“Would you trust an English bank that would accept French livres without questioning the source?”
“Still and all...you must have a small fortune there.”
“And another in a less inquisitive institution in Calais.” Emory spared a glance for Landover. “I was, in fact, very well paid for my misdeeds.”
He plucked the top sheet of folded, official looking documents off the pile, scanned it quickly and set it aside. The second was read and discarded; the third earned a small narrowing of his eyes, but in the end was rejected. There were nine documents bearing admiralty seals, and it was not until he had tossed aside the eighth that he drew and expelled a long breath, handing the last one across to Barrimore.
The marquis took it with a wry twist on his mouth. “My Lord Wessex would not be pleased to know you had kept these dispatches. He assumed, as per your original instructions, they would be immediately destroyed.”
Emory shrugged. “I was never one for taking instruction well.”
Barrimore frowned and tilted the page toward the wash of candlelight, recognizing the code at once. At his polite request, Landover vacated the chair and obliged him with the loan of his quill and a blank sheet of writing paper. It took the earl several minutes to decipher the code embedded in the seemingly frivolous recounting of events at a summer soiree, and long before he finished, there was no doubt he was extracting a specific set of orders meant for the rogue captain of the Intrepid. They acknowledged receipt of the notice that he had been approached by Bonaparte’s associates with the intent of hiring him and his ship to help the exiled general escape from Elba. Moreover, the instructions were quite specific in ordering Emory to go along with the ruse. He was assured the H.M.S. Reliant, a sixty-four gun ship-of-the-line would be waiting to intercept and, after offering a token resistance, he was to surrender. His passengers would be removed and transferred onto the warship, after which the Intrepid would be allowed to ‘escape’ with all hands.
“Wessex did not write these orders,” Barrimore murmured, not even bothering to read to the end. “Neither did I.”
“Are you certain?”
The marquis held the dispatch up to the light again. “By God’s grace, I will grant it is an excellent forgery--the signature is perfect, the code is set down correctly. In fact, if I was not looking for fault, I would not find any. But here--” the edge of the paper was almost touching the flame and Emory was about to reach out and snatch it away when Barrimore angled it in such a way as to allow both Althorpe and Turnbull to see the sheet illuminated from behind. “The watermark is wrong.”
“Watermark?” Seamus frowned. “It looks fair dry to me.”
“It is the manufacturers imprint left by the roller when the sheet of paper is initially pressed and formed. It can only be seen by holding the page up to the light--thus--and as you can plainly see, there is a stylized R in the center of the sheet.”
The two men still looked somewhat baffled--even Landover craned his neck forward to peer over their shoulders while Barrimore traced his finger around the faint shading of the R barely visible beneath the tight lines of script. “It should be a T with a cross through the stem,” he explained. “One of Wessex’s son in laws bought a pulp mill and began to supply him with paper a full year before Bonaparte escaped Elba. He used it exclusively for his most private and sensitive dispatches.”
“Who else knew that?”
“No one. Only myself and Wessex. But there were probably...oh, a half dozen or more who knew the codes we used and could have had access to the old stock of paper.”
Emory paced to the row of square paned windows and stared out at the fog a moment before turning back to Barrimore. “Then that proves I was not acting on my own initiative; that I did not sell out to France; that I was following specific orders that I believed came straight from Wessex’s pen!”
“I would be inclined to testify on your behalf if it came before the courts,” Barrimore agreed slowly, “though I could not, in faith, bear witness to your common sense for not questioning the logic of the orders. What would have been the point of sanctioning such an elaborate--and risky, I might add--scheme when Bonaparte was under lock and key already?”
“We wondered about that ourselves,” Emory acknowledged. “And came to the conclusion they had no intentions of taking him back to Elba when they recaptured him. Not alive, anyway.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
Seamus grunted. “We thought ye wanted an excuse to kill the bastard instead of keepin’ him like a king on his own wee island.”
“You mean murder him?” Landover insinuated himself in the conversation again, puffing up with indignation at the thought of what they were suggesting.
“Ye’ve never accidently throfted a man overboard in a raging storm?” Seamus asked with a smile.
“Never!”
“Then it’s a clear conscience ye’ll be having when ye stand before St. Peter.”
“If I had refused to accept the commission,” Emory added, returning to the topic at hand, “Cipriani would have found someone else. Someone they would have no means of contacting or controlling.”
“Or bearing the blame if it failed,” Barrimore mused. He looked down at the forged dispatch again, his brow furrowed. “You said there was another letter? One that Cipriani was eager to get back?”
Emory started to reach into the strongbox again, but a sound startled his hand back from the logbook and sent him reaching to his belt for his pistol instead. It was the sound of a gunshot, and even though it had been distorted by the fog and the thickness of the hull, he knew it could only have come from the vicinity of the jolly boat.
He tossed Seamus the key to the strongbox and ran for the door. “Stay here and don’t let that box out of your sight.”
