she had him in some kind of spell, and when his eyes changed, something in them tumbled into her. He no longer looked like a man, but had the innocence of a boy in his eyes.
He turned his face away, and pulled his arm free. He studied the ground with the half-exposed bloodless face looking up at him.
‘I must have the treasure.’ He spoke softly. ‘The treasure.’ He took a breath. ‘That is what I am here for.’
She shivered at the intensity in his voice. ‘You will have the statue if you bargain for her,’ she said. ‘No one here wants her or they could have taken her long ago.’ Thessa leaned forward. ‘She’s rock. Broken and marked with scars. Worthless.’
His smile only tilted at one corner. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. To me she is priceless. She is the coin I need to buy my...world. My world of the sea. I’ll have my dreams if I get her. My brothers will know I am not the infant they remember.’
She turned and knelt at the stone face, trailing her fingertips over the marble, feeling the indentation at the chin, the jagged part of the nose.
He closed the distance between them.
She could feel him every time he stood beside her just as if he touched her, and yet he didn’t.
‘I know you are curious of England,’ he said. ‘I know you wonder what is so good about it that your sister doesn’t leave. That she sends gifts instead of returning.’
‘I am curious of death, too. But I’ve no wish to die.’ And her mother’s grave was on the island. Who would tend it if not her and Bellona, and if they went to England, they would be deserting her as their father did.
‘You must meet Stephanos.’ She put the slightest emphasis on her betrothed’s name and the captain’s eyes flickered in acknowledgement.
‘I would like nothing more,’ he said. Then he looked away and she could hear a smile she could not see. ‘Perhaps I should have said, there are few things I would like more.’
‘You must watch what you say around him.’
He turned so she could see his face again. ‘I suppose. I suppose I should take care, especially if I want the woman.’
Her chest heated when he said woman and even though he looked completely away from her, she could feel him watching.
Stephanos’s home looked little different than the others he’d seen, two stories with the lower one used as a barn. Chickens pecking and a goat chasing another.
He heard a hammer, and when he scanned the area, saw the bare wood of an unfinished structure that Thessa would some day live in. Windowpanes had not
