Jennifer Horseman (53 page)

"There she lays! Land ho!" came from Peters in the look out.

"Fathoms?" Leif shouted to the muck watch.

"Twenty less five!"

"Pivot the square sails, men! Loose the sheet lines! And watch that compass!"

Aye ayes sounded from every direction upon the sounding of Leifs orders to lower sail for the slow glide into port. Gayle jumped from the quarterdeck, quickly making his way to Garrett's side. He joined him silently at the rails to watch Toulon come into view, but he saw Garrett's thought reflected in his expression and wished to God—not for the first time—there was something he might do or say to ease his pain.

Tonali hissed and circled, hissed and circled Garrett's legs, until finally in an unusual fit of irritation, Garrett lifted the cat with a kick of his leg. "Jesus, will you leave me be!"

The great cat arched and hissed, circled again. Garrett turned back to the sea when Gayle would not. There was something frightening about the cat, staring at Garrett with what Gayle would swear was supreme antipathy. The cat stalked slowly off, and for the first time ever the cat ignored Brute's excited barks at the scent of land. How odd . . .

Gayle turned with confusion back to the sea.

Visibility stretched for maybe five miles but only the lookout with a scope in hand actually saw Toulon Bay ahead. Coming to stand near Garrett too, Leif shouted up, "Report?"

"White and green colors on land. A dozen or more masts at sea."

"White?" Leif questioned. "What the hell might that be?"

"The wounded, Leif," Garrett replied, "tents for the wounded."

"Oh, aye," he nodded.

Bailey pulled in the line, wrapping it around the mainmast. He looked up at the sky, checking the rigging, when from the corner of his eye he caught the sight of black against blue. His gaze became riveted on the panther walking the rail, balancing between a deadly drop to the sea and the safety of the ship. "Captain! Garrett-"

The sound of alarm caused Garrett to turn around to see it a split second before the ship rolled and Tonali lifted on two legs in the air. With a loud hiss, Tonali used the ship's sudden motion to fall onto Garrett. The unexpected weight sent Garrett backside to the ground. In a moment of madness, Garrett was suddenly rolling with the cat. A stunned silence fell over the crew as they watched Garrett wrestle with the cat. The man's greater weight brought the beast down, pinning him to the deck. Garrett was too shocked to do anything more. "What the-"

Tonali hissed again. Desperate to make Garrett understand, he let his claws graze Garrett's chest. Garrett drew a sharp breath and gasped as he saw the four neat lines fill with his blood. The crew scarcely breathed as Garrett's gaze lifted from his chest to look at his cat. With gazes locked, Tonali twisted up off Garrett and lowered to his haunches with a hiss that curled his lips from those deadly teeth. More than one pistol pointed at the cat, one move more and Tonali would feel the searing pain of more than twenty bullets.

With his eyes locked to the panther's golden ones, Garrett slowly shook his head. Dear God, did he lose Tonali's magic at last? Tonali, the living manifestation of his magic on earth? Was this what was left? A wild panther, mad now from his many years of walking amongst its natural enemies? Dear God, no ... no, echoed in his mind as he watched, waiting for Tonali to give him a sign it was not so. The great cat only stared back, hissing a warning over and over again until—

"Captain!" Peters shouted from the lookout, "I ... I got a sight up here. ... A flag wavin' from the moun-taintop."

Garrett's gaze never left his cat's. "Signal?"

"Can't make it out. ... Nay, white . . . black crossbars." He looked up from the scope and swore before announcing, "Quarantine!"

Leifs pistol lowered in his hand as his head raised. "What?"

Garrett looked up but briefly before he quickly made his way to the ropes. The men waited, watching as Garrett climbed the ropes to the lookout. Peters handed him the scope. It required several minutes before he found it. The tiniest speck on the farthest horizon. A flag waving back and forth. He watched it stop, and only then could he make out the black crossed bars of the sign for quarantine. "Quarantine," he said in a whisper carried over the ship in the silence, a profound silence broken only by the gentle lick of the waves breaking over the side of the ship. "Quarantine."

The men greeted this with equal parts confusion and disbelief. "A whole township goin' under the flag?"

