Burning Up

seaweed abandoned by the tide.
    Jack’s leg throbbed like fire. Blood crawled across his knuckles. He couldn’t feel his fingers or his feet. He ran to Neptune, a big, gray shape against wet, black rocks, and led him to the men whipped by the rain, huddled around the boat.
    “How many more?” he shouted against the wind.
    A burly man with an orange beard—the baker—looked up. “All in. Jeb’s was the last boat.”
    “Put him on my horse. We’ll take him to the tavern.”
    Sloat would be there soon with a cartload of brandy and blankets.
    Or he’d fire the bastard.
    They limped and lurched from the beach, a sodden line of men buffeted by the gale and bolstered by their small victory over the sea.
    The taproom enveloped them in warmth, noise, and light. Half the village of Farness crowded the bar or clustered around small tables. The smell of wet wool, smoke, and onions hung on the air.
    Jack’s head swam. He needed to sit down.
    The rescued man leaned on his companions, stumbling across the wet plank floor to a place by the fire.
    “Da!” A pretty, rounded young woman with swollen eyes rushed forward and threw her arms around him. She drew back, her gaze fixed painfully on his face. “Colin?”
    Quiet fell on the taproom.
    “Sorry, lass.” Her father’s voice was hoarse with salt and sorrow. “He’s . . . He was trying to save the nets when . . .”
    “ No ! Colin.” Wailing, she sank to the floor.
    “Whiskey,” Jack ordered.
    He was tired of death. He had sat by too many dying soldiers, stood in too many sitting rooms to deliver unwelcome news to grieving mothers and wives. Sliding an arm about the girl, he raised her from the floor. “Let me help you to a chair.”
    She sobbed noisily and collapsed against his chest. The tavern keeper reached for a bottle.
    The door to the taproom burst open in a rush of rain and a gush of cold air.
    Jack glanced up, expecting Sloat.
    Morwenna materialized from the storm, framed by wet timbers against the stormy sky. Her fair hair was plastered to her head by rain. Her blue dress clung to her body. She looked like the figurehead on a sailing ship. Like a mermaid.
    Jack felt a crackle like lightning zing along his nerves and lift all the little hairs on the back of his neck.
    “I heard the bell,” she said. “What is happening?”
    No one answered.
    She was not one of them, Jack realized. She shone among the villagers of Farness like a fine wax taper, slender, straight, and pale. She did not belong in this grimy taproom. How could he ever have thought she could belong to him?
    Her gaze swept the room like a flame, lighting on his hand where it rested on the girl’s back. Her brow pleated. “You are hurt.”
    He had forgotten his bloody knuckles. “I’m fine.”
    Morwenna took a half step forward out of the rain, toward him. “I could help.”
    Her offer seared him like the drag of the wet rope. There is nothing you can give me that I do not have, she had said. Nothing I need or want.
    “There is nothing you can do,” he said.
    Her breath rasped like a match against the silence. Her gaze narrowed. “Who is that?”
    He glanced down at the crying girl in his arms. He didn’t even know her name.
    The tavern keeper’s wife crossed her padded arms against her bosom. “That’s our Jenny Miller. She just lost her man.”
    “Lost,” Morwenna repeated blankly. As if the young fisherman were a halfpenny or a sheep.
    “In the sea,” Jack said harshly.
    She cocked her head, listening to the wind and the sad, deep notes of the bell: Come . . . back. “I could find him for you.”
    Jenny’s father stirred by the fire. “He went down with the nets,” he said dully. “He will not be found until this storm is past.”
    His daughter gave a muffled sob.
    Jack’s helplessness pushed like a thumb on his windpipe. “There’s nothing you can do.” He forced the words through his tight throat. Nothing he could do. “Nothing anyone can do.”
    She met his gaze, her eyes running with borrowed colors like the sea. Without a word she turned and walked into the rain.
    The tavern keeper’s wife sniffed. “She’s a fool to go back out in this weather.”
    Jack stared at the closed door, his throat aching, his heart burning in his chest.
    Yes.
    And he was a bigger one for going after her.
     
    M orwenna strode to the harbor in a welter of rain and unfamiliar emotion. The storm was raw and turbulent outside her, inside her, churning in her chest, pulsing in