Annaleah sat in shock, her both hands clapped over her mouth, her eyes watering from the cloud of acrid cordite that hung in the mist. The pistol was at her feet, drowned under the two feet of water that had collected in the bottom of the boat. It was the depth of the water, the fact that it was close to being swamped that had prompted her decision to abandon her post and follow the others up the ladder.
She had been sitting in the awful silence for half an eternity, imagining all manner of horrors coming at her through the fog. There were sounds against the hull, and sounds beneath the keel of the dinghy--slippery sliding sounds she had no desire to identify firsthand. She heard voices from other ships echoing off the water; some that sounded ten feet away and others a hundred. There was enough air stirring to create gaps in the shifting mist as well, and there were times it grew thin enough for her to see lights, even to distinguish the shape of another frigate standing several hundred yards off the bow.
She had no idea what was happening on board the Intrepid. She was cold, frightened, soaked through to the skin and she had no idea if Emory was alive or dead, if he had succeeded or failed, if they had forgotten about her down here below the whale’s belly, or if the first face she saw would belong to a scarlet clad soldier pointing a musket at her breast.
And the water in the jolly boat kept rising.
In all her years, she had never climbed a ladder save for the decorative wrought iron affair in her father’s library. She had never been on board a ship this size before; her knowledge was limited to the barges that ferried party goers from one bank of the Thames to the other, and small tassled gondolas that drifted on the lake while ardent suitors read bad poetry.
This was a ship. A fighting ship that bore the visible scars of beams gouged by cannonballs and scraped by boarding pikes. Although her gun ports were closed, Anna had counted fifteen on the middle deck and twelve on the upper plus an assortment of smaller guns mounted on her fore and aft rails.
With water lapping over the gunwale, she had no choice but to take hold of the thick ropes and take her first tentative step up onto a rung. She had checked the pistol was secure in her belt before she grasped the ladder, but a sudden rocking motion
of the jolly boat had sent her swinging crazily against the hull. The gun had caught on the rope and been flipped free, and when it landed on the seat of the boat, the lock had snapped forward. The shot had discharged harmlessly into the side of the boat, but the sound of it had echoed like the booming thunder of a cannonade, startling Anna so badly she lost her footing and slipped into the gap between the boat and the ladder. She managed to stop herself from falling completely into the water, but her arms were jerked nearly out of the sockets and her hands skidded on the ropes, burning the palms. It was all she could do to reach over and clamber back on board the jolly boat, but by then, there were voices and shouts on the upper deck, heads poking over the rails and a sinister picket line of muskets pointing down over the side.
She clung to the ladder and clapped her hands over her mouth. Someone shouted at her, but she was still listening to the sound of gunshot reverberate around the bay, bouncing off the hull of every ship in port, amplified by the water, distorted by the mist.
The ladder scraped against the hull as someone climbed down it, and a moment later, Annaleah found herself staring into Emory’s worried face.
“Are you all right? What is it? What did you see?”
She shook her head. “It was nothing. It was stupid. It was a stupid mistake. I...the b-boat was sinking and...I t-tried...but the gun fell and...”
Standing half way up to his knees in water, Emory did not have to look down. Nor was there any time to either comfort or chastise her. The immediate silence that had followed the gunshot was now starting to fill with shouts as crews from one ship called to one another trying to pinpoint the source of the shot. Putting Annaleah before him, he guided her up the ladder where one of the crew was waiting to lift her up the last few steps and set her down on the deck.
“Quickly and quietly, gentlemen,” Emory commanded. “Haul in the anchor and get men into the tops. As soon as she is free of the muck on the bottom, I want all sails loosed and rigged out to catch whatever breeze there is about. Put the men with the sharpest eyes and keenest noses forward to guide us through this soup.”
“Aye Cap’n!”
“I’m sorry,” Anna cried softly, pushing a fistful of hair off her face.
“We would have gotten underway with all due haste regardless,” Emory said. “Are you certain you are not hurt?”
“Only my pride.”
He smiled and kissed her briefly on the crown of her head before beckoning to the ship’s cook, a crusty little Spaniard by the name of Juan Diego. “I’m going to take Miss Fairchilde below to my cabin and try to find her some dry clothing. In the meantime, I need to know how we lie for stores and fresh water, if we’ve enough to make a run down the Channel. Once we are free of the harbor, break out a cask of rum for the men if you can find one; they will no doubt have been deprived of their daily rasher while they’ve been guests of the king. Biscuits too, enough to tide them over until you can fill their bellies with beef. I plan to be back on deck before the anchor is on board, and I want to be able to smell brisket boiling when I do.”
“Aye aye, senor Captain-general! And...welcome back aboard.”
“It is damned bloody good to be back, Mr. Diego.”
CHAPTER 24
Seamus was waiting in the aftercabin with Barrimore and Landover. The strongbox had been locked and returned to its hidey hole in the floor, the stove was bolted back in place and fresh coal added to its belly. After a quick explanation of the gunshot, Emory hung the key around his neck again and sent Seamus topside to take charge of the deck until he returned. Barrimore left to escort the British captain forward with his men.
