“Where’s Lady Beatrice? And Wenna and her baby?”
Myghal coughed, spitting up seawater, before he moaned and closed his eyes, his hand moving to his stomach and his torn clothes. Ranulf spread open the garments to see a small hole in Myghal’s flesh. Blood trickled out of it, and he didn’t doubt Myghal had lost much more.
He’d been stabbed and thrown into the sea. Whoever had done it had likely believed he was already dead when he went over the side, or would drown. Even so, it was a gruesome end—but perhaps not gruesome enough, if Bea was gone forever because of Myghal’s treachery.
He slapped Myghal again to wake him. “Where is Lady Beatrice?”
Kiernan knelt across from Ranulf and produced a wineskin. “Try this.”
Ranulf opened the stopper and poured some wine down Myghal’s throat. He coughed and spluttered and his eyes slowly opened.
“Where is Lady Beatrice?” Ranulf repeated.
Myghal’s lips moved and Ranulf leaned closer to hear. He didn’t care that it strained the stitches in his side. He didn’t notice his own pain as he listened to Myghal whisper, “On Pierre’s ship.”
A knowing murmur started among the men, until Ranulf held up his hand for silence.
“Forgive me,” Myghal gasped. “I had to take her to him. He had Wenna.” Myghal closed his eyes and a tear slid out of the corner. “He killed Gawan, too. And Hedyn and Gwen…” He drew in a deep, ragged breath.
“Where’s he taken Bea? France?”
“No…” His eyes closed and his head started to loll back like a doll’s.
Ranulf grabbed Myghal’s tunic, lifting him and shaking him in his distress. “Where?”
“Tangier… Slave market.”
Oh, God.
Myghal took hold of Ranulf’s tunic and heaved himself up. “He killed Gawan. I paid him to. I wanted Wenna so much. I loved her, but she chosehim.” He gasped and started to sink back to the ground. “Forgive me.”
Ranulf knew the pain of rejection, knew it all too well. He could understand the heartache, the rage, the wounded pride, and the desperation that could compel a man to do murder. “I do.”
“God…forgive me.”
“In His mercy, He will,” Ranulf said as Myghal’s eyes rolled back and he let out his last breath in one long sigh.
Ranulf slowly and painfully got to his feet. He couldn’t think about Myghal now, or his own mistake in trusting him. He had to save Bea. Hemustsave her. He would, and nothing—no man, no ocean, no fear—was going to stop him. He would go to the ends of the earth for Bea. He would brave the surging, restless sea.
“I need a ship,” he said, looking steadily at Gareth.
“There’s a merchant’s vessel in Penterwell harbor that ought to be fast enough to catch a French barque,” his garrison commander replied.
With a nod, Ranulf started toward Titan.
“A storm’s blowing in,” Gareth warned.
Ranulf glanced at the man over his shoulder and the look on his face said everything.
“I’m coming with you,” Kiernan said, following.
“And storm or no storm, me and your men,” Gareth declared.
RANULF’S STOMACH HEAVEDwith every plunge of the ship through the six-foot waves. He clung to the rigging on the foredeck of the merchant’s ship with desperate strength, his face and body lashed by rain, wind and water. The waves frothed and surged, and the deck bucked beneath his unsteady feet.
This was the stuff of nightmares. To be out at sea in a storm, on a ship that seemed no more than a child’s fragile toy, at the mercy of the sea and wind, while below the water waited to swallow him up like a malicious god.
Kiernan made his way along the shifting deck to join Ranulf. “The captain said only a smuggler, or a madmen bent on catching one, would be out in this gale.”
