Sails on the Horizon: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars by Jay Worrall Page B

I’ll take you home.”
    “My name is Penelope Brown, not Miss Brown,” she said with a small smile. “And I live near Gatesheath, not a mile from here.”
    He saw that, with her hair softening the outline of her face and her mouth broken into a smile, that she was startlingly pretty, maybe beautiful. Charles stood silently staring until her eyes met his. “I’d best change the horses,” he said, hastily looking away. “Yours will be all right given a little time, but I think it’d be better if mine pulled your cart for now.” He retreated to busy himself with the horses. Finally, after some difficulty with his stallion, who apparently thought himself above pulling carts, he had the mare tethered behind the wagon and his horse hitched between the shafts. He returned to the back of the wagon and saw that she had been watching him, her expression softer than before. She smiled, her head cocked slightly to one side.
    Unexpectedly, Penelope Brown reached out with her good arm and gently touched the dressing on the side of Charles’s head. “Thou art injured,” she said. “How camest thou by it?”
    Reflexively Charles raised his hand to the bandage, and his fingers brushed against hers. “An accident at sea,” he answered brusquely. “It’s almost healed.”
    “Is that where thy expression, ‘with the wind on our quarter,’ cometh from?”
    “The same,” Charles said.
    She looked at him curiously for a moment, then asked, “Wouldst thou help me down, please? I don’t want to jump.”
    “Of course,” Charles said, his awkwardness returning. He put his hands on her waist and set her gently on the ground. He saw she was tall for a girl, perhaps half a head shorter than he. She smiled up at him, and he quickly said, “Here, I’ll help you up in the front.”
    This proved awkward. He lifted her by her waist up to the two-foot-high step, then supported her while she pulled herself onto the bench with her good arm. When Charles climbed up, he felt embarrassed about the intimacy of the contact between them and hardly dared look at her.
    “Thank thee,” she said at length. “Not for crashing my conveyance, doing injury to my horse, and breaking my arm, but for the gentle way thou looked after Maggie and for not being upset with me when I screamed and swore. I think thou art a Christian person.”
    Charles studied her profile out of the corner of his eye, trying not to be obvious. “I’ve seen worse,” he said seriously, “much worse. You were very brave.” He fell silent.
    “The sun is almost down,” she observed.
    “Yes?” Charles said, wondering at the change of topic.
    “Dost not thou think we should start? It’s straight ahead and the first turning on the right.”
    “Oh, yes,” he said, and quickly took the reins and flicked them. The stallion started forward.
    After they had found the turning and were well along the lane to her home, she asked, “Doth thy horse have a name?”
    “No,” Charles answered. “I just bought him today. Do you have any ideas?”
    She sat in thought. “What dost thou think of Pendle?”
    At first Charles had been a little taken aback at her use of thee s and thou s. They were archaic pronouns that had long gone out of style in most of England, especially in the navy. But as she talked, he found he enjoyed the way she spoke. It suggested in his mind a certain intimacy between them. He assumed she spoke to everyone that way, though, and had no idea why. “Pendle?” Charles repeated. “Why Pendle?”
    She gave a small laugh. “He’s so large. When thou art mounting him thou couldst say thou wert climbing Pendle Hill.” She smiled prettily at him.
    Charles hadn’t the least idea why anyone would name a horse after a small mountain in northern England, but he loved the sound of her when she was happy. He gallantly said, “Pendle it is.” He flicked the horse’s reins. “Git up, Pendle,” and the stallion broke into a trot.
    She started to laugh again