back onto the deck, he felt the wind rush at him and lifted his face to the bracing breeze.
He breathed in and looked around at the waves—at the sea stretching forever on, as always, his path to the future.
And this time, his way was crystal clear.
He’d go to Freetown, learn what was needed, return to London and report—and then he would set about finding a wife.
CHAPTER 2
“Good morning.” Miss Aileen Hopkins fixed a polite but determined gaze on the face of the bored-looking clerk who had come forward to attend her across the wooden counter separating the public from the inner workings of the Office of the Naval Attaché. Located off Government Wharf in the harbor of Freetown, the office was the principal on-land contact for the men aboard the ships of the West Africa Squadron. The squadron sailed the seas west of Freetown, tasked with enforcing the British government’s ban on slavery.
“Yes, miss?” Despite the question, not a single spark of interest lit the man’s eyes, much less his expression, which remained impersonal and just a bit dour.
Aileen was too experienced in dealing with bureaucratic flunkies to allow his attitude to deter her. “I would like to inquire as to my brother Lieutenant William Hopkins.” She set her black traveling reticule on the counter, folded her hands over the gathered top, and did her best to project the image of someone who was not about to be fobbed off.
The clerk stared at her, a frown slowly overtaking his face. “Hopkins?” He glanced at the other two clerks, both of whom had remained seated at desks facing the wall and were making a grand show of deafness, although in the small office, they had to have heard her query. The clerk at the counter wasn’t deterred, either. “Here—Joe!” When one of the seated clerks reluctantly raised his head and glanced their way, the clerk assisting her prompted, “Hopkins. Isn’t he the young one that went off God knows where?”
The seated clerk shot Aileen a quick glance, then nodded. “Aye. It’d be about three months ago now.”
“I am aware that my brother has disappeared.” She failed to keep her accents from growing more clipped as her tone grew more severely interrogatory. “What I wish to know is why he was ashore, rather than aboard H.M.S. Winchester.”
“As to that, miss”—the first clerk’s tone grew decidedly prim—“we’re not at liberty to say.”
She paused, parsing the comment, then countered, “Am I to take it from that that you do, in fact, know of some reason William—Lieutenant Hopkins—was ashore? Ashore when he was supposed to be at sea?”
The clerk straightened, stiffened. “I’m afraid, miss, that this office is not permitted to divulge details of the whereabouts of officers of the service.”
She let her incredulity show. “Even when they’ve disappeared?”
Without looking around, one of the clerks seated at the desks declared, “All inquiries into operational matters should be addressed to the Admiralty.”
Her eyes narrowing, she stared at the back of the head of the clerk who had spoken. When he refused to look around, she stated in stringently uninflected tones, “The last time I visited, the Admiralty was in London.”
“Indeed, miss.” When she transferred her gaze to him, the clerk at the counter met her eyes with a wooden expression. “You’ll need to ask there.”
She refused to be defeated. “I would like to speak with your superior.”
The man answered without a blink. “Sorry, miss. He’s not here.”
“When will he return?”
“I’m afraid I can’t say, miss.”
“Not at liberty to divulge his movements, either?”
“No, miss. We just don’t know.” After a second of regarding her—possibly noting her increasing choler—the clerk suggested, “He’s around the settlement somewhere, miss. If you keep your eyes open, perhaps you might run into him.”
For several seconds, her tongue burned with the words with which she would like to flay him—him and his friends, and the naval attaché, too. Ask at the Admiralty? It was half a world away!
Thanking them for their help, even if sarcastically, occurred only to be dismissed. She couldn’t force the words past her lips.
Feeling anger—the worst sort, laced with real fear—geysering inside her, she cast the clerk still facing her a stony glare, then she picked up her reticule, spun on her heel, and marched out of the office.
Her half boots rang on the thick, weathered planks of the wharf. Her intemperate strides carried her off the wharf and up the steps to the dusty street. Skirts swishing, she paced rapidly on, climbing the rise to the bustle of Water Street.
Just before she reached it, she halted and forced herself to lift her head and draw in a decent breath.
The heat closed around her, muffling in its cloying sultriness.
The beginnings of a headache pulsed in her temples.
Now what?
She’d come all the way from London determined to learn where Will had gone. Clearly, she’d get no help from the navy itself...but there’d been something about the way the clerk had reacted when she’d suggested that there was a specific reason Will had been ashore.
Her older brothers were in the navy, too. And both, she knew, had served ashore at various times—dispatched by their superiors on what amounted to secret missions.
Not that she or their parents—or even their other siblings in the navy—had known that at the time.
Had Will been dispatched on some secret mission, too? Was that the reason he’d been ashore?
“Ashore long enough to have been captured and taken by the enemy?” Aileen frowned. After a moment, she gathered her skirts and resumed her trek up to and around the corner into Water Street, the settlement’s main thoroughfare. She needed to make several purchases in the shops lining the street before hiring a carriage to take her back up Tower Hill to her lodgings.
While she shopped, the obvious questions revolved in her brain.
Who on earth was the enemy here?
And how could she find out?
* * *
“Good morning, Miss Hopkins—you’ve been out early!”
Aileen turned from closing the front door of Mrs. Hoyt’s Boarding House for Genteel Ladies to face its owner.
Mrs. Hoyt was a round, genial widow and a redoubtable gossip who lived vicariously through the lives of her boarders. Her arms wrapped around a pile of freshly laundered sheets, Mrs. Hoyt beamed at Aileen; with frizzy red hair and a round face, she filled the doorway to her rooms to the left of the front hall, opposite the communal parlor.
Having already taken Mrs. Hoyt’s measure, Aileen held up a small
