Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Anervous clerk greeted Richard at Horse Guards.
“Fair put out he sounded.”
“Castlereagh always sounds fair put out. What exactly did he say?” Richard demanded.
“You are to call on him immediately. And you—beg pardon, my lord, but these are his words—‘damn well better have your analysis of Malta in your hand.’”
The agitated clerk blinked up at him, anxiety giving him the fidgets. Richard dismissed him with an abrupt gesture.
Malta. Did she sail to Malta? How unsafe are those waters? He looked at his unfinished report. If you concentrated on your damned work, you would know.
Messages lay on his desk, more complaints from his parents and what was sure to be an ugly message from Lisle.
He went to answer the summons from the foreign secretary and returned with Castlereagh’s anger burning in his ears, irritated with himself over his failure to complete his analysis.
He had accumulated notes in fits and starts by collating observations of sea captains with agents on the ground, but allowed interruptions—and Lily Thornton—to disrupt the work.
It remained to pull it together for Castlereagh, the prime minister, the cabinet, and, ultimately, the prince regent into a report that could enhance his reputation. He began to write the final report.
While American efforts have subdued the worst of the Mediterranean pirates, waters of the sea between Sicily and the coast of Africa remain unsettled. Unrest in Naples exacerbates the situation so that our forces on Malta—
Malta. The woman Stewart described embarked to Malta.
Lily of all women should know how perilous the Mediterranean has become. Did she go willingly? He doubted it. Either someone coerced her or something horrific drove her to take off on her own. Either way, Volkov is behind it. He picked up his pen.
—our forces on Malta could feel the impact of shipping disruption.
He began to list actions to be taken, numbers of marines to add to Royal Navy vessels, escalated improvements to the port fortifications, and beefed-up frequency for the Gibraltar packet.
The Gibraltar packet. They are the fastest ships we have. I could leave from Portsmouth on tomorrow’s tide.
If he left immediately, he could get home to pack a few items and just make it on a good mount. From Gibraltar, passage to Malta would be easy.
Nonsense. One does not just hare off without planning. Besides, she has at least a week on me—closer to two.
Richard shook the very thought from his head. He owed Castlereagh this report and his father the courtesy of a reply.
Words flowed onto paper rapidly, if not coherently. They skimmed along the surface of the topic. They never plunged to Richard’s customary depths. They flew toward a conclusion.
Richard frowned at it. The report would be presented in the highest circles. Totally inadequate for the audience. He had built a career on exactness in all he did, on the quality of his work. I need to rewrite it.
His eyes lost focus. His words lost meaning. His mind returned again and again to the Gibraltar packet, drawn like iron to lodestone. The seas around Malta churned in his mind, and the dangers haunted him.
Something drove her away, something so strong she knowingly put herself in danger or, worse, was forced into it.
In one swift motion he completed the manuscript with a message for Castlereagh, who wouldn’t like it much.
Intelligence inadequate. I leave for Malta on the tide to see it for myself.
He had to leave London within the hour to make it. He sealed the report in a sleeve and called for a clerk.
“Send this to the foreign secretary in three hours. Not one moment sooner.” The bewildered clerk merely nodded.
His career would be in tatters before he returned. He realized with growing elation that he didn’t care. He picked up his hat and walked out the door.
I’m going to find her on Malta and, if I have to, shake the truth out of her. If I find Volkov too, he’s a dead man, whether she went willingly or not.
The port of Algiers filled the air with odors great and small.
Rotten fish and offal, the familiar rot of any port, contended with exotic spices and the cloying scent of dozens of unknown flowers.
None of them sat well with Lily’s churning stomach.
In a month at sea, her nausea had not abated.
Pregnant women, she now knew for certain, did not travel well.
That afternoon their ship bobbed at anchor, a condition infinitely worse than forward motion.
Solid ground lay feet away. She had gone above decks to stare longingly at the teeming docks, but she had been forbidden to disembark.
“Covered in veils you would still give yourself away as the English you are. Has no one mentioned to you the slave markets of North Africa?” Sahin had demanded.
Slave markets. The thought made Lily shudder. The horror of Barbary slavery was the stuff of schoolgirl nightmares. Unlike other nightmares, it was all too real. Still, dry land called to her. She had hoped he would give in and send a guard with her.
Before she could object he added, “These streets are not safe for any woman, even with a bodyguard.”
He had looked at her sadly. “Once inside the Seraglio, you will move freely only within its walls—broad, ornately decorative walls, but walls all the same. This is the life you have asked for, Lily.”
The life you asked for. Lily lay on her narrow bunk in a cabin no larger than a linen closet and contemplated her decision.
She cupped her hands protectively over the baby growing inside her and fought remorse. Everything in her upbringing told her she should have accepted the marquess. Her conscience told her so.
