Chapter Ten
Jasper had the oddest feeling of doom as he made his way up to the wet dock mooring.
He had to bite down on his tongue to prevent himself from looking over his shoulder at Libba, who just now would’ve been fading into the morning mist behind him, leaving nothing but a hazy smear of crimson in the general shape of a woman.
He felt like there was a fishhook in his chest. A big one.
He couldn’t account for it.
And he couldn’t really ponder it just now, either, because the people on the dock were drawing ever nearer.
“We’ll keep it as a store hulk while the new office is built, naturally,” a woman’s voice was saying, brisk and posh, like she’d been raised in Richmond, not some far-flung tropical paradise.
“John, did we get everything we need for the house? The cinnamon and graphite has to come off too. They’ve been in the moisture too long and we can’t leave our stock bobbing in the Channel, courting mildew and mold. ”
“Not by half,” a man’s voice answered, sounding amused. “And the girls are off hunting cats.”
“Hulk fee is reasonable,” the harbormaster said to the couple, who were standing together under the woman’s parasol, both dressed in white and gray, as though anticipating a hot and cloudless sun today.
“Your steward, Mr. Rath, has already arranged a spot just beyond the Reaper … Er, that is the crane near where your plot of wharf is.”
“‘Reaper,’” said the woman. “Ominous.”
Jasper cleared his throat, glancing at the ship, whose name glowed in painted blue letters against the golden brown wood of the hull. Shade of Port Royal.
Ominous, indeed.
“Pardon, Harbormaster,” Jasper called, holding up his hand as he trotted over. “Sorry to bother. East India here. I’m a factor with the company. Just had a question about this month’s consignment.”
The man squinted at him through the couple, his waxed mustache twitching. “Not now, lad,” he said. “Come back ’round lunch.”
“Gracious,” said the man, blinking at Jasper. “What happened to you?”
“John!” His wife gasped, swatting him with the back of her hand.
Jasper chuckled, shaking his head. “No, it’s all right. It’s the funniest story …”
“It is you!” came Libba’s voice, right on cue. “Oh, God has answered my prayers! My hero! Sir!”
They all turned as one to see her hurrying down the planks of the walkway, her red skirts in her fists, cloak billowing behind her.
For a strange, suspended moment, Jasper felt that fishhook find purchase around his ribs and give a hard tug. He stared, stupidly, until she had reached them.
“It is you,” she breathed again in her feigned Xandine accent, reaching up to ghost her hand over the side of his face that was bruised. “I thought I should never see you again!”
She turned, blinking at the assembly behind him, and brightened. “Oh! Good morning! Are you all together? I must express my gratitude for the rescue that left this dear man so very injured. It was entirely my doing. Entirely my fault.”
“Was it, indeed?” John Templeton-Rath asked, blinking at her, taking in the textiles wrapped around her body. “And you are …?”
“This is Princess Xandine of the Bedouai,” Jasper said quickly, coughing delicately and spinning around. “My apologies. We shall just take this conversation elsewhere.”
“Now, wait a moment,” said the woman, dipping her parasol down and tapping its point against the wood. “I’m afraid you’ve intrigued us all, now. What is your name, young man? And how did you rescue Her Highness?”
Libba gave a wan smile, her eyes wide, bright, and guileless, and tilted her head to the side like she was interested in the answer, clasping her hands at her chest. “This man,” she echoed, rapt. “Yes, what is your name, my hero?”
The harbormaster gave a heavy sigh, dragging his fingers down over his eyes and pulling at the bags beneath them.
Jasper was frowning at Libba. Or whoever this was.
He had never seen her so … so docile. So … vacant.
He hated it?
“Papa, we can’t find Mutiny!” came yet another interrupting voice, this one younger and feminine as two young ladies emerged from one of the tug boats bobbing next to the large ship. “Even with the fish heads, she’s refusing to come out.”
“Pippa,” her mother snapped. “Come meet our new friends. This young woman is royalty, and this young man was about to introduce himself.”
The younger woman, Pippa, frowned at her mother and shrugged, hopping onto the dock and tossing two juicy fish decapitations onto the waxed wood of the wharf, where two other cats were already waiting, each licking a fish skull that had already been picked clean.
He knew he ought to examine her, considering. He ought to be standing up straighter and taking in every detail.
But he couldn’t just now. She was just a young woman on the wharf. Skinny. Her hair was brown. He couldn’t quite … He blinked, looking down at the fish heads.
The bigger cat, a tom judging from the spiky mat of hair that jutted out above his tail and the general disarray of his fur after a month at sea, immediately moved to hoard them both, much to the affront of a slender, white cat with big, blue eyes, who watched him with her head quirked to the side just like Libba’s was, as though she were curious about how stupid he might actually be.
“I … erm,” he said, trying to drag his attention away from the cats. “Jasper Townsend,” he said, giving an odd. jerking little motion to Libba that later would haunt him as something like a curtsey, and then turning and nodding to the Templeton-Raths. “I’m nobody, really.”
