Silence Is Golden

by Sara Ackerman

  Yet even stranger, he possessed fine features and pale smooth skin he tried to disguise with a thick, full beard. It looked out of place on his face and served to confirm her suspicions something was not as it should be. It wasn’t until Lord Newgate gestured toward her and the captain turned to stare at her she knew what had been troubling her. He gifted her with a supercilious lift of a brow arched over penetrating ice-blue eyes, and her jaw dropped.

  With one look, so many things clicked into place. The urge to call out was overwhelming, but at a slight shake of his head, she clamped her mouth shut and waited. Someone had a lot of explaining to do.

  The three men talked for several more minutes before the older man took his leave and moved down ship, shouting orders at the crewmen milling about. Lord Newgate and the captain, their conversation concluded, approached her.

  “Is this she?” the captain asked, his voice low and gruff.

  “May I introduce Mr. Allen Brathwaite, captain of the Stallion of the Sea?” Lord Newgate said to Evie.

  She crossed her arms over her chest and frowned, refusing to play into this little charade.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Brathwaite. Her ladyship is fatigued from her harrowing ordeal in the hold. Otherwise, I am sure she would tell you how pleasant it is to meet you.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and she held Mr. Brathwaite’s gaze with her own.

  “Doubtful, Lord Newgate, but I’ll take your word for it,” the captain replied.

  Lord Newgate grabbed her arm, his strong fingers pinching into the soft flesh above her gloves as he whispered, “Your rudeness borders on incivility. Show the man some respect, and curtsy.”

  She struggled within his grasp, but she could not escape his iron hold. “Enough, Newgate!” Mr. Brathwaite ordered, his sharp bark a firm reminder of who was in charge. Lord Newgate dropped her arm, and she stepped back, rubbing the spot he had gripped.

  “You have your orders, Newgate. Now go!”

  He stayed put. “Captain, I’d like to assist in your questioning.”

  The captain sidled up to Lord Newgate, and though he was several inches shorter, he seized the taller man about the throat and squeezed. “I will take care of her myself. Am I clear?”

  Newgate’s eyes bulged from their sockets as he struggled to breathe. “Yes…Captain,” he gasped, and the captain released him. Coughing, Newgate didn’t even spare her a look as he bowed to Captain Brathwaite and scurried away.

  Any remaining crew had cleared off the gangplank, leaving her and the captain alone. He closed the distance between them in one hurried stride.

  “I imagine you have some questions, and I promise to tell you what I can, but right now, you are in grave danger,” the captain said in a low voice, the gruffness fading the faster the words came. “I need you to remain quiet and trust me, please, or we’re both dead. Can I trust you?”

  Questions piled on top of questions, spinning round and round in her head like a runaway top, but she bit her lip and agreed.

  “Good.” The captain grabbed her by the arm and pulled her down the gangplank. “We need to get you off this ship before—”

  A large shadow blocked their path. She squinted into the shadows to see who stopped them, but the bigger man’s face remained obscured. “Captain, you weren’t by any chance escorting this charming lady off the ship, were you?” His oily voice skittered along Evie’s spine, causing gooseflesh to break out on her arms. She wished to cling to the captain’s familiar presence, but fear immobilized her. Her arms remained rigid at her sides.

  “She has no useful information. I want to be rid of her and save us the hassle of explaining to her family why she was killed in France.”

  “I disagree, Brathwaite, and I’m the one financing the trip—”

  “And I am the captain of this ship. I say who sails with us, not you!”

  “But we all know who is in charge, don’t we?” He stepped out of the shadows, and Evie gasped, noting the smooth, bald head and the silvery puckered scar running the length of the man’s cheek.

