Irene broke off suddenly. “Bother. I cannot find my needle and thread. I’ve only ever sewn hair up for balls and such, but if we cannot secure your hair it would do as well to wear it all down for the whole of the crossing.” Irene hurried to the door. “I will return directly. I know where Mama packed hers.” Then she disappeared.
Hope pulled in a trembling breath. Irene did not want Hope. She wanted Grace, and she had admitted it in such a way that made it difficult to imagine telling the truth. What would Hope say without causing embarrassment for both of them?
When Irene returned, Hope had not moved, and her friend took up the conversation as though it had never paused.
“It is good that I will have you with me, Grace. You will not get me into any scrapes, and I will not feel as though I have to watch you at all times to prevent any catastrophic events. Besides, Albert will be with us and I know he thinks Hope is somewhat unsophisticated. But he likes you.”
It took a great deal of control for Hope to not shudder at the idea of Albert Carlbury liking anyone. The man was a tall, thin, ridiculous snob. He took great delight in explaining things to people as though everyone but he must be stupid. In fact, his attendance on the voyage had been the one negative aspect that Hope had attempted to overlook in order to remain excited.
“Mr. Albert Carlbury… likes me?” She hoped she did not sound as disgusted as she felt by the idea.
“Oh, yes. In fact, should the two of you get on, I would not be surprised if he proposed to you.” Irene giggled and started working upon Hope’s hair with a needle and thread, pulling braids and twists and curls together as one might attach lace to a hem.
For the first time since Hope had begun the deception, she considered admitting to the whole of it, so the Carlburys would send her home and she need never think of their eldest son again. Facing her father and staying at Everly Refuge would be preferable to receiving an offer of marriage from that rather pompous man.
But the ocean, a ship, and the unknown beauty of faraway islands had tempted her this far, and they still held an allure for Hope that she did not fully understand herself. Perhaps she could put him off with less-than-perfect manners, or make it most obvious she had no intention of allowing any romantic sort of pursuit.
Someday, Hope would marry, but it would not be to a man who thought it his duty in life to lecture her upon things which she had long since understood. When she married, whether it was in her present twenty-fourth year or when she was a white-haired woman of eighty, the man she chose as husband would be the other half of her soul.
Her sister would call Hope dramatic, but Grace had fallen in love with a man she had known since birth.
Oh, Hope had noticed the way Grace stared at their friend Jacob Barnes. It had frustrated and amused her that Grace would never have the courage to say anything about it to Jacob. Out of respect for them both, Hope never breathed a word of her deductions to either of them. But really, Grace’s predicament proved to Hope that her romantic ambitions were best.
Hope wanted to fall deeply and passionately in love with a man who had no comparison. He and she would meet, perhaps in a crowded ballroom or on a ride through the countryside, and they would know with the surety of a thunderbolt they were meant to be together.
In the meantime, she would have her adventure on the sea and shores of the West Indies. Nothing, not Irene’s lackluster view of adventure or her brother’s presumptuous self, would stand in her way. Hope meant to enjoy every moment of the journey before her.
Even if she had to pretend to be Grace to do so.
2
Somewhere in the Caribbean Sea
Another wave crashed against the shore, pounding and dragging at the white sand as though determined to claim every single grain for the ocean bed. Alejandro ignored the sound, a constant thrumming that had once nearly driven him mad, too used to it now to pay it any attention. His focus lay elsewhere, on a herd of seals basking on a small outcrop of rocks near the shore.
Alejandro hadn’t seen a seal in months. He’d been living off of fish, crabs, and the occasional turtle. The island provided several edible plants, yet he took from them sparingly. His diet had little variety, which made a seal a most desired delicacy.
They were beautiful animals, their smooth pelts glossy in the sun and their large eyes somehow reminding him of both a dog and a cow at the same time. Hunting them, eating them, would have filled him with guilt were it not a matter of his survival.
