Her father. The Earl of Hangleton. Here at Pomeroy House.
The notion struck Archer like a blow. Hangleton had been at Gravesmuir’s dinner party. Hangleton might know him as Quenby.
His eyes flew to Lamentation. To Gerry, who was still cradling Zenobia.
“Cap?” Lamentation said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Archer lied. “Go... fetch the silks, will you? Put them in your chamber, if they’ll fit.”
Lamentation offered him a hasty smile and a slapdash salute, and Archer’s stomach twisted.
He was still lying to them. He didn’t know how to stop it.
What had he done? What events had he set into motion, here in the parlor with his easy deceptions?Hehad told Neri that he kept up a correspondence with Hangleton. His lies might bring Hangleton’s attention to Pomeroy House.
Archer had rescued Ruby’s dream. But in so doing, he had also thrown his own crew squarely in the path of disaster.
It felt like theSwallowall over again—every turn tangling him further in the net of his conflicted loyalties, every twist tightening the rope about his neck. There was no right play—no words that might spin him free.
In the parlor—in the cove—he had not thought of anything but Ruby. His whole world had been Cornwall, and the beach, the soft curve of Ruby’s cheek and the deeper curve of her mouth. There had been no past to haunt him nor impossible future—only the present as he held her to him, as he drowned himself happily in the bright horizon of her laugh.
For so much of his life, he had lived in the present moment. Dodging fancy coves in the streets after he’d fleeced them of their coin. Charging ships twice the size of hisSwallowbut half her speed.
Even when he’d sat beside his mother in her bed, a handful of flowers balanced on her palm, he’d known it would not last forever.
But not anymore. He had his crew now. There would be no easy vanishing, no quick departure if he failed them.
And Ruby—
Ah God. She was no dalliance. No temporary madness. She was not a woman for whom affairs came and went like candied fruit, bits of sweetness to be cast aside and forgotten. She took things seriously; she took them to heart.
Already—already he was letting her down, and she did not even know it. She did not even know that he was Quenby.
“I’ll clear the chambers,” he said roughly. He could not quite look at her. He couldn’t look at any of them. “I’ll have it done before Neri comes back.”
Chapter 15
Ruby balanced several boxes of live bugs—beetles?—in her hands and tried very hard not to drop them as she pushed her way into the disused stables.
They had spent the twenty-four hours since Signor Neri’s arrival in a flurry of activity. Alice and Tamsin had taken turns entertaining the signore on jaunts across the Cornish cliffsides while everyone else raced around Pomeroy House and tried to make it presentable. Ruby had painted and carted furniture, and Archer and Lamentation had darted about locking doors to rooms that held various illicit items. Wall had transitioned fully into the role of French chef, and Eugénie had been charged with the creation of a luxurious suite for Zenobia as far away as was possible from Vanessa, toward whom Zenobia had developed a powerful antipathy.
Gerry had not been able to participate. If he left Zenobia’s side, she howled until he returned. If anyone else dared to approach—even Lamentation—she growled low in her throat and showed her tiny, pearl-white teeth.
By the morning, Ruby had turned to an enthusiastic decoration of the remaining bedchambers, including Tamsin’s and Alice’s. Alice had consented to have the beetles relocated to the stables, so long as Ruby had promised that Alice could attend to their habitation regularly.
She’d just settled the creatures into an abandoned stall—she hoped that they got on; if they ate one another Alice would be crushed—when she heard a noisy splintering and then a muttered curse. She peeked out around the corner of her stall, though of course she already knew who it was. She recognized his voice.
Archer held an immense wooden crate, which he’d evidently knocked into a beam as he’d entered. The bottom of it had broken open, and out of it had spilled an extraordinary cache of white lace stockings, which he was hastily stuffing back into the upended container. His jaw was sharp and clean-shaven, and his dark hair tumbled over his eyes, obscuring all that piercing blue.
She had scarcely spoken to him since Neri’s arrival.
Since their kiss, rather. Since she’d told him everything she knew—revealed her own secrets—and then plunged, reckless and falling, into his embrace.
She cleared her throat, and he looked up, and oh, she felt like a soap bubble, thin and floating. Her heart was in her throat as she looked at him, and worse—
Far worse. She feared her heart was in her eyes.
He’d run with her back to the house, and when she’d fallen behind, he’d laughed and pretended to gloat in his victory, and then bent to fiddle with his shoe and feigned shock when she outstripped him.
