What the Duke Doesn't Know (7 page)

Seeing that the landlady had taken charge of Kawena, he stomped into the taproom. A mug of ale would be just the thing. Two would be even better. But…no. He needed all his wits about him.

The horses were changed, new post boys mounted up, and in a few minutes they set off again. Kawena's sweet smile as they turned onto the main road south nearly undid him. He nodded in return and set himself to watch the passing scenery, in which he had no interest at all. Less than that!

An hour or so later, the carriage jerked and then wobbled. When James stuck his head out to see what was the matter, he discovered that one of the traces had broken. The postilions were struggling to halt the team with the right-hand leader out ahead, reins dragging behind him.

James braced to jump down and help, but the men knew their business. In short order they had stopped the chaise and captured the unharnessed horse. Then they bent together over the traces, examining the damage.

James sighed as he went to join them. By his calculations, they were almost precisely halfway between the first posting house and the second, as far as they could be from efficient help. This was the trouble with traveling in a hired carriage. You never knew how any particular inn cared for their tack, or their horses. And even with the best, the harness got hard usage. Mishaps like this happened all the time. If he'd ridden, alone, he'd be farther along right now. He wouldn't be fighting to keep his hands off Kawena either. But would she listen to reason about this probably futile journey? No. Reason did not appear to be one of her strongest characteristics.

“Can it be mended?” he asked one of the post boys.

“Well, yes, sir. 'Course,” was the reply. “But not at the side of the road, like. With no proper tools.”

It was only the answer he'd expected.

Kawena appeared at his elbow, which surprised him for a moment. A genteel English girl would naturally have left this matter to him, sitting meekly in the carriage until informed of the plan for her succor. But Kawena had to have her hand in everything, of course, even when she had no hope of understanding.

Close beside him, their shoulders almost touching, she looked down at the trace. The leather had clearly stretched under constant tension, and then parted. “Couldn't we tie it together?” she said.

The postilions looked amused, and rather smug with it. “It wouldn't hold,” James replied. “Leather's too weakened. Why don't you just wait in the carriage until—”

“Not the leather,” she interrupted. “If you used a length of rope, and tied a double sheet bend here and here.” She indicated spots where the trace was still sturdy. “It might be good enough until we reach the next inn, don't you think?”

James was amazed to hear her name a knot often used aboard ship. What girl knew a thing like that? And why hadn't he thought of it himself? It seemed he'd been wrong to doubt her ability to reason.

“Do you have some rope?” she asked the post boys.

“In me bag,” said one. “Never travel without it.”

“What's a ‘sheet bend'?” asked the other.

“It's a knot used for joining broken sheets—lines—on a sailing vessel,” James told him. He couldn't help a perplexed glance at Kawena. How did she know about knots?

“My father equipped trading ships,” she reminded him in response. “I learned a lot about how they worked.”

“Did you indeed?” She was a continual surprise. A delightful one.

“I cannot actually
tie
a sheet bend,” she admitted.

James burst out laughing. “I can.”

The postilion fetched his bit of rope. James fixed the ends to stronger lengths of the trace with the suggested knots, which were designed to tighten when subjected to strain. He was rather pleased with the result, as he hadn't done rope work for some years. None of the party was knowledgeable enough to appreciate the neatness of it, however.

They set off again, more slowly at first, but the makeshift harness worked quite well. Gradually, the post boys risked greater speeds, until finally they were barreling along almost as fast as before. James hung on, contemplating the idea that he hadn't imagined a pretty young woman could also be so practically competent. Growing up in a houseful of brothers, he'd formed the notion that girls were delicate creatures, more likely to moan and complain about the delay or the boredom of crawling across the countryside than to offer solutions. Of course, his mother wasn't one to sit helplessly and wait for rescue, but she was…unique, in his opinion. He sometimes thought she could read minds.

James looked over at Kawena. She clearly couldn't, or she wouldn't be looking so serene. She was intelligent and levelheaded, though, on top of gorgeous and delectable. James again felt the comradeship that had surfaced between them during their time at Alan's house. “That was a clever thought,” he acknowledged.

She smiled at him.

James blinked. Comrades were not dazzling, in his experience.

“It was a simple idea,” Kawena replied, though she was warmed by his praise.

