by Tamara Berry
I take a minute to rifle through the chest in hopes that I’ll find another real coin—or, better yet, a false bottom that leads to a trove of them—but I don’t find anything out of the ordinary. Even the rubber rat I eventually extract leaves me unmoved.
“Ferguson—” I begin, but am cut short by the telltale sound of a bird whooping in the distance.
Both Ferguson and I freeze.
I hold my breath, hoping the sound will turn out to be nothing more than an actual bird coming close to mate or eat or do whatever it is that keeps them busy all day, but it sounds again. It’s much more urgent the second time around.
“Go,” I say, pushing the lid of the chest back down. I press so hard that the Styrofoam splits, but there’s no time to worry about that now. “Out the window and back to the castle, just as I said. Take Jaime and make sure no one sees you.”
“But, Madame Eleanor,” he protests, “how will you fit if I don’t push you?”
“I’ll find a way,” I promise. When the bird call sounds for a third time, I put my hands on Ferguson’s back and propel him toward the porthole. “I mean it, Ferguson. Get your brother to safety, and don’t tell anyone where you’ve been.”
He doesn’t, as I’d hoped, immediately dash to safety. He gets one small leg out the window before turning to me with a look that I could almost swear is relief. “You’re scared of him, too, aren’t you?” he asks.
I think of Otis and the gruff, angry way he navigates the world—of how he overreacted when Birdie mentioned his wife—and nod. Yes, it’s fair to say that I’m scared of Otis, though it’s more for the boys’ sake than my own right now.
Ferguson must see some of this, because his eyes grow wide and he loses no time in scrambling the rest of the way out of the window.
I have no idea how much time I have to evacuate the premises. My fight-or-flight instinct has always leaned strongly toward the flight side of things, but that window looks even smaller from the inside than it did from the outside. It’s one thing to be caught trespassing on a man’s boat in a torn dress and with two gold coins secreted in my bosom. It’s another to be caught dangling halfway through a porthole window, unable to move in either direction.
Fight it will have to be.
Waiting only until I’m sure the boys have had time to make it to safety, I unlock the latch on the main door and steel myself for the confrontation to follow.
Then I steel myself again. And I steel myself some more.
When a full sixty seconds have passed and there’s no sign of an angry pirate at the door, I start to wonder if Jaime had been mistaken and made the bird call preemptively. There’s been plenty of time for me to hide myself away or sneak along the water’s edge, and all I’ve done is stand here like a fool waiting for evil to befall me.
Which, as it turns out, is exactly what I’ve done.
In this instance, evil literally befalls me. It strikes as a blow to the back of my head, sudden and sharp and wholly unexpected. I see nothing but a flash of black and the sudden burst of stars that follow before I fall in a heap next to that fake chest full of even faker treasure.
Chapter 11
I awake with a roaring headache, a mouth that feels stuffed with cotton wool, and ghostly feline apparitions at my feet.
“Beast?” I blink at the image of my cat sitting at the end of my bed. It’s not unusual for a woman suffering from a head injury to experience blurred vision, but it does seem highly unlikely for that vision to take the shape of a black cat.
Or—wait—two black cats.
“Freddie?” Despite the pain splitting my head in two, I jerk to a seated position. While most black cats look similar to one another, the smaller kitten is unmistakably my own. The white tips on her ears and a small kink at the neat point of her tail could belong to no other. “How is this possible? Am I dead? Are you?”
A low chuckle at my bedside draws my attention. It also pulls my head in that direction, which is a mistake for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that I shouldn’t be making so many sudden movements in my condition.
“Your cats are very much alive, though I’m not ashamed to admit that it was a near-run thing. As it turns out, they don’t much care for air travel. Or for being put forcibly into a crate.” Nicholas extends his arm, his shirtsleeve rolled to expose his sinewy forearm. Several bright red scratches adorn that well-sculpted limb. “The feline temperament leaves much to be desired. I’ve always preferred the simple obedience of a dog.”
