No, she couldn’t think about it. Dr Abney would be here to watch over them.
‘Everything all right now, Mama?’ Dinah asked in her little voice and wrapped her arms around Cassandra’s neck.
‘Yes, honey. It is.’ Cassandra inhaled her daughter’s clean scent tinged with the salty damp and almost wept. They were so close to Virginia and the safety of Belle View. As in London, before her husband’s death, the peace of their lives was dangerously close to being stolen from them. It all rested in the hands of yet another disreputable rake.
* * *
Richard stepped out of the Captain’s cabin into the sunlight and took a bracing breath of sea air, but it failed to ease the tightness in his chest. He’d seen numerous female passengers quake with fear while he’d assured them no harm would come to them and been proud afterwards to have kept his word. He’d patted their crying children on the heads and offered them treats, confident their ordeal would end the moment his men finished loading the stolen cargo. Not once in all that time had he been forced to face the ugly, twisted thing he’d become as he had through Cas’s wide, terrified eyes today.
He rubbed the back of his hand where it’d cracked against Mr Barlow’s cheekbone, a bruise forming there beneath an old scar. Richard’s presence had made her winsome voice tremble with fear and the sound of it had cut him deeper than the edge of a cutlass. In it had been the echo of everything Vincent Fitzwilliam had stolen from him five years ago, including the man he’d abandoned to become Captain Rose and the woman he’d loved.
Richard stormed across the deck, adjusting the sash across his chest. It was yet another reason why he must destroy the man.
‘Your report, Mr Rush,’ Richard demanded of his old friend and first mate when he approached the shattered mainmast. The deck surrounding it was a tangled mass of rigging and sails. Beside the mess, a few of his men guarded the Winter Gale’s crew, knives and blunderbusses at the ready. The seamen were the usual riff-raff the Virginia Trading Company hired, the toughness of their lives etched on their scarred and gnarled hands. Their dubious pasts and need for regular pay made them indifferent to the numerous maritime crimes their employer committed but it didn’t mean they wouldn’t strike at or kill Richard and his men if given the chance.
‘The Winter Gale’s cooper says there’s rumours some Virginia Trading Company ships are trading with pirates.’
‘We’ll have to find out if they’re true and, if so, put a stop to it. Vincent can’t be allowed to recover from our strikes.’ The owner of the Virginia Trading Company had stolen everything from Richard and his crew. Richard would make sure he took everything from Vincent, including his company, his standing in Williamsburg and some day, his life.
‘Perhaps we should press the cooper into service in exchange for Mr Barlow. He’d certainly be more use to us than that bilge rat,’ Mr Rush suggested.
‘As tempting as it is to get rid of Mr Barlow, I won’t force any man into this life or invite more trouble than we already have.’ After their cooper had died of a fever, they’d needed a new one to build and repair the fresh-water casks. Mr Barlow had been the best they could find and his presence made their complicated lives even more difficult. The men didn’t trust him enough to tell him their real names, or the reason behind their piracy, and Richard made sure he never saw him without his mask. He felt certain the rat, when faced with the lure of coin or the threat of the gallows, would betray them all. They didn’t need to add another questionable man to their ranks and risk more danger. ‘Have you found anything?’
‘I searched the papers I pulled from the Captain’s desk. Nothin’ official there where they should be. Captain probably hid them before we boarded, like the last one did on your Mr Fitzwilliam’s orders.’
‘Then let’s ask the Captain.’ Richard marched up to where two of his men held the Captain and his first mate a short distance from his crew. The wiry first mate stepped back, but the Captain, a round man with a leathery face full of deep lines, stood firm against Richard’s approach.
‘Where are the ship’s papers?’ Richard demanded.
‘The papers?’ the thick man snorted. ‘You’re taking our cargo, what need can you have for our papers?’
‘I don’t have to explain my reasons. Tell me where you’re hiding the shipping passes and whatever else the Virginia Trading Company gave you before you set sail.’
‘There aren’t any papers.’ The Captain threw out his wide hands in feigned innocence and glanced at his first mate to reinforce his claim, but the first mate, silenced by his cowardice, stared at the deck.
‘Bollocks there aren’t.’ Richard snatched a pistol from his sash, then grabbed the Captain by the back of his thick neck and jerked him close. The stench of rum and dirty clothes engulfing the man was more pungent than rotting fish and so different from the faint scent of roses that had surrounded Cassandra. ‘Where are they?’
‘I don’t know,’ the Captain sputtered, struggling against Richard’s grasp.
Richard cocked the pistol hammer with his thumb and jammed the muzzle beneath the Captain’s chin, determined to find the documents. ‘Is hiding them worth your life?’
The man’s small eyes widened with the same fear Richard had witnessed in Cassandra’s and guilt tripped up Richard’s spine. At one time he’d been an admired and respected gentleman who only had to ask politely to receive things, not a brigand willing to kill a man over flimsy pieces of parchment. ‘Where are they?’
The Captain raised a shaking hand to point at something behind Richard. ‘There, in the cask by the mizzen mast.’
Richard shoved the man back to his first mate, holstered his pistol and stormed to the cask. He knocked aside the lid and reached inside. His fingers brushed nothing but a rough twist of rope before, near the bottom, he touched the smooth leather of a folio. He pulled it out and flipped through the air-dampened and watermarked contents, his hope fading with each turn of the vellum. He removed a shipping pass and held it up to the sun.
‘Anything?’ Mr Rush examined the pass over Richard’s arm.
‘I can’t tell. Either it’s real or Vincent is hiring more talented forgers.’ Richard laid it on top of the other papers in the folio and snapped it shut.
Curse the bastard. Vincent would pay for all his sins. Richard would make sure of it, but it wouldn’t be because of what they’d found on this ship.
‘Maybe we should search the Captain’s quarters?’ Mr Rush suggested. ‘Might be something more damning in there, something we missed.’
Richard looked at the Captain’s cabin and the crooked door which had been returned haphazardly to its jamb. Cassandra sat inside, preparing for their meal. He could almost see her dark blonde hair arranged in soft rows of curls framing her face, with the long curls at the back just brushing the nape of her neck when she tilted her face up to his, her eyes the same rich green and brown he used to lose himself in during those spring evenings in Williamsburg.
What the hell is she doing here? She should be in London, the grand lady of the manor like she’d always wanted to be in Virginia, not aboard one of Vincent’s ships complicating Richard’s plans and threatening his peace of mind. The accusations of selfishness she’d flung at him before he’d set sail from Yorktown five years ago came back to him like a punch in the gut. She’d gloat