The seals did not stir, unaware of his approach. He was downwind, and the waves masked any sound his bare feet might have made on the sand. He gripped the spear he had fashioned out of a tree limb and a knife, certain of where to strike.
A little over a year ago, he never would have pictured himself in his current predicament. What would his father have thought, seeing his eldest son creep across an island half-naked, bare-footed, bronzed by the sun and with the physique of a malnourished laborer? Unshaven, washed only by the saltwater of the ocean when he went into the water to fish, his parents likely would not even recognize him.
Hours later, as he used deadfall from the trees to cook a portion of the meat, Alejandro leaned back against the trunk of a large tree—the tallest on the island—and tried to remember his life before the island. What would he give for a pair of shoes? Or a warm bath? A large portion of his father’s wealth, easily.
“I am Alejandro Felipe de Córdoba y Verduzco,” he said aloud, as he did every night. “Son of Felipe Abel de Córdoba y Castellano and Marie Josefina de Verduzco Loayza.” He repeated his ancestry back four generations on each side, the Spanish names falling from his lips like a prayer. Then he actually prayed, every prayer he could remember, and he made up several of his own.
His mother, a gentle soul, had patiently helped him memorize his family history before he was ten years old. “It is important,” she had admonished him in her lilting Castilian, “to remember where you came from. You might be a criollo, but your people are from Spain. Your ancestors love you and will guide you in all you do.”
If his family, his father, had remained in Spain, Alejandro’s life would look very different. As a criollo, a Spaniard born in Buenos Aires in the Principality of Río de la Plata, his life had been in constant upheaval. His mother nearly died of a disease no doctor knew the name of, and the same disease took his younger sister. Alejandro, along with his brother and his parents had made their way in the new world with their farm and cattle, hearts broken for her loss.
“Where were my ancestors when the fighting started?” he asked the fire, poking at it with a long stick meant to join the flames. “When the British came? When the loyalists and the revolutionaries formed militias? Eh? Where were you, mi familia?”
He switched from English to Spanish, then from Spanish to French, and always prayed in Latin. The learning of languages had come easily to him and repeating himself in each of them kept his mind sharp.
He had read Robinson Crusoe as a boy when he had learned English. The story had fascinated him and he spent hours playing at being marooned upon an island. Living as a castaway had erased all pleasure he’d once had for that book. Whatever fool had written it barely understood what it was like to be alone for months, now a year, frightened that every storm would leave him without food.
The seal meat tasted incredible. It did not taste like fish, or any land mammal he had ever eaten, but it was magnificent. The fat on the animal would hopefully give his body some reserves. A great deal of the meat he intended to dry, and the pelt would be useful in strips. Every piece of the animal he would use in one manner or another.
In his former life, he had not thought himself wasteful. Yet how many times had he left meat on his plate, or seen a table laid with more food on its boards than those gathered could ever hope to eat?
Those parties he had attended, flirting with young women dressed in bright colors and fluttering their fans in his direction, dressed in the finest fashions from Spain, had faded in his memory
so he could not even conjure up the face of any señorita from his past.
That night, even after his stomach was filled, Alejandro had work to do to preserve the seal’s meat. Working by firelight, Alejandro wasn’t bothered by the hours of toil. Nor did he fear remaining in the dark. He was the largest predator upon the island. The iguanas and geckos posed no threat to him. The birds were tiny, too, and bedded down at night. The most dangerous things on the island were the spiders, which were easily avoided if one knew where they preferred to hide. The poisonous trees were dangerous too, he supposed, but he had learned as a boy what that particular type of tree looked like.
The silence of the island continually tore at his mind.
Why had he allowed his father to send him away to the former British colonies? He had wasted years there, then boarded the cursed ship to come home at last, to be with his family. Would he ever see their faces again? Ever embrace them?
Alejandro did not sleep. He stayed awake, drying the meat over the fire and then the coals, carefully tending to it. The meat would last a while, if he could keep it dry. He’d learned this skill riding with the vaqueros as a boy when they went looking for stray cattle. Perhaps he could have discovered the technique on his own, but he uttered prayers for blessings on the heads of each man who had been there that night to explain the matter to him.