These words are calculated to get a reaction out of me, I know. Unfortunately, I find myself unable to rise to the task. Gratitude and the percussive ache of my head are bringing me much too close to tears for that. I reach out and grasp the hand being held out to me instead.
“It’s about time you got here,” I say as I lower myself back to my pillow. A sore spot on the back of my skull throbs in protest. “I can’t believe you abandoned me like this. Actually, I can believe it. That’s the worst part. I should have known better.”
“Oh, dear.” A softer, female voice sounds from the other side of the bed. I’m too weary to turn my neck again, but I recognize it as Sid. “It’s all my fault. I’m so dreadfully sorry, Nicholas. I wouldn’t have had this happen to her for the world. You must believe me.”
“Of course I believe you,” he says, and in a much kinder voice than he used with me. “I should have warned you that Eleanor is prone to getting herself knocked over the head. Something about her compels people to violence. I can’t imagine what it is.”
If I had the energy, I’d lose no time in telling Nicholas that if he continues in this vein, he’s the one in danger of being on the receiving end of violence. As it is, I can only accept the warm, purring bundle he places gently on my lap. Beast would never lower herself to cuddle—and in front of an audience, no less—but Freddie has always been a sweetheart.
“What time is it?” I ask. My bedroom is just as dark now as it’s been the entire time I’ve been on this dratted island, but the light from the window seems to indicate it’s still daytime. “Or am I better off asking what day it is?”
“I think you should take her home,” Sid says as though I haven’t spoken. “It’s too dangerous for her to continue her work. It’s too dangerous for any of you. I don’t know why I thought I, of all my family, could defeat the curse.”
“Nonsense,” Nicholas replies, once again in that kind voice. “For all we know, she slipped and knocked herself out on the steering wheel.”
Mention of the steering wheel brings all the events leading up to my incapacitation rushing back to me. The boat, the gold, the boys. Otis.
“Ferguson and Jaime,” I say, once again jolting into an upright position. My head swims with the sudden movement, but I close my eyes and will the sensation to abate. “Where are they? Are they all right?”
“Yes, they’re fine. The last I saw, they were downstairs playing jackstraws with Otis and Ashley.”
“Otis?” This time, my jolt is strong enough that Freddie lifts her head and mewls a protest. Nicholas also releases a murmur, his hand checking me before I can leap out of bed. “But—”
Sid releases a sound somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. “Oh, dear. He was afraid you might assume that he was the one who attacked you, since you were on his boat when it happened. But it wasn’t him, Madame Eleanor, on my honor.”
Sid’s honor isn’t something I value all that much, but I can’t think of a polite way to say so. Nicholas steps into the breach. “Of course it wasn’t,” he soothes. “You were with him at the time. And Ashley and Elspeth were down in the kitchen—everyone safe and accounted for. It’s as I said. She must have slipped.”
There’s no mistaking his firm tone in that last bit. I notice that Birdie is conspicuously absent from the list, but since I know all too well that it’s fruitless to oppose my will to Nicholas’s when I’m in anything but full fighting mode, I smile weakly and continue stroking Freddie.
“Yes,�
� I murmur. “That is what happened, now that I’m thinking more clearly. All that rain and seawater—it’s a wonder I’ve made it on two legs this long. I’m so sorry to have put everyone out.”
Nicholas releases a breath that’s tinged on the edges with approval, but Sid isn’t so easily won over.
“But I don’t understand,” she says. “What were you doing on Otis’s boat in the first place? And how—?”
As much as my head hurts right now, it doesn’t pain me nearly as much as what I have to do next. I know for a fact that I was struck by an outside force—by human hands wishing to do me harm. This idea is borne out when I take a deep breath and feel nothing swelling up in my bosom except air. The two gold coins are no longer safely nestled where I kept them. Someone must have taken them while I was unconscious.
Someone who purposefully hit me. Someone who didn’t like how close I was getting to the truth.
