Dreaming (22 page)

Alec handed him the note. “Here. Read this.”

Neil scanned the letter. “It’s written in Richard’s hand.”

Alec nodded and sat in a nearby chair. “I’ve read the thing a hundred times at least, looking for some code from Richard to give us an idea where he is. Something . . . misspelled words, anything. But there’s nothing.”

“It says I’m to deliver the money Saturday night on
Lundy Isle
. Do you suppose that’s where they are?”

“I don’t know. Could be. I’ve sent a message to the authorities but haven’t heard anything. I’ll send another messenger if I don’t hear anything by tomorrow morning. They need to send an excise cutter over the night before the drop. It can sneak in under cover of night, anchor in a hidden cove, and surround the drop sight.”

Nodding, Neil looked up. “He names me specifically to make the delivery.”

“It has to be you. You have the sloop and always were the best sailor of the three of us. Also, I think he knows that I cannot, and will not, leave Scottish alone now.” Not much more than a year before a look of tenderness would have never crossed the Duke of
Belmore’s
face. But it was there now, and there whenever he mentioned his duchess.

Alec plucked a wedge of gingerbread off a nearby tea tray and popped it into his mouth.

Neil eyed him a moment. “I thought you abhorred that stuff.”

Alec shrugged and dusted the crumbs from his hands. “I seem to have acquired a taste for it of late.”

“Curious. I was under the impression that females got cravings when they were increasing.”

“Not if one’s married to Scottish.” Alec crammed some more gingerbread into his mouth and swallowed. “All of her cravings seem to affect me as well. Strange, but I’d have never thought to try pickled eel and clotted cream with strawberries.” He paused thoughtfully, then seemed to recover himself and looked at his friend. “Your gills are turning green,
Seymour
. Read on.”

While Neil read, Alec stood up and walked over to pour them both a brandy. He handed one to Neil, who glanced up from the page, a question in his eyes. “The girl? What girl?”

Alec raised his own glass in a mock salute. “Take a drink first, then read on.”

It took only one minute for the Viscount Seymour to choke on his brandy. He coughed, and his eyes bulged slightly. He looked up and cleared his throat enough to say, “
Downe
is kidnapped with the Hornsby hellion?”

He and Alec exchanged identical telling looks. There was a brief moment of silence, then they both began to laugh.

Alec bit back his laughter. “You realize that if he saw us right now he’d use that punishing right cross of his on both our jaws.”

“True, but that has never stopped us before.”

“This is serious. We should—
Seymour
, stop crowing—make an effort to treat this with the concern it deserves,” Alec said, trying to look serious and failing miserably.

“Yes, life-threatening . . . considering who he’s with.” And Neil burst into another round of laughter.

While Neil still chuckled to himself, Alec reached out and gave the
bellpull
a quick jerk, and a moment later a servant knocked. He sent the gingerbread tray away, then paused and ordered Brussels sprouts, buttermilk, and marzipan. He turned to Neil. “Do you want anything?”

His face took on a sick look. “I seem to have lost my appetite.”

Alec shrugged, then crossed the room and hitched his hip on the edge of his desk. He stared at the note. “I wonder how he managed to get himself into this fix.”

“More than likely he was foxed.” Neil stared at his brandy glass with a distant look, then frowned and set it down. “Wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall so I could watch the goings-on, though.
Downe
and the Hornsby hellion.” He shook his head, then looked at Alec. “Did you contact the chit’s father?”

“I tried. He’s gone on some Roman field dig in the north. He wasn’t expected back for a few weeks. Seems the servants called in the local constable when the girl turned up missing, and messages were sent to both her father and to some aunt in
London
, but there’s been no word.” Alec braced a hand on the desk and leaned over to open a drawer. He took out a bulky leather money sack and dropped it on the desktop. “This is the money for both of them.”

Neil nodded, then stood up and stretched. “I shall leave now. I doubt I could stomach the sight or scent of your next tray, and it will take a day to get to the coast and another to ready the sloop.”

Alec rose. “I’ll have the authorities contact the port officials at
Bideford
. I expect you shall hear from them in the next day or so. Let me know what they intend to do.” His face showed he was torn between wanting to be there for his friend and needing to be home for his wife.

“
Downe
understands.”

Alec nodded and looked for a long time at a huge portrait of his duchess that hung above the fireplace.

“By the time I get there, I daresay, he’ll either have turned into a six-bottle man or he’ll be sober as a nun. If it’s the latter, that might be the best thing that’s ever happened to him.”

“Perhaps . . . ” Alec said, his voice fading into a thought. “But perhaps not.” He stared at the portrait for a long time, then added, “We seem to have forgotten something.”

“What? Splints for his broken bones?”

Alec gave a slight smile but shook his head, then his look lost any levity. “I wonder what this will do to him.”

“What?” Neil frowned. “The note claims he’s not harmed.”

