Ransome's Quest (44 page)

Color flooded back into Charlotte’s face. “What you are saying is that Ned and I have been kept apart because we were convinced we needed to have a real church wedding, and now I don’t get to have a wedding because—” Her face pinched and she turned away from all three of them.

“We can still have the wedding breakfast, though. Put the word out to those who will spread it that we wanted James to be there. People will understand why it was so long delayed after the wedding that way.” The creases in Maria’s forehead began to ease.

Charlotte sniffed and wiped her eyes on the handkerchief her mother and Julia had used to cool her face. “A wedding breakfast would be lovely, but what is more important to me is to know if Ned and I can stop pretending like we aren’t married and start living together as man and wife.”

“Yes, Charlotte.”

That meant Ned needed to start working on finding them a place to live. There was a little place, not far from Tierra Dulce, but he wanted Charlotte to see it before purchasing it. She would have to live there, so she should have a say in it.

“Oh, there is James.”

At the guardhouse ahead of the carriage, a marine guard led James to the door. His indigo coat had been stripped of all insignia of rank. He blinked against the brightness of the sun, holding his arm up to shield his eyes.

“Ned, do be a dear.” Maria prodded his shoulder.

“Yes, ma’am.” He trotted across the yard and retrieved James, bringing him back to the carriage, where the three ladies made a fuss over him.

Ned bade them farewell and returned to the large building where the court-martial had taken place. Inside the five commodores and Admiral Witherington still conferred. Ned assumed Sir Edward was giving them all their new orders.

Ned hoped William’s new orders included getting his three ships out to sea:
Alexandra, Audacious,
and
Auspicious
—a former pirate ship now captained by a recently promoted Patrick O’Rourke.

Ned found his favorite place to sit and wait for William whenever they came ashore. The low rock up beside the palm tree tended to be overlooked by everyone else whose ships were laid up in ordinary, coming to the fort hoping for something to do. He settled onto the stone and leaned his back up against the rough trunk.

Charlotte was with child. A baby. A family of their own. Ned had never known his father, also a sailor, who had gone off to war and never returned. Mother still kept the page from the
Naval Gazette
listing Edmund Cochrane among the dead in a little known battle in a little known corner of the world.

The Kingston
Chronicle
reported that the Congress of Vienna was even now hosting settlement talks between Britain and America. If peace was achieved, it would be the first time in Ned’s life his country—and thus his navy—would not be at war.

William insisted a country still needed its navy even during peacetime. But the peace with France had brought about a necessity to cut down the number of men and ship at sea. What would happen now with no wars at all?

Ned needed an alternative. While his prize money gave him stability and eliminated worry about the immediate future, it was not enough to support a family forever.

He liked Jamaica. Charlotte did as well. She had been learning from Julia how to run a sugar plantation. Ned had never considered becoming a farmer. Spending several weeks once on his brother-in-law’s farm outside Plymouth had nearly been his undoing. But here, in a place so beautiful as Jamaica, with Julia to learn from? How could he go wrong?

William came out into the yard, spotted Ned in his usual spot, and waved him over. Admiral Witherington joined them.

“We’re going back out to sea, Ned. The Admiralty is looking to strike a blow that could turn the war in our favor. In three weeks we’ll sail northward into the Gulf of Mexico and join with the fleet for an attack on New Orleans.”

Going back to sea. Battle. “Charlotte is with child.”

William and Sir Edward both gaped at him. Sir Edward recovered first. “Congratulations, Captain. A momentous occasion.”

But it was not congratulations he wanted. “What if something happens to me, sir? My child will be fatherless, like I was. I don’t want my child to have to live like that.”

“Nothing will happen to you. If it does, you know we will all help Charlotte with the child. You cannot let fears of what might happen keep you from doing what you know you should.”

William was right, of course. Ned set aside his anxiety over the fate of a child not yet born. “Tell me about this offensive.”

Charlotte turned every way she could to see the dress in the mirror. Julia’s seamstress had done a wonderful job, working the midnight blue silk with silver swans embroidered throughout into a beautiful gown.

In the week since Mama had diagnosed her, Charlotte’s appetite returned. Instead of finding nothing appetizing, she now ate anything Cook would put in front of her. She had especially developed a fondness for roasted goat. And today, she could eat all the roasted goat she wanted to at her wedding breakfast.

Guests had been arriving for almost an hour now. Julia planned to have Ned and Charlotte enter at eleven o’clock. Because of the distances people traveled to attend such an event, unlike a wedding breakfast in England, this would be an all-day occasion.

And other than the family and the officers from
Audacious
who came, she did not know most of the people who would be here today. But Julia knew them. And it was a good way for Mama to meet the neighbors, because she would be living with Julia until the house Admiral Witherington—she still could not think of Sir Edward as
Papa
—had commissioned in Kingston was finished.

