Pirate Wolf Trilogy (99 page)

Eva was adamant. "I am well aware of the
hardships and the danger, but he is my father."

"Yes, and the chances are he's dead and I
will be spending months looking for a rotting corpse!"

Eva flinched and Ross cursed his bluntness.
"Eva, darling, I'm sorry. But the harsh reality is that he's been
gone four years. There hasn't been a sighting, a letter, or a
message in over three. There are a thousand islands in the tropics;
he could be on any one of them. Or he could be on none of them. His
ship could have been lost to a storm, or to pirates. He might have
been captured by the Spaniards or the French or the Portuguese.
Ships go missing. Men go missing. If he was alive, surely after all
this time, he would have found some way to get a message to one of
us, but there has been no communication, no letters, not even a
verbal message passed from mouth to ear."

"He was alive when the
Gull
sailed
home to England."

"Yes, he was alive." The need to force
patience into his voice caused Ross's thin, angular face to darken
a shade. "The captain of the
Gull
said your father insisted
on being left behind, that he would find another ship to bring him
home. That was over three years ago. Three long years in the
tropics, travelling around islands infested with cannibals and
Spaniards and all manner of pestilence. He is dead, Eva. The sooner
you accept that, the sooner you can get on with your life. The
sooner we can both get on with our lives."

Eva curled her hands into fists to stop them
trembling.

"He is not dead," she insisted quietly. "If
he was dead, I would know. I would feel the loss here—" she pressed
a hand over her heart. "Father is alive. And if we have not heard
from him it is because he is in trouble. Or he is hurt or lost or
being held captive. The Spanish take captives all the time."

"Indeed they do, to hold them for ransom. We
have had no demands."

"They may not know who he is. They may have
put him to work in the mines or... or on a cane plantation,
or—"

Ross twisted his lips. "And if they have, the
average life span of a white captive forced into slavery is about
two months."

"He is a big, strong man."

"Who would eat more and cost more to keep
alive than five scrawnier men."

She whirled around, muttering a distinctly
unladylike curse, and paced to the window. "Why are you being so
obstinate? If you believe so strongly that he is dead, why are you
taking the
Cormorant
to look for him?"

"Because we still have a business to run. We
still need to find new ports for trade. This company is hanging on
by threads. East India Shipping is swallowing up all of the smaller
export lines and establishing itself as a Goliath. We've lost a
dozen trade deals with the cane growers because we cannot afford to
pay the bribes or match the prices the Dutch offer. That was the
part of the reason, four years ago, that your father undertook the
voyage, but since then we've had to sell two more ships to pay off
debts. We've had to borrow against everything we own, even the
clothes on our backs."

Eva turned slowly from the window. "I had no
idea it was that bad."

"You wouldn't have any reason to know because
I've tried to protect you. I've tried to maintain everything the
way your father would have wanted." He came around the desk and
stood alongside her at the window, and when he spoke again his
words were softer, his hands gentle where they touched her
shoulders. "I am not wishing his death, Eva. Believe me. William
Chandler was my best friend as well as my business partner. He was
like a father to me and if there is any chance he is still alive,
do you not think I will search as if my own life depended on
it?"

"It may be
his
life that depends on
it," she said stubbornly.

"Indeed it may. And the last thing I need is
an entourage of lady’s maids squealing over snakes and spiders or
fussing over which gown is best to wear in the jungle.”

“I don’t need an entourage.”

“Eva…no."

Eva sighed. He was right. Of course he was
right but at the same time, she could not shake the feeling that
her father was in trouble, and if no one came to his rescue, then
he truly would die.

"Eva…?" Ross gently tucked a finger under her
chin to tip it up to his. "We need to get on with our lives.
William would not have wanted either of us to squander our
happiness over one of his adventures gone wrong. You have postponed
the wedding twice and so far I have been a patient groom."

She shifted uncomfortably. "Yes. I know. And
I don’t mean to be so..."

"Obstinate?"

She made a little sound that he took as
assent and bent his mouth to hers. The kiss, like the man, was
polite and without embellishment, and she found herself resenting
the two full seconds he thought suitable for such a display of
unbridled passion.

