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This was it.
She carefully left her room and headed for the stairs. Just as she reached the front door, she heard the raspy shuffle of boots moving toward her. Her heart hammering, she dodged into the drawing room.
“Goodnight, Kingsley,” her brother called to their butler as he trudged up the stairs.
“Goodnight, Master Jonathan.”
Serenity trembled in the shadows as another wave of apprehension washed over her. Maybe she should stay here and let Jonathan have this story.
After all, anything could happen.
True, she was dressed like a man and it was a dark night, but what if someone should realize she was a woman? A woman alone on the docks at night was a disaster just waiting to happen.
Come now,her mind snapped.What is this cowardice? Would Lady Mary shirk at such a challenge?
Well, nay. Lady Mary would carry on regardless of the danger. Indeed, she would revel in it.
Besides, the Sea Wolf was a man of honor. It showed in the way he carried himself, in the fact that he risked his very life to save others. He wouldn’t dishonor her. He was the noble Sea Wolf. The protector of innocents.
This was her chance to be the person she wanted to be.
With that thought foremost in her mind, she slipped out the front door, into the cool night and into her future.
It was just after midnight. Jacob Dudley sat waiting beneath the bower of a weeping willow, his eyes trained on the James household, and most importantly, on the single light in the upstairs window. He was waiting for it to go out.
You’re a fool on a fool’s mission,he groused at himself as he shifted a large package in his lap. He’d come to Savannah just that afternoon to pick up his wife’s dress, and he’d been delighted to find Morgan in port. Of course, Morgan’s dinner story about his near miss with Serenity James had been less than amusing.
But they had laughed anyway and shared drinks until Morgan had taken his leave. Jake had been just about to follow when he’d overheard a man in the tavern questioning the patrons about the same story that had brought Morgan to town.
Wayward Hayes.
It was a name he knew as well as his own. A name any good profit-minded sailor kept his ears open for word of. Hayes made his living by tracking down pirates and privateers and handing them over to the governments who paid the most for them.
Now that man sought the Sea Wolf.
Just like Morgan, Hayes had decided the author of the newspaper article knew the Sea Wolf by sight; only, Hayes had yet to learn S. S. James was a woman.
That gave Jake enough time to make sure Morgan escaped before Hayes learned his identity.
But first he must make certain Serenity was secure. Hayes wouldn’t ever believe she’d written her story without firsthand knowledge of Morgan. Nor was he the type of man to go easy on her just because she was a woman.
Nay, with the price the British had on Morgan’s head, Hayes would interrogate her every bit as thoroughly and painfully as he would a man. And Jake wasn’t the kind of man to leave a woman to suffer. Not when he could help it.
The light went out.
Scooping up the package, Jake rose to his feet. Just a few minutes more and he would make sure Serenity and Morgan were safe from Hayes’s clutches.
He sneaked across the yard.
It had cost him quite a bit to learn about the James family. There were three women living in the house—the brown-haired Serenity, her blond sister, and an elderly housekeeper.
Jake smiled. True, it’d been a while since he’d infiltrated a home for such mischief, but he’d done it enough in the past to believe he’d have no problems finding the chit and getting her out. He could move as stealthily as a ghost, and in his bachelor days, he’d roamed in and out of many a woman’s room without her husband or family being the wiser.
He drew even with the sweeping front porch.
The front door creaked open.
Jake froze. And before he could move, a small form ran from the house. Like lightning, someone scampered across the porch, down the steps, and straight into his chest.
