Kate Moore (4 page)

“You still wish to meet the Viper, my lord?” Croisset asked when he had stepped down. “You do not wish to accept the sum I offer?”

“You need only to inform me how I may find this Viper, Croisset,” came the reply.

“Ah, my lord, the Viper will find you. His messengers will meet your ship.”

Croisset waved his hand in a gesture that might have been polite except for a certain sinister cast of his features in the moonlight, and Margaret began to descend the path taken by the servant with the lantern. The path was scarcely wide enough for her and switched back and forth sharply, making their descent quite steep. Behind her she could hear the thief, quiet and sure in his steps, and behind him Croisset, breathing loudly from his exertions and brushing the branches along the path with a noisy rustle like a dog pursuing a scent through the undergrowth. At a turning in the path where it nearly doubled back upon itself, the thief caught her arm and whispered, “Not a sound now, Meg, no matter what you hear.”

He released her arm, and there was an ominous crack of a dry branch breaking. Even as she identified it in her mind, she heard a second sound which she could not identify, a sound like a bucket hitting the sides of a deep well, and a third sound, like a great bellows slowly settling. Thus, before she turned, she knew Croisset had been felled. Relief made her knees weak; her thief did not mean to go to Portugal after all. The servant ahead of them had halted, too and peered back at her, lifting his lantern high. Of the thief there was no sign.

“Monsieur?”
called the servant hesitantly.

“I think Mr. Croisset has fallen,” said Margaret.

The servant looked at her suspiciously as if he thought her words a trick. Margaret backed against the bushes as he made his way gingerly past her, repeating,
“Monsieur?”

She held her breath, wondering where her thief was and what he meant to do. When the servant reached the turn in the path, she heard a thud and the merest squeal as if some animal’s cry had been cut off before it could escape the throat from which it came, then a rustling of leaves and a tumbling of dirt and rock and then silence. She waited. Another breathless moment passed before her thief appeared with the lantern and a fat purse. His coat and breeches showed no signs of what must have been a struggle in the grass.

“Croisset and his henchman are sleeping, Meg,” he said. “We need not fear that they will plot against us with the captain of this vessel.”

“But surely you do not mean to go to Portugal now?”

“But I do,” he answered. “I confess it was not my plan, but ’tis a better one.”

“Then I must leave you,” she said, backing away, hopelessly trapped on the narrow path between the approaching dinghy and the determined man before her.

“Ah, but I cannot let you go,” he said, catching her hand and pulling her with him along the path. “Even if our sleeping friends did not wake to do you harm, there is no safety for one like you along this coast.”

When they reached the bottom of the path, the dinghy touched the pebbled shore, crunching rocks and sand. The two men inside bounded over the gunwales and rapidly pulled the boat up where the surf could not dislodge it. The taller of these began to speak in French, not the French that Margaret had learned from her governess, but a rapid, peculiarly accented French full of terms Margaret had never heard. She knew just enough to understand that her companion was once again lying. He seemed to know the peculiar argot of the sailors, and when he drew glittering coins from the fat purse, she knew his lies would be accepted. She was handed into the boat, and sat upon a damp bench, pulling her cloak about her.

The brawny sailors in their soft caps pushed the boat into the surf and again took up the oars. The small craft dipped and slapped over the breakers toward a larger boat anchored in the bay. This was a vessel unlike any Margaret had ever seen, with a highpointed prow, bright with stripes of red and yellow and blue, the colors vivid even in the moonlight. There was a single tall mast amidships before a boxlike cabin over which extended a long boom. When their dinghy pulled alongside the larger vessel, they were accosted in an unfamiliar tongue by a man Margaret took to be the captain. Again her companion spoke with languid assurance; again a glitter of gold gained compliance.

Once they were aboard, her thief led her to the central cabin, and they descended two steps to an inner door, which he opened, revealing a compartment apparently prepared for Croisset himself with a wide berth built into one wall, a lamp and chest, and other necessary accoutrements.

“Croisset meant to be comfortable, I see,” he said. “I hope you will make yourself so in his stead, Meg Summers.” She thought he waited for some sign of approval from her, but she felt only sobs welling up irresistibly inside her so that she could barely speak. As she did not wish to cry before him, she turned and took hold of the door handle. Only one word came to mind.