“But you thought of it,” he said. “I didn't. And I'm the sailor.”

Kawena smiled again, enjoying the effect it seemed to have on him. The desire to tease him was nearly irresistible. His reactions were…exciting. But she still worried that he'd end the journey if she gave in to her impulses. She groped for a safe topic of conversation. “You must have seen all the ports we called at on my journey to England,” she said. “They seemed such amazing places. I wanted to explore every lane and market, but I had to stay on shipboard most of the time, so as not to be exposed as a female.”

“Ah, I wondered how you managed that,” James replied. Ships' quarters were cramped and offered very little privacy.

“The captain of the ship was an old friend of my father's. I've known him since I was a child. When he arrived at the island soon after the theft was discovered, I asked for his help.”

“I'm a bit surprised he gave it.” James wouldn't have taken such a passenger on his own ship. The situation was primed for complications, or worse. Of course, his had been a navy vessel, not a private trader.

“I had to persuade him, and my mother, and others. It wasn't easy.”

James tried to picture the mother of any girl he'd ever met letting her sail off dressed as a grubby lad. He couldn't.

“Finally, they saw that I was going to fight for my future, whatever it took. The idea that I had lost everything worked on them.”

She held her chin high and looked utterly determined. James was impressed. “So this captain kept your secret?”

“He was very kind. He gave me a cabin of my own, with a lock, and enlisted some of his officers in my cause. I suppose the crew must have figured out my secret, eventually, but they didn't speak of it. The captain was securely in control of his ship.”

“As he must be.”

“It was difficult, sometimes,” Kawena added.

James suspected this was a considerable understatement.

“But it worked. One of the hardest things, though, was not being able to look around the ports. The bits I could see from the ship were so interesting. I had imagined that the journey would let me visit many foreign lands, as I always wished to do.”

James nodded. He understood her urge to travel. It had been one of the things that drew him to the navy in the first place.

“Were you often at Madras?”

“Quite often,” he answered. “It's an important naval base in that part of the world, as well as the British administrative center for southern India.”

“I know many traders go there. Is it a beautiful place?”

James thought about it. “The area around Fort St. George looks rather like home. Farther out, there are native temples, which are quite a sight. They're shaped like a pyramid, but covered with rows and rows of figures…” He remembered the nature of some of those figures and stopped.

“I visited one of those in another place,” Kawena responded. “I thought some of the carvings were rather like those they make on the island. They were more intricate, of course.”

She spoke without a trace of self-consciousness. Remembering the very graphic male figurines he'd seen on her island home, James discovered another way that Kawena was unlike a sheltered English girl. She seemed perfectly familiar with…certain bits of anatomy, and not at all embarrassed by the idea of them. His neckcloth felt tighter all at once. “Umm, you must have sailed south from Madras,” he said.

“Yes, we went down the coast of Africa, but the stops were brief. I didn't see much else until we reached the Cape colony.”

“There's a lovely spot,” James said.

Kawena nodded. “The cliffs rising above the sea took my breath away. And it was thrilling to think that two oceans met in the waters offshore.”

What other girl would think of that?
James wondered. He remembered a day of mountainous waves as his ship rounded the horn of Africa and passed from the Pacific into the Atlantic.

“The one place I got to go ashore for a while was Gibraltar,” Kawena went on. “Captain Pierce thought I'd hardly be noticed among all the different sorts of people there.”

James nodded. The Mediterranean base was chock-full of Italians and Portuguese and Spaniards, not to mention the Jews and the Moors. “It's almost like a masquerade ball,” he commented, recalling the rainbow colors of the costumes he'd seen there. Robes and skullcaps, along with bright British uniforms and kilts.

“Like nothing I'd ever seen,” she agreed. “I stood in the square and watched a British officer slouching at a corner, looking with such scorn at all the people shouting and gesturing as they bargained.”

She smiled at James, and his pulse raced.

“Some bowed with one hand to their chest.” She demonstrated. “There were men in turbans sitting cross-legged, selling slippers or oranges or I don't know what. The din was tremendous. I felt I'd really made it to the other side of the world at last.”

