ken there’s some truth to what ye say.” She held out her hand. “I’m willing to make peace if ye are.”
Harris grinned. “It’s a bargain.”
He shook her hand. It was not soft or dainty, but roughened by years of work. More eloquently than any spoken plea, it told Harris of the life she longed to leave behind.
“It’ll be a relief to have someone to talk to.” She looked genuinely relieved. “Who’d have thought after twenty years of slaving away from dawn till dusk, I’d get sick of idleness after only two days. Time hangs heavy on yer hands when ye’ve nothing to do.”
“I stand behind my offer to teach ye to read,” said Harris. “A good book’s the best antidote for boredom I can recommend. While we’re about it, ye can instruct me in the gentle art of charming the ladies, like ye promised.”
“We’d better get busy.” An amethyst twinkle gleamed in Jenny’s gray eyes. “If I’m to teach ye some manners before we land in Chatham, there’s not a moment to lose!”
Chapter Three
“The…con-dit-ion…” Jenny sounded out the unfamiliar arrangement of letters.
“Condition,” Harris prompted.
“Oh, aye.” Her eyebrows drew together in a grimace of intense concentration as she attacked the passage once more. “The condition of the English nation was at this time…suf…suf…”
“Sufficiently miserable.” Harris helpfully supplied the last two words of the sentence.
“It’s no use.” Jenny blew out an exasperated sigh, which stirred the lock of hair curling over her brow. “I’ll never be able to read like ye can, Harris. I fear I’m an awful dunce.”
“Nonsense,” he protested. “It took me years to read as well as ye can after only a fortnight. Ye’re a clever lass, Jenny.”
The compliment warmed her more than she cared to admit. She pretended to dismiss it with a derisive wave of her hand. “Get away with ye!”
Tutor and scholar nestled in their usual perch—a short flight of wide, shallow steps leading up to the poop deck. These seldom-used side steps made a convenient retreat for Jenny’s reading lessons, out from underfoot of the crew. They had the added advantage of receiving shade from the spanker in the morning, and from the mainsail for the rest of the day.
Of late, shade had become a rare commodity on the St. Bride. Ever since that inauspicious gale at the outset of their journey, the North Atlantic weather had turned unusually clement. The wind had died to a light, fitful breeze, while the lazy waves rocked the barque as gently as a baby’s cradle. Day after day, the sun beamed down from a canopy of deep, tranquil blue. Filmy clouds floated high in what the master of the St. Bride called a “mackerel sky.”
“Ye’d likely have learned quicker with an easier book.” Harris leaned back from his seat two steps below Jenny. He cast an apologetic glance at the fat volume of Ivanhoe lying open on her lap. “Other than the Bible, I fear Mr. Scott’s books are all I could afford to bring with me.”
“Don’t fret yerself.” Jenny felt her natural optimism rebounding. “I know the Bible well enough already. I like these stories. I’d far rather read a book that’s hard but interesting, than one that’s easy but dull.”
Harris grinned. “Aye, there’s sense in that.”
They had finished Rob Roy a few days ago. First, Jenny struggled through the opening pages of each chapter, then Harris rewarded her efforts by reading the rest aloud to her. Between chapters, they discussed the story and the characters. Harris would explain any pertinent historical background.
The high adventure and heroic romance of the stories intrigued Jenny no end. At night they figured in her dreams, the heroes all looking and sounding strangely like Harris.
Every morning, Jenny hurriedly dressed and bolted her breakfast, eager to tackle another chapter. Thanks to Walter Scott and Harris Chisholm, whole new vistas of thought and experience were opening before her. Never in her life had she felt so completely alive.
“Hallo!” called a voice from aloft. “How goes the lessons, Miss Lennox?”
Jenny waved up at Thomas Nicholson, the apprentice boy who was nimbly scaling the ratlines on the mizzenmast.
“Oh, it’s coming, Thomas,” she called. “Not fast, but it’s coming.”
“Don’t listen to her, Thomas,” Harris countered. “Miss Lennox has brains to match her beauty. Why, I could make an Edinburgh lawyer out of her in six months.”
With a cheery salute, the boy returned to his work. Captain Glendenning kept men aloft all hours of the day, adjusting the sails continually to catch the faint, fitful winds. As the unpromising weather had improved since the early days of the voyage, so had the crew of the St. Bride.
A rigorous stickler for discipline, the master had taken a hard line with slackers and insubordinates. Any sailor who failed to pull his weight soon found himself scouring the deck with salt water and holystone, under the blazing sun. Diligent sailors found the St. Bride a soft billet. They ate better than the usual forecastle diet of hardtack and salt beef, and the captain used a liberal hand doling out their daily rum ration.
Discovering Jenny had a champion in the tall, menacing person of Harris Chisholm, the sailors had quickly come to treat her with respectful deference. It helped matters further when word got around that she was on her way to wed a rich shipbuilder in the port of their destination. Any sailor who planned to jump ship and look for work in Miramichi might hope for a good reference from Miss Lennox.
Returning to the text of the novel, Harris searched out more obscure words that might present a problem for Jenny’s novice reading skills.
“Brains to match my beauty?” she scoffed.
Though Harris continued to stare at the book, his ears reddened. “Should I not practice my lessons, too?” he asked innocently.
“Lessons? Ah, yer charm lessons.” It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Harris he was already a mite too charming for his own good—or hers. Instead she spoke tartly. “The most important lesson I can teach ye about flattery is don’t lay it on too thick.”
“‘He lived long and happily with Rowena,”’ Jenny read about Wilfred of Ivanhoe, “‘for they were attached to each other by bonds of early affection and they loved each other the more from recollection of the obstacles which had impeded their union.”’
The evening light was quickly fading and Jenny wanted to finish the book before she went to bed. Harris had promised they could start Waverley the next day.
“‘Yet it would be inquiring too curiously to ask whether the recollection of Rebecca’s beauty and magna…magnan…”’
“Magnanimity.”
“‘Magnanimity,”’ Jenny repeated, “‘did not recur to his mind more frequently than the fair descendant of Alfred might altogether have approved.”’
She read
