Splendor

by Catherine Hart

  Luckily, numerous bolts of valuable cloth had been replaced just the previous day by a cargo of popping corn, which had cooked in the heat and spread fluffy kernels throughout one huge room. The mass had also mysteriously acted to smother the very flames which sought to consume it, thus saving the building and the rest of the merchandise within. All in all, they had survived this latest attack with limited damage to goods and the loss of only one life—Tilton’s own.

  Still, Devlin was so incensed over Eden’s injury that he swore, “If the man weren’t already dead, I’d kill him with my bare hands! And Finster with him!”

  “And what of Finster now?” Jane wanted to know. “Eden told me that Tilton admitted that Dudley was involved in the theft of money from the warehouse, just as we have suspected.”

  Eden nodded. “Can we have the constable arrest him on just Tilton’s confession?”

  “I doubt it,” Devlin said with a shake of his shaggy blond head. “’Twould be your word for it against Finster’s, without Tilton here to add weight to the accusation.”

  “What a shame the bastard had to die as soon as he did, then,” Nate put in.

  “Nay. I’ve something much more fitting in mind for our mewling accountant,” Devlin told them, his black eyes twinkling with devilment. “A penalty more just than a quick and merciful hanging or a few years in prison, with his father’s money buying him nearly as much comfort as his own home. But first, before we see the last of him, he must be made to face the error of his ways, to relinquish that which he stole.” Devlin’s smile was diabolical. “Maties, methinks ’tis time for another haunting.”

  Chapter 19

  Since no one had gotten any sleep during the night, they decided it was only fair to put the warehouse workers on four-hour shifts, at least for the day. The night guards would maintain their vigil as usual, for while Tilton was no longer a threat, Finster had yet to be dealt with. As soon as they could, Jane and Eden headed home to a bath and bed. Because Dora would be up and about, Devlin had to bathe elsewhere before seeking his own rest—as did Nate.

  Not until late afternoon did they all gather in the parlor to examine the coffer Tilton had forfeited his life to save. With everything that had transpired the night before, they were naturally a bit tense and out of sorts. Of the four of them, Devlin seemed least affected, though he, too, was aware of the strained tone in the room.

  How could he not be? Eden was gnawing at her lower lip, and refused to look him directly in the eye, as if newly embarrassed by their latest romantic interlude. Nate kept nervously clearing his throat and fidgeting like a guilty schoolboy expecting a rap on his knuckles, his face set in mutinous lines. Jane was unusually quiet, and cast several sidelong glances between Eden and the chair Devlin invisibly occupied, a thoughtful frown creasing her brow.

  “What the devil is going on here?” Devlin asked, his frustration rising at the feeling that he was the only one who hadn’t been included in some secret pact. The other three exchanged pained looks.

  Finally, Eden spoke up in a quiet voice, though she still could not meet Devlin’s gaze. “Mama, Nate, forgive me for being such a hateful shrew these past weeks. Your relationship, though it does affect me in some ways, is not for me to rule or judge. I’ll make an effort to be more reasonable about it in the future.” If there is a future for the two of you, or for Devlin and me—and I pray there will be, she thought to herself.

  Nate relaxed visibly. “I wouldn’t hurt yer mama for the world, Eden,” he replied.

  Eden nodded, as if trying to believe him.

  Jane offered her daughter a weak smile. “Thank you, Eden. Believe me when I say that I fully appreciate your concern, and what it is costing you to trust us in this matter.” She slanted a worried glance in Devlin’s direction, and back again to Eden. “I will honestly attempt to return the favor, though ’tis uncommonly hard for me to do so.”

  Devlin was still confused. While he understood the apology from Eden, Jane’s response seemed to contain undercurrents he could not fathom. With the looks he’d been sent along the way, it appeared Jane’s words held a double message, which only she and her daughter could decipher, and if it had something to do with him as well, he could not determine precisely how or why.

  Whatever had passed between the women, it served to lighten the mood, and for that Devlin was as grateful as the rest of them. “Shall we have a look at Tilton’s treasure now?” he suggested.