“The curse,” I moan, lifting a feeble hand to my brow. Freddie doesn’t approve of this action and paws at my arm, but this isn’t a moment for playing with kittens. I’ll make it up to her later. “I was called to the boat, drawn to its presence. As soon as I set foot on board, I knew it was a trap—that Gloriana had forced me on board.”
I happen to think this a fairly good piece of acting, particularly since I’m feeling none too spry, but for the first time, Sid displays an intelligent—if not particularly well-timed—burst of common sense.
“If you knew it was a trap, why did you stay?” she asks. “Why didn’t you run for help?”
I’m not looking at Nicholas, so I can’t see his expression, but his silence communicates plenty. It’s an amused silence—the kind that’s waiting to see how I plan to wriggle my way out of this one.
Good thing I happen to be exceptional at wriggling.
“Something . . . grabbed me. Something sinister, something not of this world.” As if just now recalling the painful interlude, I reach down to finger the edges of my dress. The tear sustained as I wedged through the porthole window is still there. “Look. This is where it pulled me. Its claws rent through the fabric.”
Sid releases a sound halfway between a moan and a shriek. I’d feel bad for adding to her already monumental fears, but this is her fault for asking sensible questions in the first place.
“I tried to escape, struggled to get free, but someone—something—was on the boat with me.” The shudder that moves through me isn’t entirely faked. I was facing the door when I was struck over the head, which means whoever hit me had to have been hiding on board the entire time. Either that, or there’s an access point the boys don’t know about. “That’s all I remember. I was attacked from behind, and my world went black.”
The sound Sid makes is a full-fledged wail this time. The high pitch of it is agony to my already throbbing head, and I wince. Nicholas must see it because he rises smoothly to his feet and puts an arm around the sufferer. At that small bit of contact, every part of Sid wilts against him. She’s like a flower folding against the elements—the one plant this island of rock and sea can grow.
“I knew it,” Sid murmurs, her arms wrapping around Nicholas’s neck as if he’s her sole means of strength and support. “We’ll never be free of this thing. We’re doomed to suffer like this forever.”
I watch, somewhat detached, as Nicholas sets out to calm his friend. Nothing about his low, soothing murmurs or the way he leads her out of the room is the least bit romantic. It’s more like watching a man care for his grandmother than anything else, his steps slowed to match hers and an expression of kind—if pained—resignation on his face.
In other words, there’s no reason for a girlfriend to feel jealous. And I don’t—not really, not in any way that’s a recognizable part of that emotion. It’s just that I’ve never seen him like that with anyone before. He treats his mother with amused respect. He treats his niece with amused affection. Me, well, I get a little of both.
And that’s exactly how you like it, Winnie reminds me.
My hand curls automatically around Freddie. I take comfort from that small, purring bundle of fur and the larger, not-purring Beast casually grooming herself at my feet. I have no idea how Nicholas knew I needed my cats, but I’m more grateful than I can express. I never realized before how much I rely on them, how much stability they bring.
As I also need to start figuring out what happened to me on that boat, I lose no time in swinging my legs over the side of the bed and testing my physical capabilities. Although I’m shaky and my head is likely to ache for a few days, I’m able to stand on my own two feet.
Unlike Sid, I always have been.
After setting Freddie down next to her mother, I make a survey of my injuries. A lump the size of a ping-pong ball behind my ear indicates the source of my distress, but there’s no sign of blood or broken skin, which is good. Whoever hit me was either experienced enough to know exactly how hard to clobber a woman to incapacitate but not kill her, or they got lucky. My hair is a nest of tangled curls and half-done braids, and my velvet dress is now little more than a rag, but all my body parts are intact and fully functioning, so I’m calling it a win. In fact, the only thing that truly alarms me are the missing coins. I sweep a hand inside my dress in hopes of finding that they’ve merely settled somewhere else on my person, but to no avail.
“Do I dare ask what you’re doing?” Nicholas slips into the room so quietly he might as well be a ghost, but I’ve passed the stage of being alarmed by anything that happens inside this house.