How well he knew that feeling, James thought. It was part of the adventure he'd dreamed of all his life—to see places and peoples unlike his own. He seldom met anyone who truly understood it. His family didn't. They were rooted in England, in their different ways, and content to be. Even Sebastian. His cavalry regiment might be ordered abroad, and he would go full willingly, and do his duty. But he didn't hope to be shipped to the Antipodes. He didn't anticipate the call as a rare opportunity.

A great many of James's countrymen who went off to serve the empire, or themselves, in far lands kept their minds and hearts in England, he'd found. They didn't share his delight in difference. Yet here, in the form of this lovely young woman, was a kindred spirit.

He met her eyes, and saw that she recognized it, too. Similar impulses moved them, deep down. With that realization came a touch of comfort, a sharper stab of longing, and a whiff of danger. This trip was becoming more and more complicated. He really wasn't certain how he was going to get through the rest of it.

The main road to Portsmouth took them through Winchester, and as they stayed the night in that town, Kawena had the chance to go out and look at the cathedral early the next morning. She'd been urged to do so by the innkeeper, who'd told her that it was very ancient, built in the reign of some long-ago king.

As she stood before the towering edifice, gazing up at spires that seemed to reach the sky, an old man in priest's garb paused beside her. “There's been a church here since six forty-two,” he said.

“Six forty-two what?” she asked.

“The year six forty-two.”

Kawena worked out the mathematics of this in her head. Lord James walked up as she completed the sum. “More than a thousand years?” It was difficult to think of so much time, and of all the life that had passed before these walls.

The old man nodded like a schoolmaster pleased with his pupil. “This present building was consecrated in 1093, however. Saint Swithin is buried here, as well as a number of Saxon kings.”

Kawena was looking confused. James wasn't much better off. “The ones before the Norman Conquest,” he ventured, and saw that this didn't help her.

“It took them fourteen years to build it,” said their volunteer guide with satisfaction. “They say the stone came all the way from the Isle of Wight. Later bishops added bits on, here and there. The priory was demolished because of all that nonsense with Henry VIII.” He didn't appear to approve of this revolutionary monarch.

The old man came with them as they strolled through the cathedral. James tried to hint him away once or twice, but he was oblivious. Thus, he was at Kawena's side when they stopped to contemplate a wall of carved images.

“That looks rather like a temple in India,” she commented.

“India?” said the old man.

“No, it doesn't,” said James, noting the stiff saints and figures praying with clasped hands. It was nothing like the twisting, posturing dancers in India, particularly not those engaged in…activities that would scandalize any local churchgoer.

“They're all in rows, one above the other,” Kawena argued. “Just like—”

“Not the same,” James interrupted, afraid the old priest was going to ask for details. “We must get on the road.” The design did have similarities, he admitted as he pulled her away, though of course the ideas behind it were totally different. He didn't think he would have noticed that on his own.

Travel was slow that day, as they hit a long stretch of muddy road, turned to mire by recent heavy rains. Twice the chaise bogged down, and the second time James had to join the post boys in putting a shoulder to the rear of the carriage to help the team pull it out. Kawena offered to push beside him, but there James drew the line. Some things women simply did not do. It was enough that one of them should be spattered with muck, he told her as he scraped what he could from his boots.

At last they made it through to drier surfaces and passed into Southampton, near the end of their journey.

“Is this Portsmouth?” Kawena asked, looking out over the many boats moored in the harbor.

“No. Those are mostly rich men's yachts, not navy vessels.”

“Yachts?” She hadn't heard the word before.

“It's what they call pleasure craft.”

“Why?”

James shrugged. “It's just the name used for boats kept for the occasional sail out into the Channel. Perhaps a run to France, now that it's open to us again.”

It seemed a waste, keeping a boat as large as some of these to be used so seldom. Not even for fishing. But Lord James spoke as if it was commonplace. “Does your father, the duke, have a yacht?”

He turned from the carriage window to look at her. “No. Why would you think so?”

“I supposed he was a rich man.” She'd been thinking about such matters as the trip continued, all the similarities, and differences, between them. Their backgrounds could hardly be more unlike—their families, upbringing, expectations. They might have tastes in common, but the more time she spent here, the more she saw that English society would never see them as equal. The idea was annoying, and curiously disturbing. She wondered how he saw it.

