Jennifer Horseman (50 page)

Aye, Chein Lee, explosions in a world that means nothing . . . nothing without her.

"Desire is the appetite that devours the soul. . . ."

He felt the truth of Chein Lee's words now and he closed his eyes and conjured her vision: the slender figure shrouded like a Godiva in streams of silken hair, the poetry in her eyes, that shy smile when she caught him staring at her, the question there. One he would answer the rest of his life with his love, if only—

"Looks like a bit of the storm will hit us before Calais."

Garrett abruptly woke from his thoughts, "What? Oh, aye, a bit of the storm." He nodded, distracted by the if only in his thoughts.Never in all his years had he known a beggar's wishful // only. ...

Alarmed by what he saw, Kyle studied Garrett for a moment longer before he turned away. In the ten years he had known Garrett he had seen him in every manner a man of his rare stature might be. He had seen Garrett filled with success and laughter, rage and grief, boastful and dead drunk, contemplative and philosophical. He had witnessed the sheer force and miracle of his power too many times to doubt it. He had watched as Garrett's words sent roomfuls of men to their feet waving their fists and shouting; he had seen Garrett take down ten fighting men with his hands chained and barefoot to boot, had seen him survive the unsurvivable, tame the wild, make possible the impossible. Once he even saw him mesmerize a count from fifty feet away in a crowded room, making the man drop to the floor like a puppet without strings. A hundred times Garrett's brilliant orders transformed certain doom into startling success. In all of this he had never, but never, seen Garrett with his wits scattered like leaves in the wind. As ominous as a blood moon ...

After climbing the quarterdeck, Kyle joined the circle of men sharing a few idle moments before the change of the watch. The normally boisterous crew was subdued and unusually quiet, their collective mood sinking like an anchor severed from its chain. "Thank God, tis only Calais that we're sailin' into right now. Plenty of Frenchmen but not one with anything more than a butcher's knife. Who here knows the agents in Brussels?" ^

"Ah, good men, each," Pax replied. "Garrett keeps only the best. We'll know if the wind is good enough to see us safely to Toulon."

"Aye, Garrett always knows."

"I've given Garrett my life a dozen times. He's not forsaken it yet."

"Aye," Duke added, "we've followed Garrett to hell itself, and he's always led us back out."

The men all aye ayed this, but Kyle felt the fear underlying the sentiments that never before had to be voiced out loud. "Gettin' to Toulon is not the problem," he shook his head. "The defeated French fleet sitting in Toulon is not a problem; Napoleon is not a problem; hell itself is not a problem for Garrett. Nothing in all of Garrett's life has ever been a problem, until — "

"Juliet," Leif supplied, overhearing the men as he came up the ladder.

"Aye, and that's looking to be one dangerous problem."

Tonali paced near-by in a state of heightened agitation.

"One does what one must," Garrett once said with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders as^Leif finally finished one of many unbelievable tales of Garrett's heroism. Juliet remembered nodding, thinking, yes, 'tis true, one does what one must. Not that she thought of that now. She did»'t. She had no thoughts. The last thought had been simple enough: No ... no no no ... No! Enough to make her act on Garrett's words and ride fifteen hours through the afternoon and long into the night, followed by his men. They stopped once at a livery stable near an inn when the horses were spent. While men and beasts took a moment to rest, Juliet stole a fresh mount and a pistol resting in a holster near a water cask. The idea that one minute might be one too many left her with not a minute to rest.

The horse galloped into the shell-lined drive of one of London's finest houses. Juliet reined the mount to a quick stop, agilely sliding off before the horse responded. The reins dropped the second her boots touched ground. Her knees collapsed with the first step and she fell to the ground, pain shooting from her hips, down through her legs.

Fighting the waves of dizziness, the severe numbness creeping over the more severe pain, Juliet picked herself up again. Collecting her dazed senses, she ran up the steps and pounded the brass knocker hard and fast against the door.

Sleeping through his night duties, old man Stevens finally heard the insistent sound through his doze. Every bloody night another emergency. The relentless pounding continued for the several long minutes it took him to get to the door. "Jesus ... a minute, just one bloody-"

Opening the door, Stevens took in the size and shape of this latest disaster. Aye, this was definitely a disaster. A young woman stood at the door, concealed in traveling clothes, breathless, her eyes darting wildly as she demanded: "Rouse the admiral at once! I must speak to him . . . now. Hurry, hurry, lives are in the waiting!"