“No, he’s not. But the Hornsby girl’s reputation is. She is undeniably and absolutely compromised.” Alec looked at Neil’s stunned face. “You know that he’ll have no choice. He has to marry her.”

Rising out of the
Channel
Sea
like the bruised arm of an angry Neptune was a stark gray rock called
Lundy Isle
. At first glance,
Letty
thought it appeared desolate, little more than a long, seemingly treeless plateau forced to bear the moods of wind and sea.

But as the longboat rowed closer to the southern tip of the isle, there were snatches of pink and mauve where wild rhododendrons huddled in the wrinkles of the rock, and a lone pine tree beckoned from a promontory point that was shielded from strong gusty breaths of westerly wind.

Behind them, anchored in a blue-green cove, sat the privateer, its sails battened and its masts little more than spiky fingers that bobbed against the afternoon sky. Gulls wheeled across that same sky, crying and diving, then lighting on a pebbly beach where they paced across a small ribbon of glittering sand like anxious hosts.

The pirate Dion knelt at the bow of the boat while a pudgy red-haired man with darting black eyes rowed.
Letty
and Richard and Gus sat between them, and Hamish lounged languidly at the stern of the longboat, his pistol drawn and his face in that perpetual droll smirk.

One final oar stroke and the boat rode a wave of sea wash into a sheltered cove where its bow thudded onto the beach. Gus shot over the rim of the boat and loped toward the gulls, kicking up clumps of wet sand and glossy ropes of kelp in his wake. The gulls cried in protest and flapped into the air, then tauntingly glided above him, just out of his reach.

Dion and Hamish exchanged a look that
Letty
didn’t understand, then Dion gave a slight nod of his head.

Hamish leapt from the boat and waved his pistol. “Come, little gillyflower. As much as I would love to keep you, Dion won’t allow me any toys.” He leaned down toward her, that familiar scent of cloves following him. He chucked her under the chin with the barrel of the pistol. “Such a shame.” Richard looked ready to go for the bigger man’s throat barehanded, and
Letty
instinctively grabbed his arm.

Lightning-quick, Hamish aimed the pistol at Richard.

Dion stood up quickly and pinned Richard with a cold stare. “Don’t be a fool.”

Letty
could see the battle on Richard’s face. Everything about him, from his tight jaw to his tensed stance, said he wanted to fight, that he didn’t want to quietly succumb to whatever it was these men wanted. He was protecting her, instinctively, without even trying, and she doubted he even realized it. But she loved him even more for it.

She tightened her fingers on his arm, trying desperately to get his attention before he did do something utterly foolish. Slowly, Richard pulled his gaze away from cocky Hamish and looked down at her.

The plea in her eyes must have made him see reason, because he stepped stiffly from the boat and held out his hand to her, never once saying a word. But he didn’t have to. His rigid silence was as powerful as words.

She stepped from the boat onto the beach and found herself pinned protectively against him by his strong arm, and they stood there on a lonely beach together, facing their captors.

Hamish gave the island a cursory glance, then said, “You and Galahad have your own little paradise.” He placed his hands on his hips and laughed a big booming belly laugh that was louder than the pounding surf, the crying gulls, and Gus’s baying.

Then he stepped back into the boat, looked at the red-haired man, and said, “Row, Weasel.”

“You’re just going to leave us here?”
Letty
couldn’t believe they would just abandon them on a deserted strip of an island in the middle of
Bristol Channel
.

Dion reached beneath him and tossed a bulky sack at their feet. “Once the ransom is paid, your friends will be told where to find you.”

She tried to take a step, but Richard held her tightly against his side.

“Be still, hellion.”

She looked up at Richard, confused. A part of her— her heart—wanted to stay close to him. Yet part of her wanted desperately to bring to an end this journey that she had foolishly imagined to be an adventure. At home everything might be dull and familiar, but in reality smugglers and pirates and ransoms were not as romantic as she had thought.

Like a young bird that has fallen from its nest, she stood there disoriented and bewildered. She looked from Dion to Hamish. “You promised to take us home . . . ”

Dion was silent as a stone.

As the longboat rocked through a wave, Hamish looked from Richard to her and shouted, “Perhaps, little gillyflower, you are closer to home than you know.” He gave them a mocking salute with the pistol, then the boat cut swiftly through the surf.

Chapter 13

The Viscount Seymour stumbled up the steep stony path that led from Lundy’s dock to the residence of the island’s owner and local magistrate, Sir
Vere
Hunt.
Seymour
paused to catch his wind and looked down at the harbor below. Five small outbuildings formed the only thing Lundy could come close to claiming as a village, and on the opposite side of the bay’s small dock, an ancient fishing boat and a small sleek yawl were moored across from his sloop.

From his position on the high path he could see down Lundy’s craggy northern coastline, a seemingly never-ending monolith of shale cliffs above white ribbons of
seafoam
and deep blue-green water. The wind picked up, swirling around him, ruffling his red hair and carrying along the doleful calls of sea auks and puffins that roosted in the
cliffside
cracks.