Chapter Nine
Libba hadn’t slept much. She had never been one for long stretches of slumber, especially when there were things that needed to be done, and even less so when she was determined to wake up by a specific time.
In this case, that specific time was first light.
Her room did not face Errol’s coops, but she heard the rooster crow all the same and smiled to herself, as it gave her permission to sit up in her bed and get to work.
“Bastard,” she muttered to herself because insulting the rooster was tradition.
And because some of her favorite people were bastards. Thus her second order of business this morning.
No, not Jasper. He had both his parents. A lovely, sickeningly affectionate couple of shore folk who lived near Barrel End.
She was allowed to do more than one thing at a time, wasn’t she?
She dressed quickly in her simplest work dress and bustled down to the coops to catch Errol while he was at his feed.
He didn’t even look surprised to see her there. “Morning,” he said, blinking at her.
“Good morning,” she corrected. “I need a shirt. One of yours.”
He narrowed his eyes, throwing a handful of dried corn at the hens. “Why?”
“Because Jasper ruined his and I need him to look respectable this morning, and Mal’s clothes are too narrow to fit him. A shirt, Errol!”
“Fine!” he said. “Go get one. You know where to find them.”
“That I do!” she sang, bopping the rooster on the head with two fingers before he could retaliate on her way out. “Good morning, little bastard.”
“His name is Titus!” Errol called after her, which made her giggle all the way through her next two tasks.
She was still smiling when she threw the shirt at Jasper’s unconscious face and watched with a sort of suspended, begrudging fascination at all the muscles that moved under his exposed torso as he clawed himself awake, mumbling excuses from whatever was happening in his dream.
Why had it never occurred to her that his freckles might extend beneath his shirt? They crawled over his shoulders, some in little patches where the sun had found its way through his collar, down his throat, and over the top of his chest in the most fascinating patterns.
Freckles and chest hair.
Well, it had been a time of revelations, she supposed.
“Up,” she said, once he’d come to, his distracting, fascinating bare chest heaving and his breath ragged. “Coffee’s in the dining room. I need you on the dock in an hour for when the moor opens. Good?”
“Bad!” he shouted, but she was already walking away.
It wouldn’t do to stay and continue to examine him in the light of day, after all.
Still, she was grinning to herself at his flustering reaction and his appearance all the way to the theater.
Sadly, Lady Capulet’s gown was not ready yet, and the others that were still in the Rest were in various states of half-creation, so there was nothing to be done but to walk down to the Odalisque directly to find one that would serve today’s purposes.
There were at least two there, one for Nurse and one for Juliet.
Obviously, it would have to be Juliet.
Obviously.
They had decided against putting her in soft, girlish pastels and instead opted for bright, bold colors that Hattie insisted were prized for maidens throughout the desert cultures of North Africa.
“Why would you want to marry a girl you couldn’t spot between dunes?” Hattie had pointed out. “Red and gold. Blue and silver. Green and copper. You get the idea. You can be soft and powdery after you’re married.”
Libba had liked that.
And there was a red and gold Bedouin dress with a royal blue lining, loosely based on the cloak Napoleon Bonaparte (the fool; the utter, fashionable genius that was a fool) had worn to march into Egypt.
Sister Jeanne, their Juliet, had been wearing it during yesterday’s rehearsals, so it was easy to find and had its matching jewelry close at hand as well. And, Libba was able to get into it quickly because Monica had designed the costumes to not require a bunch of fussy lacing.
Bless her.
This morning was also one of the rare times that Libba wished she kept more wigs in her own hair texture. All the ones on the pegs just now were for a fair-skinned woman’s head, long blonde and red manes with braided bands and coifs.
She grabbed her two-pronged hair stick and resolved to simply claim that a simple, stabbed-through twist was part of her home culture, though she did stop to bring down and shape several small ringlets around her face.
She put a tin of rose oil rouge in her bodice as she hurried down the cobbles toward the docks, still knotting the overcloak atop the red dress. Her boots hit the street corners in good time, with the sun still making a lazy path up over the water line.
