They were all breathing hard by the time they reached the farthest edge of the small harbor. Signor Neri twisted his fingers together, and Alice put a delicate hand over his, a silent gesture of reassurance.
“What do we do?” Ruby asked. Her face felt sun-flushed; she was thirsty and hot and desperate to move, toact. “We’ll need to track the ship, but I don’t—” She looked helplessly up at Archer. “I don’t know how to track a ship, for heaven’s sake! It leaves no trace.”
His throat worked as he looked down at her.
“The captain will know what to do,” Gerry said. His voice was so deep that it vibrated, despite how softly he’d spoken. “He always does.”
The words seemed to take Archer in the chest. He flinched a little; his gaze flicked from Ruby to Gerry and then out to the sea. He swallowed again.
“Aye,” he said finally. “I know what to do.” He fixed his gaze on the assembled company. “Wall, come with me. I want to make theDelphiniumready. Lamentation, I’ll need you too, and Eugénie. And”—he hesitated, his voice dragging across the words like a rasp—“Gerry. Will you take the ladies back to the house?”
Ruby’s mouth came open, words tumbling free before she could stop them. “Back to the house? You cannot... Surely you don’t mean to leave without me.”
He looked down at her. His eyes burned terribly blue in the afternoon light. “I’ll come back to the house. I won’t—go. Without speaking to you.”
She reached up and touched his chest. Her gloves and his shirt made a thin, distinct barrier between their bodies, but the gesture was clear. Her hand lay over his heart.
“All right,” she said.I trust you.
* * *
Archer had thought about lying. Even as he’d made the vow to Ruby, he’d considered breaking it.
It was a reflex. A habit. Lying would be easier—lying might keep her safe. It would be to her own benefit as well as his.
He had sent Wall, Eugénie, and Lamentation off to ready theDelphiniumwhile he hastily secured provisions and called in favors. He needed someone to carry messages, to ride ahead on the mail coach to the ports he meant to search for theVulcano. He needed, if it came down to it, to storm Verdura’s townhouse and search for Princess Serafina there himself—which meant he needed someone to find out for him where the hell Verdura lived.
He’d tracked down Gill Oliphant, sipping ale in the warm dusk, and had only just related the first of his many requirements to the old smuggler when he’d noticed Alfie Enys wiping the same table over and over, eavesdropping shamelessly.
“Here now,” he said, “Alfie, don’t—”
But Alfie had taken off, and within ten minutes, more Enys boys had appeared, and then Benji Woon’s equally mischievous sister Deborah, and then the apothecary’s assistant, and the hawk-nosed shipwright, and even Mr. Polkinghorne, the vicar.
Ready with maps and ropes and tinctures, with cousins in Portsmouth and ships in Southampton, with advice and provisions and stout hearts.
All of them ready to help.
They had not come for Princess Serafina, Archer realized with a swoop of shock and giddy, fearful guilt.
They’d come for him.
It seemed that somehow these last years, while he’d been living at Pomeroy House and protecting his crew and scrabbling to keep them all fed and housed, he’d developed a kind of rootedness. A connection to St. Petroc’s that felt, dizzyingly, like home.
They believed in him. They thought that he could lead them. He’d told them in all confidence that he knew what to do, and somehow, through sheer force of will, he had to mold that prediction of success into hard reality.
He felt sick with gratitude and terror together. It was as if he’d convinced them they could walk upon water, and now he had to watch them all try.
His mind turned, again and again, upon the direction he planned to take his crew as they searched the ports along the coast for theVulcanoand the princess. Closer to London—closer to where he’d failed last time, as Quenby.
If he did not bring Ruby with them, there was no chance they might come face-to-face with her father. If he left her here, he could keep her safe. Keep all of them safe.
Keep his secrets from his crew.
If he fled now, he would not have to face Ruby’s disappointment. He could rescue the princess and come home in a shower of glory and pretend he’d never broken his vow to Ruby. Make believe he had not let her down.
He composed a note in his mind to excuse his flight. An apology. And as he did, the motto of House di Sangro came back to him, a shameful twist of truth.
Astra inclinant, sed non obligant.
