Chapter 3 #2
Julia followed. “So you wish me to go alone?”
A hanging sign indicated the White Hart, and Henry moved toward it. “You are welcome to remain with me. My understanding is that the estate is only a mile, maybe two, from town.”
Julia eyed him, and Henry guessed her predicament. She probably both wanted to join in walking and leave him behind after he’d suggested she look to matrimony while on the island.
Her ire won, as he’d expected.
“Very well. I will return to our things and await my chariot.”
Henry’s lips twitched, but he stopped and turned to where she’d halted in the middle of the road. “Come with me, won’t you? The sort who hang around dockyards are not the most savory.”
“I can handle myself.” She crossed her arms.
“Humor me, then.”
It was not to be known who would have won the ensuing contest of wills, for a carriage ambled down the road and they were obliged to move from its path. Now in the stable yard of the White Hart, Julia seemed to deem fighting Henry pointless and followed him inside.
Despite the time of day, the place was full to the brim. Customers or residents of the inn at tables, serving girls darting amongst the crowd. The smell here was much like at the docks, except one could swap most of the piscine scent for cheap liquor.
Julia’s nose wrinkled. “If it does not offend your manly sensibilities, I think I will wait outside.”
Henry breathed through his mouth. “Stay close, please?”
She rolled her eyes, but nodded. “Of course.”
“Thank you.”
She stepped around a little bald man who approached Henry. “May I help you?” he asked, eyeing his potential customer with distrust.
“Yes, I need to hire a coach to take my sister and our things up to Windvale.”
“Very well.” He turned, aiming a shout for the open door behind him. “Tommy! Hitch up the horses and call for Jack.”
“Do you have a young woman who might accompany my sister? I do not wish her to travel alone. Your wife, perhaps?”
“Sure, sure, Jane can go with her.”
“Thank you. Our things are at the docks. I can show your man the way.”
“He’s a’coming. Any minute now.”
Henry tapped fingers against his pant leg. A loud shout of raucous laughter came from behind him. “You’ve quite the crowd here for late morning.”
“Yes, well, we’ve the best drink.”
“Do you see many foreigners like myself?”
The man eyed Henry. “Too many, I should think.”
Distrustful of foreigners in general? Or simply a cantankerous sort of fellow? “Don’t enjoy my kind, do you?”
“Our island is well enough on its own. Don’t need no interference.”
Henry’s brows lifted. But a man came from behind the proprietor with only a slightly less disgruntled expression on his face, so the conversation was over.
When Jane arrived, Henry was surprised to see that she was a well-kept, smiling girl.
By her account, she was the proprietor’s niece.
It settled Henry’s nerves a little to know that Julia would not only have the likes of the carriage driver to accompany her.
Their things were loaded on, and the party set off, leaving Henry to breathe in the dust of the departing carriage.
He immediately turned back to the town. The owner of the White Hart did not trust outsiders, but that was not much to go off.
He would return to the inn and join a quick game of cards.
Gather some information on the general sentiments of the island before he set off to Windvale only an hour or so behind Julia.
The proprietor had claimed his inn provided the best liquor, but one sip told Henry that if the man were honest, the rest of the island must suffer from truly detestable libation.
Forty minutes at the table and one glass of brandy left him with his stomach even more in knots and only breadcrumbs of information.
He hoped a few conversations with the dockworkers would yield more, but after striking up three or four, he found he wasn’t much better for it.
The island pride was healthy, inhabitants seemed to think they lacked for nothing, and none mentioned the faintest suggestion of fear over pirates in their waters.
It was not conclusive information, but it did hint toward the piracy being an inside job.
And coupled with what he knew from Carlton that these sorts of attacks on merchant ships seemed, if not frequent, then at least often enough to create a pattern, Henry thought it safe to determine that he was, indeed, looking for a group that lived on the island.
Which very likely meant the Gentleman Pirate lived on the island.
Nausea unrelated to his sea journey, the bad brandy, or the smell of fish surged yet again as he paced the dirt road to Windvale.
His thoughts ran red with blood. Memories he’d managed to keep hidden rode waves of pain, and his vision blurred when he could not keep them back.
