Chapter Seventeen
“Let’s turn back and search again at dawn when we can actually see something.” The innkeeper refused to budge and addressed his staff rather than Captain Kincaid, who had already gone farther ahead after he had tried and failed to reason with the man. “We’re on a wild goose chase tonight, lads, as I knew we would be.” He glared at Georgie while jerking his thumb at the captain, letting her know in no uncertain terms, yet again, that he thought that this was all their fault. “I told him this would be futile before we set off and you heard him just now—he still refuses to listen.”
“That’s because he’s right!” The captain might have given up all hope of getting the innkeeper to help, but she hadn’t, and they had more chance of finding Felix with more eyes looking for him than fewer. “We can’t stop now! The poor boy must be terrified, and we’ve come this far. We have to meet with the other group as planned or they will think that we are lost too—and it would be criminal to do that to them.” Especially when she could not disagree that all of this was all her fault. As one rebel understood another, Georgie never should have let Felix out of her sight. Not when he had been so determined to be.
“Not my problem.” The innkeeper raised his meaty hand rudely near her face. “And what’s criminal, miss, is that nobody would be lost if you and that idiot up ahead had kept a closer eye on your charges!” Again, an undeniable fact she could not disagree with. “Hopefully the boy has more sense than either of you do! If he’s got any at all he’ll have found some shelter and will stay there till morning, when we actually stand a chance of finding him.”
“But—” The meaty palm came up so swift again, it almost hit her nose.
“It’s late. It’s pitch-black and this is a wild goose chase. So if I say we’re done for the night, we’re done. You and his nibs over there can battle on if you’re daft enough to do things his way and still think that the other group are daft enough to have not turned back already, but he ain’t the boss of me and neither are you.” He spun around and started walking away. “Come on, boys!”
The two ostlers began to follow. She grabbed the arm of the second and most sympathetic to try and stop him, but the young man shook it off. “I’m afraid he is the boss of me, miss, so I’ve got to listen to him… sorry.” And off he went too.
“Captain—wait!” Georgie shouted, and when he didn’t stop, likely because he was still furious at her for not properly supervising his nephew too, she picked up her sodden, mud-filled skirts to dash after him. “The others have turned back.”
He grunted but didn’t slow.
“If you are quick, you might be able to reason with them some more. He knows the lay of this land better than we do and we need as much help as we can get if we are going to find Felix.”
The captain still did not bother stopping. “You can only reason with a person who wants to be reasoned with, Miss Rowe, and our friendly innkeeper doesn’t.” Unperturbed at the desertion, he continued onward, then paused to watch the ostlers’ lanterns disappear. “But it is late, it is dark, and you are soaked to the skin, so you should return to the inn with them before you catch your death of cold.”
“What, and leave you to get lost too?”
She saw his eyes roll in the lamplight before he hoisted it aloft to point at the stars. “I’m a sailor, Miss Rowe, so I read the night sky as well as I read a map. I can assure you that I won’t get lost, so go. In fact, I insist. I’ll move quicker without you. This is no place for a woman. Especially such a…” He flapped his hand in the general vicinity of her body. “… compact one.”
He couldn’t have called her a hindrance more plainly if he had tried, and while he was probably right because his legs were much longer and not weighed down by layers of skirts that caught on everything, his dismissive lack of faith in her abilities incensed St. Joan within.
“You can insist until you are blue in the face. I am not giving up. I shall continue to search for Felix alone, if need be.” She pushed past him to continue onward and immediately caught her skirt on a branch.
“Somehow, I knew you would say that.” He bent to yank the fabric free.
“If you knew it, you should have saved your breath, Captain.” To prove that she wasn’t a liability, Georgie sped up and knotted the sides of her skirts as she did so to stop them dragging, cursing herself for not wearing breeches beneath them as her friend Lottie always did. “Being female or compact will not slow me down, I promise.”
“Though Miss Rowe may be but little, she is fierce,” muttered the captain, misquoting Shakespeare for once rather than another pompous military man.
“She is indeed.” He clearly meant it sarcastically, but Georgie knew it was true. She might have lost Felix, but she was going to find him—or die trying. “And just like the woman the Bard described, when I am angry, I am both keen and shrewd—and I am angry.”
“So am I.” He allowed her to have the lead for all of two minutes before he streaked past. “I am going to strangle bloody Felix if we find him alive.” She could hear the fear in his tone, the if in that sentence shrieking volumes.