“Traitor,” she said. Though it was no more than a whisper, she thought he flinched at it. She slammed the door as hard as she could, and it banged shut in a very satisfactory way. But when she looked to lock it, there was no key. A glance around the narrow cabin in which she was to make herself comfortable confirmed that she had no means of escape. Since he had carried her from the earl’s library—how many hours ago?—she had been telling herself she should escape at the very next chance. Now no further chances would come. Through delay and hesitation she had allowed herself to become party to the betrayal of her country. She stood very still as the tears of weariness, frustration, and loss came at last. The ship lurched forward, and she stumbled into the berth and curled up in her cape, and very soon Margaret Somerley slept.

***

For a few minutes there was a bustle on the deck as all hands worked to trim the sails and get the ship underway. The young man in the green coat observed it all quite carefully. When they reached open sea and the breeze picked up, he made his way around coiled lines and nets and strings of cork and wood, away from the steersman to the prow of the boat. He leaned over the side and drew from an inner pocket a thick bundle of papers. These he unfolded and tore to pieces, allowing the white fragments to fall like leaves shaken loose in a gale. They drifted down to the inky waters and disappeared one by one in the vast blackness of the sea.

4

M
ARGARET WOKE TO
strange sounds, not the birds or horses or dogs of Wynrose, nor the rustle of maids’ skirts outside her door or the clatter of wheels outside her window in London, but to creaks and groans and sudden, sharp snaps, and a whistle of wind above her and somewhere below her a whispering rush of movement. The movement was a slow, rolling rise, a trembling pause, and a swift, sliding descent. She opened her eyes. Above her were the rough beams of the cabin to which she had been led late the night before. It was impossible that she should be here, yet here she was.

The lamp no longer burned, but a sort of gray daylight entering from two small windows illuminated the narrow compartment, only as wide again as the berth on which she lay. Against the wall opposite the door was a stand with a pitcher and basin set into holes in the top to keep them steady. Across from her were a low chest and a commode and above them several hooks on one of which she saw the thief’s greatcoat and on another her cape, the cape she had been wearing when she had curled up on the berth. She felt the rough blanket that lay over her. He had entered the room as she slept, had done this simple thing for her comfort. At the thought of how he might have looked at her, at how he might have touched her, she sat up abruptly, flung off the blanket, and swung her feet over the side of the bed. Where had her slippers gone?

In her agitation she wished to move, but though the berth was wide enough for Croisset, the confines of the narrow cabin allowed her no more than a few lurching steps in either direction. How very foolish she had been in all that had to do with her thief and how selfish as well. What were her parents enduring in her absence? She had hardly spared a thought for them during the adventures of the evening before, but by now they must be distressed at her disappearance. Would they believe she had run away? Her father would be very hurt if he thought so, but how could they guess that she had been abducted? Her mother would consider only the embarrassment to the family before the Earl of Haddon and would even now be apologizing for Margaret’s rudeness or lamenting Margaret’s lost opportunity to meet the earl’s son. At the disloyal thought, a recollection came to contradict it, a memory of her mother sitting beside her after she had broken her arm riding a forbidden colt. There had been no blame in her mother’s words or looks, only comfort and reassurance. How had she come to doubt her mother so in just a few short weeks in London?

There was a knock on the door. She felt unprepared to meet him, but there was certainly no place to hide in the cramped cabin. “Come in,” she said.

The handle turned and the door swung toward her. Her thief stood on the threshold with a rough wooden tray. A stirring of the air in the room brought her the smell of bread and strong coffee, and she was at once ravenous, cold, and conscious of all the needs of her body. It would be sensible, she knew, to accept the comforts and necessities the thief offered, but how could she? Her parents must fear dangers and discomforts which she had not the merit of suffering.

He stepped forward, and she stepped back. A pained look crossed his face. “Last night,” he said, “you advised me not to go unprovided into danger. This morning, let me return the favor.” He set the tray on the bed, turned, and was gone, and Margaret knew a moment of regret.

In the end, she did what she must, and settled herself on the berth with the tray before her and the blanket about her shoulders. A little curl of steam still rose from the coffee. With a sigh she took the heavy cup and sipped the hot liquid. From above she heard muffled shouts and footsteps, and the regular creaks and groans of wood and rope, and the flutter and snap of canvas. Was he up there or in some other cabin below? She resolved to remain in the cabin, to avoid him in thought as well as in person.