Emory helped himself to the contents of Landover’s sea chest and found a clean dry shirt and breeches. Annaleah took them with ice cold hands and was almost afraid to look up into his face, knowing there might be greater repercussions--at the very least a look of grave disappointment--now that they were alone.
But he only urged her to change quickly out of the wet clothing and to make use of what few amenities there were among Landover’s personal possessions. He would have Diego heat water if she wanted to wash--he actually smiled when he commented that her face still bore residue of fairy dust--and he would see that a pot of hot tea was delivered as soon as the water boiled. He left, promising to return when the Intrepid was underway, and it was all Annaleah could do not to burst out in tears the instant the door closed behind him. Why, she was not exactly sure. Possibly because she was once again embroiled in an adventure she had never in her wildest imaginings believed could ever happen to her, because he had kissed her in front of all his men, because he had not kissed her before he went back on deck...
Moving with the wooden limbs of an old woman, she set the dry clothing on the bed and walked over to the gallery windows. There was not much to see beyond the wall of dirty gray fog but even as she had to adjust her balance she could see threads of mist starting to swirl and spin away like dervishes. The anchor was no longer dragging on the bottom and the ship was moving. Slowly, to be sure, but she was moving. And one more chance to return to the bosom of her family was creeping away.
Anna supposed she should sit down and compose a letter to her family that might be delivered by Captain Landover when he was set ashore--but what could she possibly say at this point to convince them she had not lost all grips on her sanity? She was not only loose, she was fallen. There was now a warrant out for her arrest and how did one explain that to a family who placed moral righteousness and the appearance of propriety above all else? She could barely justify her actions to herself, let alone others.
Sighing aloud, she leaned her head against the cool pane of glass. Falling in love was hardly an adequate defence, and Emory's declaration of having fetched her rosewater did not exactly ring with conviction. As much as she was loathe to admit it, Barrimore was right. She could not see Captain Emory Althorpe living the staid life of a country squire when there was still so much of the horizon to explore. Even less likely was the supposition of him settling down to a wife and children, content to sit before a blazing fire and read books about other men’s adventures. In truth, it was more than likely he would leave England again. Whether he proved himself innocent or not, he had no use for it and with the war ended, England had no use for him. Spies would be an embarrassment when there was no more spying to be done.
If she was being perfectly honest, she would have to admit that once he was out of the harbor and on the open sea, she would be of little use to him either. She couldn’t even swim, for pity’s sake. She would be a burden, a nuisance, possibly even a hindrance.
He had made her no promises, of course. Had avoided making any commitment whatsoever. The presumptions were all hers; she had simply assumed that after everything that had happened, everything they had been through together, he would take her with him regardless of where he went or what he did after he freed his crew and sailed out of Gravesend.
A faint glitter caught her eye and she stared at the diamond ring her aunt had given her. Had Florence seen ahead to a time when she might need to fend for herself? With the ring, she would not be destitute. She had a fine education, impeccable manners when she was not behaving like a hoyden. There was an inheritance from her grandmother that would come to her on her twenty-first birthday, nine long months away.
She bowed her head and started to twist the ring around her finger but stopped when she realized it was the same habit Barrimore had of toying with the great golden signet ring he wore. She closed her eyes instead and did not know how long she stood there, the windowpane cooling her brow, until she heard the door open behind her.
“I brought you some tea,” Emory said after a moment. “You haven’t changed yet?”
Remarking upon the obvious did not bolster her confidence any and she turned. “No. No, I...was watching the ship get underway, wondering how you could see through all this fog.”
Her voice trailed away when she looked at him, his face--even scratched and scabbed--was almos
t too breathtakingly handsome to contemplate against the contrasts of shadow and candlelight. He had taken off the scarlet tunic and wore only a white shirt and black breeches. His hair fell in loose, gleaming waves to his collar. His hands--strong enough to work the rigging lines of a storm-tossed frigate, gentle enough to make her weep with pleasure--were balancing a wooden tray with two cups, a small pot of tea, and a big bottle of rum.
“Actually, it is thicker on deck than it seems. The men high up in the crow’s nest can see fairly well and as long as we don’t steer toward a cliff, we should be fine. Seamus has his fine Irish blood up anyway and would resent having me on deck when he is trying to prove he hasn’t lost his touch.”
“Lost his touch?”
“There was fog the night he tried to take her out through the blockade.”
“I see. And you trust him this time?”
“With my life.”
“He has been with you a long time then? And you remember it all?”
“He has been reminding me on every breath.” His eyes narrowed. “Is something wrong?”
“Wrong? No, nothing is wrong.” She attempted a feeble smile. “It just...seems odd not to have had a dozen coaches chasing after us.”
“Well,” he set the tray down on the desk. “With any luck the fog in the harbor will hold and they will not notice we have slipped our mooring until the sun burns it off. By then we should be well into the Channel.” He studied her quietly for another moment, then turned and went back to close the door. He blew out most of the lamps that had been blazing such a bright beacon out the gallery windows, leaving only one meagre candle flickering in a brass wall sconce.
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