The possibility that, contrary to all appearances, someone—most likely someone in authority in London—was pursuing those missing, Will included, came as a huge relief.
However, they—whoever they were—weren’t here, and she was.
And Will was still missing.
She’d held Sampson’s gaze while those thoughts flitted through her mind; his worry remained plain to see. She drew breath, hesitated, then inclined her head. “Thank you for the warning, Mr. Sampson. Rest assured, I’ll pay it due heed.”
No need to tell him that learning that Will had, indeed, been on some mission and had subsequently disappeared, and that others had disappeared as well, had only made her more determined than ever to find her missing brother and, if possible, rescue him, too.
* * *
The obvious first step was to learn more about the mission Will had been pursuing.
Other than attending Undoto’s church, the only oddity she’d heard of in Will’s behavior before he’d disappeared had been his interest in Dixon, the army officer stationed at the fort.
Given the time-honored tensions between army and navy, Will’s interest in Dixon had to have been work related—ergo, mission related. Presumably, he’d gone to speak with Dixon, which made Dixon an obvious person for her to speak with, too.
Her hopes of gaining some insight into the nature of Will’s mission were riding high as she toiled up the final stretch of road that led to the open gates of the fort, with its guardhouse built against the palisade to one side of the entrance.
On gaining the cleared area before the gates, she paused and looked back. Perched on the crown of the hill above the harbor, the fort commanded an arresting view over the settlement and the ships clustered before the docks to the wide blue sweep of the estuary beyond. She took a full minute to savor the sight.
Three days had passed since she’d spoken to Sampson outside Undoto’s church. She’d spent those days alternating between vacillation and action. On the vacillating side, she’d found herself entertaining nagging doubts along the lines that perhaps Sampson was right, and she and her family would be better served by her retreating and then waiting to hear through official channels...
Every time she’d got to the “waiting to hear through official channels” part, her thoughts had come to an abrupt halt, and she hadn’t been able to follow that line any further.
She would never convince herself that waiting for someone else—especially someone with official authorization—to rescue Will was a viable alternative.
Her actions had been more to the point; she’d gone back to the taverns she’d previously visited and tried to learn more about Dixon. She’d reasoned that the more she could learn about him before she faced him, the better placed she would be.
Unfortunately, that tack had proved futile. For the same reasons she hadn’t expected Will to be acquainted with an army officer, none of those he had drunk with knew much of Dixon, either.
Just that he was stationed at Fort Thornton.
And now she was there.
She turned away from the vista and walked the last yards to the guardhouse and the pair of middle-aged guards taking the sun at their ease beside it.
They straightened as she neared. Both respectfully touched a hand to their hats.
“Miss,” said the younger with a nod.
“Ma’am,” said the older, straightening even more.
Aileen halted before them and smiled. “Good morning. I would like to speak with an officer by the name of Dixon. I understand he’s quartered here.”
Both guards looked at her, then to her surprise, the pair exchanged a sidelong glance.
The older refocused on her. “I’m afraid, ma’am, that that won’t be possible.”
She blinked.
Before she could formulate an appropriate response, the younger guard blurted, “He’s not here, you see. Gone off to seek his fortune in the jungle, they say.”
The older guard cut his junior a chiding look. “Don’t believe—much less repeat—everything you hear.” Looking back at Aileen, he said, “Captain Dixon was here—he should still be here—but he went missing some months back, and no one’s seen hide nor hair of him, nor heard anything about him since.”
“He’s vanished?” She fought to rein in her shock. Battled to keep her expression uninformative.
Nevertheless, the older guard frowned in concern. “Why did you wish to speak with him, ma’am?”
She met his shrewd eyes. She couldn’t think of any reason to lie. “I believe my brother, a lieutenant in the navy, came to speak with Captain Dixon. This would have been some months ago—possibly three months or more.”
“I remember that!” The younger guard beamed at her. “Thought it odd that one of the navy bas—ah, officers wanted to speak with one of ours.”
“So he—my brother—and Dixon met?”
The younger guard shook his head emphatically. “Couldn’t. Dixon was already gone. Would have been a good five weeks before. I remember we told your brother that. Had quite a jaw about it, now I think back. About what Dixon vanishing like that might mean.”
The older guard was regarding her closely. “Why don’t you ask your brother about Dixon—about what he was after him for—when the squadron sails in? Should be in a week or so, I gather.”
Aileen met his eyes, then grimaced. “Would that I could. Sadly, my brother has vanished, too.”
“Cor!” The younger guard’s eyes rounded. “Mercy me! Whatever’s going on?”
The older guard narrowed his eyes on his junior. “Told you. Don’t know what’s going on, but it’s not what it looks like.”
* * *
A week later, late in the afternoon, Aileen threw a shawl about her shoulders and left the confines of the boardinghouse to walk in the public gardens behind the rectory. She’d found the little oasis of civilized peace just a few yards up the road and down a short lane six days ago, and it had quickly become her favorite place for thinking.
