So he spoke calmly and cheerfully on the way to her house, ignoring the twitching curtains as they approached. But there was no huddled figure on the doorstep, none inside or at the back door.
“Tell me who his friends are, and where I might find them,” Durward said resignedly. “Also, when did you last see him?”
“This morning,” she said, scribbling down names on the back of a shop receipt with a tiny piece of pencil, “when he went to the harbour. But I have spoken to the harbour master, and he hasn’t been out to sea. The Queen Marie is still berthed and he isn’t on board. Or wasn’t when I looked.”
“I’ll look again,” Durward promised, taking the note from her. “You should wait here for him. I’ll keep reporting back until I find him.”
She blinked rapidly, frowning, almost as if realizing for the first time that someone other than her father and herself was involved in this personal nightmare. “Why would you do that?”
He gave her a lopsided smile. “Oh, someone should think well of me before I sail.”
She was a captain’s daughter. She knew the tides. “You only have a few hours before you sail. You should sleep.”
“I wouldn’t sleep anyway,” he said lightly. “I might as well be useful.”Ha!If his family, let alone his friends, could hear him, they’d fall over laughing. And yet she looked genuinely concerned, as though she weren’t worrying about enough as it was. Thrown, he grabbed his hat and departed.
IT TOOK HIM ALMOSTthree hours, but he eventually found Captain Jasper lying on a beach outside the town, cuddling an empty bottle. The tide was already soaking his hair and the left side of his body. Another few minutes and he would drown unless he woke up. Durward only knew he was alive from the harsh snoring noise which all but drowned out the sounds of the sea.
No wonder his daughter was angry with the idiot. And no wonder she was afraid to leave him.
Durward set down the lantern he had “borrowed” from the doorstep of the last alehouse in town and hauled Captain Jasper’s body out of the water. He extracted the bottle from his limp grip, filled it with sea water, and poured it over the drunk’s face. Together with a few slaps and an ungentle kick, it was enough to revive him.
“Wha’-wha’... What’s going on? Carina?”
“You don’t deserve Carina,” Durward said grimly. “Get up, you mess of a man. You’re going home, though I should leave you to drown.”
Discovering his companion was not his daughter, Jasper took exception to being moved, even taking a swing at Durward that was so wide of the mark he barely had to duck. Instead, he seized Jasper by his coat and shirt front and hauled him to his feet, shaking him and then holding him upright for several moments. After that, getting him to walk was easier, though it was a long journey back into town, holding him up for the most part, though he gradually took more of his own weight.
They walked mostly in silence, Durward because he had begun to grasp the full scale of Carina’s problem, and there was no point in even beginning to address it until Jasper was sober. Jasper probably required all his energy to remain upright and keep putting one foot in front of the other. He’d also begun to shiver from his wet clothes and the chilly night.
No curtains twitched as they finally approached the captain’s house. Finally, all the neighbours must have been asleep, although, as Carina opened the door to Durward’s quiet scratch, they might have heard her involuntary, “Oh,Papa!”
“Perhaps a warm drink,” Durward suggested. Jasper himself was quite compliant going upstairs to bed, though his shivering was now alarming. He sat like a child while Durward stripped off his wet things and towelled him dry, before putting him in a night shirt and shoving him into bed just as Carina appeared with a mug of tea.
Jasper’s shaking hands could not hold it, so she did, folding his hands around the mug beneath hers.
“He got wet on the beach,” Durward explained. “I think he just needs to get warm, but I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“No, you’ve done enough,” she said intensely. “I can never thank you for this.”
And tomorrow, he thought, she would go through it all again, or something very similar. He stared at her for a moment, taking in her tragic, angry eyes, her unbearable, lonely anxiety, and the sheer character behind her beauty. It all seemed to wash over him like a tide of understanding.
I would do anything for you.
The shock drove him from the room, though he suspected her attention was all on her father once more.
Durward had never been in a kitchen in all his pampered life. But she had made tea in a large pot already, so it was easy enough to pour another two cups. He even found a plate of fruit tarts that had clearly been made for an evening meal treat. He put that on the old wooden tray too and carried the lot back to Jasper’s room.
Her eyes widened with shock. But she took the cup from him, and a few moments later, ate one of the tarts. She seemed bemused, unused to help of any kind, unsure how to deal withit. The utter loneliness of her troubles cut him to the soul, so although she had a reputation to maintain, and he a ship to catch in another couple of hours, he could not leave her.
Possibly for the first time in his life, it struck him that he rarely considered other people.
Even with his duels, which he had swaggered into, more than ready to die, had he ever considered their effect on his opponents or anyone else? It struck him that if Jasper needed a kick, so did he.
But mostly, he just thought of Carina, with admiration and a growing, strangely wonderful feeling he had no name for.
He began to talk, mainly to distract her from her worry. He even made her laugh sometimes. Until she discovered that though her father still shivered, his skin was hot.
“I’ll fetch the doctor,” Durward said grimly. “Where is he?”