She had time. She still had time.
And she really didn’t want to do this next part. Which was why she’d put it right in the middle of a harried, important, unrelated task.
That always made the unpleasant ones easier.
She sucked in a briny breath of morning air as she approached the row of squat houses against the wharf, counting the fourth one in from the right and giving a cursory rap before pushing inside.
The smell hit her with all the weight of a swinging repair crane, like the Ballast out near Ship Street had just decided to collect the cargo in her chest.
Sawdust, linseed oil, whiskey, and overcooked egg yolk.
And there at his breakfast, looking utterly stunned in the middle of the room, was her father.
He stared for a solid minute, fork aloft, gray-haloed yolk speared on the end until he managed to croak out, “Elizabeth?”
“No,” she said with a sigh. “You’re still alive, I’m afraid. It’s just Libba, your daughter.”
He blinked several times, rubbing the heel of his hand over his eyes, and gave his gray head a shake so hard, it made his jowls wobble. “Christ, girl,” he muttered, his Scots brogue almost entirely gone these days. “You look just like her.”
Libba bunched up her nose, squinting down at her absurd outfit and then quickly deciding it was not worth the follow-up questions. “I don’t have long,” she said. “I need a favor. Happy to do one in return.”
Her father sighed, dropping his fork and running fingers through his thick, gray hair. “I haven’t seen you in years.”
“And you don’t have to again,” she said quickly. “Or you can. I can start coming for Wednesday dinners. I just need your signature on a legal form.”
“What form?” he asked, so wary, he sounded, for a moment, exactly like Malcolm. “I read anything I sign, and you had better too.”
“All right, be calm,” she said impatiently.
“The days where you could initiate parenting have passed, I’m afraid.
I am in the process of assisting a friend …
a … an employee,” she corrected, seeing her father’s face immediately shutter, “in getting his papers in order. He does not have a registered surname. It turns out I cannot give him mine without your consent.”
He stared.
Outside, the ropes creaked.
“So can I have it?” she snapped. “Your consent?”
He hesitated. “Wednesday dinners, you say?”
“Faither!” she snapped, exasperated. “Yes, if that’s what you want.”
“With Malcolm?” he asked again, averting his eyes down to the plate.
Libba frowned.
She couldn’t promise Malcolm.
“I can’t go giving my name to someone I’ve never met,” he continued, as though he knew she wouldn’t answer that second bit. “Bring this … this employee by. For dinner. We’ll talk then.”
“Fine,” she said. “Stop overcooking your eggs. You’ll make yourself sick.”
And then she departed before he could respond.
She walked briskly, shaking her shoulders and hands and withdrawing the rose oil to dab the salty dryness from her lips and dab her eyelids and cheeks.
She should have told Hattie everything some weeks ago, when she’d had the opportunity. She should have, because now that she’d deceived her, she couldn’t very well do it now. And Ruby couldn’t keep a secret. And Monica would frown at her until she was a puddle of contrition.
Malcolm couldn’t know.
Errol wouldn’t understand.
Rhys might, but who knew what he might do with the information.
She sighed and rubbed her brows.
Maybe she should ambush Elias with the information just to see how he’d react. With confused horror, she imagined.
They barely knew each other.
She gave a dry, exhausted laugh and pushed forward.
She had Jasper, after all. And she had Lem.
Why did she need another confidant? Why did she need someone who was not actually involved?
She didn’t. She didn’t.
And there, in the misty haze of dawn, she could see the Templeton-Rath ship bobbing on the water.
Shade of Port Royal read the side.
She grimaced.
Why would anyone name a ship that? After something that had sunk?
Bizarrely, the two tugs on either side of it had much more winsome names.
Mongoose of the Crossroads the first one read. Lucky Spider the other read.
They both appeared to have come in with the main ship from Ceylon.
The gangplank was down from The Shade, balanced on the dock as several people buzzed around to take advantage of the early hour and the mostly-empty wharf. Just as she’d known they would.
She couldn’t hear much from where she was standing, just out of view, but she could see a clutch of upright people near the harbormaster’s office and felt her heart speed up a little. The Templeton-Raths would not trust initial disembarking to happen without oversight.
