Dreaming (28 page)

Pitiable, laughable, but absolutely understandable. If anyone could understand Harry’s reaction to her it was Richard. He consoled himself with the thought that, should things get dull, he could go over and sit next to Harry. They could compare wounds, he thought, watching the scene with a kind of detached amusement.

However, there was one thing he couldn’t deny. Not once since they’d been nabbed had Richard been bored. He had been shot, starved, drunk, half drowned, insulted; he’d been mad as hell, but he had not been bored.

Unusual. Very unusual. His memory held a life’s log filled with dull and empty days. Even those wild ways that the Reverend Mrs.
Poppit
would deem wicked no longer held much in the way of amusement.

Yet this motley group held his wayward interest the way nothing had for so long, except perhaps a brandy bottle, and even strong drink had ceased to be the escape for Richard that it had once been. He had so few places to run anymore. Nowhere to hide.

Thoughts of running and hiding fled while he watched those around him. He crossed his hands behind his head, leaned against a cave wall with his legs comfortably outstretched, and just let himself be entertained.

He had nodded off for a while, yet he had no idea how long. Not that it mattered. He wasn’t going anywhere. No pressing schedule.

They all sat in a quiet tentativeness around the small fire, Gus literally dogging the hellion’s steps as she doled out food to a row of ragtag smugglers who sat between Harry and herself. Rather like a neutral ground between warring factions.

With a sharp bark, Gus leapt up and snatched a piece of cheese right from the hellion’s hand, making her jump back in surprise. “Gus!” she scolded. “Stop pilfering the food! You be sweet!”

Philbert
frowned, an expression that told Richard he too thought the idea of Gus being sweet more than a little farfetched. Richard immediately felt a sense of kinship with the man.

The beast had trotted gleefully over to plop down in a dark corner, where he seemed content to masticate the living hell out of that cheese.

Ignoring the smacking that echoed from that corner, Richard tore off a chunk of bread and chewed it, studying each person around him and asking himself if this could all be a nightmare—an in-his-cups type of nightmare. One drink too many. A bad hallucination from which he would soon awaken, hung over.

But nightmares didn’t last for days. They either lasted one night or a lifetime.

He came to the only logical conclusion: He had actually died—yes, that was it—and had come back as part of a lost play by . . . by Moliere.

Les
Inadaptes
. The Misfits.

That’s what they were, he thought, looking at each man. Then his gaze shifted to the hellion. And suddenly
he
felt the misfit.

He doubted he had ever been that naïve, that young, that filled with the ability to find good in everything.

One thing was certain: He knew he’d never been a dreamer.

Yet she was. A happy dreamer. With a bounce to her step she moved down the line of men, handing them hunks of bread and wedges of sharp cheese and acting as if it were the food of the gods, as if they were her bosom beaus, and as if this were the most delightful of moments.

When he watched her expressive face, he could almost believe that there was something special about today. Except he knew better. But on she went, smiling at each man, a smile that was warm and inviting, honest, a real smile that could move him more than it was comfortable to admit.

The past few hours had held no smiles. She had made that comment about his pride, then had quietly moved across the cave, curled up against the security of her dog—her only friend in the world—and slept while he’d sat there feeling like a puffed-up horse’s ass.

He felt a sharp pang of guilt as he watched her. Because he remembered how pointedly silent she had been a few minutes ago. She had stood before him with her arms full of bread and cheese.

She had no smile for him. She stood there as if she couldn’t bear to look at him, so instead she held out the food while staring at her shoes. Made him feel like the very devil.

He knew what she needed. She needed to be home. She needed to be away from him. She needed to learn reality—that dreams didn’t come true. And no matter what she did, how hard she tried, he would never, could never, allow himself to be what she wanted him to be.

Her knight on a white horse.

He absently rubbed the thick stubble on his chin and stared at her a little longer. He supposed it was best to leave things as they lay.

She handed the other brother a wedge of cheese and some bread.

“Thank ye, Missy.”
Phineas
looked up at her and paused, then added, “Ye was right, ye know.”

“Me?” She smiled that smile. “About what?”

“On the other ship, when ye came to our defense. Ye said we didn’t mean no harm. We didn’t have the foggiest notion them crates were full o’ gun locks until it was too late.” He hung his head slightly and said, “Ye might be finding this hard to hold true, but”—he held up his right hand—“God’s truth, we’ve never smuggled afore.”

Richard didn’t find that difficult to believe at all. In fact, he’d have wagered most of his fortune on it.

“Truly?” she said, then she darted a covert look at Richard. “Just as I had said. One doesn’t feed people that one is intending to murder. That doesn’t make sense.”

Turning back to
Phineas
, she added, “Richard told me that people who are going to be executed are given last meals, you see.” She lowered her voice. “He’s a known rakehell.” She stopped to give a huge dramatic sigh, as if the notion was difficult to bear.