Not exactly robbin' the cradle but the girl could not have even a third of the admiral's winters. Alone, unescorted in the dark dead of a London night, this was definitely trouble. Trouble for the admiral, and if she weren't so pretty—nay beautiful—a thing he'd slam the door where she stood. He first tried reasoning. "Now look here, young lady—"

Juliet saw what he was thinking and said, "Get your master at once—"

"Wake 'im? What ye want to wake 'im for? Tis money, I'd wager, sure as—"

She had no patience and even less time. She removed the pistol from her cloak, aimed it, and said quite simply: "Produce your master or lose your life. Now."

Stevens backed slowly tip as she stepped forward. He turned immediately as she called out, "Tell the admiral my name: Juliet Ramon Van Ness."

The pistol slipped back in her cloak pocket. She grabbed the entrance hall buffet table as blackness swept her. Tapping all her strength and will, she pulled her consciousness back and caught her breath. The sound of horses' hooves pounded outside as Garrett's men finally caught up to her. "Admiral!" she called up to the top of the stairs where he appeared, moving down even as he swung a maroon silk smoking jacket over his night-clothes.

"My lady ... my God-"

"Garrett's in danger! You must help him!" She rushed up the stairs to meet him, reaching to him imploringly, "I discovered word was sent to the French Admiralty through a bank in Amsterdam. They know who he is . . . he'll be caught!"

"What? What? Slow down . . . just slow down a moment. Who sent word ... to where?"

"It doesn't matter who it was ... a boy, and I can't slow down. Word was sent some time ago to a bank in Amsterdam, to be forwarded to the French Admiralty. They know who he is! You must save him . . . ! Send out ships or get word to him . . . hurry, hurry, before 'tis too late-"

"Oh my God," the admiral held her by the arms, breaking eye contact as his mind turned a hundred times in the minutes. Garett's last message arrived just two days ago. Agents in Brussels assured him of The Raven's absolute safety, that despite the defeat at Trafalgar, his name was being mentioned in the highest circles for having taken those British muskets, even though that prize, too, fell prey to an act of treason. The Raven would be sailing to France in three days at the latest. It took a message at least that long to travel from Brussels to England. The Raven will have left for France, and if by chance The Raven had not left, the ship will have left by the time a return message got there.

"Samuels, wake Cadell immediately. Betsy, is that you peeping around the corner?"

An older maid wearing nightclothes and a night cap jumped into view at the top of the stairs. "Yes sir?"

"Take Lady Van Ness to the sitting room and get her some tea—"

"No, I'll stay with you," Juliet insisted and though the admiral tried to send her away, it would have taken more than one man and half the night to get her to comply. "What will you do?"

An awful silence greeted the question before the admiral answered with the deceptively simple fact: "I will do everything within my power."

The older man turned away, coming down the rest of the stairs, where he confronted six of Garrett's men in his doorway. No one said anything, it being startlingly clear after the last remark that nothing in the admiral's power could stop the tragedy waiting ahead—clear to everyone but Juliet, that is.

"Admiral!" Juliet stopped just short of screaming. He stopped but did not turn around. "Admiral," she cried again as she rushed down the steps to come to his side. "Is there time? Will the message reach him before he sails?"

For several moments the admiral could not, would not, answer. Finally he said, "I believe The Raven has already set sail, my lady."

The sentence hung in the silence. Juliet didn't know she was shaking her head, but her voice at last pierced the silence. "No . . . no, there must be something you can do ... Something! You can send out the fleet to intercept The Raven at sea—"

"Yes, I can and I will. Yet since the battle, I have only three ships at my disposal—the rest are sitting in dry dock in Gibraltar for repairs. The odds of three ships intercepting another on high seas . . ."