Her hair hung in soft waves almost to her shoulders. Ned teased her that some night he would take a pair of shears and cut it all off again, for she did not need long hair to be beautiful the way some other women did. But she noticed how he liked running his fingers through it and imagined once it was long again that he would forget what she’d looked like with short hair.

She yawned. Ned was supposed to come get her when it was time to make their appearance. Maybe she should lie down until then.

Closing her eyes, the warm comfort of sleep drifted in.

But before it could take hold, the door opened. It couldn’t be eleven o’clock already. She kept her eyes closed, not wanting to lose the soft tranquility she’d found.

“Ned—”

A hand covered her mouth, pushing her head deep into the pillow. “Make a sound and I’ll kill you.”

With the cane harvest about to begin, this might be the last time for several months that Julia would get to see some of her neighbors. And it looked as they had felt the same way, as everyone she’d invited had come.

“You should have had one of these for yourself,” several of her neighbors remarked, passing by with a plate piled high with Cook’s goodies. More than one of her neighbors had tried to hire the mulatto woman away from Tierra Dulce, but Julia guarded her jealously and awarded her handsomely for her skill in the kitchen.

Yes, Charlotte and Ned’s wedding breakfast did serve the additional purpose of formally introducing William to those in the area who had not yet met him. Attired in his dress uniform, he, along with her father, drew quite a bit of interest and appreciation from the women. But they weren’t the only ones. Patrick O’Rourke looked quite dashing with his new epaulettes, and the lieutenants from all three ships drew plenty of female admirers.

“Julia, dear.” Maria pointed at the hall clock visible through the open doors. A few minutes before eleven. She’d best send Ned for Charlotte.

She looked in the study, where he’d been earlier, but no Ned. Where else would he be? Oh, yes. She went to his second favorite room in the house. He sat at the table eating scraps from the roasted goat Cook was carving.

“If the goat is about ready to go out, do not you think it is time you and Charlotte made your appearance?” Laughing, she shooed him out of the kitchen. “Come out whenever you are ready, and William will make the announcement.”

Returning outside, she found William and let him know it was almost time. He went to the top of the porch steps at the back of the house, standing near the door to the bedroom corridor, where Ned had been instructed to bring Charlotte out.

Moments later Ned appeared—alone and panic-stricken.

Julia joined him and William on the porch. “What is it?”

“I cannot find Charlotte anywhere. Things are knocked about in our room, as if there was a struggle.” He blanched. “I think Charlotte’s been taken.”

C
harlotte worked at the knot in the silk neckcloth whenever Henry Winchester had his back turned. The office building blocked them from view of the main house and yard, where the guests milled, and the pistol he had tucked under his belt kept her from crying out.

“Your families ruined the Winchesters, and you’re all going to pay, starting with you.”

Not only did Henry have an edge of insanity in his voice, he looked as though he had been out in the wilderness, chased by animals for months. And the fact he’d had to bring one of Ned’s neckcloths to tie her to one of the porch posts while he dug for something in the small garden meant he had not planned this. He was acting on emotion, not intellect.

“I planned everything. My brother did not trust me. He did not believe I could make plans and follow through with them. He believed he was better than everyone else and smarter than everyone else. I’ll show him that I can make a plan and follow through with it.” He kept muttering to himself as he dug.

She almost had the knot loose.

“What are you doing?” He jumped to his feet and tightened the knot at her wrists, as well as the one around the beam. “I will kill you, Charlotte. You could have married me, but instead you chose to jilt me for who? For a sailor, a nobody.”

A biting retort readied itself on Charlotte’s tongue, but then she thought of the baby. Th at one thought was what had made her walk calmly out of the house with Henry, had made her stay quiet and not call out when he led her down to the office and around behind it. She had to do whatever it took to save herself so she could protect her child. And that meant not inciting Henry to do anything worse than he had already done.

He knelt, picked up the spade, and started digging again. “This was my garden. She thought she was so clever, making the steward keep his own garden and cook his own food instead of eating in the big house like Jeremiah. He’s not worthy to walk in my footprints. Why should I want to eat at the big house with the likes of him?”

Charlotte started working on the knot again.

This time the more vigorously Henry dug, the more he babbled. About his brother. About Jeremiah. About Julia. About his mother and sisters.

She could move her hand—oh, yes! Her right hand slid free from confinement. The cloth fell away just as Henry’s spade hit something hard.

Charlotte wrapped her hands in the cloth to make it look as though she were still tied up. Hopefully he would not notice how loose her binding was now.

He pulled a small iron lockbox out of the hole he’d dug under the corner of the porch. Taking a key from his pocket, he opened the box.

Inside was more money than Charlotte had ever seen in one place.

“Ten thousand pounds,” Henry murmured. “All mine. Now I don’t have to share with Arthur. He never shared anything with me. Made me look the fool in front of Julia Witherington.” He looked around, wild-eyed. “They can’t know I have it. They’ll keep chasing me. They’ll never stop chasing me.”