“That’s just it, little one,” she said into the gloom, rubbing her abdomen. “If I marry him, your father will always be ‘the marquess,’ never Richard.” Never beloved, not out loud.
Aboard this ship, she kept them both safe. Inside the walls of the Seraglio, they would be safe. She refused to regret it.
“When your grandpapa comes, he will take us back to England in time, safe and above contempt.” She hoped it would be so. Her hopes lay in her knowledge of Sahin, who failed her only once, and in her loving, though often neglectful, father. She prayed her hopes were not in vain.
Another wave of nausea overtook her. To control it she stared at the ceiling and began listing her qualifications as a teacher: languages, education, and arts. When the interview came with the Valide Sultan, she would be ready.
Richard crawled into Malta on a small boat with peeling blue paint, filthy sails, and the reek of fish.
The Spanish fisherman he hired in Gibraltar gave him an ironic salute when he disembarked and mockingly patted the purse safely stowed in his pocket.
The grizzled old thief had demanded top coin when he realized how badly Richard wanted immediate transportation. No more formal passage to Malta could be found that departed sooner than a week; Richard agreed to the fisherman’s extortionate terms.
It would take days to get the stink out of his clothes. For once he didn’t regret traveling without a valet. His man in London would die of heart palpitations at the sight.
Thirty minutes later Richard presented himself to Sir Thomas Maitland, governor of Malta on behalf of the British throne.
The unannounced appearance of the Marble Marquess, dirty and disheveled on his doorstop, stunned the governor.
He gaped for a full minute before he barked orders to his staff for “bath water and plenty of it” and ordered lodging for his distinguished guest.
Richard bit back the one question he came to have answered and let a flurry of excitable Maltese servants carry him off to newly aired rooms.
It took Maitland’s staff an hour and a half to assist the marquess with his bath, locate the correct amount of citrus oil to counteract the effect of fish, and truss him into an ill-fitting, borrowed suit.
They hustled him off to the formal dining room where he sat with disgruntled impatience at the governor’s dinner table with a minor attaché, two colonels, an expatriate baroness, and the Anglican bishop of Malta and his wife, all of them eager to meet the Marquess of Glenaire.
If Richard found the company less than sterling, the table setting and the cuisine matched that at the houses of the highest society in England.
As it should for the cost of maintaining this pestilential place.
Most of the company cared little for the reasons behind his arrival, wishing only to bask in the presence of the Marble Marquess, luminary of foreign affairs and of the court. Maitland, however, obviously burned with curiosity.
“To what do we owe the honor of your visit, my lord?” he asked over the soup course.
“We are particularly interested in the safety of our shipping in these waters,” Richard explained, staying as close to the truth as possible. They’ll think me a fool if I tell them I’m pursuing a woman who doesn’t even want my attention.
The governor general looked for a moment as if he might question the need for the foreign secretary’s second to personally research in the field. He did not.
“Were my reports not received?”
“Your reports,” Richard improvised, “were intriguing.” And damned vague. “I became curious to see for myself.”
Maitland looked skeptical, but he let the issue of his reports drop. Richard’s dinner mates plunged into a lively discussion on the topic, each giving a firsthand—although, based on his research, inaccurate—account of the situation.
By the middle of the main course, conversation moved on to much more delicious gossip of amorous intrigue on the island. Over a particularly tasty duckling and beetroot dish, Richard finally saw an opening.
“My men reported a concern recently. Perhaps you can clarify something for me,” he said, drawing all eyes, eager to help their high-ranking guest.
“We had word of a young woman traveling alone this way, a tiny young lady, accompanied only by a bodyguard or servant of Eastern extraction.” He spelled out the dates.
The guests looked at one another, puzzled.
“With all of the instability, the Foreign Service has concerns about a woman alone. She sailed on the Captain James out of Boston.”
Maitland’s face lit up. “Ah, Miss Dalca, Maria Dalca. She is well. You may rest at ease.”
“She arrived here safely?”
“Yes,” the governor beamed. “But we only had her company briefly. She is bound to her home in Maldavia after schooling with her English grandmother.”
“You spoke with her?”
“Briefly. Polite enough chit. Terribly accented English. Shows some polish from her time in England. Small. Lovely girl with volumes of dark brown hair.”
Brown hair. Not Lily.
“Excellent. My men worried for naught,” Richard murmured.
“Brown hair,” the baroness chuckled coyly. “Perhaps.”
What the hell does that mean? Was her hair brown or not?
“She transferred to a Russian vessel and sailed for Thessaloniki where her aunt will meet her. Whether they travel overland or continue by sea to Constantinople and the Black Sea I cannot say,” the governor rambled on, filling in details about how much his majesty’s government had been glad to help her on her way. Richard heard only two words.
Russian. Thessaloniki.