Lord James shrugged off the question of riches. “He has no interest in keeping a yacht.”

“You are the only one of your family who likes boats then?”

He laughed. “On the contrary, we had a sailboat on the lake at Langford. Well, it's still there, though not used so much now. Father taught us all to sail it.”

“All?”

“Me and my brothers. It's nothing like the sea, of course, but if there was a spanking wind, you could get a bit of excitement out of her. When you could manage a turn at the tiller, that is. Everyone wanted to be captain. Nathaniel finally set up a regular schedule for us to follow.”

“He is the eldest,” Kawena remembered. Lord James looked younger as he spoke of this. She glimpsed the grinning, mischievous boy in the man. It was easy to imagine him racing to be the first into their sailboat.

He nodded. “Not that we paid his lists any mind. Me in particular. I was out the door and onboard whenever I could manage.” He laughed again. “Papa nearly beat me once for taking that boat out at night. Even after I pointed out to him that there was only a gentle breeze and a full moon to sail by.”

“That must have been beautiful,” said Kawena.

He stared at her briefly, as if her response surprised him. “It was.” He paused, seemed about to speak, then looked away. “It wasn't as if I could be washed out to sea or shipwrecked on our own lake. I could have walked home from any part of the shore.”

“You could have drowned, and no one would have known.” Kawena didn't think this had been likely, but she could imagine a parent's worries.

“I can swim better than any of my brothers. Papa made sure we all could paddle from the center of the lake to land before we were allowed to take the boat out alone. I was best with the sails, too. Never got becalmed like Robert. Without the oars, the booby.”

It sounded like a large lake, and all part of the duke's estate. “Langford must be a big place,” Kawena remarked.

“It's a rambling old pile,” Lord James replied. “Every generation seemed to want to add their own bits. Rather like that old priest was saying about Winchester.”

That he could compare his home to a vast building like the cathedral told Kawena more than any wealth of detail. And he didn't seem to notice the implication. Langford must be as different as a house could be from the small, palm-thatched place where she'd grown up. She'd seen English thatched cottages along their route; their inhabitants seemed to be farm laborers, very far from the family of a duke.

And what did it matter? she asked herself impatiently. As soon as they accomplished their mission, she would be leaving, and Lord James would be reabsorbed into the life of the English nobility. It wasn't as if they'd ever see each other again.

Although, he was still in the navy. Might his next ship not call at Valatu? But when she imagined greeting him at their small dock, welcoming him to her mother's house…the picture broke down. She couldn't make the pieces of that story fit together.

* * *

They pulled into Portsmouth in the early evening, after three days on the road. Lord James engaged rooms at a fine-looking inn, and all would have been well if Kawena had not overheard him ask the landlady to give them chambers well separated from each other. He also requested that she and her maids take special care of his “sister.” Kawena suspected that money changed hands then, though she couldn't see from the hallway. Very likely he was plotting to leave her here while he went out to make inquiries, she thought. Did he imagine she could be so easily fooled? But no matter. She had plans of her own.

Early the next morning, as James addressed a breakfast of fried ham and hot bread and coffee in the taproom, a slender figure entered, pausing just inside the doorway. He paid him no mind until the fellow walked right up to his table and stood, silently, rudely, right at his elbow. Then James raised his head, a sharp setdown on his tongue, only to discover that it was Kawena, back in her male costume as he had first seen her.

James half rose from his chair, jostling coffee out of his cup and nearly overturning the small table it sat upon. “What the devil?”

“I thought this dress was best for visiting sailors,” she said. “They will be less likely to—”

“Have you lost your mind?” By sheer luck, the taproom was empty. But that might change at any moment. Anybody might come in and recognize her and ask why his “sister” had donned such a scandalous, shabby costume. What was he to say to that?

“Your crew won't suspect,” she said. “No one did when I traveled alone.”

It was true that the baggy coat hid all the enticing curves of her body. And the sloppy cloth cap covered her hair and half her forehead. When she kept her head down, the brim made it difficult to see any of her face. Still… “Go upstairs at once and put on a proper gown. The staff of the inn are bound to notice—”

“They won't say anything. I told the landlady all about it. And swore her to secrecy.”

