stood. ‘I should return to my cabin so you might get some sleep. I’ll help you out of your dress, if you help me out of this lovely gown.’
Rebecca rose and let her lookalike untie and loosen the laces at the back of the plain dress she’d worn most of the voyage. What a shame. She’d quite enjoyed not being herself, playing a woman whose life seemed so much simpler, so much within her own control.
She turned to face Claire. ‘Let us see how far we can carry this masquerade. You be me tonight. Sleep in my nightclothes, in this bed. And I will continue being you.’
The young woman looked stricken. ‘I cannot allow you to be closeted in that tiny berth they gave me!’
‘Why not?’ Rebecca countered. ‘It will be an adventure for me. And you will have the comfort of this cabin as a treat. When Nolan enters in the morning, we shall discover if she still believes you are me.’
Rebecca pulled out her nightdress, made of the softest of muslin. ‘Here.’
Miss Tilson fingered the fine cloth of the nightdress. ‘Perhaps. If you desire this.’
‘I do desire it,’ Rebecca insisted, helping Miss Tilson out of her dress. ‘I desire it very much.’
* * *
In the morning the sea became even more restless. The sky turned even more ominous shades of grey. Rebecca convinced Claire to continue to wear her clothes and impersonate her. Nolan, who remained abed, sick as ever, and the few seamen who attended them still did not guess that Claire masqueraded as Rebecca. Even with the two ladies together, the seamen never seemed to notice how alike they were.
The seamen were rushed and worried, however. There was a storm brewing, the seamen said. The ladies must remain below.
As the day progressed, Rebecca and Claire talked more about the weather than about their lives. They left the cabin rarely only to check on Nolan, who suffered so much she did not even react when Rebecca, dressed as the governess, attended her.
In the late afternoon, the storm broke, tossing the packet boat even more violently than before.
‘We should be nearing the coast,’ Rebecca said.
‘If the ship can even sail in this.’ Claire’s face—her identical face—paled in fear.
Suddenly shouts and pounding feet sounded from above them, then a loud crack and a thud that shook the boards over their heads. The two women grasped each other’s hands. Their masquerade became unimportant as the wind and sea pitched the ship so constantly that they could not change back into their own clothing.
The gentleman who’d passed them the day before opened the door without knocking. ‘Come above,’ he demanded in a voice they didn’t dare disobey. ‘We must abandon ship. Bring nothing.’
Rebecca defied him, grabbing her reticule containing all her money. When they reached the stairs, she shoved the reticule into Claire’s hands. ‘Here. Take this. I’ll be right behind you. I’m going to get Nolan.’
Claire hung the reticule on her wrist.
‘Miss!’ the gentleman cried. ‘We must leave now.’
‘I will be right behind you,’ she called over her shoulder.
Rebecca rushed to Nolan’s cabin. A seaman was at Nolan’s door. He turned to Rebecca. ‘She refuses to come,’ the man shouted. ‘Hurry! We must get above.’
Rebecca pushed past him and ran to her maid. ‘Nolan! Come with me.’
The older woman recoiled, rolling over and huddling against the wall. ‘No. Sick. Leave me alone.’
‘Come, miss!’ the crewman cried. ‘There is no time to waste!’
‘I cannot leave her!’ she cried.
He dragged her away from Nolan’s door, practically carrying her to the steps of the companionway.
On deck, rain poured as if from buckets, obscuring the chaos Rebecca found above. The mast had splintered in two and lay like a fallen tree on the deck, ropes and sails tangled around it.
‘To the boats!’ the seaman shouted, running ahead.
She followed him, catching sight of Claire and the gentleman at the railing. The ship dipped suddenly and a wave washed over the deck. Rebecca had only a second to grab hold of a rope or be carried in its ebb. When the wave passed and she looked up, Miss Tilson and the gentleman had disappeared.
Her escort seized her arm. ‘Come, miss. No time to waste.’
He pulled her along with him to the side of the ship where other passengers and crew were climbing into a rowing boat that had been lowered over the side. Claire was not among them. Rebecca glanced out to sea, but Claire had vanished. Nolan, Claire and the gentleman were lost.
There was no time for emotion. The crew lifted her over the side as the rowing boat bobbed up and down beneath her. Only with luck did her feet connect with the wood of the boat’s bottom.
The boat filled quickly. Rebecca huddled next to a woman clutching her two children. Beneath their feet was at least an inch of water and more pouring from the sky. Somehow the sailors rowed the boat away from the packet. Through the darkness and rain, a shadow of coastline was visible. Rebecca kept her eyes riveted on it, watching it come slowly closer. Almost in reach.
From behind her a woman screamed.
Rebecca swivelled around to see the packet boat crash against the rocks. At that same moment the rowing boat hit something and tipped.
Rebecca plunged into icy water.
Garret Brookmore, the new Viscount Brookmore, received word of the shipwreck off the coast of Moelfre while he waited in an inn in Holyhead. This was the packet he was to meet, the one on which the governess was to arrive. There were survivors of the wreck, he was told, and Garret felt obligated to travel to Moelfre to see if Miss Claire Tilson was one of them.
None of this was remotely within his experience. A year ago he’d been in Brussels with his regiment awaiting what became the Battle of Waterloo. For the past ten years he’d battled the French. Then word came that his brother and his brother’s wife had been killed in a carriage accident and he needed to return to England to inherit his brother’s title and all the new responsibilities that accompanied it, responsibilities over which he had no preparation. His older brother had been groomed from birth to be the Viscount. John was the family’s fair-haired boy, able to do no wrong in their father’s eyes, whereas not much was expected of Garret so he’d always been bound for the army.
Now the son from whom the family expected little had an estate to run, Parliament to attend and two little girls, his orphaned nieces, to tend to. Pamela and Ellen, only nine and seven, had been securely in the care of their governess, a long-time retainer of their mother’s family, but fate had not finished being cruel. That woman, too, died.
How much could two little girls take? Their mother. Their father.
