by Jane Ashford
“No! My father was an English gentleman!” She glared at him.
“Then I didn’t kill him. Unless he’d signed onto one of Boney’s fighting ships. And if he did, then he deserved—”
“You stole everything he had and broke his spirit so that he died,” Kawena accused.
“I did no such thing.” James had never been more certain. “You have the wrong man.”
“Liar!”
It seemed as if she would fly at him again. Who would think that dark eyes could burn like that?
“We’re getting nowhere,” said Alan, with a crisp authority that made Ariel smile. “We must begin at the beginning if we are to untangle this riddle. You…Miss…Kawena, sit there.” He pointed to the sofa. “James, over there.” He indicated an armchair well out of reach, then drew Ariel to a pair of seats between them. “Now, give us your tale.”
“It’s not a ‘tale,’” the girl responded. “It’s the truth!”
“He only meant your story,” Ariel put in. “What happened to bring you here.”
The visitor sat back. James thought she might be trembling, but she was doing all she could to hide it.
“I come from the island of Valatu, very far from here.”
“Far? That’s on the other side of the world,” James interjected.
“You admit you know it!” Kawena accused.
“My ship called there for supplies once or twice,” he replied. “It’s in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,” he told Alan and Ariel. “Or, well, not the middle, but a thousand miles or more from the coast of Australia.” He turned back to Kawena. “But I never saw you—”
“My father never let me near the harbor when ships were in.”
James could easily see the wisdom of that. “Your father, the English gentleman,” he said. “I don’t remember meeting any—”
“He didn’t work in the trade house. He was not a shopkeeper!”
“The beginning,” Alan reminded her. “And if you could stop interrupting, James.”
“Me? I’m not the one who—”
Alan held up a hand to silence him. James subsided with a frown.
Under three pairs of eyes, Kawena hesitated briefly. Then she put back her shoulders, seeming to gather herself, and said, “My father was the son of a rich English merchant. When he was young, he was sent out on a long voyage, so that he could learn how the trading was done. But when his ship was blown off course by a great storm, and he came to Valatu, he was…much taken with the place. And he met my mother. And so he chose not to go on with his ship, but to stay there.”
Her voice had a wonderful lilt, James thought. She didn’t sound like anyone else he knew.
“He understood what ships needed so far away from their homes,” Kawena continued. “And so he made a place where they could trade for island things. Fruit and other food, fresh water, things that people on the island made. He took in trade items desired by other ships. Rope and metalwork and sailcloth. My father was very wise and…and canny. He built a fortune in this way.” Sadness in her face shifted to anger. “And then you stole it from him!” she said to James.
“No. I didn’t. You’ve made a mistake.”
“Your ship was the last to come before it went missing. None other stopped in our harbor until the one I left on. We searched the whole island, with great…thoroughness.”
Everyone turned to look at James. “I remember stopping there,” he said. “I did speak with the man at the trading post. We loaded fruit and fresh water and a trinket or two. But I know nothing of your father, or his fortune.”
“You took it, and when my father found it was gone, he had a fit and died!”
“I did not!” He grimaced. “I’m sorry about your father, but I did not steal anything from him.”
The trouble was, Kawena was starting to believe him. This large, handsome man was not what she’d expected to find. He didn’t have the tone or the look of a liar. His blue eyes were direct and clear; there was nothing evasive in his stance or his manner. He seemed honestly revolted by her accusations. And being here in this house—the small, pretty woman had been so kind to her, chatting openly about who lived here and her daily life. She gazed at the two brothers with their deep auburn hair that curled slightly, their square jaws and easy grace. No one here felt like a thief. She had no sense of deception.
But if this James Gresham knew nothing of her father’s treasure, then she didn’t know what to do next.
With that thought, the exhaustion and fear and uncertainty that had been hovering under the surface of her consciousness came surging upward. She’d been shoving it all down and ignoring it as she hunted her quarry across the world. Until this moment, there had always been a next step to take, another trace of James Gresham’s path to follow. Now…what was left?
Despite the generous aid of a ship’s captain friend of her father’s—giving her free passage and helping to hide her true identity—she’d spent all her money on this long journey. Aside from the shabby clothes she’d arrived in, she had only a few coins and the ancient pistol she’d bought near the London docks, which she had never meant to fire! That shot was James Gresham’s fault entirely. She’d meant to frighten, not injure.
But if Gresham was not the thief, if she could not immediately recover her father’s fortune… Kawena endured a moment of something very like terror. Everyone she knew, everything familiar, was half a world away. And she had no notion how she would get back to them. In all her twenty years, she had never felt so alone.
Silently, Kawena struggled for control. She would not reveal her plight to the three strangers gazing at her, waiting for her to speak when she had no idea what else to say.
“Are you all right?” asked the young woman. Ariel, she had said to call her Ariel.