As the sun began its final descent toward the western horizon, a cooling breeze often lifted off the harbor and estuary beyond, sweeping up the hill with gentle grace, refreshing and renewing the air after the stifling, muggy heat of the day.
Pacing along the lightly graveled path, Aileen made for her favorite bench. Situated beneath the spreading branches of a tall, shady tree, the bench was unoccupied, as it usually was. She’d seen only a handful of people using the gardens, and most of those were nursemaids or governesses with their charges; at this time of day, they were busy elsewhere, doing other things.
Amid the leaves of the old tree, long brown seedpods hung, dry now, and in the stirring of the breeze, they added their soft rustle to the evening’s chorus. She found the already familiar susurration welcoming. She sat, letting the fine shawl fall to her elbows so she could better enjoy the coolness on her skin.
She scanned the short stretch of lawn below and saw only a single couple who were already heading home. She watched them go, then she raised her gaze to the wider vista of the harbor and its ships, and the estuary beyond. From there, she could even see the opposite shore, so distant it was nothing more than a thick band of jungle green edging the water.
This was a very foreign land.
She told herself that. Told herself it was no real surprise that finding any trace of Will months after he’d disappeared would take time. More, that any trail wouldn’t easily be uncovered.
In search of that trail, she’d returned to sit through two more of Undoto’s performances. She’d spent both observing closely, searching for some hint of what had sent Will there—desperately hoping for some inkling of what he had gone there to find. Other than feeling faintly disturbed by the tenor of the services, she’d learned nothing more.
She’d spoken with Sampson again,
but perhaps unsurprisingly given his earlier concern, he’d been discouraging.
His attitude had only added to her welling despondency.
She’d expected to get somewhere by now.
Glumness dragged at her. Instead of giving in to it, she focused on the scene before her. A ship—sleekly hulled and sporting three towering masts—was sliding gracefully up the estuary. Even from this distance, she could make out the tiny figures of sailors scrambling high on the spars, furling a quite staggering array of sails.
The sight of the ship held her transfixed. As she watched, it smoothly slid past the mouth of the harbor and continued up the estuary, still well out from shore.
She wondered why the ship wasn’t turning in. As far as she knew, there was no other settlement—certainly not a settlement of the size to which such a ship might sail—farther along the estuary’s shores.
She continued to trace the stately passage of the ship. Watching it was curiously soothing.
Courtesy of her brothers’ incessant obsession, she was more than passingly acquainted with the latest designs in sailing vessels. In the sleek lines of the ship nosing down the estuary, she thought she detected the telltale shape of the new ships out of the Aberdeen shipyards. Clippers, as people were starting to call them, because under full sail—which was how they were designed to be sailed—the hull rose and sped across the water, clipping the waves.
She imagined how fast the ship before her might go if all the sails she could see were set before a good wind.
It would fly.
Will would have loved it.
“Will will love it one day.” She frowned at herself, at the unintentional surfacing of her deepest fears.
The best way to eradicate fear was to face it. She didn’t want to, yet she forced her mind to consider the unthinkable.
She still couldn’t believe it. Will isn’t dead.
He’d gone missing, but he was somewhere, and still alive.
He was findable. In turn, that meant he could be rescued.
She would do it.
She would not give up—she would never give up—on Will.
Finally, the ship she’d been watching turned its prow toward shore. It came in a short way, then anchored just inside a cove two bays to the east of the harbor.
She wondered why the captain had chosen to avoid the harbor proper. “Perhaps they’re only anchoring for the night, or to take on water.”
Regardless, she’d seen enough; she had more pressing matters to address.
Eschewing the sight before her, she turned her thoughts inward. Doggedly, she retrod—yet again—all she’d learned. Now that she’d worked out why Will had gone to see Dixon—because Dixon had already disappeared and Will had wanted to learn more—that left Will’s attendance at Undoto’s services as the one peculiarity she had yet to explain.
She decided that was a clear enough sign. Either something happened at the services that Will had seen but that she had yet to notice, or...
She couldn’t think of anything that or might be.
Frowning, she refocused on her surroundings and realized the light was fading. In the tropics, night descended like a curtain falling on a stage—with brutal finality and quite surprising abruptness.
She rose. The temperature had started dropping with the setting of the sun. She flicked her shawl about her shoulders and set off at a brisk walk for the lane, the road, and Mrs. Hoyt’s Boarding House.
As she entered the lane, her senses came alert. Pure habit; she didn’t expect to meet with any difficulty in that area.
Nevertheless, as she emerged onto the road by the rectory, she recognized that, with the falling of night, the atmosphere in the settlement changed.
It wasn’t only the view, the surroundings, that grew darker.
She set off along the rough pavement toward the boardinghouse. Lights were already burning on the front porch, and a welcoming glow shone through the parlor curtains.