She was still shaking her head, "Send men to France, to ... to-"

The older man watched the life drain from her face as she grasped the obvious: that it would take the army that England never had to stop the French on their soil. "No Admiral, no. There must be a way . . . there must be a way. Do something ... tell me you can stop him . . . tell me! You see ... you see ... I can't lose him now—"

The statement sounded inane and stupid, unless weighed against the utter desperateness of her love. The room spun, blurring as she collapsed in the admiral's arms. He held her up, his heart racing at an unnatural pace as he felt the force of his powerlessness. One of Garrett's men stepped forward to say quietly, "She rode from Kourtain Castle without stopping. Three falls, that I know of. The men are a hair's breadth from collapsing, as she is, but—"

"Yes, I see." And the admiral did. He held her as she cried, even when his secretary finally appeared and he dispatched the futile message, then issued the orders for a call to arms in preparation to sail. Another message was sent to the Van Ness townhouse as the admiral led her to a chair. Minutes ticked by. One by one men appeared: two of Garrett's agents, a captain and his officers, then another, and another—secretaries and serving maids. The house was in an uproar. Each man greeted the news with shock. It was strange, Juliet thought, it took everyone only seconds to exhaust the possibilities.

No possibilities? That didn't make sense. . . .

Throughout it all she remained in a thick daze, not thinking of Garrett or Gayle or Leif or any of the other men who would come to death soon, for she could not think of them. Not now, perhaps not ever. She'd lose her mind. Instead, she focused her entire being on the insistent ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall and the idea that there was no possibility of saving Garrett.

Most of the men adjourned to the admiral's study. A few of Garrett's men wandered outside. She was left alone for a minute. The ticking grew loud in her mind, the knowledge more insistent. She finally forced herself to watch the hands marching slowly around the circle.

Time moved forward unto death, but while there was life, there were possibilities.

A man came back, not the admiral. Juliet didn't recognize him as the captain who had accompanied the admiral on board The Raven because she was not looking at him. "Excuse me, my lady, but we need to know the name of the traitor who sent this message."

The name meant nothing to her; she gave it with no effort. "Tomas Croth. You will find him at Kourtain Castle or in the village near by."

The man bowed and left her alone with the clock ticking like a chorus of heralders. . . . When at last the admiral emerged to explain the preparations, he found himself staring into an empty room. Juliet was gone, already fifteen minutes into the long journey to Toulon.

The queer old man leaned over to take a closer look at the fallen girl. She lay against the wall sound asleep, with her knees held in her arms, and like she's missin' a neck, her head dropped over her knees. "Time to wake up," he whispered, as he gently shook her shoulders. "Come on, love, ye got to be up an' gone."

"Come on, love," echoed in her mind with the incessant ticking of the clock. "Come on, lovely, let's see ye eyes open."

Nudged from the deepest, darkest sleep of her life, Juliet lifted her head. Disoriented, she tried to bring the world into focus. A man stood over her. She discerned clumps of bright orange hair, a color she had previously seen only in the fruit, springtime marigolds, the rare spectacular sunset. The unnatural hair framed a perfectly round face, this covered with a smattering of orange whiskers. More than one scar marked this terrible face, too, which seemed even worse if one was unkind enough to notice the flat, crooked nose—nightmarish enough. But what made her gasp was the hollow socket where an eye should have been.

All of which spurred the memory of a pistol in her cloak.

Ole Jack had a great fondness for beauty, and while the girl's beauty was more bewitching than God's own angels, he forced himself to first deal with the pistol. "Now what in heaven's name do ye want to shoot me for? Tis ye that be sittin' in me own spot. Aye, me own spot for twelve long years now, this is the place I sit with me tin cup and blind eye pointin' at the passersby. But ye be a bloody arse if ye think I'm willin' to die for it."

His smile alarmed her. Over half his teeth were missing, the sorry result of a lifetime of poor eating and even worse cleaning habits, no doubt. How did people manage with no teeth? Thin soup and milk . . . could a person survive on that? And why, dear God, why was she wondering when she had less than two weeks to beat The Raven to Toulon?

The nightmare continued to stare at her, and she at him, and she began to think there was something very odd about him. That hair was just too orange and his face too round, as if drawn by a child's pen circling the rim of a cup. The way he captured and held her eyes, too. The longer she stared, the more the features seemed to change, blend, transforming the grotesque image into something fine and—