Page 32 of The Rogue

“Let me? You won’t let me? Damn you, Lawrence. I saw the bullets hit you, three bullets! You were bathed in your own blood, and I saw you fall into the sea. I have lived and relived that scene in nightmares for a lifetime. Do you seriously think I could live with seeing you hanged? Do you think I can contemplate it and keep my sanity intact? For God knows I feel I’ve had little grasp on it for the last decade!”

The earl took a breath and she saw the cold demeanour he wore like a cloak slip neatly into place. “You will go now, Captain Savage, while I consider what to do with you. As for you, Miss Morton, you must be tired. I will give you my cabin for the voyage, a meal and someone to assist you will be sent shortly. I believe you will find some of your belongings in that chest,” he said, gesturing to a small box at the side of his desk.

He opened the door and shouted, and two men came smartly at his call.

“Take the prisoner below. See he is fed and unharmed, he is to reach the gallows without a mark or you will feel my wrath, do I make myself plain?”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

Henri watched with uncertainty as Lawrence was led away, and Alex’s cold eyes met hers.

“Miss Morton,” he said by way of taking his leave, and nodded his head, pulling the door closed behind him.

Henri stood there for a moment and then took a breath. She had the strangest feeling that she hadn’t actually breathed since the ship she now stood on had been sighted. She walked a little unsteadily to the bed and sat down, suddenly aware of the slightly nauseating motion of the ship, the creak of wood and rigging, and the muffled steps and calls of men both above and below her.

Until this point her mind had been totally consumed with fear, with shock, with wonder - with Lawrence, and her surroundings had all been caught up with that fact. But now she was sat here, still and alone with her thoughts and her surroundings seemed to want her to take note, for try as she might she was struggling to make sense of what had just happened.

The Earl of Falmouth was, indeed, a good man. A man who had been bowed by grief at the loss of his brother. The charismatic pirate captain who she’d come to care for was going, somehow, to be saved from the gallows. Though at this point she could not conceive of how such a thing could be arrived at. But there had been an air about the earl that made her believe he would think of something.

She lay back on the bed and decided she would take a moment to rest before she changed her damp clothes, even though the cold, wet material around her made her shiver. But then she closed her eyes and sleep had begun to beckon when there was a frantic knocking at the door. Frowning she hauled her protesting limbs upright and hastened to answer it.

“Who is it?” she called.

“Henri?” cried an ecstatic voice from behind the wood and Henri was almost bowled off her feet as the generous figure of Annie burst through the door and enveloped her in a hug.

“Oh, Miss Henri!” the lady sobbed, running hands over her Mistress’ face and arms, as though ensuring everything was, indeed, in the correct place and quite as it should be. “Are you alright? Did the brute hurt you?”

Henri beamed and hugged her maid with quite as much enthusiasm. “Oh, Annie, I am so glad to see you, you cannot imagine!”

“Whatever were ye thinkin’, child?” she scolded, for once in her life overcome with an excess of maternal instinct. “If I hadn’t followed ye, oh, Lawd, I dread to think what may ‘ave befallen ye!”

“You sent Lord Falmouth?” Henri exclaimed, as all became clear. She frowned as questions crowded in her mind. “Papa? Is he well, is he here?”

Annie shook her head. “No, my lady. Your papa is well, but his lordship insisted he stay home and carry on as usual. No one is to know ye are missin’ see. You’ve gone to stay with a cousin in the north, that way he said, if we found ye, none would be the wiser and yer reputation quite safe.”

“Oh.” Henri nodded, thoughtful, wondering why this didn’t seem to be as much as a relief as perhaps it should be. She had the diamonds, though, she thought. She need not marry the earl now and if Lawrence was freed ...

But she was getting ahead of herself, Lawrence was currently in irons and a long way from freedom.

Annie looked at her young charge and pulled a face. “Look at the state of ye. Now get them wet things off this minute. We’ll get ye warm and dry, and ye can tell me what the devil you’ve been up to. For if I know you, there’s mischief brewin’ here somewhere.”

Henri smiled, reassured by Annie’s familiar nagging tone, and allowed herself to be wrangled out of wet cloth and into a warm bed, with tea and crumpets, and a rapt audience to hear tell of her adventure.