His father’s killer was closer than he’d been in six years.
Henry was meant to find him and exact justice on the man.
Like a cannon shot, the reality of the situation slammed into him.
He’d brought Julia here. To escape certain danger in London, yes, but even still. Would he lose another family member?
He flexed and balled his fists, pulling air in through his nose, then pushing it from his mouth. He did not have the luxury of losing control here.
Out of the game, he might be, but he was a perfectly capable spy.
Over the last week, he had studied maps of the island, determined his plan of attack for ferreting out the mystery.
The Gentleman Pirate was one of the strangest criminals his father’s team had attempted to apprehend.
The man had a propensity for showing respect to the ships he pirated: no casualties during his piracy, blindfolds used in lieu of shooting men.
Every whisper of him was that, despite his actions, he was—as they called him—a gentleman.
Certain intelligence pointed to him being a navy man as well, and his presence at the masquerade six years before, when it had been filled to bursting with several naval officers, made that even more likely.
The house party was five weeks long, and by the end of it, his father would finally be avenged, Julia might be engaged, and he would have the funds to carry on his family’s legacy as he ought to have years before.
His stride lengthened. The air was certainly fresher here. It had been over a year since he’d been in the country. A hint of salt hung in the air, and the plants seemed brighter. He rolled his shoulders back.
A shuffling sound at the treeline some fifteen paces from him caught his attention, but he could see nothing within the shadowed confines of vegetation.
But then, a feminine voice filled with frustration called out, “Help!”
The yell was not particularly loud, nor did it sound fearful or distressed, but Henry stopped on the road, peering more closely into the trees. He thought he saw movement on the ground.
“Help!” it came again, and this time, a woman popped her head around a tree trunk several feet into the wooded area.
Her bonnet had fallen back, and red hair drew his attention as his feet took him off the road.
He transitioned into an easy jog across the grass until he was beneath the canopy of leaves.
The woman had leaned back against a tree, and her foot appeared caught between two rocks.
She turned her eyes up to him, her expression a mask of annoyance.
“I am so very sorry to inconvenience you. I stepped on this rock but it was too unsteady. It pitched and my foot slid into another, with the first trapping my ankle.” She gestured down with exasperation.
“I have been trying for a quarter of an hour to remove the rock, but I cannot seem to get the correct leverage, and I fear that if I move it even a little, it will fall back with greater force.”
Henry bent down, examining the rocks. Her dress was caught with her boot, both pinned beneath the stone. “Does it hurt?”
“At the moment I believe I have lost feeling in my toes. But otherwise, I am in hardly any pain.” She brushed red tendrils back from her eyes, tucking them behind her ears. “Heavens, but I haven’t the time for this.”
“Are you meant to be somewhere?” he asked, grasping the upper rock. Just casually making conversation with a damsel in distress that he knew nothing about. It could never be said that Henry Ainsley was a respecter of societal norms.
She nodded, wincing as he attempted to get his fingers beneath the impressively-sized rock.
“I apologize,” he said, trying again.
Her hand waved in the air as if it were unimportant. “No. I simply thank you for helping me. We do not get a great deal of people on this road. I was worried I would be forced to wait for someone to come find me.”
He looked up, meeting her eyes from mere inches away. “I think I have it. On the count of three?”
She nodded, a determined glint entering her eye.
“One, two . . . three.” He heaved upward on the boulder, dislodging it from her ankle long enough for her to pull back her foot, then let it fall back down into place.
She leaned back, prodding her ankle gently.
“Everything well?” he asked, not yet standing.
Gingerly, she tilted the foot back and forth. Her light green dress slid up above the boot and he averted his eyes. “I believe so,” she said.
“Good.” He stood, brushing hands off on his trousers before offering them to her.
She took both, and he pulled, helping her to her feet.
When standing, she was a few inches shorter than he, and not many years below his twenty-nine, if he had to guess.
She leaned heavily on her left foot for a moment as she tested her injured one.
It held her weight with only a slight grimace on her part.
“Are you certain you are well? I could . . . I could carry you?” It was a ridiculous offer, but what was he to do? Watch the young woman hobble off on her own?