Thief of Hearts (4 page)

"Now try to sleep. Does your head hurt?"

"I couldn't sleep. Tell me everything."

"Anna…"

"You must." Her voice sounded dull, exhausted. "While that man is gone. Who is he?"

"He's who he says he is. Do you remember Nick's death?"

"No," she said quickly. And suddenly fresh tears streaked down her face as the blessed numbness retreated. The pain of her loss was physical, a deep hurting of the heart. For a few seconds she confronted the fathomless, infuriating enigma of death, the dark truth that two days ago Nicholas had lived and today he was gone.
Gone
. She tried to feel it, to understand it; but such bottomless agony assaulted her, she had to let it go. Emptiness was excruciating, but it was endurable. And already she was grieving for herself, not Nicholas
, her
loneliness,
her
loss, not the ineffable tragedy of his extinction. That was unbearable.

She took a shuddery breath and reached for Aiden. Their arms curled around each other and they clung together. Her weeping turned to harsh, choking sobs, and he held her tighter. He murmured to her and patted her hair, letting her cry, not trying to make her stop.

Finally she pulled away to wipe her face with the edge of the sheet. After a moment she thought to straighten the collar of her nightgown, button the top button. Were there no other women on this ship? How had she gotten here? Who had been taking care of her?

"Sleep now," Aiden said, and started to rise.

She reached for his wrist and held on. "No, don't go, tell me what's happened. Yes! I want you to tell me. Please, please, I have to know."

He heaved a bleak, hopeless sigh. "I wish we had more time," she thought he murmured. Then, "How long have we known each other?"

She blinked in perplexity, but answered after a second's thought, "Since I was ten. Fourteen years."

"Fourteen years. Do you trust me?"

"Yes, of course. Of course I do." She hadn't any doubt of it.

"Good. Because I'm going to tell you something you didn't know, something… that will hurt you. And then I must ask you to do something that will be very, very hard."

Her stomach tightened with new dread. But she did trust Aiden. "Tell me."

"Six months ago I was approached by this man Dietz, along with two other men, lawyers for the ministry. Do you remember the incident in March of the
Oreto
?"

She nodded warily. A ship from a rival Liverpool shipyard had steamed out of the Mersey, ostensibly bound for the port of its new European owner. Instead it had sailed to Nassau, been outfitted for war, and metamorphosed as the cruiser
Florida
in the Confederate navy. An illegal operation, since it violated England's careful neutrality in the American Civil War, but highly profitable to the shipbuilders who had arranged it. The English government denied any knowledge, but the Union side suspected a conspiracy. "But that had nothing to do with Jourdaine Shipbuilding, that wa—

"No, but these men came to me to explore the possibility that the same thing was
going
to happen at Jourdaine. Again." " Again?"

"They believe our ship
Ariel
went the same way last year."

"But that's absurd, we—"

"And they wanted to find out if a certain new ship of ours was really meant for sale to the Dutch, or if it was intended for another Confederate captain, to be armed secretly with guns and supplies in Naples and then used as a cruiser in the war."

Anna's thoughts were hopelessly scattered. "The Dutch? Are you talking about the
Morning Star
?" Jourdaine had launched the trim merchantman only five days ago from the Liverpool docks, bound for Amsterdam. O'Dunne nodded. "But how ridiculous! We would
know
."

"Would we?"

"
Nicholas
would've known. It couldn't be, it's impossible."

Pain flickered behind his eyes before he shifted his gaze to the blanket between them. "Nicholas would have known, yes. As the one responsible for coordinating the delivery of new ships to new owners, he would've known."

"Perhaps you had better say straight out what you mean," Anna said steadily. But the pain in her temples was rocketing out of control.

"I told the government men that if such a thing were going on, it must be without the knowledge of Thomas Jourdaine, Sr."

"Of course."

"I told them your father is a scrupulously honest man, and that in any case he has no need for quick money. I told them he would never help the South in the war, legally or illegally, because he's been violently antislavery and vocally pro-Union for years. They believed me." He looked away again. "And so they turned their attention to the second in command."

"No," Anna declared, with no hesitation. "It's a mistake. Nicholas would not have done it, wouldn't have had anything to do with something like this. For what? Money? He has, he had no need of it once he married me. What would be his reason?"

"None now. But the ship must've been contracted for months ago, before your brother died, before you and Nick became engaged. There would be an enormous profit from an arrangement like this with the South's navy. He could've used the money then, before he discovered a way to make his fortune."

"A way to..." Anna went ice-cold, then burning hot with anger. "How dare you," she whispered, hazel eyes flashing fire.

O'Dunne stood up and pushed his fingers through his hair, ruining the neat center part. He did her the kindness of not looking at her while he delivered his next news. "These agents, Anna, they… investigated Nick's background. They discovered it was fabricated. He wasn't a clergyman's son; he never went to school in Wales or in England. They have no idea who he was, but there was no Balfour family in the Irish town he claimed was his birthplace. He made it all up."

