Never Trust a Pirate (19 page)

Not now. Not until she came to him with the truth.

But soon.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I
T WAS FULLY AN
awful day, starting with the disaster of losing her dress out the window, followed by the captain’s appearance in her room, his hands on her, holding her. He wanted to talk with her, did he? How was she going to avoid that? Oh, she could put off just about anyone, and nothing could make her say anything she didn’t want to say, but she still felt edgy.

So far she’d found next to nothing to explain how the captain would have profited from killing her father. The locked closet had proven stubbornly resistant to her lock-picking efforts. Granted, she’d had little time, daylight, or energy to give it her full attention—it was all she could do to wash herself and tumble into the hard, narrow bed. And Mrs. Crozier hadn’t let her get anywhere near the study. She needed some kind of proof, either of guilt or innocence, before she ran from this place and never looked back.

Admit it, Maddy
, she told herself.
You’re running from the man, not the place
.

It wasn’t that she was a coward. She was simply wise enough to know when she was out of her depths, and with Captain Thomas Morgan she was floundering, weakening. Longing.

It was hard to think of him that way. He wasn’t a Thomas—it felt artificial, and she wondered if he had a pirate name, like the Dread Captain Morgan or Morgan the Black. In fact, she wasn’t even sure he was a Morgan—wasn’t that already the name of a famous pirate from centuries ago? Of course it was probably her own guilty conscience—she was the one with a false name, not the captain. But she really couldn’t think of him using that name.

She didn’t have to think of him using any name at all, except as a possible thief and murderer. Supposedly her father had driven the carriage to the edge of the cliff—he’d been found at the bottom, his neck broken, the carriage and horses abandoned. The one thing the solicitors had been able to do was quash any suggestion of suicide, and Maddy knew it was an impossibility, because Eustace Russell didn’t know how to drive. He always hired a driver. And there had been no one else out there on the windswept heart of Dartmoor. Had he died alone? Or at the hands of a killer?

She couldn’t afford to brood; she’d been brooding for too long. That was why she’d come here. She could take action, and that was exactly what she’d do, she thought, moving down the narrow staircase to Mrs. Crozier’s kitchen lair.

By late afternoon the sky was dark with clouds. The housekeeper had been at her, all day, criticizing, making her do things over and over again, which, Maddy well knew, was entirely unnecessary. Nanny Gruen had believed that a lady should know how to accomplish any household task in order to properly direct the raft of servants she would one day employ, and Maddy never did anything halfway. When she scrubbed a floor it was spotless, when she polished something it gleamed. Mrs. Crozier was simply venting her spleen, and clearly she had a great deal of it to vent.

The captain had been right—there was most definitely a storm coming. Maddy could practically feel the electricity in the air. The sun was nowhere to be seen—all day the sky had been dark and
threatening, and she’d heard the rumble of distant thunder as an ominous accompaniment to the wind that rattled the windows and shook the trees in the back garden. Out front the waters of the harbor foamed, rocking the ships on their moorings, and Maddy tried not to think about the captain. He was already gone by the time she reached the kitchens, barely ten minutes after he’d left her. Her first thought had been a devout hope that he’d be on his boat for the entire day. Her second had been a fear that he’d do just that. This was no sort of day to be out on the open water, though admittedly she was no judge of the matter, having never set one foot on a boat. She might think the captain capable of heinous crimes, but she didn’t want him dead.

Was it possible that there might be more than one man behind their father’s destruction? What if the captain was merely a part of some larger scheme? There was only one problem with all this—what possible reason could anyone have to destroy the House of Russell? Stealing the money was one thing—why did they have to steal her father as well?

The Earl of Kilmartyn had managed to survive the debacle with his fortune intact, and he had seemed a logical villain. But Bryony was too smart to be tricked by some wealthy Irish rakehell, and she’d married him out of hand, despite the fact that he was suspected of murdering his wife.

So he was out of the question—she trusted her older sister’s judgment too much. But what possible reason could the captain have for killing his employer? To be sure, her father suspected him of something, had even relieved him of his command. But what could her father have done to him that would have justified murder? And what had her father suspected him of? Morgan could hardly have embezzled all that money from across the country.

Their third possibility, Viscount Griffiths, the man who now owned their country estate, Somerset, was an even less likely villain. But that scrap of paper and common sense were all that they had to go on.

“Why have you got the lass down on her knees all the time?” A deep, rumbling voice broke through her abstraction as she rubbed the scrub brush back and forth, back and forth beneath Mrs. Crozier’s direction. At least all the endless, mindless work gave her plenty of time for introspection. She looked up, way up, into the craggy, sea-worn face of the man who lived in the mews.

“Work must be done, Mr. Quarrells,” Mrs. Crozier said. “I’ll thank you not to interfere with my arrangements.”

Mr. Quarrells snorted in contempt. “I’d like to see you do a bit of work for a change. I don’t know why he puts up with you.”

“My husband and I are devoted to the captain and this household,” she said sharply, but Maddy could hear the trace of fear in Mrs. Crozier's voice. She longed to sit back on her heels, rest her aching arms during this argument, but she didn’t dare. Mrs. Crozier had taken to giving her sharp little kicks when she thought Maddy was slacking off, and she already had bruises.

“Ah, it’s his business and none of mine,” Quarrells said, disappointing Maddy, and she ducked her head. “And speaking of himself, where is he? Isn’t he back yet? He knows better than to stay out when a storm like this is brewing.”

