Chapter Twenty-Five
Twenty-Five
Tristan shoves Trevor and me under the stairs seconds before wood splinters and scraps of fabric plummet into the spot where we just stood.
“Was that a warning shot?” I hear someone yell.
“Get the new men belowdecks!” Mr. Tydes hollers. Oh God—the new men. None of them are trained in sailing or battle yet, and if we are boarded, they could be enslaved once more.
“We haven’t time to fly colors,” Trevor says, sounding terrified.
My gut clenches. He’s right. If we’ve been seen, they already know we aren’t privateers. If it’s truly a frigate like Naeem says, all the men on this ship are dead unless we come up with something very clever, very quickly.
I turn to Tristan, but he’s gone. “Tristan?” I call, stepping out from under the stairs just in time to see Captain Sharpe emerge from the fog.
He hauls me into his arms and lets out a puff of air. “I saw the mast fall,” he says. I’ve never heard his voice sound quite so strained.
“I’m all right,” I say. “Tristan disappeared.”
“Tristan!” Trevor screams from behind us. “Get down!”
Everyone looks up—and though the fog is thicker now with dust particles and smoke, Tristan’s red hair is just visible as he moves through the rigging with the Union Jack in his grip.
“Is he insane?” I gasp.
“Shit.” Sharpe pushes me at Trevor and is hurrying towards the remains of the mizzenmast, apparently intent on climbing after Tristan, when a second shot splits the air.
My heart drops into my stomach as I stare up at Tristan, willing him to hold on as tightly as he can, just as the cannonball hits the water on our starboard side and rocks the ship hard enough to send both Trevor and me sprawling.
I don’t hear a scream, nor do I see Tristan’s body come crashing down from the skies, but I can’t find him through the fog now. Trevor helps me to my feet as the Deliverance rocks back and forth, but I don’t waste time thanking him before I rush into Sharpe’s cabin to rifle through his desk.
I come up with what I’m searching for just in time to hear a single gunshot. Instinct screams for me to hide from danger, but I am running on pure terror now—and the men are in trouble. Captain Sharpe’s crew—my crew.
I hurry out on deck with the British letter of marque in my hand, holding it up in the air. “We have our papers!” I cry out.
How have they boarded us so fast? Captain Sharpe stands at gunpoint with his hands raised, looking grim as he stares down the barrel.
I can’t stop myself from marching over to them, papers in hand.
“I have our papers!” I say once more, then stop short as a gun is trained on me.
This feels different than when Captain LaBarre boarded us. This feels hostile.
The papers are snatched from my grip, and I raise my hands to eye level the same way Sharpe has, my chest heaving.
I want to say something else, but then an English officer steps forward and glances around at the crew until his gaze falls on me.
His eyes widen, and he motions for the gun trained on me to be dropped.
I leave my hands where they are.
“Master Davenport, I presume?” he says.
I am too stunned to speak. How on earth?
But then a familiar face appears from behind the officer, grinning dangerously at me. “Oui, that is him,” says Captain LaBarre. “The viscount’s son I told you about.”
Oh God. What have I done? I let my gaze flicker to Sharpe, who is staring at me with real fear in his eyes. Nothing could have prepared me for that expression on his face. I want to cry, but I feel frozen in time.
“I guess ye owe me that reward after all,” says a gruff voice from behind me. Without consciously deciding to do so, I spin around to stare at Renard. He’s standing with a roll of paper in one hand. I realize, with growing horror, that it’s the wanted poster from the tavern at Cap-Francais.
“Renard?” I ask, my voice too quiet.
“You’re the man who met with Captain LaBarre?” the English officer asks.
“Aye, I am.”
“You claimed to have something worth more than the reward for his lordship’s son.”
“Aye… I do.”
I can’t imagine Renard has anything of the sort, but I also can’t think of anything to say. I am stunned silent.
“Renard, you slimy bilge rat!” Captain Sharpe snarls. “I should have pegged you as a turncoat and weighted your pockets!”