He was younger than her father by a decade,
tall with a pleasant enough countenance most women found appealing.
Eva thought his eyes were slightly too close together over a long,
thin nose that was usually tilted upward, as if the air was better
near the ceiling.

With William gone it had seemed only natural
for Lawrence to assume the responsibilities of looking after
Evangeline as well as the business, but she knew full well there
was another reason why he wanted the wedding to take place sooner
rather than later: the twenty thousand pounds her mother had left
in trust for her dowry.

She had been sixteen when he had proposed—two
short months after the
Gull
had returned to Portsmouth
without her father on board. She had accepted more out of a sense
of duty than anything resembling love, a sentiment she suspected he
wholly shared. He had wanted to marry right away, but she had
insisted on waiting until her father returned from the Indies, a
decision he had reluctantly accepted, but as the months passed and
the debts grew, his belligerence was becoming uncomfortable. With
her nineteenth birthday looming, she did not know how much longer
his patience would last, and for that reason alone, she was almost
happy he was adamant about undertaking this voyage to the Indies
without her.

She smoothed her hands across the front of
his doublet and stepped back a pace easing the crush on her skirts.
"Might I expect you for supper tonight?"

"No, not tonight I am afraid, but I will try
to interrupt your evening later, if only to say goodnight and pick
up the letters. The
Cormorant
sails in a fortnight and as
you can see my desk is buried under a mountain of paper. Someone...
me... must wade through it and find the bottom or it will not
matter if we find the lost city of gold, there will be no more
Chandler-Ross Shipping. Which is another reason I need you here to
oversee the daily affairs. We have a ship due in any day now from
Italy and hopefully her cargo bays will be full of Florentine
glass. I have given instructions to Mr. Bernard—who is infinitely
capable of running the business in my absence—that he is to report
to you as well as to the army of solicitors we have staving off the
hungry hoards."

Eva approved the choice. Reginald Bernard had
been with the company for two decades. "I assume you will be taking
that horrid man, Augustus George, with you?"

Ross nodded. "The fact he stands seven feet
tall, looks like a slab of solid granite, and sounds like a
gorilla, will work in good stead if I have to deal with island
natives."

Eva could not argue the fact. Augustus George
was a brute, with a chest the size of a mature oak and a face most
mothers would describe to frighten their children into obeying. He
had started working at the shipping offices shortly after her
father had departed for the Indies, and poor Master Bernard lost a
pound of sweat whenever the big man was around.

Lawrence cupped her elbow in his hand and
steered Eva toward the door. "About your father's letters... I was
thinking I might make copies before I leave. They may contain some
clue as to where we should try to pick up his trail."

"I have read them a thousand times and found
nothing new."

"Yes, I know." He kissed the top of her head.
"But fresh eyes..."

He left the sentence unfinished as they
passed through the outer office of the shipping company. The
ever-efficient Reginald Bernard smiled and bowed toward Eva, then
with as much discretion as possible, waved a small slip of paper at
Lawrence.

"Go ahead," Eva said, smiling. "The carriage
is just outside, I can see myself away."

"If you're sure."

"As sure as you are that I cannot come to the
Indies with you."

She turned with a swirl of her long skirts
and stepped out onto the street. It was just past three and the sky
was overcast. Horses were clopping past, kicking up mud from the
morning deluge; pedestrians were hurrying about their business
before the rains came again. Some children ran past chasing a
barking dog down the street.

The carriage was waiting, the driver standing
in attendance. Everything seemed drab and gray under a sky
threatening rain. The only splash of color came from a woman with
violently red hair who brushed past her and entered the shipping
office.

They exchanged polite apologies by rote, but
Eva's thoughts were still on her father.

William Chandler was not dead. She did not
know how she was so certain of that fact, she just knew he was not
dead.

Thinking of him, she glanced at the
confectionary shop across the street and a memory was jostled
loose. When she was little, as a treat, her father would bring home
candied figs from the shop. They were boiled in honey and rolled in
cane sugar that would crunch with every delicious bite.

She signaled her coachman to bide a moment
and walked to the shop. A bell tinkled when she opened the door and
a large, rosy-cheeked woman came waddling out of a back room
carrying a tray of freshly baked pies.