Kawena nodded, trying to keep her expression blank. On top of everything else, England made her feel quite disoriented. Everywhere she went in this land, something reminded her of her father. Intonations, mannerisms, habits that she had thought unique to him turned out to be quite common in his home country. It was unsettling, to say the least, and yet fascinating, too. How she would have loved seeing it in his company, sharing each small observation, each start of recognition.
The sharp pain of loss lanced through her again. With her father’s death, she had lost more than a parent. He had been the one person who accepted her wholeheartedly, as she was. With him she didn’t feel the conflicting tides of her dual heritage so strongly. To sit with him in his cluttered workroom was to be at home. She’d listened to all his stories, spoken his language, absorbed the quaint vagaries of English manners as he described them.
Kawena plucked at the blue fabric of the gown Ariel had lent her. She’d worn such dresses, brought from far across the sea, to please him. Other times, she’d slipped on the easier garb of her mother’s people, to show kinship with her family there. Both and neither were fully hers, she often felt. She was warmly welcomed everywhere on her island, yet always just a bit of an outsider. And when her father was gone…he had been her anchor, and now she was adrift.
“Kawena?” said Ariel.
What was there to say except the truth? “No other ship stopped in our harbor after yours,” she said to James Gresham. “And my father always insisted that the captain of each ship be the one to come ashore and trade. No one else.”
“I did trade. But no more than that. Someone on the island must have stolen your treasure. The man in the trading post had a shifty look, as I recall.”
“That was my half brother,” replied Kawena. “I would trust him with my life.” The three children of her mother’s first marriage were as close to her as true siblings. “And I have told you, we searched. There are not so many places to look on the island. And people there all know each other’s business. They would see that there was no way to use my father’s fortune without being expose
d. Anyway, someone would have seen, told.”
“But couldn’t it have been one of the ship’s crew?” asked Ariel.
They all turned to look at her. “Are you siding with her?” demanded James.
“No. It’s just…if your ship was the only one…”
“They don’t let sailors wander about on Valatu. No shore leave allowed.” James Gresham looked at Kawena. “I suppose I see why… The thing is, I was the only one who—”
“Had the chance to steal it,” finished Kawena.
James frowned at her.
“Still,” said Ariel, “someone could have sneaked off the ship at night.”
“They would not know where to look,” said Kawena. Although…could a very cunning man have found his way into the trading center? A big part of her problem was that she didn’t know precisely where her father had kept his hoard. He’d tried to tell her something as he lay dying, but… She swallowed another wave of sorrow.
“My crewmen were not thieves,” said James.
Kawena straightened. “My father told me that Royal Navy crews are the dregs of press gangs and criminals.”
James started to speak, stopped, then said, “My crew wasn’t.”
“None of them?” asked Alan. “If a man is faced with the temptation of, what, a chest full of gold?” He looked at Kawena.
“My father put his fortune in…small things.”
“What kind of things?” James asked.
Kawena’s conviction that this man had stolen her father’s cache of jewels finally died under the simple curiosity of his gaze. He simply couldn’t look and feel so guileless and be guilty. Another wave of despair swept over her. If it wasn’t him, if her long, long chase had been misguided, what was she to do?
She tried to rally her spirits. She couldn’t give up. She just couldn’t. Perhaps a very cunning thief might have slipped past the watches her father set on trading ships. There was a chance that such a man could have discovered the jewels. What other explanation was there? “Someone from your ship robbed me,” she declared, wishing she felt as certain as she had when she first arrived. “And the captain is responsible for the acts of his crew.”
“I…” James Gresham didn’t deny the principle. “My ship’s been decommissioned, the crew dispersed to other vessels, or mustered out, even. There’s nothing I can do—”
“We must find them, and question them,” Kawena said. She tried to sound as if there could be no doubt about the matter. “It is your duty to make this right.” She saw that this latter idea reached him, which only increased her conviction that he was not the thief.
“It might not be so difficult,” mused the other man, the brother. “Such a man would be spending more lavishly than made any sense, I suppose.”
Kawena cast him a grateful look.
James scowled. “None of you understand what a large task this is,” he said. “It would take a deal of time, and pulling some strings at the Admiralty. Which I’m not sure how to do, if you want the truth.”
Ariel leaned forward in her chair. “Well, you can both stay with us until it’s all straightened out.”
Kawena tried to hide her relief.
“I didn’t agree to do any ‘straightening,’” James objected.
Ariel looked at him. His brother looked at him. Kawena focused a steady, expectant gaze on his face. She wasn’t pleading. She wouldn’t stoop to plead. But she was…anticipating. She had a feeling that a silent appeal for justice would make a difference to this man.
“Oh, very well,” James Gresham muttered under the combined onslaught. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Two
“Do you think it wise to have offered hospitality to a total stranger?” Lord Alan Gresham asked his wife. Ariel, nestled against his shoulder on the parlor sofa, fixed him with her entrancing hazel gaze. As they were alone—their unexpected guest ensconced in the last spare bedchamber and James off brooding in his own room—he pulled her closer.
Ariel smiled her approval of this move. “Probably not wise,” she said.