  A memory surfaced of her seven-year-old self, slipping out of the nursery and padding down the stairs to see her father. She had seen him come out of his study, but he missed her slight form crouching on the stairs, a railing clutched between her small hands. This man had loomed over her father, yelling at him, flecks of spittle hanging from his beard and glistening in the candlelight. His scar flashed a brilliant glow of pink, and she knew he was evil. She had wanted to scream at her father to leave this man, had opened her mouth to warn him, but no sound emerged. But the man had seen her standing on the stairway landing, mouth opened in a soundless scream of terror, and he had winked at her, his scar puckering and jumping on his face like a macabre puppet. She had fled to the nursery and cried herself to sleep. Weeks later, nightmares of him still disturbed her slumber. Her mother and father had tried to reassure her the man was a specter, a fiendish invention of her overactive imagination. She knew he was real.

  Now here he stood, her childish nightmare come to life. For the first time since leaving Atwood Manor, she feared she’d not make it off this ship alive.

  The captain stiffened but complied. “As you wish, Michelson. I will take her to my quarters for questioning.”

  “Wise decision, young man.” Michelson leered, doing nothing to lessen his monstrous visage.

  Taking her arm, the captain steered her up the gangplank and across the length of the ship to the master quarters. Once inside the room and behind a locked door, Evie’s control broke. Comforting arms encircled her waist, and she muffled her sobs on the starchy fabric of the coat she had admired minutes earlier.

  For the first time in her life, she didn’t have a plan. Everything had been turned around. Instead of finding Alfred and reuniting with him, she was now a prisoner. The one bright spot in this otherwise awful mess was knowing she was not alone. She lifted her head from the coat and searched those familiar ice-blue eyes with her own. “What are we going to do, Beatrice?”

  Chapter 21

  Luck was a fickle creature. As with wealth, it was a matter of who had it and who did not. For much of his adult life, Alfred had believed he populated the group of people who didn’t have it. When he considered the loss of his father, the missed opportunity to travel the seas, and the subsequent life of drudgery he had inhabited as a solicitor, he knew luck did not favor him.

  The moment he had made the decision to leave it all behind, he predicted his luck was going to change because this time he would leave nothing to chance. Preparation and planning were needed to restore the odds in his favor. When he embarked on his journey, he had been confident of his success, yet luck eluded him as numerous disasters impeded his travel and necessitated his continued confinement with strangers.

  “One more push and we’re there, Mr. Coombes!” Mr. Coachman yelled over the splashing waves. He hefted his oars through the water and gave a final heave. The boat’s bottom rubbed against the sandy shore, and he dropped the oars he had been wielding for the last several hours. Dragging himself out of the boat he and Mr. Coachman had rowed downriver to the port, Alfred flopped to the soggy earth. Had he the strength, he would have kissed the ground, but it proved too strenuous. He was injured, exhausted, and soaked to the skin, and all he wanted to do was crawl into a warm bed and stay for a week or so.

  “Rest for a minute, Mr. Coombes, but we must be on our way.” The smaller man bustled about, lugging the boat onto shore and removing their meager supplies from the hull.

  He grunted and rolled onto his back, throwing an arm across his eyes. Luck, and time, was against him. For a brief moment, he allowed himself the indulgence of wallowing in self-pity. In spite of his best efforts to remove the odds of misfortune from his planning, he had not foreseen the tempest knocking him off course. No one, not even he, could have predicted the havoc one small woman could wreak. Now here he was, embroiled in a forgery scheme and on a mad mission to rescue his impetuous soon-to-be fiancée from dangerous s
mugglers. His education at Harrow had not prepared him for this task, nor had his years of negotiating contracts. All he could rely on was luck, and that good lady had never smiled upon him.

  He removed his arm from over his eyes and stared into the darkening sky above. Doubt and fear pushed him to question his ability to protect the one he loved. How am I to manage this feat when everything I’ve tried goes awry? He wanted nothing more than to give up, yet failure was not an option. If he did not succeed, she would be lost to him forever, a fate too horrible to even contemplate.

  “Are you going to lie there all day feeling sorry for yourself, or are you going to get up and find your young miss?”

  Someone had dared to interrupt his self-loathing. He glared up at the offending intruder and gasped. A familiar round face obscured his vision, and he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. Blinking several times, he peered above him. The image had not changed.

  “Did you ever expect to see me again, Mr. Coombes? I’ll wager not.”

