Page 60 of Unearthing the Smuggler's Heart
A snit.
Was he jealous of her parents, perhaps? That seemed unlike him. Or maybe he was just so anxious to be back aboard theHarpythat every moment spent in Spain was agony for him. She hated the thought of that, but there was no denying that it sounded far more likely a reason.
She had seen him out of the corner of her eye as she walked in the villa gardens that afternoon, and by the time she'd turned her head, he was gone again, back into his metaphorical hole. She did not like the twisting agony of distress she felt at the idea of it.
She stopped at the edge of a decorative pond and stared out at the glassy water, frowning down at her own hazy reflection.
That was how her father found her.
He approached quietly, though the sound of his cane tapping against the flagstones was impossible to muffle completely. He did not speak immediately, for that seemed to be his way, careful and considerate and never demanding. Instead, he took a seat on the stone bench next to where she stood, propping his cane next to him, and waited for her, should she wish to have a conversation or simply share the silence.
She looked over her shoulder and met his gaze, unable to suppress the little smile of pure happiness that rose in her every time she saw him. "Don't mind me," she said, moving to sit beside him. "I am occasionally pensive for no good reason at all."
"I suspect you have plenty of good reasons," Randall Ferris replied easily, giving his daughter a reassuring squeeze of the shoulder. "It is perfectly reasonable to be rattled, every now and then."
She nodded, plucking one of the oval-shaped stones from her feet and rubbing her thumb over it, staring down at the little gray rock like it might have answers.
She used to sit outside of the house she'd grown up in and search for stones like this one, that she might send skipping across the surface of the river. She hadn't done it in many years, but she looked up, unable to resist the urge to try and send the stone bouncing over the glassy surface of the pond. It skipped half a dozen times before sinking.
"Impressive," said her father in a tone that seemed sincere. "Can you teach me how to do that?"
She looked up at him in surprise. "Teach you to skip stones?"
"Yes, of course," he said, reaching down and plucking up another rock from between their feet. "I've never known how."
"Well, I can try," she said uncertainly, frowning at the rock in his hand. "You'll want a thinner one to start with, I think. I can't promise I'll be a very good teacher."
"Oh, nonsense," he said, setting his first rock aside and looking around for a second, using the toe of his boot to search. "It's in your blood, after all. Who taught you?"
"No one," she replied, surprised by the question. "I just kept trying to do it until it happened. It must have taken me at least a year to master."
"A year!" he repeated, smiling. "So you are tenaciousandclever? I am so very pleased. I will remember to be patient in my own endeavors."
She blushed, looking down at her hands while he chose a few more stones from beneath them. It had taken her a year all on her own, but surely it would not take nearly so long with an instructor.
Still, she thought, looking up at the way the late-afternoon sun brought out strands of gold in her father's beard, it would be nice to have a year to teach him. A year out here with the fronds blowing and the late-afternoon sun. On and on and ever and forever, the kind of thing she dreamt about when she was a girl.
She thought of Mathias again and felt her heart ache. He would not stay here and wait for an entire year. He couldn't! Isabelle wanted to give birth to her child in England, with her husband nearby.
She could always choose to stay behind, she thought, uncertain whether the prospect elated or pained her. She could stay here, with her family, if she so chose.
She sighed, shaking the thoughts out of her head in favor of choosing a stone from her father's new selection, and hoping they scattered over the water just as easily as that first thrown rock had. She did not want to think about such a choice, no matter how imminently its necessity loomed.
She just wanted to sit here, in the sun, and skip stones for as long as she could.
CHAPTER27
Outfitting the ship for the remainder of the journey back to England had become a welcome distraction for Mathias, especially with his crew out, enjoying a rare taste of shore leave in the little Spanish port town where they'd docked.
He had never done so much of this tedious preparation all on his own, but he found that with the recently reorganized pantry as well as the lists that Isabelle and Jade had compiled during the trip out, it truly was not that difficult to manage, and there was something soothing about a completely empty ship in which to go about his business.
It was not as though he was needed elsewhere. Was it?
He had been keeping himself busy because there was nothing else to do. Jade was off with her parents at all times, whether it be in their little schoolhouse or touring the little town. Isabelle had been engrossed in pregnancy business and her new friendships with the Oliviers and that housemaid she'd cozied up to.
He wasn't bitter about it, just restless.
Between Pauline's implications about his future with Jade and all that business about wronging Dumand, he'd been desperate to silence his mind in the hours when he couldn't escape into sleep. In the last days, his nightmares had been brand-new scenarios, all to do with sticky emotional nonsense that should not have awakened him in a cold sweat, gasping for breath.