“Aye,” Renard says to him. “Ye shoulda.”
“I am Lieutenant Jonathan Elmsworth,” the English officer says, ignoring Sharpe’s outburst.
“Renard Campbell, nae fancy title,” Renard says as he pulls something from his pocket and holds it out to Lieutenant Elmsworth.
It can’t be. Every muscle in my body goes rigid at the remembered weight of that envelope in my pocket. The envelope with Christopher-Henry scrawled across it and the seal I never dared to break.
How is it in Renard’s possession now? How did he even know about its existence? I try as hard as I can to remember ever mentioning it, but the only thing that comes to mind is the night I returned to Captain Sharpe’s cabin to find my trunk open and the key in the lock.
The night after Renard tried to bed me. The night after he took “money” from my purse to pay for a whore.
I would be sick were there anything more than two bites of apple in my belly.
As it is, those two bites are firmly lodged in my throat, instead of in my belly where they belong.
As Renard hands over the envelope, I can see that the seal on it has finally been broken.
A wave of nausea and disgust passes over me at the utter violation of Renard looking inside that envelope, while I never worked up the courage to.
Something inside that envelope is important enough that it brought the French and English navies here, and I have no idea what it is.
“Master Davenport,” Lieutenant Elmsworth says as he takes me by the arm. “Your father has been searching for you for months.”
“My father?” I ask in disbelief. I can’t imagine my father going to such effort and expense on my behalf—not even to punish me. Nor did I realize he had quite so much pull as to involve the Royal Navy! Is this because of his friendship with Prince—no, King Henry?
I twist to catch a glimpse of Captain Sharpe one last time as I am dragged towards the rail of the Deliverance. “Is there any danger of your father chasing after you?” he had asked me.
The look in his eyes now utterly destroys me. All at once my vision is blurred by the wet heat of tears as they spill down my cheeks.
I brought this upon them. This is my fault.
“Leave the crew be!” I cry out as a second officer takes my other arm in hand and ushers me forward. “They didn’t know who I was. I lied to them to board the ship!”
My pleas go unanswered as I am lifted bodily onto the rail, then the world around me drops as I focus on the shifting water below.
I am certain the ocean will swoop up and swallow me whole if these men don’t keep a firm grip on me.
My fear paralyzes me, and I can’t even tell them that I don’t know how to swim.
I don’t remember climbing down the rope ladder to the waiting skiff below, nor do I recall the process of boarding the English frigate the Prince Henry. All I remember is panic—in the knowledge that I would never see Captain Sharpe or Trevor or Tristan again, and that their blood was on my hands.
Renard’s smug face stares back at me as we stand on the deck of the Prince Henry. It’s begun to rain, and I am more downtrodden than ever as my fine silk jacket is slowly soaked through.
“You knew,” I snap at him. “You knew that wanted poster had nothing to do with Jeff Reuter.”
“Aye, ye took long ’nough ta figure that out. Ye dinnae have the bollocks ta slit someone’s throat.”
Oh God. He can’t possibly know about that, unless… How had I not realized sooner? How could I be so utterly daft? “It was you,” I whisper, shuddering at the memory of Jeffrey Reuter’s dead eyes and still-warm blood.
“Aye,” Renard growls. “He’da spilled his guts the moment he realized Cap’n was on ta him. Jeff Reuter was a coward, he was.”
“Reuter knew where you hid your stash,” I say in quiet realization. I bring a hand up to my mouth. I think I am going to be sick.
Before I can say more, the ship’s captain approaches me, ignoring Renard as he bows his head to me in a surprising act of deference.
I understand now that I don’t outrank him as long as my feet are on his deck, but I won’t say anything.
Instead I lift my chin defiantly and narrow my eyes at him.
I am still reeling over my revelation about Renard and Jeff Reuter, my throat still burning with bile, but I can’t let him see that.
“Forgive my men’s rough treatment of you…” The captain seems to hesitate over my title, then eventually decides on, “My lord. I am Captain Hale of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. I will be your escort home to England, where your father eagerly awaits your safe return.”