So they were here.
Maybe not the daughter. The plain heiress.
But the others. And that was all they’d need for this day.
“Mutiny!” cried a feminine voice, startling Libba so badly, she almost dropped her rose oil tin.
A second woman’s voice joined the cry. “Mutiny! Come now, where are you?”
What a thing to be shouting on a ship harbor! And in such a singsong, lovely tone as well.
Two young women darted through the mist, coming toward Libba directly. One was tall and slender, pale skinned and slower than the other. The second was petite, dark skinned, and shaped like the most ostentatious hourglass.
The second’s voice was louder.
“Have you seen a cat?” the shorter young woman asked a passing porter. “White with circle patterns on its coat? One ’round each eye?”
“It’s a wharf,” the porter replied, baffled and blinking at such an early onslaught. “We’ve got bushels of cats.”
“Ayo, she might still be on the ship!” the thinner woman called. “Oh, blast! Papa will gloat.”
“Maybe she hopped to one of the tugs,” the one called ‘Ayo’ replied, turning and skipping off toward her friend. “She tried to do it often enough while we were at sea.”
“Oh, Mutiny,” sighed the other woman, shaking her head and slinging an arm around Ayo’s shoulders.
Libba blinked.
Not a servant, then. A companion, perhaps? An equal.
That was something.
“There you are!” hissed Jasper, right in her ear.
This time, the rose oil fell from her fingers, through the wharf planks, and into the English Channel.
“Oh, look what you’ve done.” She sighed, turning and giving him a light shove. “Oh!”
She blinked several times, taking him in.
Half his face was still purple and puffy, but it looked oddly … well, artistic against the bright red of his hair.
He was wearing Errol’s shirt and his navy-blue jacket from last night, but he’d somehow commandeered a dark-golden waistcoat in heavy tweed fabric to go between them. The effect was striking.
“You look like a dandy in a penny novel,” she said, baffled, reaching up to smooth the fabric at his collar. “Just escaped from the monster.”
“Oh, Lib,” he sighed, chuckling and patting the waistcoat. “I am the monster.”
She gave him a look, which only made him grin wider, pushing the bruises around his eye into a crescent of vibrant blue and purple. It made her sag a little, her heart sinking.
He’d risen to the occasion, just as she’d asked. He was here. He looked the part. He looked too much the part!
She had expected him to fumble a little more, and she couldn’t tell if she liked or didn’t like that he hadn’t.
“Whose waistcoat is that?” she demanded. “Not Malcolm’s.”
“No, of course not,” he replied, looking down at himself. “Elias lent it. Looks good, doesn’t it?”
“Shut up,” she said, her voice gone a little grainy. But only because it did. She spun on her heel and nodded toward the dock. “There are the Templeton-Raths.”
“Indeed?” he said, his voice also thinning.
He stepped closer to her, his chest bumping against her shoulder, the heat from his body radiating out through her costume.
It warmed her back, his body steady and hot behind her, like she could forget it all and simply fall back against him instead of pushing forward.
Like she could stop and find warmth and anchor.
Like that were a possibility here, when she knew that it wasn’t.
She shivered, frowning, and took a brisk step away. “Yes. I’ve just seen your bride-to-be, in fact. At least, I expect that I did.”
“Oh?” he answered, and she could hear the hesitation in his voice. “And?”
She narrowed her eyes but still didn’t turn. “She was running up and down the wharf shouting, ‘Mutiny!’”
There was a pause. The harbormaster’s bell rang.
“What?”
“Go!” she said, finally turning and giving him both a tug and a shove in the direction of the dock. “Before it’s too late.”
He stared at her for a moment, something like hesitation in his face, his hands working at the lapels of his jacket as he glanced once, nervously, at the boat, and then back at her.
He was looking at her like he wanted her to tell him he didn’t have to do it.
And good.
One or two more pushes and he’d abandon this nonsense entirely.
“Go!” she snapped again. “Now!”
He frowned. But he went.