  As the others gathered round, he broke open the lock and threw up the lid. Eden and Jane gave twin gasps.

  Amid a tumble of scorched books, the centers of which had been hollowed out, lay a fortune in cash and coin.

  “My word! Would you look at all that money!” Eden exclaimed, her eyes wide with surprise. “Surely Tilton could not have pilfered that amount from us!”

  Jane blinked and agreed. “Surely not. Why, there must be thousands of pounds there! Mayhap he had not yet shared his stolen wealth with Mr. Finster.”

  Nate snorted in disgust, while Devlin shook his head. “Both of you are so naive ’tis unbelievable. Little wonder the two of them were able to fleece you so easily. Judging by the amounts charged, and those actually received the few times I was on hand to witness Tilton’s actions, this amounts to only Tilton’s share. Believe me, Finster gained an amount equal to or larger than your former foreman’s. Do not forget, ladies, that these men had three long years in which to accumulate their stolen wealth.”

  Eden knelt and ran both hands through the coins, letting them rain back into the box. “This is incredible! ’Twill more than pay for the office to be rebuilt, for needed repairs, and any other improvements we have been delaying. Not to mention monies to be repaid to customers for damaged goods.”

  “Aye,” Devlin concurred. With a teasing smile, he added, “And a whole wardrobe full of fashionable new bonnets and gowns for the recently prosperous Winters ladies. Before you know what is happening, you’ll both be turning suitors away from the door by the droves.”

  Three frowning faces rounded on him at this latest statement, but only Nate challenged it aloud. “I don’t think I care for the notion of anyone else tryin’ to take me place in Jane’s life, thank ye very much, Devlin Kane. So just tend to yer own affairs, and I’ll tend to mine, and we’ll see who comes out the better, shall we?”

  At the stroke of midnight, Devlin hoisted himself through Dudley Finster’s open bedroom window. A floor below, the mantel clock was still tolling the witching hour as he grabbed the skinny accountant by his bony shoulders and gave him a rough shake. “Finster!” he hissed.

  The man came awake with a violent start, clutching both hands to his meager chest. For a moment Devlin thought the fellow was about to go into apoplexy. But that would have been too easy, and too swift an end for him. He deserved to suffer much more.

  Savoring what was to come, Devlin lounged against the corner bedpost and waited, silently chuckling to himself as Finster peered into the murky shadows of the room, perhaps sensing Devlin’s presence but unable to detect him. Cautiously, the man reached his hand out toward the nightstand, and the new spectacles he’d recently purchased in the hope of remedying his sudden, inexplicable bouts of clumsiness. The fragile eyeglasses rattled noisily in the still room as Dudley’s shaking fingers came into contact with them.

  Devlin laughed aloud. Dudley cried out. His hand jerked reflexively, causing the spectacles to crash to the floor and shatter into tiny pieces. “My, my! What a bloody awful shame!” Devlin commiserated mockingly. “But don’t fret, Finster. Where you’re headed, you won’t need to see any further than the end of your nose.”

  “Kane?” Dudley guessed. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

  “Justice, my little man,” Devlin told him, his deep voice ringing with barely muted menace. “Why don’t I light a candle so you can properly see exactly what you are pitting your puny efforts against?”

  Broken glass crunched beneath his boots as Devlin stepped up to the night
stand, from whence he took candlestick and tinderbox. As the wick fired, he turned full view toward the bed, and was immediately rewarded by Dudley’s gasp of horror upon witnessing the candlestick floating in midair.

  “Not quite what you expected, eh, Finster?” Devlin continued with an evil croon.

  “Who... what are you?” Dudley wheezed, his thin chest heaving beneath his nightshirt.

  “A specter? A phantom? Mayhap your worst nightmare?” Devlin suggested tauntingly. “Ah, but you guessed who I was at the start—you simply underestimated what I was, didn’t you? A fatal mistake, Finster. As were your schemes against Miss Winters. For which you will now begin to pay, and continue to do so for many long days to come.” He crossed to the fireplace mantel, left the candle there, and continued to stride about the room, confusing the accountant even more as Dudley attempted to pinpoint his opponent’s ever-changing position.