“I have no idea, Mr. Quarrells. He didn’t tell me when he expected to return.”

The man shook his shaggy head. “I hope the lad had sense not to take the small boat out on his own. He’s going to run into trouble if he went too far.”

“Jesus and Mary protect him,” Mrs. Crozier said devoutly, and Maddy would have given a silent snort if she hadn’t been filled with her own irrational worry. It was bad enough when she thought he’d gone out to sea in a large ship. If he were in a smaller vessel he’d be that much more vulnerable.

“More like the devil,” Quarrells said with a heartless laugh, and Maddy tried to feel encouraged. Surely a friend wouldn’t laugh if he
were in any real danger. “Tell him I need a word with him when he gets back, Mrs. C.”

“Surely not about my household arrangements?” Mrs. Crozier said sharply.

The man laughed. “Not really worth my time, is it? I’ve got more important things on my mind. Just don’t kill the lass. You don’t find such hard workers every day.”

The housekeeper made a harrumphing sound, and Maddy kept scrubbing, not slowing her efforts as she heard the kitchen door close behind Quarrells. She half-expected Mrs. Crozier to deliver another sharp kick, but the woman didn’t move.

“Looks like you’ve got yourself a champion,” Mrs. Crozier said with a sniff. “If I were you I wouldn’t get your hopes up. He’s not going to be much help to you. You’re not his type.” The woman cackled to herself. “Have you got that floor clean yet? You’re taking forever.”

There was revenge and there was revenge, Maddy thought, plastering a sweet smile on her face. Mrs. Crozier was trying to defeat her, and the best possible response was sweetness and light. “I believe I’ve done it right this time, Mrs. Crozier.”

“Then clean it up, girl. I’ve got dinner to prepare, and that miserable Mon-sewer turned my kitchen upside down. I don’t know whether the captain is lying at the bottom of the sea in this storm or not, but if he gets back safely he’ll need his dinner.”

Maddy’s smile didn’t falter. “What would you like me to do next, Mrs. Crozier?” She was so weary she could fall asleep where she knelt, but she couldn’t afford to show it. She was never going to fall asleep in the wrong place again—it was much too dangerous for her peace of mind.

There was a crack of thunder, followed by pelting rain, and a shiver ran down Maddy’s back. What would it be like to be on the ocean in a storm? The very thought was terrifying.

Mrs. Crozier eyed her skeptically. “Are the fires laid?”

“Yes, Mrs. Crozier.”

“Everything dusted and swept?”

“Yes, Mrs. Crozier.”

“Floors waxed and polished?”

“Yes, Mrs. Crozier.”

“Windows. How are the windows?”

“I washed them yesterday and the day before.”

“You didn’t do a good enough job. There were streaks.”

There hadn’t been a single streak on any pane. “Would you like me to do them again?”

She could see the thoughts tumbling in the woman’s brains—she could send her out into the thunderstorm to wash the outside of the windows and court death, even though the outside was ostensibly Wilf Crozier’s bailiwick. Finally Mrs. Crozier made a disgusted sound. “Go on then and do something about the disaster the attics are in. I’m astonished you can live in such squalor.”

Maddy forbore to mention that Mrs. Crozier had refused to allow her any time to deal with the mess in the attics. The only problem with going up there in the storm-shrouded afternoon was the chance she might disturb the bats. “When would you like me back downstairs?”

“If I need you again I’ll call you. And don’t be thinking you’ll steal a nap. You’re not being paid to sleep on the job.”

For a moment Maddy wondered whether the captain had said anything to his housekeeper about finding her asleep in his bed. He couldn’t have—Mrs. Crozier wouldn’t have let her hear the end of it. “Yes, Mrs. Crozier.”

She might not have dared sleep when she climbed the endless flights of stairs to the attics, but at least the bats did. She brought up a broom and a bucket of hot water, and what had been an unending chore downstairs was surprisingly pleasant in her own space. The clean windows looked out over the storm, and she peered through the thick clouds to the harbor, looking for any signs of a boat foundering on
the rough waves. Which was patently ridiculous—if the captain was out there she had no idea what his vessel looked like. And why would an experienced sailor go out on the water when he wasn’t working? It would be like a cobbler making shoes in his spare time, wouldn’t it?

By the time she was finished, the sky was full-on dark, and the captain hadn’t returned, at least, not by way of the front door. She’d planned to attack the locked closet again, but she couldn’t concentrate. She’d deliberately left the window open, returning time and again when she thought she heard someone outside. The wind-driven rain soaked the floor in front of her, but Maddy didn’t care. Her stomach was tied in knots, and all the rationalizations couldn’t stop her anxiety. She needed him home, safe and sound, and then she could worry about whether he needed to hang for her father’s murder.

Finally she dragged a sagging, mouse-chewed old chair in front of the window, covered it with a quilt, and sat down, waiting. The rain blew in on her face and she closed her eyes, breathing in the smell of the sea and the freshness of the storm, and she let her body become still and quiet. She hadn’t been to church since her father died, and before then it had been more of a social obligation than an act of religious observance, but this undercurrent of thought couldn’t really be called prayer. She closed her eyes and pictured the captain, the wicked, laughing captain, alive and well. Any port in a storm, the captains would say. And he would be more than adept at saving his own neck. He’d be fine. But still she let the vision move inside her, to quiet the unbearable fear.