Chapter 25
Ruby stood on the deck of the Delphinium. The little ship had dropped anchor just outside of Southampton, and it rolled gently beneath her feet, forward and back. The spray stung her cheeks, soaking through her dress as she stared out into the starless dark.
They had been searching for Verdura’s Vulcano for nearly a week—all of Archer’s crew except Wall, who had remained at Pomeroy House to care for the dogs.
They’d stopped at Plymouth, at Torquay, at Exmouth—every harbor large enough that a black sloop with an Italian name might hope to escape notice.
Archer had produced as if from nowhere a whole network of old friends, and shipmates, and cousins of friends, and wives of shipmates, passing word of their search all along the coast. They’d heard rumors of the Vulcano but nothing tangible.
Nothing—until it had been sighted in Southampton.
The information, according to Archer, was ironclad.
They’d broken anchor within an hour of receiving the express, which had been posted by Mr. Polkinghorne’s spinster sister.
The winds had been favorable, and they had made excellent time—so good, in fact, that Ruby had been astonished when Archer had ordered his crew to do something with the sails that made the ship slow abruptly and then dropped the Delphinium’s anchor before they drew close enough to discern the Vulcano.
As it turned out, he did not intend to let Ruby within striking distance of the people who’d abducted Tamsin and Princess Serafina. He had waited until night fell, and then he and Gerry and Lamentation, armed to the teeth, had made for the Delphinium’s dinghy.
Preparing, it seemed, to row themselves to the Vulcano and mount a surprise attack.
“No,” Ruby had said stubbornly. “You’ve brought me this far. Let me go with you.”
Archer had stepped close to her. Pushed her wind-tangled hair back from her face and then cupped her cheek in his hand.
“Ruby,” he’d murmured. “I need you to stay here. I know how hard it is to wait for word and not to act. But I can’t—” He’d broken off, his hand tightening on her jaw.
“I can’t do what must be done if my only thoughts are of you. ”
“And how am I to do what must be done?” she’d whispered. “Do you think it’s any easier for me?”
He’d bent and kissed her hard. “I’ll be back.” When he drew away, he was smiling at her—a flash of steely confidence, of charm so sweet it singed her skin. “You own me, Ruby Ballimore. My body. My soul. Don’t think I won’t come back for it.”
She’d watched as the three men had rowed away, watched until they’d vanished into the dark. She had not moved from the deck—would not, she vowed, until they returned.
The night seemed to stretch interminably as she waited on the deck, her fingers tangled with Alice’s. She thought of Tamsin and the princess, missing a week now. She thought of Malcolm: a brace of pistols strapped across his chest, a sword at his hip, a knife in his boot. Smiling at her.
She waited and hoped and prayed—nonsense prayers, all bargain and plea—and when she finally saw the rowboat in the distance, she almost thought she was imagining the sight.
But she wasn’t. She freed her hand from Alice’s to clutch at the ship’s low rail, leaning out as far as she dared. Together, they strained to see what soon became plain, even in the clouded dark.
It was only Archer, Gerry, and Lamentation in the dinghy. No Princess Serafina. No Tamsin.
The men’s faces were grim as they hauled themselves back onto the deck of the Delphinium.
“What happened?” Ruby asked breathlessly. The rest of the crew crowded forward, Signor Neri at the front.
Archer shoved his fingers through his spray-damp hair, and oh, she longed to run her hands across his face, his chest—anything to reassure herself that he was safe and whole.
But she didn’t. He stood a handful of feet away, self-contained, radiating unhappiness like cold phosphorescence. He had something clutched in his fist—some white glitter in the night.
“They weren’t there,” he said shortly. “No one was.”
“The Vulcano was empty?” Neri demanded.
“Stripped bare. The cabins, the gunport—there’s no one and nothing left aboard.”
Ruby’s heart lurched. Tamsin. “Are you certain? Did you check the cargo hold? Could they have been trapped somewhere?”
He exhaled hard and met her gaze. The sapphire blue of his eyes looked shadowed.
Dark. “I’m a smuggler, Ruby. I know where to look.
” He opened his hand, and in it she saw a thin jeweled collar she recognized from Zenobia’s delicate neck.
“I found this, shoved between two planks in the companionway. They were there. But not anymore.”
Ruby felt sick. Helpless. The Vulcano had been their only tangible connection to Serafina and Tamsin, and she couldn’t seem to force herself to let it go.
She tried to make herself quit demanding, for heaven’s sake, but she couldn’t stop herself.
