set foot on a ship again. To ride in the winds of a wide-open sea with the smell of salt and adventure close to the bone. To climb up the rigging of an eighty-foot mast and hang suspended against the blueness of a horizon that stretched for ever.
A voice calling to them brought her from her thoughts and she looked around to see a man hurrying forward.
‘I had hoped to see you here today, your Grace,’ he said when he was upon them. ‘There was a break-in on the Nautilus last night, though from what I can gather nothing was taken. But the lock on the main cabin door was forced and a few papers shifted.’
‘Did anyone see anything untoward?’
‘No, nothing. Davis heard noises after midnight and thought it was me checking on the ropes.’
‘Set a double shift tonight, then,’ Asher ordered, ‘and have Silas bring his dog back on board.’
Emerald stiffened as his eyes raked across her and again she felt some sense of complicity and an uncertainty that was hard to pin down. Had Azziz and Toro frisked the ship already? It could well be possible. She had determined to contact them tonight and let them know of the new plans Asher Wellingham had set in place to guard his ship when the arrival of a beautifully dressed woman in her forties made her turn. At her side there walked a boy, his eyes firmly fixed on Lucinda.
‘I didn’t realise that you would be up for the week, Asher.’ The woman smiled, looking at Emerald and waiting for an introduction.
‘Lady Emma Seaton, meet Lady Annabelle Graveson and her son, Rodney. Emma is newly come to London to stay with her aunt, the Countess of Haversham.’
‘Miriam of Haversham?’ Her glance sharpened on the locket around Emerald’s neck; if she had been pale before, now she was even more so.
‘You are her niece?’ Her fingers pulled at the lace around her collar before her eyes rolled up and she fell into the arms of Asher Wellingham.
Again, Emerald thought.
How tiring it must be to for ever have collapsing women swoon around you. This faint, however, hardly looked like the one she had pretended in the Henshaw ballroom. It was obvious that Annabelle Graveson was truly ill for her face had taken on a greenish-grey pallor and sweat covered her brow.
Asher Wellingham hardly seemed fazed as he lifted the woman up effortlessly and led the small contingent into the inn, where a space was cleared on a cushioned seat.
‘Fetch some water and give us some room,’ he ordered and the innkeeper wasted no time in doing as he was bid.
Rodney stood at the foot of his mother’s makeshift bed. ‘She said that she felt ill this morning, but I didn’t think she meant this ill.’ Emerald noticed Lucy’s hand resting on his shoulder, trying to give him comfort and almost laughed.
This ill?
The woman was probably just hot or the stays binding her stick-thin waist were too tight. Already she was coming to. She thought back to the aftermath of battles aboard the Mariposa when sailors had sat in silence against the bulwarks and nursed broken bones. Or worse.
But this was England, she reminded herself, where a faint still retained an important place in the whole scheme of things. A vivid reminder of the place of fragile women.
She watched as the woman sat herself up and wiped her brow and upper lip with a delicate hanky she had extracted from the sleeve at her wrist.
‘Oh, my goodness,’ she said, repeating it over again as she looked around the group. ‘I said to Rodney this morning that I was not feeling up to a jaunt into the village. My stomach, you understand. It is rather unpredictable and yesterday the cook served a strong soup that I can only surmise was badly made. Old meat, if I were to hazard a guess, or fungi plucked from a place it should not have been. Rodney, where are you?’
‘I am here, Mama.’ He did not move and Emerald looked away when she perceived that both Annabelle Graveson and her son were watching her, their blue eyes a mirror copy of each other’s.
Asher, as usual, had taken charge, ordering large platters of food and wine and making certain that Taris was aware of the fare that was placed before him. Glancing across the room, she saw a group of young men looking her way, but the scorching glance of the Duke of Carisbrook discouraged them.
She almost smiled. How easy it must be to slip into the role of a protected woman.
How simply easy.
Lucinda. Annabelle Graveson. They let him take charge without even noticing what they had given up.
‘Are you at Falder for long, Lady Emma?’ Rodney Graveson was sitting on her left side, next to Lucinda.
‘For a week. My aunt, the Countess of Haversham, is here, too, but she has been laid low by a cough and has taken to her bed. Perhaps you know of her—your mother seems to.’
‘Mama seldom travels outside of Thornfield these days, but I have heard her mention that name.’
He blushed, his fair hair standing out against the colour, but he did not look away and Emerald liked him for it. Once, years ago, she too had been cursed with such shyness and Rodney Graveson seemed like a kindred spirit and in desperate need of friendship. Looking up, she caught Annabelle Graveson watching her.
‘What is it you are speaking of with Lady Emma, Rodney?’ Her voice was high and the colour in her cheeks was better.
‘He was just asking me how long I planned to be here for, Lady Annabelle.’
‘Oh, I see. And your answer?’
‘Seven days, I think.’
‘Then we shall have you over to Longacres for dinner next Sunday. Asher will bring you. About six.’
She did not ask the others at the table, which struck Emerald as both odd and rather impolite, and the Duke of Carisbrook’s perfunctory nod was such that she wondered if he meant to honour the invitation at all, but as she felt the squeeze of Rodney Graveson’s hand against her own beneath the table she was touched by his gesture and hoped that it would be possible to go.
Two hours later, after saying goodbye to the others Emerald sat on Hercules and picked her way down the incline behind Asher Wellingham on his tall black stallion. Lucy had stayed in Thornfield with the Gravesons and Taris had met a friend at the tavern and had decided to embark on a game of chess. Emerald wondered whether the whole thing had been a set-up, for Asher Wellingham seemed very keen on riding back with her and left as soon as the first opportunity presented itself. She also wondered as to the propriety of being alone with him, but dismissed that notion with indifference. Her reputation here was unimportant—she would be gone from England as soon as she found the cane.
The sea lay before them and, licking her lips, she could taste the salt. Here the sand was not fine and white, but grey and coarse, the pebbles mulched by the movement of this lonely, lovely coast. The sea. Her heart sang at the joy of being beside it again. If this was my home, she thought, I should never leave it.
After the warning at breakfast Asher Wellingham had seemed withdrawn and quiet. He did not tarry or offer her any explanation of beaches, cliffs or field.
His land, she