  “Now then,” Devlin intoned with deceptive casualness, “I believe we have come to the point in our talk where I inform you what I wish of you. And if you are at all wise, you will do precisely as I request. After all, what choice have you against my superior wit and might? You must admit that I do hold the advantage over you, Finster. I could slay you on the spot, and none would know ’twas I. Even should they suppose it, what could they do to me? ’Tis nigh on impossible to catch a ghost.”

  “No! Don’t kill me!” Dudley whimpered, huddling against the headboard and tugging the covers half over his face. “Let me be, and I swear I’ll never go near Eden Winters again!”

  “That is a fair start, but not near enough to barter for your life.”

  “What more?” the accountant squawked. “I’ll do anything. Anything at all.”

  Devlin’s chuckle was demonic. “I thought you might.” For endless seconds, during which Finster quaked in fright, Devlin let the man wait. Finally, he said, “Hand over the funds you stole from Winters Warehouse. All of it. Every last pence. And don’t try to hold any back for yourself, because I know the sum you took.”

  “I ... I can get it to you tomorrow, first thing in the morning,” Finster pledged frantically. “As soon as the bank opens.”

  “Nay, Finster. Now. You and I both know that money is not resting in the bank, where your father might chance upon it.” He strode to the bed and yanked the quivering man to his knees, pulling him from the bed. “Get it, man. This minute. Or begin to pray for a merciful death.”

  Stumbling on watery legs, Dudley made his way toward the hearth. There, he knelt and clawed with fear-numbed hands at the cornerstone, until at last he pulled it loose. From within the gaping crack, he pulled a sack, then another, and finally a third. These he placed in a pile on the floor, then scuttled away from them as if afraid to be near Devlin when he retrieved them.

  From nowhere, a hand closed over the back of his nightshirt, administering a sound shake. “I said all of it, Finster. Or don’t you care for breathing?”

  On a defeated sob, the man again reached into the hole and withdrew two more sacks. “There,” he wailed. “You can check yourself if you don’t believe me, but that is the sum of it.”

  “Fine. Now pick them up and let’s be on our way.”

  “Where? Where are you taking me?” Tears streamed down his sunken cheeks. “You’re going to slay me after all, aren’t you?”

  “Nay, weasel. Not as long as you do as I say.” When Finster failed to move, Devlin gave his shoulder a rough nudge. “The bags, Finster,” he prompted. “And you may choose either the window or the door for leaving, but make so much as the smallest squeak, and your father will purchase your coffin on the morrow.”

  A short time later, Devlin relieved the quaking accountant of his burdensome booty and delivered him into Nate’s care.

  “Ye brought him in his nightshirt, Dev?” Nate crowed. “Damn me, if old Cap’n Grumble ain’t gonna get a charge out of this! His new pretty boy, all dressed and ready fer his bed! Ho!”

  “Captain Grumble?” Finster parroted.

  “Aye,” Devlin answered with a gruff laugh. “He’s going to be your new master for a time—a very long time. You see, Finster, I’ve sold you to him, and he takes quite a liking to mewling men such as you. Treats them real special, if you catch my meaning. You’ll have many a day to reflect upon your sins and repent of them, endless days and nights to plead for mercy—or the death you begged me not to grant to you.”

  Finster’s disappearance came as no great shock to anyone save his own family, and that only because he’d left in the dead of night with no word of farewell. Eden was at once relieved and anxious, for the work careening the Gai Mer was nearly done, and Devlin might decide to leave soon. Each day, she watched for signs of his imminent departure, becoming more and more nervous as time went on. Each night, awake in her bed, she listened long into the night, treasuring each sound that came from his side of the abutting wall. Each morning, before opening her eyes, she breathed a fervent prayer that he would not yet be gone when she arose. At moments she almost wished he would go and get it done with, for she felt as if she were walking about on pins and needles, just waiting for the inevitable.

  Meanwhile, Devlin and Nate went about business as usual, or what passed for usual these days. Beyond tending to the frigate, they were also overseeing repairs at the warehouse.

