Close to the Wind Page 16

  ‘What else is there, Georgie?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean. You’re still holding out on me and I intend finding out why.’

  Georgiana’s thoughts raced. If he’d found Jasper, then he must know who she really was. He would also know there was no point in killing Charles as the marriage hadn’t taken place, and Jasper would never be in line to inherit the gold mine. But although she had no hard evidence about who had killed Iver, Jasper must realise she could implicate him and Walsingham. That was more than enough to put her own life in danger. Then an even more chilling thought struck her. If both she and Charlie were to die, her aunt would inherit the mine. Jasper would be rich, after all.

  She searched Harry’s eyes that stared so intently, so seemingly caring into hers. She could see no trace of the pirate, yet he was in there, somewhere. Summoning every ounce of acting ability, she grasped his wrist and widened her eyes. ‘What are you talking about, Harry? You’re frightening me.’

  He held her look for a second, but she maintained her expression of bewildered alarm. The truth was, she did not have to fake her fear much at all.

  A voice called out of the darkness. ‘Mr Miller? Did I see you come this way? The captain’s looking for you. The barometer is falling fast. A storm’s on the way.’

  Harry cursed then said, ‘I have to go, but Georgie – don’t get too close to Mellors. We’ll talk soon.’

  He slipped away, a black shadow in the light of the moon, and Georgiana fell back against the railing. Their thin support pressed into her back. The approaching storm was not the only danger on the horizon. Clearly Harry saw Tom as a threat and the thought of having Tom’s strength at her service was very reassuring.

  ‘Talk away, Harry,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll learn nothing from me.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  The storm hit with unprecedented force later that night and raged for days. The ship, which had seemed so large and solid, was tossed as easily as a piece of driftwood in mountainous seas. The wind howled ceaselessly, shredding nerves. Waves broke with torrential violence over the decks. It was hard to tell which emotion was uppermost in the passengers’ hearts – the fear of death or the longing for it as they stayed strapped to their bunks, struck down by seasickness of the worst sort.

  Julia and Sebastian terrified Georgiana. They lay, clammy to the touch, with white-green faces and eyes black with misery. They had vomited and vomited until left with only dry retching that rendered them shivering and tearful.

  ‘Make it stop, Miss Trent,’ Sebastian whispered.

  ‘If only I could,’ Georgiana said as she smoothed his hair from his forehead, ‘if only I could.’

  Even Tom, usually so dependable, was stricken by the malaise and he and Mr Taylor could not leave their cabin. Georgiana visited all the passengers, making them comfortable where she could and earning the gratitude of Dr Carmichael, himself not faring well, for not only was he seasick but he’d sprained a wrist when he slipped on the wave-swept decks.

  ‘Most obliged, Miss Trent,’ he muttered, ‘most obliged,’ as she took away his bowl of vomit.

  For several days she did not see Harry and when they did finally meet one dinner time at the empty table, she was shocked. Harry’s face was white, his jaw stubbled, his eyes dark with fatigue. He started to rise but Georgiana motioned for him to remain sitting and he sank back. When he picked up his glass, she saw that his hand shook.

  ‘Have you had any sleep?’ she demanded, forgetting her resolve to treat him with indifferent cordiality.

  He shrugged. ‘The odd hour or two, but you know most of the crew is down too.’ Then he looked at her as though trying to focus. ‘Poor Georgie. You look exhausted yourself. Have you been ill?’

  She shook her head and slipped into a chair across from him. He served her some soup from a large bowl that swung in a cradle. ‘Thank you. No, I haven’t felt the slightest twinge. No sensibility at all, as my aunt always used to say.’

  He smiled at her attempted levity. ‘And the children?’

  ‘Worn away to shadows. I’m terribly worried about them,’ she admitted, and she tried a mouthful of soup. ‘Ugh, it’s not very hot.’

  The smell of mutton and vegetables cloyed.

  ‘I know, but we have to keep our strength up. Go on, try some bread.’