Another young woman was climbing out of the tug, this one shorter and darker than the one before. Not the daughter, he reckoned, based on the complexion of the parents, but grinning like part of the family, anyway.
“I am Agatha Templeton-Rath, and this is my husband, John,” the woman who was clearly in charge of this operation announced. “This disaster of decorum with the fish heads is my daughter, Philippa, and this is my niece, Ayomide Rath. Her father is around here somewhere.”
“Just in my office,” the harbormaster muttered. “With the money.”
“You are not nobody.” Libba gasped, pressing her fingertips to her glossy, rose-scented lips. “You fought four men for insulting my honor! You saved me when they would have taken liberties, here near this very dock!”
He had thought he would struggle to feign humility for this moment, but Jasper found he was not struggling at all to be red in the face and deeply uncomfortable. It wasn’t humility, of course. It was bone-deep, quaking regret.
But it likely looked the same.
“Oh, it was really nothing,” he managed.
“Squalor, no!” Philippa Templeton-Rath snapped, pointing at the orange tomcat. “You know better.”
The orange tomcat gave her a disdainful blink, which was enough for the white one to paw her fish head over to her side of the planks, next to the clean skull she’d already finished.
Jasper noted that the tomcat’s fish skull was in significantly worse shape, gnawed and pitted. It still had bits of gray viscera streaking it.
“It was not nothing,” Libba was gushing, going into vivid detail about his daring deeds and how he had rescued her from a clutch of brigands while her bodyguard had been securing their lodgings for the night.
He could hear her, as though she were very far away, as he watched the cats.
“I did not know the docks were so dangerous in England! In Africa, we think England must be a land of nothing but laws!”
“Africa!” the niece, Miss Rath, exclaimed. “Ibo lo wa?! Iw? oòrùn Africa?”
Libba blinked at her. “My apologies, I don’t …”
“She is a Bedouin,” Mrs. Templeton-Rath said quickly. “Northern Africa, Ayo. Saharan. She doesn’t speak Yoruba; she likely speaks French. Isn’t that right, my dear? Parlez-vous francais?”
Libba gave a little, stuttering breath, color rising in her face that seemed to at least be recognizing all the heat in Jasper’s own cheeks. “Oui! Naturallement. Comme Napoleon.”
All four Templeton-Raths made a noise of distaste at that.
And still, Jasper could not look away from the damn cats.
The white one was inching closer, one claw at a time extending toward that second fish head, the meaty one that the tom had not started in on yet.
The tom, Squalor, was watching her out of the corner of his eye but not moving just yet, not acknowledging what she was about.
It was fascinating. Like watching someone get shot by a very, very slow bullet.
He took a breath, his tongue finally touching the roof of his mouth at the behest of the damned tomcat, and before he could utter a single warning, the white cat’s claw touched the fish head that was not hers.
And he pounced.
“Squalor!” both young women shrieked as the orange cat turned and used his beefy shoulder to propel the white cat forcefully to the side.
She recovered quickly, rolling with a delicate thunk and hopping back to her feet as though nothing had happened at all. She flicked her ears and took two confident steps back toward her intended object of theft.
Then there were three rapid cat sounds of indignation and the white cat went over the side of the dock. She almost went cleanly, but her front legs came up, narrow and snowy pale, grabbed the tom around the neck, claws digging into his scruff, and took him down with her.
There was a splash.
“Hubris!” Philippa Templeton-Rath cried. “Oh, heavens! Oh, no!”
Both cats emerged, spitting and hissing and thrashing in the wet dock waters, which were deeper than the rest of the stretch around this area.
Too deep for housecats. Or ship cats. Or whatever the Devil these were.
“Oh, damn,” Jasper muttered, and before he could really think about it, he was in the water too, diving in after the damned cats.
He emerged, eyes stinging, with the tomcat completely limp and spitting out saltwater like a bad foie gras under one arm, and the white cat going absolutely mad on the bruised side of his face with the very sharp tips of her claws as he attempted to use his feet to propel them toward the shallows.
It wasn’t until he got his soggy shoes into the shingles beneath the water that he could see them all staring down at him from the dock.
Even the harbormaster.
He opened his mouth to say something reassuring, but Hubris the cat slapped his lips with the full force of her open claw before he got the chance.
“You know,” said Libba in her Xandine accent. “I know a happily married pair who met in exactly the same way.”
“Oh, my babies, my sweet ones,” Miss Templeton-Rath exclaimed, sloshing into the water, her skirt water-logged as she reached out toward them.
Jasper, squinting at her through the salt sting in his eyes, attempted to hand her the orange cat first as the other one was currently attempting to carve her name into his throat, but the woman shook her head and took the white cat instead.
“Oh, Hubris.” She sighed as the cat immediately went slack and curled up against Miss Templeton-Rath’s chest like the best-behaved feline in Brighton. “You really don’t know when to stop.”
Jasper looked down at the orange cat, still shin-deep in the water.
Squalor looked up at him too.
And then vomited, all over his borrowed waistcoat.