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.
“A tavern… in the town… up from the quay.”
“Good. Now, listen, there’s no time to lose,” Phoebe said urgently. “If you leave the door unlocked when you go, I’ll give you two more guineas.”
The boy’s jaw dropped. “I dursn’t,” he breathed.
“No one will blame you.” Phoebe reached under her straw mattress for her purse. She shook out two guineas and laid them on the table beside the tray. “All you have to do is leave, pretend to lock the door, and go on your way.”
The coins winked in the sunlight. The boy couldn’t take his eyes off them. “I dursn’t,” he repeated in a whisper.
“I assure you that if Lord Granville’s angry, his wrath will fall on my back, not on yours,” Phoebe said with perfect truth. “He’ll not blame you, I promise.”
“But the captain…”
“The captain will only blame you if Lord Granville complains,” she pointed out, hying to keep the desperation from her voice. Time was wasting. “He’s not going to complain about you.” She pushed the coins a little closer to the edge of the table.
The lad hesitated, thinking. It was true that there had been no unpleasant consequences after he’d let Lady Granville on board. The captain had offered no objections, no one had suspected his own involvement, and Lord Granville and his wife had seemed in perfect accord during the voyage.
And four guineas was unimaginable riches. Beyond the dreams of avarice. “I dunno…”
“Lend me your cap and your jerkin,” Phoebe said, reaching into the purse for a sovereign, which she laid beside the guineas. “I’ll return them to you as soon as I come back. I have to find my husband because there’s something I have to tell him. It’ll be disastrous if I don’t.”
The intense conviction in her clear blue eyes was utterly sincere and enough to persuade the already persuadable cabin boy.
He shrugged out of his jerkin and tossed his cap on the table. “You really wants ‘em?”
“Yes, they’ll make all the difference.” Phoebe scooped up the coins and held them out to him. “Here.”
He pocketed them and headed for the door. “I’ll jest turn the key ‘alfway. All you ’ave to do is give it a push.”
“Let me try it before you go.”
The lad pulled the door shut and turned the key a fraction. “Now,” he whispered through the door.
Phoebe gave it a hearty shove. It resisted for a moment, then flew open with a crack. “That’s splendid,” she declared. “Now you can say you locked the door without really lying.”
“Aye,” he agreed a mite doubtfully. “Still be best if nobody knows though.”
“They won’t,” Phoebe assured, pulling the door closed again, listening for the turn of the key. Once she heard it, she resisted the urge to test again that it could be broken open, and turned back to the cabin.
She threw off the skirt, shirt, and jacket of her riding habit and rummaged through Cato’s portmanteau for one of his shirts. Her fingers shook in her desperate haste.
Her close-fitting riding britches were not in the least like conventional men’s britches, but they would have to do. Cato’s shirt came down to mid-thigh and covered a multitude of sins. The cabin boy’s ragged, grimy jerkin over the shirt disguised its pristine laundering and the ruffled front. She rolled up the sleeves to hide the ruffled wristbands and tied one of Cato’s kerchief’s at what she hoped was a jaunty angle into the open collar.