  He held out the basket and she took a roll but only nibbled on it. Though she did not feel sick, she had no appetite. Harry watched her. ‘Here, drink this water and get it all down.’

  When he was apparently satisfied that she was trying, he returned to his own bowl, eating slowly but doggedly. She knew the determination it took for him to eat when all he obviously craved was sleep. As if feeling her eyes on him, he looked up and smiled. ‘Don’t look so worried, I’ll be right in a tick. As for the children, soon as this storm blows itself out, they’ll bob up like corks, you’ll see.’

  ‘Thank you, that does set my mind to rest a little.’

  Harry broke a roll in half and dipped some into the soup. Toying with her spoon, she added, ‘It just all feels so empty, doesn’t it.’

  They both looked down the length of the table, usually thronged with passengers.

  ‘They aren’t dead, just ill. They’ll recover too, you know. In a few days all will be back to normal, I promise.’

  ‘A few days! That still sounds forever away. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound fainthearted but you haven’t seen how everyone is suffering.’

  ‘Haven’t I?’ he asked dryly. ‘I’m helping tend the crew as poor old Carmichael is so laid up.’

  ‘Are you?’ The idea entertained her. ‘Nurse Harry?’

  Their eyes met.

  ‘Dr Harry, you disrespectful circus brat!’

  They laughed, constraint and exhaustion falling away as they swapped nursing stories and then tried to remember the worst they had ever felt.

  ‘I think it was that morning after I fell and you came to talk to me. My head was pounding, my arm on fire and I was in such a quake I could barely stand.’

  He smiled. ‘You disguised it well then – you seemed a trifle weak but as impertinent as ever and no sign of penitence at all.’

  ‘Penitence! I was only doing what had to be done. I’ll bet you’ve been far rasher than me in your adventures.’

  That made him laugh. ‘Perhaps Georgie, perhaps.’

  ‘What about you? What was your worst moment?’

  She was expecting a flippant sea story, but Harry went unexpectedly grave and said, ‘Coming home from prison to find my mother had died the day before.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Georgiana’s spoke softly, partly in sympathy and partly to encourage confidences Harry had never offered before. She thought he might yet retreat but Harry, staring into his soup, continued in a low voice.

  ‘I’ve never felt sicker than when I knew I’d failed her when she needed me most. She killed herself for me, you see. Died trying to put me through a fancy Cambridge education and I was so callow I never even knew.’ His eyes were filled with pain.

  ‘Perhaps she didn’t want you to know.’

  He glanced up at Georgiana. ‘You’re right, she didn’t. All the same, I should have guessed all her talk of rich uncles was poppycock.’

  This was a new Harry. The light-hearted confidence he wore as armour had been ground away by the storm. Here was a man driven beyond exhaustion. She remembered Consuela saying Harry never talked of his past. Was this her opportunity to discover the real man? Tentatively she asked, ‘Why were you in prison? I don’t understand …’

  For a second Harry was silent as he stirred the soup with his spoon. ‘It all seems such a long time ago now,’ he finally said, looking up, eyes clouded with memories. ‘It was my second year at Cambridge and I got a message to say my mo
ther was dangerously ill. I travelled as fast as I could, but when I arrived at our cottage she was delirious, talking wildly of them and how she’d never meant to lie. There was other stuff about my father, how she’d deceived him. Normally she wouldn’t talk of him at all, you know. She’d only say that he’d died before I was born. Of course in our village tongues were always wagging, especially when I was suddenly whipped out of the local schoolroom and sent to Harrow. She told me a rich uncle overseas was paying and, like a fool, I believed her.’

  ‘There was no reason not to,’ suggested Georgiana. She had never seen him show vulnerability before, reveal any sense of powerlessness. There was no sign of the humour that all too often lurked in his good natured face. Instead there was regret and self-disgust.

  ‘Maybe, but I also didn’t want to believe the explanation the gossips came up with. Anyway, there she was in our miserable cottage, tossing and turning and going on about how she had done a terrible thing because she loved my father, and begging my pardon. She kept insisting I take care of her poetry book. You remember it?’