“You can choke the last breath from his neck after I’ve given it a good wringing first—when we find him, Captain. It was me he disobeyed, after all, so surely I have earned that pleasure first?”
“How about we toss a coin for the honor if we find the little rascal?”
“When we find him, Captain.”
He managed a half smile as he nodded. “When we find him.”
For the next fifteen minutes, neither spoke other than to call Felix’s name into the void. Neither did either of them mention what was also becoming obvious—that as the riverbank got steeper, the rushing water in the gully beneath sounded faster and significantly angrier than it had before.
Distracted by intrusive thoughts of doom while castigating herself for not predicting Felix’s rebellion, Georgie slipped on a slimy piece of exposed rock beneath her boot. Before she hit the hard, rocky ground and did herself serious mischief, she flung herself into the cradle of a crooked tree trunk, but still managed to wind herself in the process.
Rather than alert the captain that she was down and incur yet another lecture about this being no place for a compact woman, she took a moment to recover while he continued to shout for his nephew ahead.
“FELIX!” The rushing water swallowed much of his effort. “FELIX, WHERE ARE YOU!”
In case he turned to see her collapsed in a heap, Georgie joined in, hoping he would assume that she had fallen behind again on purpose. “FELIX!” She cupped her hands around her mouth to amplify her shouts. “NORBERT!”
Something wafted on the midnight breeze. The cry of an owl? A fox?
She strained her ears, doing her best to block out the camouflaging noises from the water and the captain’s shouts farther ahead, and heard the noise again.
Could it be a human’s cry?
A child’s?
She strained some more.
No! It was a howl! It was faint and distant, but unless a pack of wolves had survived their extinction in England and had lived secretly and undisturbed for hundreds of years, then it had to be Norbert.
“Norbert!” She hauled herself out of the tangled arms of the dead tree to scan the area, and when the dog answered with another bloodcurdling howl of distress, she knew she could not possibly be mistaken. “Captain! Come back!”
Captain Kincaid burst out of the shadows ahead, barely illuminated by his lamplight in the dregs of the moonlight, and she beckoned him closer. “Listen!”
Georgie cupped one hand around her ear to show him which direction the faint howling was coming from, and his expression changed when he eventually heard it too.
He ran toward the sound like a man possessed, grabbing her hand as he rushed past, and together they dashed as close to the edge of the slippery, steep riverbank as they dared.
While they both bellowed down it, the light from the lanterns caught two pinpricks of ghostly green which seemed to flicker behind the shadowy leaves of a bush. They danced closer and closer and suddenly the entire bush collapsed beneath the weight of Norbert’s huge paws as he galloped toward them, barking.
The dog stopped directly below them, dancing on the spot, barking for all he was worth as his shaggy head stared downriver, as if begging them to clamber down the bank and follow him.
The captain wasted no time complying, but as he skidded downward on the wet rocks, he held up his hand to stop her following. “Wait there!”
“Oh, for goodness—” Then he held up both palms in surrender.
“I am not suggesting that you cannot climb—but this bank is too steep and too wet and if Felix is hurt I am going to need your help to get him back up it!” Then he sped off after the dog until his retreating lantern was sucked into blackness.
In two minds as to whether she should do as instructed or rebel, Georgie began to pace, stopping abruptly when she heard Simpkins’s party calling from up ahead.
“OVER HERE!” She waved her arms in the air to attract their attention. “HELP!”
What happened next all seemed to unfurl in a blur.
As the cavalry arrived, so too did the barking Norbert, and within moments the silhouette of the captain reappeared down below. His lantern was gone but as she raised hers to light his way back, there was no mistaking he was carrying a child.
Simpkins and one of the other men scrambled down the bank, and within moments, a pale, shivering, and sobbing Felix was passed from man to man back up the bank and into her waiting arms.
“I slipped,” he muttered as he buried his face in her neck and sobbed for all he was worth. “And I’ve hurt my leg.”
“We’ll fix it.” She cuddled the boy close and rocked him like a baby while it took all the men, including Simpkins, who still loudly proclaimed hatred of the scabrous bag of fleas, to get Norbert back up to the top of the bank. As soon as his paws hit terra firma, he flung himself at Felix and licked the distressed boy’s face. Then he licked Georgie’s, and then, as the captain tried to heave his belly over the edge of the slippery bank, he thoroughly licked his face too.