It was a resolution more easily made than kept, for during the long day she could not but reflect on the events that had brought her to such a pass. Try as she might to condemn her companion entirely, she could not escape the thought that some of the blame was hers. Surely she could have stopped him somehow.

With the gray light of a second morning, she woke to her duty. The only right action in her situation would be to stop the thief from selling secrets to the French and to escape as soon as she reached Portugal to return to England, however unwelcome she might be there when her adventure was known. She would not waste another day in thought.

After she had fortified herself with bread and coffee, she attempted to put to rights her rumpled person. There was no mirror to guide her efforts, but she brushed and shook her skirts and ran her fingers through her hair. The results could hardly be acceptable to her mother. Indeed she laughed ruefully to herself; her mother would be horrified at the limp, soiled muslin. She had pulled her cape from the hook when she stopped to consider her stockinged feet. Then she saw that her captor’s coat had disappeared in the night. When had he come? And why? She turned to the door. Beside it were her kid slippers, fresh and clean, though she knew they must have been quite dirty when she had come aboard. She stepped into them, pulled her cape tightly about her, and opened the door.

Then she could see other doors and steps leading to the hold and to the deck. She chose the latter, ascending to the deck, stopped momentarily by dazzling light that brought tears to her eyes. Shading her eyes with her hand, she looked about. Two sailors regarded her with leering interest, and she turned and made her way over ropes and nets to the bow of the boat. Light bounced off the water in blinding sparkles. The sea itself was a deep purple, almost black, except for the frothy caps of the waves. For some minutes she watched its changing surface with no other thought than how beautiful it was. But the breeze whipped at her skirts, chilling her so that she turned away from the water to find herself face-to-face with her mysterious companion.

He sat with his back to the cabin, his legs stretched lazily in the sun, and the very ease of his manner fired Margaret’s determination to do battle with him.

“Care to join me, Miss Somerley?” he asked. “It’s quite a bit warmer here out of the wind.” He patted the deck beside him in invitation. Briefly, she considered her tactics. To remain standing and aloof was no doubt the wisest course, but she would hardly be able to question him with her teeth chattering. So she huddled down on the warm boards, keeping as much distance from him as she could in the small patch of clear deck.

In planning to confront him, she had forgotten how unsettling was his smile. She looked away, mastering the temptation to gaze at him, and attempted to frame a question so penetrating that he would instantly confess his identity and his plot. In this she was hampered by the impropriety of addressing him by the only name she knew.

“Mr. . . . ?” she began.

“Drew,” he countered.

“A name from your childhood?” she asked, recalling the friendly familiarity of his exchange with the earl’s groom.

He laughed. “You do not trap me so easily, Meg,” he said.

“Croisset called you
my lord
,” she accused, the more sharply perhaps because she had turned to him and found his laughing blue eyes likely to weaken her resolve. “Are you a lord?”

“No,” he answered easily, apparently undismayed by her question.

“Then who did you pretend to be?” She sat up straight, adjusting her position slightly so that she might confront him directly and compromising with the chill wind so that she might not be lulled by his smile. “There must be another spy, a
lord
who intended to steal the earl’s papers and sell them to the French.” The idea was exciting. Her thief might not be as wicked as he seemed.

“Perhaps Croisset merely flatters all Englishmen with titles,” he suggested, to Margaret’s frustration neither confirming nor denying her suspicion.

“No,” she said, “that’s not it. You were . . . are impersonating someone. That is why you changed your hair and clothes and voice before you met with Croisset. But why?”

He pulled Croisset’s purse from an inner pocket and hefted it lightly in his palm, suggesting its weight. Money of course, she thought, and her spirits sank at the evidence of his greed. He had wanted more than Croisset offered; he had taken Croisset’s purse; and he meant to be paid yet again by the Viper.

“But surely,” she said, reasoning aloud, “the sapphires you gave me are worth as much as any papers the French might buy.” The glances of the rude sailors had cautioned her to tuck these away in a pocket of her cloak.

“Then you see why I must replenish my coffers,” he replied.

“I don’t see at all,” she answered. “You could take back the sapphires and be rich, and then you would not need to sell any papers to the French. You and I could return to England, and I could slip the papers back into the earl’s library with no one the wiser.”

“Except Croisset, of course,” he said dryly.