She felt as if all the blood in her body had stopped circulating. "But we've known him for years," she got out, hands fluttering weakly. "It's impossible, it's some awful mistake." Her mind was in chaos, her skull was throbbing, she couldn't think. She retreated to the ultimate question: "Aiden,
who killed him
?"

"I don't know. I can only think it was Northern agents, spies for the Union who had the same suspicion we did and chose this way to stop it."

"No, I don't believe that."

"I didn't want to either. When these men told me what they suspected, I was as incredulous as you. I told them I
wouldn't
believe it until I'd seen evidence with my own eyes. And so that was the job they gave me. To watch Nick as closely as I could without attracting his suspicion. To go over his books, to monitor his contacts in the yard, to—"

"To spy on him!"

He looked down, shamefaced.

"And what did you find?" she asked coldly.

"Nothing. Nothing at all."

Her smile was triumphant. But she put her hand over her heart, for before he'd answered, it had seemed to stop beating, and now she felt almost faint with relief.

"But Dietz wasn't satisfied. He thinks Nick insisted that you and he elope as soon as he found out the
Morning Star
would be ready to launch three weeks early."

"Why?"

"So he could meet the ship and its captain, a man named Greeley in Naples, after she'd been refitted for war. And so he could get the money for her he was still owed."

"It's a lie!" The pain was excruciating now. Her mouth was dry; the nausea had returned. "It's a lie. You don't believe it, do you? You were his friend! Oh, God, I can't think, I can't think…"

"Anna, you're ill," he said, not answering her question. "This has been too much. I'll tell you the rest later."

So there was more. She was too exhausted to stop him this time when he got up to go. "Who is the 'prisoner'?" she managed to ask before he opened the door. He shook his head mutely. She flung a hand out. "Where is this ship going?"

He looked embarrassed now, glancing away. "To France. After that you're to go to Italy, to the villa you and Nick leased for the honeymoon." She could only stare. With a last helpless, miserable glance back, Aiden opened the door and went out.

"Mwuh," shuddered Billy Flowers, his head between his knees. A sudden lurch of the ship shoved his huge frame against the bulkhead behind him and he swore, holding his sore collarbone protectively. "Oh, bloody bleedin' 'ell… "

"What kind of ship is this, Billy?" asked Brodie, to distract him.

"Wot d'you mean, wot koind? It's a blinkin' boat, that's wot."

"How many masts? I couldn't see in the dark when they put me on."

"'Ow the 'ell do I know? I didn't count the beggars. Mwuh," he said again, holding his diaphragm and going even greener as a fresh roll almost tipped him off his bunk.

The same roll wrenched Brodie's wrist painfully against the manacle chained to the headrail of his cot, reminding him with nasty irony of the similarity of his circumstances now and two days ago.

He'd thought Dietz and O'Dunne were liberating him, but there wasn't a hell of a lot of difference between being chained to a wall in prison with Shooter and being chained to a bunk in a ship's cabin with Billy Flowers.

Not altogether true, there was one important difference. Tomorrow he wasn't going to hang.

The door opened and O'Dunne stumbled in. "Where's Dietz?"

"On deck," said Billy.

"You look terrible. Go on up yourself."

"Thanks, guv." Billy heaved himself up, made a grab for his checked coat, and lurched out, swallowing rapidly.

The lawyer sank down on Billy's bunk. "It's getting worse."

"We're at the mouth of the Channel, the currents are always hell here. Don't worry, we'll get past it." O'Dunne sent him an odd look, one he was getting used to. The lawyer was surprised every time Brodie said something that sounded halfway human. "Unlock this wrist iron, will you? I'm starting to bleed."

"You know I can't."

"Come on, O'Dunne. Where the hell would I escape to?"

The next moment, the sea pitched violently and Brodie winced as his chafed wrist jerked hard against cold iron. The ship righted itself and O'Dunne gazed at him speculatively across the small space of floor that separated them. He got up, took a key from his waistcoat pocket, and unlocked the padlock around the headrail. "Give me your other hand." Brodie obeyed. They exchanged a silent, loaded stare during the five-second interval in which he was, technically, free. O'Dunne looped the chain around his other wrist and snapped the lock between two links, leaving about sixteen inches of slack chain between his bound hands.

"Thanks."

O'Dunne collapsed back on his bunk. He rubbed his neck wearily, and after a minute he lay down. Brodie stretched hugely, then reached into his pocket for a cigarette. O'Dunne heard the scraping of the lucifer match. "Nick didn't smoke," he snapped.

Brodie crossed his booted feet and leaned back against the headrail, savoring the rich bite of the tobacco on his tongue and in his lungs. "That so?" he asked mildly.

"Who gave it to you? Billy? You'll have to get rid of it."

Brodie puffed stolidly, not answering. O'Dunne stared at him a moment longer, then shifted impatiently and returned his gaze to the ceiling.