  Pushing himself up on his elbows, he used the last reserves of his energy to rise.

  “Mrs. Peabody!” He couldn’t believe she was here, but his eyes told him he was not mistaken. “Whatever are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to help you board ship.”

  “I beg your pardon?” He couldn’t have heard right. His head injury had him hearing what he wanted to hear.

  She grabbed onto his hands and steadied him. “I can get you to the ship where they are keeping her. She’s aboard the Stallion of the Sea.”

  Desperate hope fluttered inside him and had him believing his rescue was not doomed to fail.

  “Is it still in port?” Mr. Coachman asked. He strapped on one of the pack bags they had brought with them from Atwood Manor.

  “I did as you instructed. He’s kept them ashore with one excuse or another for the better part of two days, but today something changed. It’s good you’re here. My son doesn’t know how much longer he can stall them.”

  “Your son?”

  “Didn’t Mr. Coachman tell you?”

  “Tell me what?” he demanded of the wiry driver. “What is going on?”

  “I told you how his lordship and his three companions tied me up and left me alongside the road. What I didn’t tell you is how I met up with Mrs. Peabody on my way back. She was driving a donkey cart south, and stopped when she saw me. Seeing as how she knew the young lady, I told her what’d ’appened.”

  “The poor girl,” Mrs. Peabody clucked. “I always knew a single woman traveling alone invited trouble. Now, with the young lady in serious danger, I wanted to do my part and help, even if she had poked me in the ribs with her bony little elbows on occasion.”

  “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Peabody, but how were you able to detain a ship from leaving port?” She gave him a gimlet glare, and he retracted his words with as much haste as possible. “In no way do I doubt your ability to do so if you were of a mind, Mrs. Peabody. A formidable woman like you, I imagine, could stem the tide if desired, but for us mere mortals, how would one go about detaining a ship?”

  “Formidable, is it?” She hooted with laughter, and her many chins wobbled with mirth. “Aye, I suppose you are right. Do you remember I was going to visit my son? After three weeks of solid rain, I had about enough of him, his wife, and my grandkids. I took off to port, where my eldest boy is harbormaster in Southampton.”

  Mr. Coachman interjected. “When she told me this, I knew of a way to keep the lady safe until I could bring you to ’er.”

  “You had your son stall the ship from leaving? How is it possible? Did you not fear he would lose his position?”

  “Don’t you worry none about him. My boy owed me, and he knew it, too. Two days he’s kept the ship from sailing to France. He told me as how he couldn’t hold her past today, so it’s a good thing you and Mr. Coachman showed up.”

  “Mrs. Peabody, you’re a saint! I don’t know how to repay you.”

  “I don’t know as anyone’s ever called me a saint afore, but you’re a sweet man for saying it. All I ask is you marry your young miss and keep her out of trouble. A couple of babes in the belly should do the trick.” She nudged him in the ribs, and laughed until her own belly shook.

  “But how am I to board ship?” He looked at his clothes. Soaked and muddy, his clothing lay in tatters. His mother would be appalled at the damage done to her handiwork, and even in his sorry state, he did not resemble a sailor.

  “Never you fear, Mr. Coombes. My boy has to make his final inspection today. When he’s busy with the captain, you sneak aboard.”

  “Won’t the other sailors see me?”

  “He’s got a trick to get you on. All you have to do is be ready to run when it’s time.”

  His confidence returned, and a kernel of hope took root. “I can run.”

  “Good. Now let’s get you into something dry and talk about what you’re going to do once you find her.”

  Mrs. Peabody tucked her arm through his, and their little party of three walked to town discussing how he should go about getting her off the ship. He listened, content for once to have others do the planning for him. Maybe he wasn’t plagued by ill luck. Maybe luck, either good or bad, was nothing more than Fate directing a body through life until a person found himself where he needed to be.

  He looked to either side of him, at his traveling companions turned friends, friends who were willing to help him accomplish a nearly impossible task, and he thanked Lady Luck for his good fortune.

