Chapter 35
Ihave my notes here,” Julia said, her voice low as she steered Henry by the elbow to the side of the bustling room.
He let himself be pulled along, grateful for the distraction.
The night had dragged on far too long, and Henry was ready to call it quits and head to bed.
Already, half the group had done so, but Henry had been loath to leave his sister with Jennings.
He and Julia had only had a quarter of an hour that afternoon before the viscount interrupted and required her presence.
Not willing to leave the two alone, he had gone along, but that had left them barely any time for Henry to fill her in, on the barest of terms, regarding what he was on the island to do.
She knew that he was gathering information on people on the island to help his employer in London, but he still didn’t feel comfortable telling her everything.
Not after the threatening note, and knowing pain would come from knowledge of their father’s brutal death.
He’d done enough disservices to his sister.
Yet he felt pulled in a million directions. Before they left in forty-eight hours, his sister needed him to end her engagement, but the Gentleman Pirate was still afoot and Henry was running out of time. Where were Carlton’s men? Or even a letter explaining their absence?
The smugglers were bound to be active the following night, with the new moon, but he could hardly take on the band on his own.
And all the while, his heart wanted nothing more than to grovel at Alice’s feet and ask her to give him a chance to redeem himself.
“Here,” Julia murmured, coming to a stop.
“It is everything I found on every man on the island. Some are frankly unimportant, but Lieutenant Shelbourne has a streak of debauchery, Mr. Swasey is dreadfully in debt, and Lord Danbury evidently has two illegitimate children unknown to society.” She pressed several folded pages into his hand, and he quickly tucked them away, seeing Jennings approaching behind her.
The man was keeping Julia close, as if he knew she was attempting to weasel her way from the betrothal.
Julia spun and met the viscount, taking him away to a pair of chairs near the fireplace.
Blast, he hated that man. Hated that he was so close to what Henry had become—a blackmailer.
And he hated that he had such scant time to remove Jennings from Julia’s life.
He needed something of equal weight to the secret Jennings knew of Julia’s in order to bargain with him.
To convince him to release Julia from the betrothal without retribution.
He turned, intending to leave and read Julia’s notes, but ran into a person. Reflexively, he reached out, grabbing the woman’s arms to steady her. Alice’s.
She stiffened, eyes wide, and he released her as if she were scalding hot.
“I apologize,” he muttered. “I was not looking where I was walking.”
“Nor I.”
She looked away, but didn’t leave. His feet were similarly stuck. He wanted so badly to talk with her. Not even a day had passed, and yet he felt worlds away.
“Are you ready for the masquerade?” he asked.
“Yes.” Her lips pressed together. “Have you chosen your disguise?”
“I have not given it much thought yet. What will you be wearing?” His chest ached at her nearness. But it would be worse when she left.
“Nothing particularly grand. I wear the same thing each year.”
Had he imagined it, or had she inched away? He should let her go.
He did not wish to. “What is the costume?” he asked.
“A tiger.”
He froze.
The telltale signs of her embarrassment showed. Her hands gripped her skirt, her cheeks tinged pink. “It is silly. It clashes horribly with my coloring.”
“No.” He shook his head, still trying to gather his thoughts. A tiger, she’d said, and immediately a vision had filled his mind. One from a lifetime ago. “Nothing could clash with your coloring. You look magnificent in everything.”
“You are too kind.” But her words were shaky. And this time he knew he did not imagine the step she took away. “I should be . . . I need . . . good evening.” And then she was gone.
He watched her leave, a piece to a puzzle he hadn’t known needed solved falling into place. In an instant he remembered it all.
He’d met her before. Before she’d married. Before she’d come to live on this island.
He’d been smitten by the girl in the tiger costume. But that had been his final evening as a carefree man.
That night, after he’d danced with a delightful young lady in a tiger costume, he’d watched his father die.
A masked man had cornered Daniel Ainsley in his own trap, and slit his throat before he could run.
Henry had watched from the window; the timeline had been moved up and he and Fletcher had been too late to enter the room.
Caught and alone, Henry’s father had faced several men alone, hands raised in surrender—and they’d slit his throat nonetheless.
One moment and his world had crashed around him.
Stumbling a little, he left the room in a daze, letting the dimness of the corridor engulf him as memory assailed him.
He’d been unable to cope, instead turning to drink and gambling. It was months before he surfaced from his despondency and realized what he’d done. By then, the tiger-masked woman was lost to him. His life was lost to him.
He’d started climbing from the hole as best he could, but he’d also known he needed to be careful about it for Julia’s sake.