“Perhaps some false wall or—or casks with secret compartments, or—”
“He shouted,” Lamentation said.
She broke Archer’s gaze and turned to his former bosun. Lamentation’s exquisite face was strained, and his palm twisted helplessly along the hilt at his side.
“He shouted,” Lamentation said again, “even when Gerry and I told him to keep quiet. He shouted for them as soon as we were aboard, before we even knew that the crew was gone.”
“I knew,” Malcolm said roughly. “The ship felt empty.”
“What would you have done?” Lamentation said. His voice rose. “If the ship had been manned? If they’d started firing at you before you could even draw your first pistol?”
“I knew it wasn’t manned.” Archer sounded confident and steady, all certainty.
Everything was under control, his voice seemed to say.
You were safe with me. “There might have been one or two sleeping sailors, but I could have fought my way past two men. I wanted—” He broke off.
Looked to Ruby. Tried again. “I wanted them to know we were there. Tamsin and the princess. If they were on board, I wanted them to know we’d come for them. ”
Her heart felt like a live thing, the way it twisted at his words. Her whole chest ached as though she’d taken a blow.
He’d wanted them to know. He’d risked himself—his own life—so that they would know someone had come.
It was what his own crew had done, she thought. Gerry and Lamentation, Wall and Eugénie. When Malcolm had been sent down from the navy, the four of them had given up everything they had so that he need not be alone.
“Thank you,” she said. Her voice wobbled. “Thank you for trying.”
He’d been fretting over the ropes that held the dinghy, checking and rechecking his knots, but at her words, his hands stilled. He looked up, and the brilliant forced smile on his face was a hundred times worse than naked anguish for the way it stabbed between her ribs.
“A delay,” he said. “Nothing but a delay. I’ll find them, Ruby. I’ll turn over a thousand rocks to see what crawls out. I’ll—” His smile wavered, a candle almost blown out, and then recovered. “I won’t let you down.”
“Malcolm.” She touched her fingers to his, still frozen on the rough knots. “You’re not. You couldn’t.”
His smile faded as he looked at her—dimmed into something less brilliant. More true. “I could,” he said.
Gerry was standing behind Lamentation, his hand on Lamentation’s shoulder. “We can set the sails, Cap. What’s our heading?”
Archer looked from Ruby to his crew. There was some struggle on his face; his throat worked. “London,” he said. “I want to talk to Admiral Penney.”
Gerry nodded and made to turn, but Lamentation gave a stiff jerk, as though he’d been struck. “Penney?” he said. “Why?”
“He’s a baronet now. Well connected. He may know something of Verdura’s whereabouts. He . . . owes me a favor.”
“He owes you a hell of a lot more than a favor,” Lamentation said. His voice scratched on the words, and he looked suddenly, terribly young. “He owes you his career. He owes you that goddamned baronetcy for the way you saved his neck.”
“Enough.” Archer’s voice was quiet, his eyes steady on Lamentation’s face. “You’ve made your opinions on the matter known.”
“It seems I haven’t. You wouldn’t consider going to him if you’d heard a thing I’d said since we lost the goddamned Swallow!”
“I have heard. I heard you then, and still I made my choice, Lamentation. Even if it’s not the one you would have made.”
Lamentation took a breath, shakily, and he angled his chin up as if to hold back whatever emotion had tangled in his throat. “I don’t understand why you’d turn to Penney after what he did. I don’t understand why we can’t do it on our own, Cap! Why we’re not—enough.”
Archer’s face was pale and carved beneath the clouded moon. “We need help.”
“Not from him.”
Ruby’s eyes burned as she watched them. In truth, she felt the same as Lamentation did. Penney had put his hand in the net of Archer’s life and twisted—in some places pulling him free, and in other places warping him so that he could not see himself clearly.
Penney was no hero. Archer was. But Archer had made his decision, and he had chosen loyalty. Ruby could understand that, just as she could understand the painful self-consciousness written on Lamentation’s face.
I don’t understand, he’d said, why we’re not enough.
“We should go to London,” she said abruptly. “But not for Penney.” Half a dozen pairs of eyes came to rest on her, and she swallowed hard. Hoped this was not a mistake. “I think we should go to my father.”
Above them, the moon broke through the stand of clouds, washing the deck in cool translucent blue.
“I know he has not supported our efforts in the past,” she said quickly. Almost desperately. “But I believe I know how to make him aid us. We’re more than halfway back to London now. It would not take so long for us to get there if—if the wind is right.”
She hesitated on the words as she looked up into Archer’s face. Please, she thought. Please let this be the right thing to do.