"What can I get for ye luvie? Some nice
pasties or pies? A candy stick per'aps?"

Eva described the figs and the woman nodded.
"Aye. I 'ave some in the back. It’ll only take a mo' to wrap them
for ye. Praise be, dearie, but ye look just like yer father."

Eva was pleasantly startled. "I do?"

"Well, not harf so burly an' ye’ve no hairs
on yer chin but aye, William Chandler's eyes be that same shade o'
green. N’owt likely there’d be two pair like ‘em in all o'
Londontown. A true shame he 'ad to lose one o' them like that, but
aye. Dance wiv' the Devil an' ye can expect to pay a high price to
get out o' hell."

Eva's smile faltered. "Excuse me? Lost an
eye?"

"Aye. So my Billy tells me. Oy, but then
again—" she looked flustered for a moment and clapped a hand to one
pendulous breast, releasing a small puff of flour dust— "he mout've
got it wrong. He can't read nor write so whoever wrote the words
for him mout've got it wrong too."

"How would your son even know?"

"Why he runned away to sea wiv' yer da nigh
on... mmmmm... four year ago? Admired the cap'n all his life, he
did. He were always sayin': ‘Mam, when I grow, I want to be just
like Cap’n Chandler’. Shouldn't've come as no surprise he snuck out
that mornin' an’ signed himself onto the
Gull
. Near drove me
mad wiv' worry till he sent a post home tellin' me where he’d got
off to. Mind, 'is letters are full o' shite an’ blather an’ need
cipherin'... an’ they come months after whatever adventure he's
tellin', but at least he still has enough fear o' his mam to let
her know he's alive."

Eva was afraid to move, afraid to breathe.
"The last letter you had from him... was how long ago?"

The baker pursed her lips and stared at some
distant spot on the wall. "Ooooh, nigh on three, four month now.
But it were wrote way back at Christmastide. He were on some island
called Zoomer."

"Zoomer?"

"Aye. Said they were layin' in supplies, him
an’ yer da. That’s when yer da lost 'is eye, poor soul. My Billy
said he looks like a real pirate now, wiv' a proper patch an'
all."

Eva moistened her lips. Her blood was
suddenly racing with excitement and her heart was beating so loudly
in her ears she was certain the baker could hear it. "Do you still
have the letter by any chance?"

"Hmm. Aye, an’ I do. Are ye all right luvie?
Ye look like ye're about to split at the seams.”

"Please. May I see it? May I see the
letter?"

"Oy, I don't know now. I'd 'ave to go up the
stairs to fetch it. An’ the shop’s busy."

She waved a pudgy hand to indicate the one
sticky-faced boy pressing his nose up against a jar of sugar teats.
Eva fumbled a coin out of her purse, then another, and another.
With each addition the woman’s eyes widened further out of the
creases.

"Please," Eva said. "It’s extremely
important. Will you fetch the letter please?"

"Aye, luvie, aye." The baker wiped her hands
on the front of her apron, snatched up the coins, and hastened to
the stairs leading to the upper floor. She moved with deceptive
swiftness for her bulk and was back in the main room of the shop
before Eva had paced the length twice.

"He talks 'bout turtles big as a boat, an’
sea creatures what swim alongside ships an’ chatter like women."
She handed the letter across the wooden counter. "Talks 'bout them
Spanish too, 'bout 'ow he an’ yer da were near caught once or twice
near one o' their wells. Lord love a duck, I thought, if them
Papists don't think they even own the water! It be all there." She
huffed and pointed. "In the letter."

Eva took the precious sheets of paper and
stared at them for a long moment. The ink was smudged, the pages
badly crumpled and stained, and she could only imagine the long
journey and the many hands that had touched them in transit. There
were three sheets of tightly slanted script, with most of the words
copied out how they sounded rather than how they were spelled. It
would take longer than several minutes for Eva to decipher the
pattern of speech, but she needed to look no further than the date
scrawled at the top of the page to set her heart pounding in her
chest. It was dated November of the previous year, proof her father
was alive as recently as six months ago.