I had a grimmer task. I had put off reading Black Edward Tew’s journal, diary, or whatever the hell it was as long as I could. I knew it would probably answer most of my remaining questions, and Angelina would want those answers. But I was sick of this whole case by now, disgusted with the people who would do such horrible things for such petty, selfish reasons. I’d had my fill of the Brotherhood of the Surf.
Still, I was a professional. I ordered some ale, locked my door, and arranged the journal so that the light from the porthole shown on the pages. The cover promised I’d know why Black Edward had done the awful things he had done. I opened it, saw the neat words written in my own native language, and began to read.
He told about his past: the son of a well-to-do merchant, educated and trained for the family business but enamored of the sea since childhood. I didn’t know the family he said he came from, but socially they would have been a tier or two beneath me. I recognized the place names, though, and the descriptions. He was Arentian, all right, just like me.
And in a short time, I knew pretty much everything else about him, too.
WHEN we reached Mosinee, I paid Jane what I owed her and added a healthy bonus, which used up the last of Angelina’s gold. Our horses, kept in reasonable shape by the stable, showed no overt sign they’d missed us. Baxter seemed just as annoyed as he always did when I climbed onto his back. I was equally uncomfortable after being out of the saddle for so long. I could tell my butt was going to really hurt for a while.
Outside Tallega, we stopped where the road divided. “Well, LaCrosse, this is it,” Jane said. “A hell of a trip, I’d say.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Hell of a one.”
“You still won’t tell me what was in that logbook?”
“Nothing that changes anything for us. The bad guys are all dead, the good guys are few and far between, and everyone left alive is on their way home.” I paused. “So how’d you leave things with Dylan?”
She rolled her eyes. “Dylan had it bad for me, LaCrosse, not the other way around. I think he finally realized I wasn’t who he thought I was. Or at least, not anymore.”
“So it’s back to Miles, then?”
“Yep.”
“What’re you going to do about him?”
“LaCrosse, I’ll tell you a secret. There’s only one thing worse than a husband you can’t control.”
“And what’s that?”
“One you can. ” She winked, nudged her horse, and headed toward home. Miles wouldn’t be there, but wherever he was, she’d find him, drag him back, and chain him to a bigger rock. And then they’d resume the life that worked for them. For a long time, I believed that Jane was trapped in her marriage by her sense of honor, but now I knew better. She was exactly where she wanted to be. Like me.
Well, not yet. I wanted to get back to Liz. Angelina could damn well wait.
“WELL,” Liz said between gasps for breath, “good to see you, too. Need to fix that shaky leg.”
“It always does that at that particular, uhm, moment.”
“I meant the shaky table leg.”
I let her down off the dinner table, and she moved her clothes back to their appropriate positions. I pulled up my pants and dropped heavily into one of the chairs. We could’ve made it to the bedroom, I suppose, but at the time, we’d had other priorities. I think the bards call it a “lusty bedding,” even if technically no bed was involved.
“If I never get on a ship again, it’s fine with me,” I said. “You have no idea what it smells like after you’ve been at sea for a month. They use piss to wash their clothes, Liz. Seriously.”
“Such lovely people you meet in your profession.” She poured us both some ale from the bottle we kept in the kitchen. “You got a nice tan out of it, though. And you lost weight.” She sauntered back with our drinks and sat in my lap. “And I assume, given your enthusiasm of the last few minutes, that you kept your hands off Jane.”
“It was a struggle, but we managed to control ourselves.”
She kissed me. Her face gleamed with the sweat of our exertions, and her short red hair was mussed. I thought she looked more beautiful than the sunrise over a tropical jungle. She said, “Does Angelina know you’re back?”
I shook my head. “I’m not quite ready to give her my report. I need to sort things in my head first.”
She kissed me again. “Want to tell me about it?”
“Eventually. But not yet. It’s not that I’m wondering what I’ll tell her. I’m just wondering what to do about it. We may have to leave Neceda.” I looked at her. “Or at least, I might have to.”
“You had it right the first time,” she said. “ ‘We.’ As long as I’m with you, I’m home. Wherever we are.”
I drank my ale and kissed her some more. There were few things I enjoyed doing more than those two. I couldn’t believe I’d gone so long without doing one of them.
DESPITE a subsequent encore of my welcome home that should’ve left me too exhausted to think, I couldn’t sleep. I left Liz in bed and wandered out onto the landing in the middle of the night, where I again found Mrs. Talbot at the bottom of the steps, this time pouring something from a large jug into a row of smaller ones.
“Poxbinder for killing sea monsters?” I said when she saw me.
She looked confused. “What?”
“Nothing. Cutting elderberry wine for street sale?”
“If I didn’t, I couldn’t sell it,” she said. “Those mountain folks make it strong enough to melt you all the way down to the soles of your feet. When did you get back?”
“This afternoon.”
“Did you find your pirate?”
“Yeah, I found him.”
“After all this time, that’s quite a feat. You should be proud of yourself.”
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t what I expected. Not at all.”
She stopped, straightened up, and rubbed the small of her back. “You’re not paid to expect things, are you? You’re the legs and the eyes; the heart and the brain are the person who hired you.”
I smiled. “That’s what the training manual says. I think I forgot.”
“Sometimes you have to relearn the basics.”
“Sometimes. Good night, Mrs. Talbot.”
“Good night. You two going to keep it down now that you’ve had your welcome home meet-and-greet?”
“Not likely.”
“Well, make her scream once in my honor, then.” “No, that was me,” I said.
She cackled.
I went inside, stretched out beside Liz, and kissed her bare shoulder. She snuggled back against me. Eventually I fell asleep. When I awoke, I knew what I had to do.
Chapter Thirty-four
I was leaning against the wall beside the tavern door when Angelina came down the street just before dawn. The mist was heavy off the river, and she emerged from it slowly, first a dark blob and finally an unmistakably feminine silhouette.
Neceda’s various businesses were getting ready for the day as well. Both the area farmers and the crews on the riverboats got early starts. A local boy swept the wooden porch outside his family’s shop and watched Angelina as she passed. She was old enough to be his mother, but some kinds of sexiness did not lessen with age.
When she saw me, she stopped. “You’re back.”
“I am.”
“You look different.”
“Weeks in a tropical paradise will do that to you. I have my report.”
The normal seen-it-all haughtiness left her face. She desperately wanted to ask me if he was alive, but she didn’t. Instead she calmly unlocked the door and I followed her inside. She locked the main door behind us, then went into the kitchen and unlatched the back door so Rudy the cook could get in and start the fires he’d need. She used flint stones to light a couple of lamps, then stopped at the bottom of the stairs leading up to my office.