Then she nearly tripped as her mind connected her recent thoughts. She halted and stared ahead as she realized...
“I might have been looking in the right place, but at the wrong time.” She breathed the words as the possibilities firmed in her mind.
In this place—as in any other rough and dangerous place in which predators lurked—time of day made a very real difference to what anyone watching might see.
Her heart lifted. She stepped out, her stride firmer, more decided—even more determined.
She’d been watching Undoto during the day. She needed to watch him during the evening and night.
True evil walked in darkness, after all.
CHAPTER 3
Robert stepped out of The Trident’s tender onto a rickety pier constructed of old spars lashed together with vines. Better than slogging through the waves, he supposed, and definitely better for the swift execution of his plan than sailing into the harbor proper.
With its usual abruptness in these climes, night had fallen some hours before. The Trident had been in position by then, but he’d deliberately held off and waited until the bustle of early evening activities had faded before coming ashore.
He directed a searching look into the darkness beyond the pale sand, but there were few people to witness their landing—an old man slumped with a bottle in his hand in front of a ramshackle hut, a young man sitting on a stool and frowning over some nets, several women and children flitting like wraiths through the shadows; none seemed to be paying any great attention.
No doubt they knew better than to stare too openly at men like his party, white men who came ashore under the cover of darkness and well away from the lights of the settlement.
With a few quiet words, he and the four men he’d handpicked to accompany him hoisted their bags, then moved silently and swiftly off what was plainly the local pier of a small fishing village huddled around a pocket of the shore of the wide-mouthed bay two bays farther east from Kroo Bay and the main port of Freetown.
Robert led the way up a stretch of deep sand. He paused where the sand gave way to firmer ground and the shadows of listing palms created a pool of deeper darkness and waited for his men to join him.
As they trudged toward him, he looked past them at the tender steadily pulling out through the shallow waves. The Trident herself was a dark, somewhat indistinct shadow that seemed to hover, gently drifting, on the dark surface of the water farther out in the cove.
The four men reached him. With a tip of his head, he indicated that they should follow him; resettling his seabag over his shoulder, he walked on in the direction of the settlement.
He took whatever path offered, tacking this way and that as he steadily led the way westward through the straggling shantytown of crude dwellings that bordered the settlement like lace on a woman’s petticoat.
He’d left all his officers on board; they couldn’t merge into the population of Freetown in the same effortless, unobtrusive way the four men he’d brought with him could. Benson, Harris, Fuller, and Coleman were all sailors, plain if experienced seamen for whom no one in a port city would spare a second glance. All four were also highly experienced fighters, whether on deck or on land. For what Robert imagined he would need to complete this mission, the four possessed the best collection of requisite skills.
Jordan Latimer, his lieutenant and second-in-command, hadn’t liked it, any more than his ship’s master, Hurley, and his quartermaster, Miller, had, but they’d held their tongues. They were accustomed to being the ones by his side; that, this time, he’d chosen others for that role simply illustrated how very unlike his usual missions—which often involved drawing rooms and even ballrooms—this particular mission was.
He’d left his officers to manage the ship and hold her ready to depart at a moment’s notice. He’d given instructions that once the tende
r was re-stowed, they should let the ebbing tide draw them farther out from shore, back into the estuary proper, and then anchor where, through a spyglass, they could see the rickety pier, yet where their position made it clear they were not intending to engage with—or threaten—anyone.
He paused to glance back—to see if the tender had been hauled in and if The Trident was drifting out again—but the stands of palms that lined the shore, and the black shapes of the village houses with their palm-frond-thatched roofs, blocked his view.
His men milled behind him. Cloaked in darkness, he turned and strode on.
He’d been to Freetown before; his memory of the settlement’s geography was rudimentary but sufficient, and Declan and Edwina had spent hours describing the various areas of the town as they now were. So while he didn’t have anything resembling an accurate map, he had a fair idea of where he was heading, and the pulsing throb of many lives lived at close quarters drew him steadily on.
They entered the settlement proper—the area defined by recognizable streets, even if the surfaces were merely beaten earth—from the east and made their way toward the nearer edge of the commercial district. There, traders’ stores, smaller warehouses, and inns and taverns catering to various types of travelers congregated between the end of Water Street and the shore.
Robert halted in the middle of a dark street that in one direction led to Water Street and in the other to the wharves the local fishing fleet used. He looked around, then glanced at his men. “Let’s see if we can find an inn—one catering to merchants should suit. I want something not too far from this spot. Meet back here in ten or so minutes.”
With nods, the men spread out, drifting down this alley, that lane. Robert himself walked on toward Water Street, but found only stores and offices.
He was walking back to where he’d parted from his men when Benson came trotting out of a lane on the side of the street away from the harbor.
He fell in beside Robert. “Nice little place just along there, Cap—sir.” With a tip of his head, Benson indicated the lane he’d come out of. “Could be our place.”