  Georgiana nodded. ‘The Romantics.’

  ‘That’s the one. Well, I tried to reassure her that she’d been the best of mothers and the book would always be safe. It helped, but still she was terribly agitated.

  ‘Bet, our neighbour who was tending to her, said she’d got sick after being caught in a snow storm in London. That made no sense. I’d never known her to leave the village, let alone go as far as London, but Bet told me that since I’d been at Cambridge, my mother had been up several times.

  ‘At that moment the door burst open and in came two officers to arrest her for pawning stolen jewellery. I thought the world had gone crazy, but clearly I couldn’t let them take my mother. I said I had stolen the jewellery and that she hadn’t known where it came from. So they arrested me, and that was the last time I ever saw her.’

  For a second Harry was silent, staring into his soup.

  ‘What happened next?’ asked Georgiana.

  Harry glanced up, eyes blue-black in the lamplight. The pain in his face was speedily erased however and she saw his defences go up as he shrugged. In a matter-of-fact tone he continued his story.

  ‘I spent the next two days in prison. I was lucky to have some coins in my pocket which bought me a private cell. I spent my time wondering what to say when my trial came up. I had no idea what I was supposed to have stolen and wondered how the hell my mother had come into possession of such jewels.’ He gave a grim laugh. ‘I still couldn’t accept the most obvious explanation.’

  Georgiana imagined how that time must have been for Harry; fearful for his mother, fearful for himself. His legitimacy, indeed his whole life, nothing but a series of questions.

  Our past makes us what we are, who we are.

  How did it feel, to not know who you really were? What a false position for Harry, of two worlds and of none. At least she knew who she was. She also had Charlie. Harry, usually so invincible, suddenly seemed very alone.

  He took up the story again; his voice, though jagged with tiredness, still had that deep underlying strength that Georgiana always found reassuring. ‘On the third morning the guard told me I had a visitor. I thought it might be Bet, but instead this cloaked woman swept into my cell. Her hood was pulled low so I could not see her face, but from her bearing I could tell she was someone of consequence. She demanded to know who I was. I bowed, gave my name and asked who she might be. She replied, “Impertinent boy! It was my jewellery that was recovered.”

  ‘I should have expected it, I suppose, and realised I’d have to be very careful. I began to apologise but she cut me short and ordered me to come closer so she could see me.

  ‘I hesitated, aware that I must smell terrible and she said impatiently, “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.”’

  Georgiana laughed and Harry’s eyes crinkled at the corners. ‘I know, I laughed too at that and began to like her, despite her highhanded manner. I explained that I thought my presence close up might be offensive, but I moved forward into a strip of light from the window so she could see me. She took one look and recoiled. I must have been a terrible sight, dishevelled and unshaven, but it seemed to be more than that. Her hand went to her throat as she asked me to repeat my name. I did and she took a step forward to look closer at me. Her hood slipped back and I found myself looking into this haughty face with remarkably sharp eyes. She demanded I describe the necklace I’d stolen.

  ‘I knew I was on thin ice so tried to bluff my way out by saying I couldn’t talk about my case, but she refused to be put off, pointing out I’d already confessed.’

  Georgiana laid down her spoon, put her elbow on the table and leaned her chin on her hand, caught up in the story. She was no longer aware of the storm raging outside. It was as if there were only the two of them in the whole world, trapped in the small pool of light from the kerosene lamp that swayed on the wall. ‘So what did you do?’

  He gave a half-smile. ‘Oh, I made a great pretence of trying to remember by saying I couldn’t quite recall which one was hers, having stolen so much. I asked her, “Was it the one with the diamonds?” Not clever, I know, but really, she had taken me so completely by surprise.’

  ‘Did she believe you?’

  Harry shook his head. ‘I should have known from her eyes she was no one’s fool. She just gave a crack of laughter, said she’d raised two boys and knew I was lying. I decided to give it one more try and said something like, ‘The emeralds?’