  ****

  The Stallion of the Sea sailed in open, black waters, having departed Southampton four hours earlier. Alfred pulled his sailor’s cap low about his ears and slunk farther into the lengthening shadows on deck. He was still amazed he had been able to board ship, but Mrs. Peabody had been right. Her son had arranged a spectacular diversion. While Alfred lurked out of sight but prepared to run, a young boy herded a flock of sheep down the dock and up the gangplank of the Stallion of the Sea. Chaos had ensued, and in the confusion of stampeding ovine, he had slipped aboard while the seamen were busy evicting those wooly diversions. By the time all had settled above deck, he had snuck below and hidden amongst the cargo in the dark hull. For hours he sat behind the large crates and barrels stacked in the hold, his long legs folded into his chest, ears attuned to the noise above, waiting.

  Before heading out to sea, the activity above deck was constant. Seamen ran to and fro, the vibration of their feet on the wooden slats jarring his position underneath. Heavy grunting and the rhythmic sound of ropes being pulled ensued as the captain barked orders for the sailors to hoist the sails. The Stallion jerked and shuddered, catching a gust of wind in its billowy sails. She was reluctant to leave her comfortable berth, but she soon found her rhythm in the strong pull of the tide. Though restless waves buffeted the prow, she caught the outgoing current and cut through the water. Then all was quiet.

  Some time later, much of the activity on deck had ceased and in the lull, raucous laughter and drunken singing filled the silence.

  The sailors must be dining. It’s now or never. Rising, he stretched his stiff joints and wove his way around the barrels, congratulating himself on his stealth, until he bumped into a small crate, which hit a barrel and knocked it over. He crouched low and prepared himself to fight should someone approach. After several minutes of tense silence, his hand clutching the knife sheathed at his ankle, no one came. His shoulders slumped at his narrow escape. He righted the barrel he had knocked over, surprised at how light it was. A quick glance within showed it carried nothing but paper. He grabbed a piece of the paper and studied it in the dim light.

  Notes! Not any notes, either, but the same kind of forged banknotes Evie had given to Mr. Coachman, the same kind as had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

  It’s as Lord Kendrick and I feared! They are running forged notes to France. A quick perusal of the other crates revealed more of the same. Hundreds of one-pound bank notes drafted from the Bank of Eng
land, made out to bearer, filled the crates. A few quick calculations, and he totaled a staggering sum.

  “One hundred thousand pounds!”

  A further search revealed more upsetting news. There were dozens of barrels filled with gunpowder, and numerous crates containing flintlock muskets. While it was not unusual for supply ships to be carrying weapons for the troops, not all the barrels or crates were marked the same. Though each one bore a black stamp in English lettering itemizing the contents within, a third of them were also stamped in French. In other words, he surmised, not all the supplies were intended for British soldiers. If his suspicion was correct, Michelson was doing more than providing financial assistance to the French; he was arming her men.

  A terrible surge of patriotism overwhelmed him, and he cursed his inability to both rescue his bride-to-be and destroy the supplies. Indecision once again waged its awful war, and for one brief moment his resolve wavered. Britain must come first. But he recalled Evie’s sweet smiles, her fiery intelligence, and her cunning mind, and his decision was made for him. Thousands of men were fighting for their country; he was all she had. This was not his battle to fight. He replaced the spilled notes, resealed the lids of the barrels, and snuck out of the hold.

  On deck, the first watch was ending. His best chance of sneaking unseen to the captain’s quarters from the hold door to the stern was to do it during the changing of the night watch. Hugging the shadows of the mast, he waited until the new watchman announced himself and ascended to the crow’s nest. While the two seamen exchanged greetings, he ran the length of the ship to the captain’s door. He pressed his ear to the solid wooden plank, hoping to hear any noise to confirm her presence within.

  When planning with Mrs. Peabody and Mr. Coachman, both had told him the captain’s quarters were the best location to search for her. Mrs. Peabody’s son had asked to discuss matters in private, and the captain had refused admittance. It wasn’t much to go on, but it seemed the obvious location to hold her.