"Never heard the likes before . . ."

"What plague could do it?"

Garrett slowly looked up from the scope to view his cat from above. Tonali had put blood on his chest and now someone was waving a quarantine flag, but not from port. The flag was being waved from the moun-taintop behind the French troops.

Quarantine, disease, death . . .

"Nay, not a plague men, but a warning," Garrett shouted down, "A warning like Tonali's. Death is in wait ahead and someone—God bless his soul!—is telling us to hoist sails to the wind!" The men took this in with no small shock until Garrett's voice snapped, "All hands to the sails!" He looked down at Tonali, who lifted up on two feet before falling into excited circles, and he laughed, "And may the heavens above keep that man safe for his rich reward!"

From many miles away Juliet watched the black mast of the ship sink slowly into the horizon. She dropped to her knees, "I did it ... I did it. He is safe—" She never knew how long she cried, overwhelmed with relief and joy and, had she known it, Garrett's own gratitude. An emotional tide that vanished faster than a snap of fingers as she looked up to see over twenty uniformed soldiers racing up the mountain. . . .

Garrett nodded at what Admiral Kingston said, motioning to Leif to continue with the description of the battle. He had tried everything possible to put off this meeting with the Admiralty, just everything. He dropped nearly two hundred pounds in bribes to keep the docking of The Raven a secret. He slipped out like a thief in the night to his rooms at the Connaught, wanting nothing from the world but one night to be alone. One night before he had to greet the Admiralty and explain what happened on the voyage home: how The Raven joined the three ships sent on the futile and—as it turned out— unnecessary mission to save them, the encounter with the Spanish ships sailing off Corsica, and the battle that followed.

Thank God Leif was here to do it.

Garrett leaned back in the leather chair in his suite of rooms, pretending to listen as Leif described the battle, then their victory. His raised hand swirled the brandy in his snifter, the color reminding him of her hair in sunlight. It was the note sent to his mother at his town-house that did it. She must have alerted the Admiralty that he had arrived. He had just wanted her to know he was safe. . . .

A lie, he had just wanted to hear of Juliet.

Emotion filled his mother's return note, but the only words he cared about were brief: "Juliet is safe and well and happy." Would she be happy if she saw him? If he took her in his arms and brought his lips to hers? Would she be happy when he dropped to his knees, begging for her forgiveness?

To hell with forgiveness, he was in fact a debauched bastard. Forgiveness was not much on his mind, repentance far less. Nay, what he wanted, and badly, was her love. He wanted to lay her backside to a bed, his bed, any bed, to the music of her laughter; he wanted to run his hands through her hair and over the silken skin of her slender form; he wanted to take the sweetness of her mouth in his, to watch the laughter in her eyes darken with passion; he wanted to feel her trembling and flushed beneath the heat of his body, to fill her—

"What?" Garrett's word was a demand as he caught this last remark. "You know who warned us?"

A strange smile filled the older man's face as anticipation pushed him from the chair to begin a slow pacing. This was the moment they had all awaited; Garrett would be shown no mercy now.

Garrett knew he was in trouble, trouble in the form of a long-winded speech. He exchanged glances with Leif, who as always met his irritation with an easy Scottish grin. "Who was it, Admiral?" Garrett asked, though God knew, the question would do no good.

"The most courageous person in all of England."

"No doubt," Garrett said, clasping his hands behind his head and leaning back, "but could we skip his childhood, the knickers and the nannies to get to more recent events?"

Ferris and Kingston exchanged quiet chuckles, chuckles settling quickly to grins of sweet anticipation. After recovering from their own shock and disbelief, they had waited a full week and a half to tell this story. After endless rehearsing, they finally decided to save the name for the very last. A decision based not only on the supreme pleasure of tormenting Garrett but more because if the name came first, Garrett would not then be in a condition to hear any other part of the miraculous story of heroism.

" Tis a story of miracles—"

"Aye, miracles," Garrett nodded distractedly, giving it one last shot before the description of the first nanny. "And to whom do these miracles belong?"