“You what?” James felt as if the floor had dipped beneath him, like a ship's deck in a big blow.

“She saw me in the corridor outside my room. She did seem shocked,” Kawena admitted. “But when I explained—”

James grabbed her shoulders and pulled her closer. He resisted an impulse to shake her. “You told her about the jewels?” he hissed. The story would be all over town in a moment. Indeed, it probably already was. If one of his crew members had the blasted things, they'd be alerted, probably on a fast horse out of town already. And their trip would be wasted.

“I'm not stupid!” said Kawena, pulling out of his grasp. “I told her a sad tale, to get her sympathy.”

“Tale? What tale?”

“I said that we needed to question some rough sailors about our brother's death at sea. That we feared there might have been foul play.”

“Our brother?” repeated James, bewildered.

“Our other brother.”

“Other…?” Either he'd lost his wits, or there was something wrong with his hearing, James concluded.

“You're supposed to be my brother, remember?” Kawena looked impatient. “So the one lost at sea is the other—”

“Nobody was lost at sea,” he interrupted, his mind struggling to catch up.

“And I'm not your sister, either.”

“Shh.” There was still no one about, but how long could that last?

“You are so cut up over Donald's loss—”

“Donald?” Who the flaming hell was Donald? And how had he come into this?

“Our
other
brother,” Kawena repeated, with the air of one speaking to a lackwit.

“That's a Scottish name,” James objected, and then shook his head. What did that matter, in this whole farrago of nonsense?

She shrugged. “I was thinking quickly. It just popped out.”

“Popped.” He eyed her, dazed by this new side of her character.

“So, you are prostrate with grief,” she continued. “You and Donald were very close. You are too distraught to go about alone. I have to dress as a boy to accompany you as we try to discover his fate.”

“Fate.” This ridiculous tale made him sound like a milksop, as well as dim.

“She promised to say nothing,” Kawena finished. “Shall we get moving?”

She walked out, and he had no choice but to follow. “You realize that I may meet acquaintances here? The town is full of navy men.”

“All the better that you aren't out with a nonexistent sister,” she retorted, striding off.

He hadn't meant to be out with anybody at all, James thought. He'd meant to slip off, leaving her at the inn, as she'd obviously divined. He should have skipped breakfast. But he'd been hungry.

At least she was keeping her head down as she walked. James recovered his wits and reminded himself that he had the list of addresses. She couldn't find anyone without him. Catching up to her, he muttered, “You will follow my lead, and keep your mouth shut. Or we will give up this job here and now.”

She gave one terse nod, eyes on the pavement, looking very much like a sullen lad, actually. She slouched and sidled along, the picture of youthful reluctance. He had to admit she was rather good at playing her chosen part.

James consulted the notes he'd made during his visit to the Admiralty, and they moved off.

He began with his former first officer, as the one most likely to have kept track of the crew's movements and noticed any unusual behavior. Simmons had received his orders for a new ship and was happy with the posting, so he was pleased to see James, and even more pleased to down a tankard of ale at James's expense. He did give James a pitying glance when James suggested a reunion of the old crew, but he agreed readily enough, helping arrange it for that evening.

James bought dinner and stood drinks for the eight sailors from the
Charis
currently in Portsmouth, and was hailed as a great good fellow all round. Kawena even played a part. Explained as the son of a friend of his family looking for preferment, pushed off on him to squire about Portsmouth to see if the navy would suit, she made an occasional sneering comment that gained him instant sympathy.

When the meal was over, Kawena retreated into a dark corner and listened as Lord James skillfully guided the men into talking about their final voyage, with special attention to the stop at Valatu. Without saying so outright, he gave the clear impression that infractions and irregularities didn't matter, now that he was no longer their captain. If a man had gone ashore without his knowledge, or engaged in some dubious trading on the side, well, that was the way of the world, wasn't it? Several of the men seemed startled to hear this from him, Simmons in particular. Others, lubricated by free-flowing liquor, boasted of their exploits in various ports of call. Kawena watched their faces as they spoke and laughed, gauged their body language for hesitance or lies. Some were sly or unsympathetic or venal. Some admitted cheating natives in various exchanges, using their ignorance to come away with items worth far more than what they gave. None said anything relevant to her quest.