Hang on—Hale?
Of course Digby’s absolute weasel of an uncle was the one to finally catch up with me. What a joke. What an utter disappointment. I regret ever letting Digby Hale put his tongue down my throat.
I scoff, which seems to take him by surprise. “My father awaits my return as eagerly as a condemned man awaits the gallows,” I say. “What’s wrong, did Elizabeth have another girl and now he’s desperate for his heir back?”
Hale’s brow twitches as he stares at me.
I can see him working through a few answers in his head before he replies.
“I cannot speak to that, my lord. You will have an audience with him yourself in a few weeks, when we return you to English soil. Until then Lieutenant Elmsworth will show you to your stateroom.”
My stateroom?
I forgot what it’s like to travel as a member of the peerage. I glance at Renard and narrow my eyes. “And him?”
“He will be… accommodated.”
My gaze shifts back to Hale’s face at that, and I can tell that something is amiss. There is something at play here that Renard doesn’t know about. For all the effort he put into ensuring the Royal Navy would be able to sneak up on us in the fog, he still has not won himself a seat at the table.
Good. I hope he rots in hell.
“I want my envelope.”
“That envelope belongs to your father,” Hale says regretfully. “I’m not at liberty to return it to you, but I am sure all will be explained once you’re safely home.”
“What’s going to happen to the Deliverance?”
Hale’s brows rise as he stares at me.
“The ship you just shot at!”
“Let me worry about them,” Hale says as he waves a hand for me to be ushered away.
“Leave them be!” I shout over my shoulder.
“If I find out any harm has come to them, I’ll bring my father’s wrath upon you!
” Though I know my father will care nothing for the pirates who helped me escape his grasp for the last half year or so, Hale knows no such thing.
At my words, I can see his demeanor change, before he claps his hands together and begins barking orders to the other sailors on board.
I am taken belowdecks with a man on either side of me, which makes it particularly difficult to maneuver our way down the stairs. But we make it, and I am led down a hall to a small door directly below the captain’s cabin.
Lieutenant Elmsworth opens the door, and I am unceremoniously pushed inside the room.
It’s respectable. I realize in an instant that it’s meant for royalty; this is likely the cabin the royal family would stay in on their voyages.
I’m rather shocked to be put here, viscount or no.
It’s not appropriate for me to stay in a room of this quality, even if I am the highest-ranking person on this ship.
There are windows across the back gallery—likely smaller than the ones in the captain’s cabin, but this room is clearly meant to mimic his, to allow the royals comfort as they travel.
The bed is quite like the one I shared with Captain Sharpe—the realization is like a knife twisting in my chest. It isn’t very different from Captain Sharpe’s cabin at all, in fact, save for the lack of weaponry on the wall and its sterile, pristine state.
I whirl to face the door, but Elmsworth blocks the way, and the two sailors stand behind him with guns at the ready. “Your stateroom, my lord,” he says. “I’m sure you will find everything you need here. Supper will be served promptly at six thirty every evening, and breakfast at sev—”
“I know you don’t expect me to wake up for breakfast,” I snap, because I want to be a brat. I want to make this hard for them. I’m ignoring the ache in my chest in favor of being furious, and I will do anything within my power to inconvenience these men. That is all I can do.
Elmsworth stops and stares at me for a long moment. I think he is going to tell me to shut my mouth and eat when I am fed, but instead he grits his teeth and nods. “Breakfast will be brought to you by nine each morning.”
I cross my arms and stare back at him. “You plan to keep me locked in here like some common prisoner?”
“For your own safety, my lord. It’s not my orders but your father’s that you remain locked in for the duration of our voyage.”
“And how long will that be?”
“Approximately a fortnight. I’ll have something brought up to hold you over until supper.”
I want to argue further, but I know nothing will make him stay and do battle with me, so I simply stare at him with as much contempt as I can muster, even while my heart is breaking.
He leaves the room, and I hear my short-lived freedom die an anticlimactic death with the sickening click of the lock.