Birds started their song before he had finished his task. The sun rose in the east, and he turned to admire it from his spot on the tree-covered hill. The beauty of a gray sky turning yellow, then blue, had long since stopped giving him any measure of hope. Yet if the sun kept rising, so too would he.
“Dios mío, strengthen my faith. Give me hope.” The day stretched before him as the horizon, empty and lonely.
3
August of 1814, St. Kitt’s Island
“I am not certain this is the best sort of entertainment for young ladies,” Irene said for the fifth time. Hope had counted each of her friend’s protests and soothed them away as gently as possible.
“It is an excellent educational experience,” she countered this time. “Doctor Morgan will be with us, and Mrs. Morgan, too.”
Wrinkling her nose, Irene peered up at the rising sun from beneath her wide-brimmed bonnet. “What if we are overexposed? You might not worry overmuch about freckling, Grace Everly, but I will turn red and speckled for certain.”
Four months of being called by her sister’s name had nearly made Hope forget her own. She had maintained the ruse after arriving on St. Kitts. The week previous, she finally received a letter from her sister letting her know of their father’s reaction to their deception. Father’s letter to the Carlburys had yet to arrive, but Hope expected it would be on the next boat from England. Then they would know her secret and likely devise some sort of consequence for her if they did not send her directly home.
When Doctor Morgan presented an opportunity for one last adventure, small as it was, Hope leapt upon on.
“You have your bonnet, your parasol, gloves, and a shawl,” Hope pointed out to her friend. “And you may stay below deck while we sail to the island and beneath trees once we are there. Only think of your sketchbook and all the lovely plants and birds you might add to it.”
After a moment of quiet, Irene’s concerned frown disappeared. Placating her into doing the things Hope most wished to do, and seeing the things she had dreamed of all her life, took patience and creativity. Discovering Irene’s weakness for sketching exotic creatures and plants had increased tenfold Hope’s abilities to persuade the more demure young woman.
They stood on a dock with a small party preparing to board a sloop, which bore the name on its side in Latin, Angelus Maris. Hope eyed the tall white sail, nearly bouncing upon her toes in her excitement. When they’d disembarked on Saint Christopher’s Island two months before, she had privately wished to never step foot aboard a ship again. Yet after walking about in the limited society of the island, and constantly refraining from acting as her true self, she needed some excitement.
Visiting a nearby island on a scientific expedition sounded like the perfect distraction. Doctor Morgan, as organizer of the event, had invited the entire Carlbury family to accompany him to study the flora and fauna of an uninhabited island.
“I do hope we are back before dinner,” Albert muttered from behind Hope, veering her away from her pleasant thoughts. When she turned to see him, he was staring at a pocket watch in his hands. “Devoting the whole of a day to this sounds less appealing by the minute.”
Hope forced a smile, though the gratitude she felt was real. “I am glad you agreed to accompany us. I do not think your parents would have allowed us this marvelous expedition had you not volunteered to come, too.”
His narrow chest puffed up, and he tucked the watch away as he bowed to her. “As it pleases you, Miss Everly, I will endeavor to enjoy the outing.”
Pretending she did not see the significant glance Irene gave her, Hope stepped closer to Mrs. Morgan. “Have you been out to the island with your husband before, Mrs. Morgan?”
“Yes, twice before.” Mrs. Morgan tucked a light brown curl back behind her ear. “It is a charming little island. It is a joy to walk on a shore where few others have stepped before. Oh.” She stretched her neck to peek around Hope. “It is time to board, I believe.”
Hope turned to see the doctor gesturing for those waiting to join him on the boat, crossing the gangplank onto the small vessel. She did not return to Irene, but kept next to the doctor’s wife instead. Irene was still standing directly next to her brother, and Hope had no wish to take his arm for assistance in boarding.