Of course
. Margaret did not like to think of Croisset’s rage when he woke and found them and his money gone. His vengeance would be terrible if he caught them, and she was sure he would try. And if the angry Frenchman did not kill her thief, surely English justice would. But, she reminded herself, if she could recover the papers or prevent their sale to the French, he would not be guilty of treason after all. It was no more than Prudence would do for Tom True.

“But you have fooled Croisset once and gained a fat purse. Might we not fool him again?”

“And what would be the gain?” he queried coolly.

“Your life,” she answered, and blushed for the intensity with which she had said it, hurrying into further speech. “And the good of your country and the respect of all good men and women.”

He laughed, but it was not the teasing laugh she found so pleasant. “At least one of those rewards might be worth something,” he said, “but no gold?”

“I can hardly promise you gold,” she retorted, affronted that he had shown greed in the face of her concern. She turned her head away so that he would not see her bitter disappointment.

“Alas,” he said, “without gold, what will I do when I want to give some brave girl a bauble?” Margaret felt his fingers touch her chin and yielded to their gentle insistence that she turn back to him. He was kneeling beside her on the deck. “And if I give up my wicked ways, will I win your respect?” he asked quietly. Untrusting, she studied the handsome face so close to hers. She could detect no deceit in its clean lines and fair features. But if she offered her respect, something of herself, would he really abandon his treason?

“Yes,” she said, “if you will turn the papers over to me and allow me to restore them to the Earl of Haddon, I will respect you.” In her eagerness to persuade him she swayed forward slightly.

“I can’t,” he said.

“Oh,” she cried, in the grip of an emotion quite new to her. He had played upon her hopes. The brightness of his eyes had deceived her again. While she took it for the fire of purpose, it was merely the gleam of greed. She pulled at her skirts and cape so that she might rise and flee, but he caught her by the shoulders with his strong hands and subdued her resistance by the simple expedient of wrapping his arms about her in a tight embrace.

“Meg,” he began, speaking down at her averted face, “I said
I can’t
, not
I don’t wish to
. I do what I must do, and when I have done it, I shall restore you to your family. Now,” he continued, “I shall go below so you may stay here to enjoy the sun and breeze, but it would be well if you were willing to negotiate a truce with me.” He released her, and she felt his gaze on her as he waited for her reply. She held herself rigidly still and refused to look at him until she could command her voice properly.

“I may be forced to accompany you,” she said, “but I do not choose to be on familiar terms with a thief and a traitor.” He was gone almost as soon as the words were spoken, and if, after he left, she found her cape inadequate protection from the chill breeze and occasional spray, she would not admit it, even to herself. When the sun set on her second day at sea, she numbly made her way back to the cabin.

On her return, changes in her cabin were immediately evident. Someone had straightened the berth and brought fresh water and made other arrangements for her comfort. Across the blanket lay a man’s cambric nightshirt. When she lifted the article and examined it she found it had been peculiarly altered, the sleeves chopped short and a hasty seam taken up the back in regular though unsightly stitches. It was too small a garment for any man she had seen aboard the ship, so it must be intended for her, strange as that seemed. She hung her cape upon its hook and saw once again her rumpled muslin. What a pleasure it would be to doff her limp, soiled dress. She had reviled her captor, and he had provided for her comfort. Her last thought that day was that she did not hate him as she should.

The third morning of her voyage new sounds and rougher motion woke her. It was rain she heard, passing in driving gusts across the roof of the cabin. Where was he, she thought, and immediately reproached herself for not wondering instead how her parents were taking her disappearance. Yet the otherness of her circumstances, the unfamiliarity of everything around her, made her parents seem impossibly remote. She had a vision of them making calls, entertaining guests, sitting in their drawing room, her mother at the pianoforte, her father with a book, as if she had never existed at all.

For the first time in her odd journey, the hours seemed to drag. She huddled in the berth or paced, while new thoughts distressed her about what would happen when they reached their destination. If she were to recover the stolen papers and escape her captor somewhere in Portugal, how would she find someone trustworthy and willing to undertake the trouble and expense of restoring her to her parents?

In the unsettling darkness of the storm she could not tell the time and believed the day would never end. When at last a leering sailor brought her evening meal, she found that even the wine could not make her sleepy. She squirmed and stretched upon her bed and thought the same thoughts repeatedly. Only when the storm subsided a bit and the boat resumed its steady rocking did she fall into a restless, dream-disturbed sleep.