Bogles!” she cried. Her voice trembled. “Mama says I’m never to go in the hold.”
Excellent. He may as well remove his balls now and save Captain Kinloch the trouble. He reached the floor and glanced around. It was an upper hold, full of everything from casks of wine to bolts of textiles. How much legally gained was anyone’s guess.
“Mr. Bogles!” Anne called again, reaching the bottom of the stairs.
“Stay here,” he ordered. James hung on to a stack of crates held in place by a timber frame and stumbled farther into the hold, shining the light this way and that.
“Wait,” Anne cried. “I have some dried fish. He loves it more than anything!”
A bribe ought to increase his chances, which as things stood, were zero. Light-headed, he hung the lantern from a hook on an overhead beam and went back. The ship heaved and crashed and some cargo on the starboard side shifted noisily as he struggled to find his usually reliable sea legs.
Anne was already holding out the dried fish when he reached her, but something wasn’t right. She faced to the side without looking at him. “He’ll come for this,” she said, as though speaking to an invisible third person. “I know he will.”
“I’ll give it...a try,” he said, out of breath. Immediately she turned toward him with her arm still outstretched and her eyes fixed on his belly. He paused. “Anne?”
“Yes?”
He held out his hand. She didn’t seem to see it, and a hole opened up in his gut. “Anne,” he said sharply. “Can you see?” There wasn’t time for niceties.
“I hear him!” Her face lit up suddenly and she pointed past him. “Mr. Bogles! Oh, do hurry!”
Blind. Anne was blind.
Hell and damnation, he’d led a blind child into the hold. Damn Jaxbury for not saying something. He lurched forward and grabbed her arm. “We’re going above.” Mr. Bogles could fend for himself.
“No!” Anne screamed and struggled. “We can’t leave him!”
“You can’t be down here.”
“Please. Please!”
Her desperation cut him to the bone. She struggled, and he hadn’t the strength to fight her. He wrapped her hands around the stair rail. “Wait here. Do not move.”
“I won’t. I promise!”
“Give me the fish.” He took it from her fingers.
“I hear him again! Please hurry!”
James didn’t hear a bloody thing, but he went in the direction she pointed. He grabbed the lantern from the hook and finally heard a faint meow from among the cargo. A rat scurried away. Whatever Mr. Bogles was up to down here, he was not doing his job.
“Mr. Bogles!” Anne cried.
Meow, came an answer from the direction of a pile of large rope coils that had slid sideways with the waves. James willed himself forward, holding up the lantern. Meow! came another complaint from beneath the pile. Through a gap he saw two glowing eyes and part of a white, whiskered face.
The ship heaved and rolled. Somehow he managed to hang the lantern and reach for a coil. His arms rebelled, buckling like wet straw, but he tried again. He shifted one coil this time, then another. The rough floor scraped his soles as he sought purchase with his bare feet. His legs burned, threatening to give out.
“Do you have him?” Anne called from much closer than the stairwell. A glance over his shoulder showed her making her way through the cargo.
“Anne, stop!” He barely had the strength to make himself heard. “Go back!” He stretched forward, half lying across the pile now, and shoved at another coil. More coils towered above him. With all of his strength he propped up the coil that trapped the cat, but Mr. Bogles cowered somewhere in the recesses. Blast it all, he’d dropped the dried fish.
“Come out, damn you,” he said through gritted teeth.
The ship heaved.
“Anne!” Captain Kinloch’s voice shot through the hold.
The ship crashed. James lost his grip on the rope and a white flash shot past his shoulder.
“Mr. Bogles!” came Anne’s joyous cry.
James fell forward, and the coils he’d moved tumbled on top of him. He grunted in pain, crumpling beneath their weight, and his hand closed around something leathery. The dried fish.
“Anne! What are you doing down here?”
James said goodbye to his balls and let his head fall.
* * *
DRENCHED FROM THE rain and waves above, Katherine flew down the stairs with her eyes fixed on Anne and swept her into a fierce hug, ignoring Mr. Bogles wiggling between them. “Anne Kinloch, I told you never to come into the hold!” She ran her hands over Anne’s face, hair, shoulders. No injury. Already she could imagine half a dozen ways she would kill Thomas Barclay when she found him.
Farther into the hold, the lantern from her cabin swung wildly from an overhead beam. Bloody cur—this was her reward for caving to pity and hauling him aboard. “Anne, quickly,” she said, rising. “Upstairs.”
“But the man, Mama— I think I heard him fall!”
“Shh...we shall find him and he won’t hurt you again. I promise you that.” By God, she would kill him slowly and feed him in pieces to the fish.
“Mama, you mustn’t be cross!” Anne shook her head frantically. “It was my fault. I couldn’t find Mr. Bogles, and I begged him! I know I shouldn’t have unlocked him, but—”
“Unlocked him?”
“I’m sorry, Mama. There was no one to help.” She tried to turn out of Katherine’s grasp. “Oh, why don’t I hear him? He was just here!”
At precisely that moment, Katherine spotted a pair of bare feet sticking out from among the cargo.
Anne’s lip trembled. “I know I shouldn’t have taken the keys from your drawer. I was so scared.”
Katherine hugged her tightly. “I’m sorry, sweetling. I’m so sorry.” She never left Anne alone in high seas. Never. But they’d needed all hands on deck, and she’d promised herself it would just be this once, and she would come down to check...but she should have come sooner. She should never have left Anne in the first place. Wicked, wicked man, taking advantage of a little girl’s fear.
“Do you see him, Mama?” A tear tumbled down Anne’s cheek.
Katherine stared at his feet. “Shh...I will find him. Quickly, now, upstairs to safety. Give Mr. Bogles to me.” Sweet Anne was too innocent to know a man in Mr. Barclay’s condition did not rouse himself for the sake of a cat. Her jaw tightened. With any luck fate had already punished his attempt at insurrection,