"The same person who alerted us to what had happened in the beginning. We owe more than your life and the lives of your men to this hero, for if I hadn't received the word so soon, I wouldn't have sent those three ships out. Even if you had escaped the entire French regiment in Toulon, you would have met the Spanish alone—"

"Nay, a moot point. It would not have happened. I was sailing in blind. Even after various warnings and signs —Leif had a dream about it and my cat seemed to know—if not for that quarantine flag, I would have sailed right into the Toulon Bay where our death waited. So what the hell happened?"

"What happened?" Admiral Kingston repeated. "A most unexpected contestant fought death and danger, risking everything against the greatest odds to save you and your men. The very beginning was a fifteen-hour ride through the night to bring me word of it. I did everything in my power, but I knew 'twas not going to be enough. Only the unlikely possibility that our three ships might meet The Raven on the open sea could save you, and the odds . . . Well," he continued in a changed voice, haunted by the mystery of it, "this new player was unable to accept these tragic odds. Without a word— and please Garrett note my next words—and certainly without my permission, this hero embarked on a long journey to Toulon, not even knowing how it would be possible to save you, knowing only to die in the trying. After assuming a clever disguise, becoming a beggar's brat—one just had to see this to believe!—this person bought passage on board one of the last ships to Amsterdam. This was done by parting with a family heirloom, a treasure that," he smiled at Garrett, "this individual will hold you responsible for retrieving. Once in Amsterdam, they got to the nearest livery stables, got the best horse available with the money left over, and started off. The trip normally would take a man riding hard a week and a half. This rider went without sleep and often food to reach Toulon in six days, two full days before The Raven was spotted."

"Of course, Toulon swarmed with the presence of the fourteenth regiment — sent to ensure your capture—and then, then our hero saw the horror of the platform. They felt lost, seeing the hopelessness of it, not knowing what to do, until suddenly the church bells sounded from the mountain top. And with that sound came the idea that did in fact save you.

"The rest is a nightmare. As The Raven disappeared on the horizon, as your signaler was still crying with joy, the regiment was climbing up the mountain to capture the flag waver. The chase was on, a chase that lasted all the way to Turin—"

"Turin? My God," Garrett said with his own reverence now. "What is that, a hundred miles?"

"At least. Many shots were fired at different times but only one hit. A graze on the arm, thank God."

"Well, what happened? How did he escape?"

"Finally escape was achieved by donning a ... a more natural costume, one that would have fooled anyone looking for a boy. The story does not end here, either. This incredible agent learned how to survive, traveling only at night, sleeping in churches and abandoned sheds and barns, often the forest itself, slowly making their way back to Amsterdam. Once there, with no money left anyway, planning to beg and plead for passage, a danger in and of itself, your savior discovered — "

"Dear God," Leif said, having heard of it this very morning, "Napoleon had just closed Amsterdam to the English."

"Aye," the admiral nodded. "They had no way to get home. And with amazing ingenuity, this brave soul discovered that some English ships still managed to sail to the continent."

"Smugglers?" Garrett guessed.

Admiral Kingston nodded, this was one of the most frightening parts for him; he could hardly bear thinking of what might have happened. "So, having no choice, our traveler made their way to a little fishing village south of Calais. At this point, boots were traded to get food. This person walked barefoot, taking rides when they came, and in this person's own words: 'The stories of Garrett's heroism taught me one does what one must.' "

Garrett smiled at that, having remembered saying those very words to Juliet when she asked how it was possible.

"Well, this remarkable ^person met a priest, who arranged another disguise and passage on one of these pirate ships. Passage got the old-fashioned way, through work as the lowest member of the crew." He paused, adding in an ominous whisper to Garrett, "I don't have to outline for you just what horrors that entails on a lowly pirating vessel sailing our seas. This person—"

"That's it," Garrett slammed his goblet down. "This person? This person? Who the hell is this person?" He looked at each face, but still no one ventured to answer. "Ah," he grinned, guessing, "I know. One of my agents, was it?"

"Not exactly."

"Oh, don't tell me," Garrett smiled, "young Hun-tington?"

"Nay."

"Browning?"

"Nay again," the admiral smiled.

Garrett stood up, bracing his long arms on the table. He leaned forward, "Admiral, to what man do I owe my goddamn—"