The doctor and his wife, Hope, Irene, and Albert, were joined by three sailors and two other gentlemen. The other men were strangers to Hope until that morning, which was surprising given the limited number of people upon the island with whom Mrs. Carlbury permitted them to socialize with.
One of the men was Mr. Phineas Thorne, a gentleman not much older than Hope. He was visiting his uncle’s property and had barely spared Hope and Irene a glance. Then there was Mr. James Gibson, who was perhaps the oldest member of the party. He was a colleague of Doctor Morgan’s and a professor at Oxford.
Once they were underway, Hope saw Irene make directly for belowdecks. Without Hope beside her, Albert was obliged to go down with her and act as chaperone so she would not find herself alone with any of the gentlemen or sailors. Hope pushed away the guilt by telling herself she would join them beneath the deck after a quarter of an hour.
Standing next to Mrs. Morgan, Hope lifted her face to the morning sun and closed her eyes. A spray of ocean water moistened her face and she laughed, opening her eyes to see the waves slapping against their boat.
“Two hours,” a deep voice said from the other side of Mrs. Morgan. The doctor leaned against the rail and grinned at his wife. “Smooth sailing and good weather all the way, they think. We have a wonderful day ahead of us.”
Though he was at least a dozen years older than the woman he’d married, the doctor exuded an energy that Hope could not help but admire. His enthusiasm for life and the world around him had been obvious to Hope from the moment she met him at a stuffy dinner party. Everyone else attempted to impress the Parliamentary party with how sophisticated island life could be, while the doctor expounded upon its wonders and oddities.
Hope had asked him dozens of questions at the dinner party, embarrassing Irene somewhat. But Doctor Morgan had answered all of them cheerfully.
When Hope thought enough time had passed, she left the railing with a sigh and went to sit with her friend. If Albert left them alone, she could content herself below deck. Thankfully, Albert had a small case of seasickness and much preferred to be in the fresh air. Irene had brought a deck of cards with her, so they passed the time playing games.
When they came to the island at last, a small dinghy was lowered with the members of their party. One sailor stayed aboard the anchored boat, the other two rowed the group the short distance to the s
hore.
“After a tour,” Doctor Morgan announced once everyone was on dry land, “we will picnic just there, beneath that grove of trees. Then we will return back to St. Kitt’s.”
Shading her eyes, Hope looked from the island back out to the ocean, the wind whipping at her skirts. The world was vast and beautiful, and even this small part of it made her wish to be daring and bold.
“Are those clouds in the distance?” Irene asked, peering in the same direction Hope stared. She pointed with her lace-gloved hand to a small gray smudge near the horizon. “I do hope it does not rain.”
“I am certain it will not.” Hope linked arms with her friend, not willing to even entertain the idea of her latest adventure being rained upon. “Come, let us attend to Doctor Morgan. I am entirely fascinated by this island. We must keep an eye out to find the perfect specimen for your drawing.”
Hope intended to enjoy every second of the day, even if stodgy Albert followed along behind her wherever she went.
The storm came up with a swiftness which barely gave Alejandro time to cross the island to his shelter. The thunder and lightning raged over the water all night long, and the wind left him in real worry of a hurricane. If the storm’s violence swept up his food sources or frightened away the fish, starvation might finish him as it had attempted to only four months before.
The wind at last died down mere hours before sunrise, and the sky cleared in time for dawn’s rosy light to fill the sky. Alejandro at last emerged from beneath the rock shelf he used as shelter. He walked through the trees to the western beach, taking in the damaged foliage. Fear had overcome him during the storm, making it hard to even breathe, but seeing the relatively unscathed trees gave him a measure of reassurance.
The birds called to one another, and the frogs chirped too, which finally allowed him to relax. If the wildlife had survived, chances were the fish would stay near as well. The birds had remained, thankfully. The doves were his favorites, and their gentle call to one another through the trees comforted him more than any other sign the island might give of its distress.
Saving Miss Everly: A Regency Romance (Inglewood Book 3) Page 2