“Please tell me you heard the clunking of two gold coins inside my bosom and took it upon yourself to safeguard them.”
He raises a brow.
It’s with a heavy sigh that I say, “I assume that’s a no.”
“I’m afraid so. Would you like me to make a more thorough search of your person? I’m willing to do whatever is necessary to find them.”
I hold up a hand to prevent him from stalking to my side and making good that threat. There are too many thoughts jumbling around inside my cracked head, so many vague ideas flitting around without anything to anchor them. As easy—and delightful—as it would be to forget these for a few minutes in the arms of a man like Nicholas, I refuse to be distracted.
“Do you know who found me on the boat?” I ask. “And who brought me up to the house? Also, what day is it? This place is so dark all the time, it’s like living inside a cave.”
Nicholas’s expression is neutral, which I take to mean he’s disappointed not to be invited to manhandle me. He does, however, hold up one elegant hand and start ticking off answers. “Yes, I do know who found you—it was me. I’m also the one who brought you up to the house. And it’s still Tuesday. You’ve been unconscious for the better part of the afternoon, but that’s not surprising considering the size of the bump on your head.”
“You found me?” I echo.
“Yes. I was brought to Airgead Island in the company of a delightful old man named McGee. When he pulled up to the dock, the first thing he noticed was that the door to the cabin on the tour bout was open. He suspected his grandsons were up to no good, but I knew better.”
I look a question at him.
“You were the one up to no good,” he explains. “McGee obviously doesn’t know that a troublesome pair of eight-year-olds has nothing on you when you’re in the middle of a case.”
As this is uttered with a chuckle and a lurking smile, I take it as a compliment.
“And there were no coins on me at that point? Well, I guess that’s my answer. Whoever hit me definitely took them. I wonder if that was why I was attacked, or if they were afraid I was getting close to something else. Please tell me you searched the boat while you were on it.”
“Alas, no. I felt that the woman passed out on the floor was of more immediate concern. Your cats, too.” Since stroking me is out of the question, he pets Beast instead. Although that cat refuses to let me show her any affection, she turns her head into Nicholas’s hand with haughty
pleasure. “I think it was the noise of the airplane they objected to the most. I have no idea how we’ll get them back. If you wanted them with you, you should have brought them on the train in the first place.”
I blink at him. “But I don’t want them.”
Freddie turns to me with such a look of wide-eyed betrayal, I immediately contradict myself and set out to soothe her. I use every term of feline endearment that comes to mind, aware the entire time that Nicholas is watching me with a twisted smile.
“I had no idea you were so eloquent,” he murmurs as soon as Freddie is back to a full purr. “What does a man have to do to earn the same regard, I wonder?”
“Don’t,” I warn him with a raised finger. “You’re straying from the topic.”
“Which is?”
I hold a hand to my head and sit on the bed. For once, this move isn’t intended to inspire awe in my audience. Everything still feels so fuzzy and muddled that I close my eyes in an attempt to corral my thoughts.
The mattress sinks, and I feel the heat of Nicholas settling next to me. To his credit, he doesn’t speak or move or do anything to interrupt my thought processes. It’s one of my favorite things about him, to be honest. He’s an unreliable travel companion, he has a tendency to revert to levity at the worst possible moments, and he could have had the decency to search that dratted boat while he had the chance, but he has his virtues. His unquestioning willingness to sit back and let me conduct my affairs in my own way and my own time is one of them.
“The treasure is real, that much I know is true,” I say, more to myself than to him. “I’ve seen the coins, and if they’re a sample of the rest, they’re worth more money than I’ll see in my lifetime. If that’s not a motive for all this, then I don’t know what is. The curse isn’t real, that much I know, too. It was a person who hit me over the head, not a ghost or a dead monarch. That same person most likely killed Glenn Stewart and maybe Harvey Renault, too. You heard about Harvey?”