“Then…?”
“If wise means cautious and cool and unwilling to inconvenience oneself to help,” she added. “But I believed her story. Didn’t you?”
Alan considered all that he’d heard earlier, then nodded.
“And I know what it’s like—what it feels like—to be alone in the world, with nowhere to turn. Kawena had that look. I could not turn her out into the street.”
Her hands clenched into delicate fists. Her expression was fierce. Remembering the day he’d found her all alone in her mother’s dark house, deserted by parent and servants, yet refusing to be cowed, Alan was flooded with love for his spirited wife. He had to kiss her.
Ariel laced her arms around his neck and kissed him back with such enthusiasm that neither had any further interest in conversation for quite some time. Indeed, their rising ardor dictated a delicious retreat to their own chamber in the waning hours of the afternoon.
However, after dinner that evening, Ariel led her husband and guests back to the pleasant room off the garden and decreed that they must make a plan.
“She’s going to have to tell me what I’m looking for first,” James responded. His period of solitary reflection had not improved his mood.
Kawena hesitated, reluctant to reveal any of her secrets. But if she didn’t trust these people, what was her other choice? Even if she gave up, acknowledged her voyage a failure, she didn’t have the money to pay her passage home. And she was not giving up! She refused!
She took a breath and made up her mind. It felt like stepping off the cliff on the north side of her island home and plunging into the deep green water below it. “My father kept his fortune in jewels,” she said. “He always traded for gems when he could. He knew how to value them, and he said they were the most portable kind of wealth.” She held out cupped hands. “They were in a cloth bag about this big.”
Alan raised his eyebrows. “A fortune indeed.” He turned to James. “It should be easier to find a sailor selling jewels than one merely spending coin.”
His brother nodded, but didn’t look happier. “I’ve been thinking about this tangle,” he said. “We’re going to need an admiral. At least.”
“What for?” asked Kawena.
James sighed. “I can’t just march into the Admiralty with a list of my former crewmen and demand to know where they are. Or, I could, but I wouldn’t get anywhere. The clerks will want explanations and authorizations. Particularly authorizations. I suspect I would need approvals just to get a load of forms to fill in. And submitting forms to the navy is like…tossing sovereigns in a wishing well. Only it takes a lot longer. Just about as likely to do any good, though.”
The others considered this. “But an admiral could find the men?” said Ariel.
“He could use back channels, get me in to see the proper person, unofficially. If he wanted to.”
“Then you must ask an admiral for help,” said Kawena. The conclusion seemed obvious. She didn’t see the problem.
“Right,” replied James. “The thing is, I’m not acquainted with any admirals.”
“But you are in the navy. Surely you know an admiral.”
“I’ve stood on a deck near one or two of them. Shook hands with another at a reception in Sydney.”
“Well, perhaps he would remember you,” said Kawena.
“Possibly.” James’s voice was very dry. “But he has no reason to do me any favors.”
“I don’t believe you even want to try to help me.”
“Oh, no, only too happy to risk my career to find your baubles,” he muttered.
“If you mentioned Papa?” said Alan diffidently.
“I’ve always made my way on my own merits,” James replied.
Alan nodded as if he understood perfectly. Kawena looke
d from one brother to the other, confused. “You might ask Nathaniel,” Alan suggested.
“What has he to do with anything?”
“Who is Nathaniel?” asked Kawena.
“He’s their oldest brother,” Ariel told her as the men conferred quietly. “There are six of them, altogether.”
A picture formed in Kawena’s mind—six tall, handsome, auburn-haired men with piercing blue eyes. The image was rather dazzling.
“Nathaniel is Viscount Hightower,” Ariel finished.
“Viscount?” Kawena knew this was a noble title. She’d heard of such names from her father. But it wasn’t the sort of rank she’d associated with this comfortable but small house.
“Alan and James, all of them, are sons of the Duke of Langford.”
“Duke!” The word came out so loud that the other three stared at Kawena for a moment. When she said nothing more, they continued their deliberations.
“Nathaniel has a knack for solving problems,” Alan said. “And he’s discreet. You can talk to him about matters you don’t want to…burden Papa with.”
“Burden?” James looked at him, wondering what escapades his studious youngest brother could have had to cover up. But he understood the notion completely. The trouble with going to their father wasn’t fear. The duke was no domestic tyrant. Quite the opposite, really. The thing was, you didn’t want to disappoint him. Ever. It didn’t bear thinking of. And then, other times, matters that seemed to carry the weight of the world just amused him too much.
“We should write Nathaniel,” Alan said. “He’ll know how to find a useful admiral.”
“He’s on his honeymoon,” Ariel objected.
“No, they’ve left the country house and gone to Brighton.”
Ariel gave her husband a look that Kawena couldn’t quite interpret. Perhaps she was amused.
“Are you sure?” James said.
“Quite,” replied Alan.
“Well, I suppose he can always say no.” James rose. “I’ll give it a try.”