Her dowry was gone, and their name could be dragged through the mud at any point, which would ruin any of her chances at a safe and steady future like their father had wanted.
But he couldn’t go back to the work he’d done for the crown.
It was too painful. So he’d taken on odd jobs his solicitor found and joined ventures he could barely afford, but really he’d doubled down on his gambling.
He’d already learned he held his liquor well, so he used it to his advantage, getting men drunk and then half-cheating them out of their money and secrets.
He’d forgotten the girl at the ball after that, but not really forgotten her. It was as if she’d been in the back of his mind as the epitome of what he could never have. A sweet, innocent woman who radiated joy did not deserve a man like him with death in his past and nothing in his future.
Henry groaned, the sound thankfully slipping from him when no one was near to hear.
It felt like a sucker punch, this information.
He wasn’t entirely sure why, but it felt like for the second time in their lives, he and Alice were being given a chance at a future, and both times he was not in a position to allow it.
Something told him life would not be so kind as to give him a third.
The door behind him opened, and Jennings exited. He lifted a brow at seeing Henry standing there. Henry opened his mouth to say something to the man, but nothing came out.
Without a word, Jennings passed him.
Henry stared at the door to the drawing room. He could go back now—talk to Julia about everything. But he had no desire to be surrounded by people.
“Blast it all,” he muttered, stalking down the hall towards the stairs. He had to accomplish something.
He had Julia’s notes out by the time he entered his room, locking the door behind him. They were extensive. He flipped through several pages, scrubbing a hand down his face.
Names swam in front of his eyes. Some he knew well from the party and others he only met that night or at the garden party a week before.
He would start with Carruthers, see if the information he’d requested and not gotten from Carlton could be found here.
Then he would see if there was something about Jennings that Julia had yet to discover but that would free her from the engagement.
The candle was nearly a puddle on Henry’s desk. His mind felt much the same. Julia’s penmanship wavered as his eyes blurred, but he blinked and forced them open.
The details on Carruthers were actually muddling his mind even further.
None of it pointed toward smuggling at all—but Henry had seen the ledgers in the man’s room.
Besides, he was a naval man, as their intelligence years before indicated the Gentleman Pirate was.
But he was also a decorated officer, with many awards from the crown.
He seemed on track to become a captain. Julia even uncovered that the man helped care for his ailing mother and two younger siblings.
Altruism didn’t fit with piracy. Or perhaps it did, if the funds he stole were supporting his family’s lifestyle.
Regardless, the page of information before him, whichever way he looked at it, did not point to Carruthers being involved in smuggling or piracy any more. It gave him no specific information he could use to have Carruthers arrested and tried.
Would Henry have to go to the beach alone tomorrow night after all?
A single man against a band of smuggling pirates?
If he did, it would only be to definitively learn who was running the group.
He would have to blend in with the men and get out without being found out.
Then all he could do was take the information to Carlton and the Crown and hope they did the right thing.
That didn’t feel like avenging his father.
He ground his teeth, turning his attention to the second problem. Jennings. What were the chances that he could see anything in Julia’s notes that Julia did not already know? Would they leave the island in two days having failed at all their goals?
This man’s list was far longer than the others. Clearly, Julia had spent more time unearthing secrets here.
He was incredibly wealthy, as he’d claimed.
Enjoyed sailing and hunting. Had one living relative—his mother that he corresponded with almost to extremes.
Henry saw the note on his mistresses. Unexplained trips to the coast, evidently multiple times a year that were to presumed lady loves.
Even his valet was similarly flawed. He must have had an unsavory past indeed to require a change of name.
Julia had uncovered that the man, now called Robert Mills, was born Jacques Dubois.
Dubois. Where had Henry heard that—
The stable of the White Hart. Dubois was the name of a man involved in the smuggling. And it was no common English name.
Henry flipped back through everything, eyes skimming with a new lens.
Jennings had visited this island several times as well.
Henry sat up straighter, another recollection coming to him. Alice had said Jennings was a friend of her husband’s. But she’d also said she did not know him. Something was missing there.
He stood, knocking back his chair. Trips to the coast. A French valet. Incredible wealth.
No, was it possible? Henry had written off anyone not native to the island at the start.
It made sense—if piracy or smuggling were occurring, it would have to be an entire endeavor.
It would not make sense for someone across the literal channel to be that intimately involved.
But Carruthers might be. Was it so surprising to think that Jennings could as well?
Were the lieutenant and Jennings working together? Nothing here tied the men to each other. Except Seymour. And Henry did have proof that Seymour had been involved. But who was the Gentleman Pirate? The naval man or the lord?