“So he knows quite a bit—for an earl, I mean-about gambling, drinking, smuggling, debauchery, executions, even piracy. Did you know that he was the one who told me that the term ‘privateer’ was a more socially acceptable word for ‘pirate?’ I surely didn’t know, never having been around pirates. Of course, now we all have, haven’t we? But back to my point . . . ”

In which lifetime, Richard thought, would she make her point?

“I believe that is why he—Richard, that is—can be so terribly cruel at times.”

It was his turn to flinch. She’d made her point. Quite accurately.

“But you didn’t intend to harm us, did you?” she continued. “And, as I was saying, I told him so, after I found out he’d lied to me about the little adventure to tell our—I mean,
my
grandchildren. But he said that the gun locks were the only reason you had to nab us.” She took a breath and hugged the bread and cheese more tightly to her chest, then cocked her head. “So why did you take us?”

Phineas
frowned, nodding his head every so often as if he were trying to recall everything she had said.

Philbert
nudged
Phineas
with an elbow jab and whispered, “Forget all the blithering questions. Just answer the last one.”

Both brothers exchanged a knowing look, then turned toward
Phelim
, who was sleeping against a cave wall.

Like the others, Richard found himself staring at the sleeping smuggler. He no longer had his admiral’s hat or
eyepatch
, but one sleeve of his shirt hung empty, the arm that belonged in it resting in a long lump across his belly.

His burnt-brown skin showed his years on the sea and in the sun, and like the others, he had a shock of graying hair, which had dried and now sprang from his head in clumps of cowlicks. Richard stared at the man’s head and had the sudden image of a red water jug with large handles. He’d be willing to wager the contents of both were the same.

Phineas
and
Philbert
pointed at
Phelim
and in unison said, “He did it!”

Phelim’s
only response was a loud snore.

“Why did he do it?” she asked.

“‘Cause he lost his wits,”
Philbert
muttered.

“Now, Bertie. Ye know
Phelim
wouldn’t’ve
done that what he did if his head were right. Me brother
hain’t
been himself, Missy.”
Phineas
shook his head. “Not since he come home from the navy. He took a hit in the head. He was in Nelson’s navy for twenty long years, while Bertie and me saw to the business. The whole time
Phelim
was off fighting the frogs, we took care of what were ours, we did.”

The hellion looked at them. “So you weren’t all in the navy?”

Phineas
shook his head.

Philbert
added, “We be milk hawkers.
Buttermen
.”

Richard took a deep breath, rested his forehead in one hand, and stared at the cave floor. They’d been nabbed by cow farmers and shell-cracked sailors. God . . . He could almost hear
Seymour
crowing now.

“Our dairy farm be near the
village
of
Dappledown
,”
Philbert
told them. “
Phineas
took the butter-cart to the village every day but the Sabbath.”

“Bertie here makes the finest cheese and the whitest butter in the parish,”
Phineas
said with brotherly pride.

“Thank ye.”

“
Ye’re
welcome. I only
spake
what were true. I miss the life, Bertie, that I do.”

“It be a good life,”
Philbert
agreed.

“Aye.”

“’
Til
the
bleedin
’ Parliament went an’ passed the Enclosure Acts. Took away the common pasture and forced us to sell off all but two cows,”
Philbert
explained. “
Phelim
come home just after. I knew we should’ve kept him with us. Should
never’ve
let him go off to
London
,
Phineas
. Should’ve never.”

“He served in the navy
fer
a long while, Bertie. For
England
and God and King. ’
Tweren’t
his fault what happen to him.”
Phineas
looked at the hellion, his shoulders slumped in defeat. “We lost the farm, the last two cows, everything, we did.”

The hellion had tears glistening in her eyes as she patted the older man on his slumped shoulder. “How?”

“He took off to
London
with Harry and the others.”
Philbert
looked at them. “They’d all been
t’gether
in the navy and up and set a meet at the Fish and the Tail, a dockside tavern. Rough place it were too.
Phelim
didn’t duck during a brawl and got hit on his head.”

Philbert
gave them a knowing look. “
Ye’ve
all seen what happens. He thought t’ be Nelson bartering with the enemy for his stolen brigantine. By the time he came home, he had traded our small farm
fer
a ship.”

“But it’s obvious he’s not well,”
Letty
said. “No one should hold him to a trade, considering.”

“We tried to explain, we did, both Bertie and me,”
Phineas
added. “But the bloke what bartered it said a trade’s a trade. He’d been looking to pension out on a farm himself, he had. So we was stuck with no home, no income, only that ol’
lugger
what was barely seaworthy before it wrecked. We be
livin
’ aboard the ship when
Phelim
took it into his poor head to make a deal with some
froggie
émigré.”

“The gun locks,” Richard said, thinking aloud.

“Aye.”
Philbert
nodded. “We was told all we had to do was ship some crates o’ food, blankets, and the
hie
to his family what were still in
France
.”

“Claimed they was struggling to hang on to their home,” said
Phineas
, picking up the tale. “
Considerin
’ our trouble, ye can see why we were
willin
’. But there weren’t no food in those crates, no there weren’t.