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No, it didn’t have to be him. I kept telling myself that, over and over. But the question kept coming back: what
if it is?
The men out on the water pulled the motionless body into their little boat and returned to the ship with swift dips of the oars. I stood motionless, awaiting their return. Awaiting my doom, or my salvation.
And since when have you been so bloody melodramatic?
The answer to that was simple. Since him, of course.
A rope was tied around the dead man’s torso, and he was pulled up the side of the ship until he slid over the railing and landed on the deck with a wet thwack. I didn’t look. I didn’t dare to.
‘Miss?’ It wasn’t the lieutenant’s voice. Captain Crockford had appeared beside me, looking not half as relaxed and aloof as earlier. His face still was rather pale. ‘Miss, I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to identify the body.’
Somehow, I managed to swallow around the giant lump in my throat.
Get a grip and look! You owe him that. You would be dead if not for him.
‘All right, Captain. Step aside, please.’
The captain did as I asked and offered me his arm for support, but I didn’t take it. I was a wreck, but I would have to feel a lot worse than this to need a man’s arm to stand upright. Lifting my chin, I forced my gaze towards the contorted figure on the planks of the deck.
‘Thank the Lord!’ I breathed in a sigh of relief so deep I could hardly believe my lungs had the space for all that air. ‘It’s not him!’
‘Are you sure, Miss?’ the captain asked, still sounding worried. ‘I mean, with his face looking like that…’
‘I’m sure!’
Even with his face swollen and horribly bluish, I could instantly tell that the man on the deck was not Mr Ambrose. In fact, it would hardly have been possible to find a man who looked less like Rikkard Ambrose than the pudgy individual with the sodden black moustache that lay there in front of me.
‘Well, what does Mr Ambrose look like?’ the captain asked.
A choked sob escaped me. ‘Why? Are you expecting to fish so many men out of the sea that you’ll have to pick and choose?’
‘Just tell me, Miss Linton.’
With a shrug, I gave in. I didn’t have the strength to resist right now. Following right on the heels of the relief that the dead man wasn’t Mr Ambrose had come the horror of knowing that this was what he probably looked like now: blue, swollen, stiff and cold.
Well, he’s always been stiff and cold, so at least that won’t change, will it?
Another sob escaped me.
‘Tell me, Miss Linton,’ the captain insisted.
Oh, what the hell! If he thought it would help…
‘He’s tall, dark…’
…and handsome. So bloody perfectly handsome!
‘…and, um, dark. Dark-haired, I mean.’ I coughed, hoping that nobody was noticing my ears reddening. A drowned man was lying right in front of me, for Pete’s sake! How could I think of something like that at a time like this?
‘Beard, Miss Linton?’
‘He hasn’t got a beard. Not even a moustache.’
The captain’s eyebrows rose. ‘No beard?’
I shook my head. ‘None at all.’