  This went on for nearly a fortnight, with Eden holding her breath against the day Devlin would announce his intention to weigh anchor with the next tide. Then came news of a different sort, and Eden’s heart soared with renewed hope. The King of England was offering amnesty to all pirates who would apply for it. All they were required to do was to sail to New Providence in the Bahamas by the fifth of September and renounce their unlawful ways of life publicly before Governor Woodes Rogers. All who did so by the deadline would be granted pardons for their sins against the Crown, as long as they swore to be peaceable citizens henceforth, and stood by their oath never to return to piracy.

  “Oh, Devlin! This is wonderful news!” Eden proclaimed.

  “Is it now?” he replied sourly. “Well, I suppose that all depends on which side of the fence you are standing, doesn’t it? As for me, I think it stinks!”

  Her face fell, her smile wavering. “But, Devlin, think of it. A full pardon for all your past crimes. A chance to start your life fresh, with no marks against you.”

  The look he gave her was the same an adult gives to an ignorant child, one who simply will not understand. “Sweetling, if I wanted to reform, don’t you think I’d have done so before now? With or without the King’s benevolent consent? As it happens, I like my life just as it is. Or as it was before I became half a ghost,” he qualified. “Piracy suits me, Eden. ’Tis what I do, and what I am good at. I am loath to give it up now, merely because the Crown requests it. Besides, they’ve been attempting to rid the seas of pirates for centuries, and have had little success at it. What they ask now is nothing new.”

  “Perhaps,” she conceded softly. “But what they offer in return is, Devlin. Amnesty. No reprisals. A chance to begin again, on the right side of the law.”

  “Ah, but look at what they expect me and my men to relinquish at the same time. Jewels, treasure, wealth beyond your dreams. And to do what, Eden? To find some menial job ashore and live on remembrances of past adventures for the rest of our days? To dine on regret evermore and become more bitter with each passing year?”

  “Nay,” she told him stubbornly. “You needn’t give up sailing altogether. Simply employ your favorite skills in a more lawful direction. Would that be so terrible?”

  He gave a negligent shrug. “Mayhap not, but the earnings would be a pittance compared with our current gains. I might have a mutiny on my hands at the mere suggestion of it to my crew.”

  Eden stomped a dainty foot at him, both hands bunched into small fists and planted atop her hips, her eyes narrowed into angry turquoise slits. “Horse feathers!” she spat out. “You’re just too greedy and too lazy to want to work for your pay. You’d rather
steal it from someone else, which makes you hardly better than Finster!”

  Fire seemed to spew from his black eyes, and anyone else would have run for his life at the scowl that drew Devlin’s brows together. “Why, you tart-tongued harridan! You dare to say such a thing to me, after all I’ve done for you?”

  “I dare more than that, Captain Kane,” she retorted smartly. “Beyond all else I’ve mentioned, you are also too much a coward to want to try living a normal existence—for fear you might fail!”

  Her verbal darts fell too close to the truth for Devlin’s comfort. It wasn’t just the wealth and the excitement that lured him on in his pirating ventures. Or the vengeance he still meant to visit upon Swift, when next they met. It was also a deep-rooted fear of not being able to measure up to what his dead parents would have expected of him. It boiled down to that. After all the time that had passed, he was still afraid to disappoint them, and himself—despite the fact that he had recently tested his rusty carpentry skills, and been fairly satisfied with the result. Or that, for several weeks now, he’d been land-bound and was not suffering overmuch from it He’d even enjoyed certain aspects of working at the warehouse.

  But he was not about to admit any of this to Eden, when he was scarcely able to admit it to himself. Rather, he stood glaring down at her, wondering why he would think she looked so fetching, so downright beautiful at this moment, when she seemed set on being her most hateful. Her color was high, her eyes sparkling with defiant fury, her nose tipped at a haughty angle— she was the most glorious sight he’d ever beheld.

  His hands shot out to pull her to him, his head lowering close to hers. “Even when you’re spitting at me, you’re a beguiling little witch! For tuppence, I’d turn you over my knee and spank the meanness out of you!”