“Cato?” she said when there was no response from the bottom bunk. Leaning over, she peered over the edge of her own into the narrow space below. It was empty.
Phoebe wriggled out of her bunk and climbed down the ladder, unaware that her mouth was pursed in a little moue of disappointment. Cato, once he’d finally acquired his sea legs on the second day of the voyage, usually awoke her himself in ways that made her blood sing. But not so this morning.
She went to the porthole and gazed out. They were docked at a quayside thronged with sailors, stevedores, carriers’ wagons. Even at this early hour, the activity was frenetic, although her view was limited to a smallish stretch of cobbled quay and a red-brick, rather crooked building a few yards away.
At the sound of the cabin door opening behind her, she spun around. “We’re here.”
“A reasonable deduction,” Cato agreed with a slight smile. But behind the smile, Phoebe could detect something else, something that made her a little uneasy.
He closed the door and said calmly, “Sit down, Phoebe. There’s something we need to discuss.”
Phoebe looked at him uncertainly. “What kind of thing?”
“Sit down.” He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down firmly onto the stool, then leaned back against the closed door, his arms folded, his dark eyes, sharp and watchful, resting on her countenance.
He was dressed casually in shirt and britches, his doublet open, his dark brown hair ruffled by the wind. A streak of early sunlight coming through the small porthole caught the flicker of gold in the darker depths. Phoebe gazed at the pulse beating at the base of the strong column of his throat, and her belly jolted with familiar desire. She forgot the tingle of apprehension and made a move to stand up, but he spoke again and the gravity of his tone kept her seated.
“I’m going to ask you a question and I want you to consider very carefully before you make answer.”
Phoebe swallowed, disliking the tenor of this discussion.
“Will you give me your word of honor that when I leave the ship you will make no attempt to follow me?” Cato put the question in his usual cool fashion, but his eyes never left her face.
“Where are you going?”
It was a mark of how far he’d progressed along the road to understanding his wife that Cato answered without hesitation. “I have to go into the town to look for someone.”
“For Brian Morse?”
“No, no, indeed not.” Cato shook his head.
“But do you think he’s here?”
Cato shrugged. “Maybe. It matters not, but-”
“He’s a bad man,” Phoebe interrupted with some passion.
Cato frowned. “Misguided, untrustworthy, with an overweening ambition, certainly.”
“He’s evil,” Phoebe declared. “I know it and Meg knows it… and Olivia.”
Cato’s question seemed to have become lost. He was about to reiterate it when Phoebe said suddenly, “Could you not unadopt him? Disinherit him?”
Cato’s frown deepened. The question touched on an issue he’d considered too delicate to bring up. He said gently, “I had never considered it. I had assumed it wouldn’t be necessary.”
Phoebe flushed to the roots of her hair. She had somehow forgotten, as she posed the question, her own part in the situation.
As he saw her distress Cato regretted his observation. He was enlightened enough to know that it wasn’t Phoebe’s fault that she was barren; it was just one of those wretched quirks of fate. “Let us not talk about this now, Phoebe. Brian is the least of my concerns at present.”
“Yes,” said Phoebe in a low voice.
“So. Will you give me your word of honor you will remain on the ship until I return?” His voice was once more cool and brisk.
“When will you return?”
Cato controlled his impatience. It never did any good with Phoebe, whose thought processes followed their own road. “I don’t know exactly. I have to find this man… or discover what has happened to him. I may get news at the Black Tulip today, or it may take a week or so. Now, do I have your word?”
Phoebe stared down at her hands in her lap. She twisted her wedding ring, noticing absently that the circle of skin beneath was paler than the rest of her hand. Five days in the sun and sea air had given her a suntan.
Cato waited. Phoebe said nothing.
“Well, I commend your honesty,” Cato said dryly into the silence. “But I’m afraid it leaves me no option.”
He left his position by the door and reached for his sword-belt, which was hanging on a hook set into the bulkhead. He buckled the heavy studded belt at his narrow waist and settled the sword comfortably on his hip. He took his pair of pistols and thrust them into his belt and slipped a poignard into his boot.
Phoebe watched these preparations with sinking heart. She’d seen him dress for war before, but it never failed to fill her with dread. “Are you going to be fighting, then?”
“I’d be a fool not to be prepared,” he returned, swinging his short black cloak around his shoulders. He looked down at Phoebe, still on her stool, and said, conscious of its inadequacy, “There’s no need to be afeared, Phoebe.”
“Isn’t there?” Her eyes were bleak.
“I’ll send a message this evening if I don’t intend to return tonight,” he said, turning back to the cabin door.
He opened it and then paused, his hand on the doorjamb. “Phoebe, I’ll ask you once more. Will you give me your word you’ll not attempt to leave the ship without my permission?”
An agreement trembled on her lips, but it was an agreement she knew she would never keep. Phoebe remained silent. Proving herself untrustworthy was no route to gaining her husband’s trust, as she’d concluded long before.
Cato sighed. “So be it, then.” He left, closing the door quietly behind him. Phoebe heard the key grate in the lock.
She jumped to her feet and went to the porthole, her eyes fixed to the small piece of quay visible. Cato appeared in a very few minutes, striding briskly. She watched until he’d disappeared from view.
Phoebe remained at the porthole, her forehead pressed against the glass, staring out as if she might somehow will him back. Her eyes grew somewhat unfocused as the scene ebbed and flowed in and around her telescoped view, and when Brian Morse first appeared across the glass, she barely noticed. Then, with an exclamation, she blinked as if to clear cobwebs from her mind and eyes, and stared fixedly.
Was it truly him? But he was unmistakable. Dressed as elegantly as ever in a dark green coat and britches, lace at throat and wrist, sword at his hip, he was crossing her line of vision and going towards the crooked red-brick building at the rear of the quay. A door stood open at the front of the building. Brian paused, glanced around, then entered the building with the air of one who knew exactly what he was doing.
Phoebe’s heart begun to thud. He had followed Cato. And whatever Cato might say, Brian Morse had not come to Rotterdam with his stepfather’s best interests at heart. Cato was out there in the town somewhere, and Brian was on his heels. The sense of Brian’s malevolence chilled her anew. Cato might dismiss him as a threat, but Phoebe knew better.
She turned almost wildly back to the cabin. The Black Tulip. What was it? Where was it? It sounded like a tavern of some kind. She dressed, fingers fumbling in her haste, then paced the confined space between door and porthole, racking her brains for a means of escape.
She was staring desperately out of the porthole when the key turned in the lock and the door opened behind her.
“ ‘Ere’s yer breakfast.” The cabin boy entered with a tray. “Captain says as ’ow Lord Granville says y’are to stay in ‘ere.” He regarded her curiously as he set the tray down on the table.
Phoebe thought rapidly. Here was her only chance. The boy had helped her before; maybe the same inducements would work again. “D’you know what the Black Tulip is?” she asked.