The Rose Garden

I’d forgotten, from the time that I’d encountered him at night in the front bedroom of Trelowarth, just how quickly he could wake. My hand had barely touched his shoulder when his eyes came halfway open.

‘Eva?’

‘You’re not comfortable.’

He closed his eyes again. ‘I am.’

‘You’re not. That chair’s too small,’ I said. ‘Let me sleep there. You take the hammock.’

‘No need.’ His voice had the cavalier slur of a man who’d had too much to drink and was past really caring; who’d happily sleep in a ditch if he had to.

But I cared. With a bit more persuading I managed to get him to stand. He was less steady on his feet than I’d expected, and I had to steer him to the hammock with his arm around my waist, and when he obligingly lowered his long body into it he didn’t let go, but kept his arm there so that I was pulled partway into the hammock, too.

I tried to straighten. ‘Daniel.’

He’d already started falling back to sleep.

If he’d been sleeping deeply it would have been easy to dislodge his hold and step away, but as it was his arm lay heavily and firmly round me, keeping me in place. And to be honest, once I’d thought about it, I was not all that inclined to step away.

He’d said a hammock held the weight of two men when it needed to. I took him at his word, and since I was already halfway in I cast propriety aside and slipped in properly, turning a bit so my head nestled onto his shoulder. I let the rhythm of his heartbeat, strong and sure beneath my cheek, chase off my worries.

He had been right earlier, when he’d suggested that I’d been expecting adventure; that I’d seen a certain romance in the notion of a smuggling run to Brittany. But the romance of the voyage could no longer mask the actual reality of what was going on, not with the cargo we now carried from the French ship we’d been sent to meet in secret by the Duke of Ormonde’s orders.

I might be prepared to believe that what Daniel had taken in trade for the wool at our first port of call had been only the usual brandy and lace, but whatever the French ship had given us now had to do with the coming rebellion. And although I knew the rebellion would fail, I had not learnt yet what that would mean to the man lying next to me, or to his brother and Fergal, or even the men on this ship, and their families. In the history books they likely wouldn’t even rate a mention, just as Shakespeare’s Henry V, having read aloud the list of noblemen who’d died at Agincourt, had then dismissed the countless others lying lifeless in the mud as ‘none else of name’.

But these men were not nameless to me. Not to me, I thought, laying my hand on the chest of the man at my side in a move that was faintly protective. Daniel half-woke again, drew me more closely against him and lowered his head so his wine-scented breath warmed my temple, and went back to sleep. And in time, as the ship creaked and rocked with the wind and the waves, I slept, too.

When I woke to a knock at the door there was light in the cabin – a grey light that spilt round the edge of the curtains. I shifted, not wholly remembering, and felt the weight and warmth beside me.

Daniel hadn’t moved much in the night. He still held me against him, my head cradled into the curve of his shoulder, his hand lying heavily over my hip. It couldn’t be comfortable for him, I thought. If nothing else, he’d likely lost all circulation in his arm. Carefully I eased out of the hammock without swinging it too much, and crossed to answer the door.

Fergal’s face was impassive. His dark gaze briefly rested on my rumpled gown and loosened hair before it flicked beyond me to where Daniel lay asleep, and then returned without expression. ‘Waken him, would you?’ the Irishman told me. ‘He’s needed on deck.’

He turned away, not waiting for an answer and not making any comment on the way that he had found us, but I sensed his disapproval.

I tried talking to him later, as we washed the dinner plates together in the galley alcove, on our own. I did it quietly. I told him, ‘What you saw … it wasn’t like that. Nothing happened.’

Fergal didn’t answer. Didn’t even glance around.

I tried again. ‘I said—’

‘You’re not meant to be speaking.’ His hard sideways glance cut me off. ‘And the other is none of my business.’

I knew where the coldness was coming from; knew he was not angry but concerned, and I could only guess that his concern was not for me, but for his friend. He’d have seen how losing Ann affected Daniel, and no friend would ever wish to see that twice. No matter how well Fergal liked me, I felt certain that he viewed what was developing between myself and Daniel as a road to sure disaster.

And I wasn’t so convinced that he was wrong.

My troubled thoughts stayed with me as the Sally slowly settled back into the shelter of her private mooring place below the dark woods of Trelowarth, with the black cliffs at her back.

We had slipped in on the rising tide and darkness was beginning its descent upon the pebbled shoreline, cloaking our activities from idly prying eyes. And by the time the men had off-loaded the cargo with efficient speed and silence, there was barely light left in the cabin for me to make out Fergal’s features when he came below to fetch me.

‘Danny’s waiting at the cave,’ he said.

We were the last to leave. The other members of the Sally’s crew had scattered to their own devices with a stealth that marked them true-born smugglers.

Fergal handed me down into the Breton rowboat that we’d brought back to replace the one we’d lost to Creed’s accomplice. I could see the smashed remains of that one sitting on the beach as Fergal rowed us quietly across towards the Cripplehorn.