  ‘I thought she would be furious, but for a minute I swear she looked almost gentle. Then she cried, “Enough! It was taken twenty years ago. I did not think to see it again but it is returned and I am satisfied. I’ll see to it you are released, and that all charges are dropped.”’

  Georgiana sat back, eyes wide. ‘Unbelievable. You must have been thrilled.’

  Harry’s eyes met hers. ‘I was dumbstruck, to be honest. I laughed because it all seemed so unlikely, but when I tried to thank her she just said she didn’t deserve any. Then she asked if I was well and healthy.

  ‘I said I was, wondering where on earth that question came from. She nodded and said that was all she needed to know. Then she said, “Goodbye, Mr Trent,” and that was that. She just turned and left.’

  Georgiana shook her head in wonderment. ‘And you were released, just like that?’

  ‘That very day.’ His face had lightened while telling of this strange encounter – clearly he still felt some fondness for the old woman – but now it darkened. ‘I arrived home just in time to bury my mother.’

  ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. It was all a long, long time ago.’ Harry’s manner changed and he laughed self-consciously. ‘I should never have lingered so long and certainly shouldn’t have bored you with my stories.’

  ‘You didn’t bore me,’ Georgiana protested, but she could see he had already retreated, just as Consuela had said he did. Georgiana’s mind buzzed with questions, but Harry’s moment of confiding was clearly over. She became aware once more of the howling wind beyond the flimsy walls, heard the creak of timbers under strain. Smelt the fumes from the gas lamps.

  ‘Did you ever see the old woman again?’ she asked. ‘Did you ever find out who she was?’

  But Harry had already pushed back his chair and risen. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t stay any more. Forgive me for abandoning you, Georgie, but I’ve been away from my post too long.’ He looked down at her. ‘If you hadn’t disregarded my plans, you’d be safely back in Britain and would have been spared this storm. This is exactly the sort of thing I tried to save you from.’

  ‘How could I return—’ she began, but he raised a hand to stem her protests.

  ‘I know, the irate fiancé. Even so—’ he paused. ‘Even so,’ he added softly, ‘I am glad to see you again, Georgie.’

  Sev
eral emotions chased across his face but they were swiftly banished. He stepped back, gave a small, formal bow. ‘Miss Trent,’ and was gone.

  Chapter Twenty

  The storm did eventually blow itself out – or they outran it – Georgiana wasn’t sure which, but just as suddenly as it had arrived, it departed. People emerged white and frail into the sunshine, disbelieving that they were still alive. Sebastian and Julia bounced back as quickly as Harry said they would, and Georgiana was in awe of how much food the two children put away.

  ‘Do you have hollow toes?’ she demanded of Sebastian as he returned for his third helping of porridge.

  ‘Every part of me feels hollow,’ he explained. ‘Even my teeth and hair.’

  Mealtimes were back to being lively events, although the seat on Georgiana’s right was often empty. At breakfast one morning, Mrs Roper asked the captain why Mr Miller was absent so frequently.

  ‘That young man has become my right arm. I’ve never had such a fine officer,’ the captain beamed. ‘Many things shook loose or broke in the storm and Mr Miller is personally overseeing all repairs. I told him he’ll make a fine captain one day. He only laughed, but I was being perfectly serious for he has a natural air of command, you know.’

  Georgiana hid her smile by sipping her coffee just as Tom said in a low voice so only she could hear, ‘He certainly does have a very high-handed manner.’

  She was surprised. ‘Don’t you like him?’

  ‘There is something about him—’ Tom began, but he was interrupted by Sebastian.

  ‘Mr Mellors, do you remember you promised to play deck quoits with me today?’

  He turned to Georgiana’s young charge and smiled. ‘Of course. Did you know you’ve got porridge on your chin?’

  While Sebastian scrubbed his face with the back of his hand, Mrs Roper leaned forward to gain Georgiana’s attention. ‘My dear, can I count on your company for a turn about the decks later this morning?’