Authors: Lightning
She stood again, and as she glanced around him, her smile reappeared. He turned and saw a familiar figure hurrying toward them.
“Uncle Jeremy,” the girl said, and Adrian watched as the two embraced warmly before the newcomer turned to Adrian and stretched out his hand. “Captain Cabot, my thanks. I saw you save my niece from an unexpected swim.”
“Your niece?” Adrian replied with some surprise. He had often frequented Jeremy Case’s shop on Bay Street. It carried the finest goods, including high-quality cloth, the best cigars in Nassau, and gift items such as music boxes and porcelain. He liked Case, who was unfailingly fair and courteous in his dealings. “Then I’m especially pleased to be of service.”
“You have been indeed, Captain Cabot. Perhaps we can repay you with supper.” Jeremy smiled. “You and your small friend here.”
Adrian grinned. “He’s not often included in invitations.”
Jeremy’s smile grew wider. “I think your Socrates is quite smitten with my niece.”
“As am I,” Adrian replied gallantly. “We would be delighted.”
“How long will you be in Nassau this time?”
Adrian hesitated. There were any number of spies in Nassau, some with signaling abilities. He didn’t want any leak as to when he might leave, which would assure he’d have Union boats waiting for him. “I haven’t decided,” he said. “I have to sell this cargo and find a new one.”
Jeremy gestured with his hand to the crates lining the docks. “You’ll have no trouble finding goods. There’s far more cargo available than ships to carry it.”
Adrian looked appreciatively at the sight. “Aye, that’s true, and there are fewer ships all the time. The risks are getting too great.”
“But not for you?”
“The danger’s part of the attraction, Jeremy, you know that. We’ve spoken of it before.”
“I leave that to you, Captain,” Jeremy said with a smile. “In the meantime, in the peace of Nassau, why don’t you join us for dinner tomorrow evening?”
Adrian’s gaze went to the woman’s face. It was guarded now, her pleasure from Socrates’s unprecedented courtesy gone. But despite the quiet gown, the reserved look, she still held a certain appeal, no, more than that. A bit of mystery, perhaps. And challenge. He felt a peculiar stirring inside, even as, for a flash of a second, he remembered the mirror and that odd sense of foreboding.
Yet his hand still felt warm from touching her, and there had been a moment, when their eyes met, that something flashed between them, something so different and arousing and … stimulating … that he’d been hard-pressed not to tighten his hold and lean down and …
He forced his thoughts to behave. “I would be delighted,” he said. “So would, I expect, my mischievous friend.” He nodded to Lauren Bradley. “Until tomorrow then.”
Her eyes stared solemnly up at him, and he wondered what was behind them. “Thank you again, Captain,” she said in an attractive low voice.
“My pleasure.” He grinned, his eyes studying her carefully before he turned and strode down the pier with the rolling gait she had noticed in other seamen.
Jeremy Case interrupted her inspection. “Very well done, my dear. I’d not expected such fast work.”
Startled, Lauren turned to him. He was an older man, tall and thin but saved from austerity by the twinkle in his light blue eyes. His face was weathered, lines reaching out from his eyes and mouth in crinkles that gave his face character and substance. She liked him instantly.
“I didn’t plan that fall,” she admitted wryly.
“Then Providence is our accomplice,” he replied with a quick smile. “I’m Jeremy Case,” he said, “and my wife and I are delighted to have you staying with us.”
“Does she know why I’m here?”
“No. She really believes you are my niece.”
She was moving along with him now, their voices low. She was curious. How could Mr. Case’s wife not know about her husband’s relatives?
His hand went to her elbow as they came to a stone step. “I’ve … been estranged from my family for some time. Corinne knows I dislike talking about the past, but she was delighted when I told her you needed a home for a while. She … we … have always wanted a daughter, but God never blessed us in that way.”
Lauren heard the quiet resignation in his voice. She cast a quick glance his way and tried to guess his age, but she couldn’t. The eyes were youthful, and the lines could be the result of grief and trouble as well as age.
He hurried them along, past carriages lined up along the wharf, through a square filled with peddlers hawking fish and fruits to a narrow street lined with neat pastel-colored storefronts.
“This is Bay Street,” Jeremy explained. “We live over the store.” He stopped a moment and searched her face. “It’s not very elegant.”
Lauren smiled back warmly. “I’m a doctor’s daughter, and my father cared little whether he was paid for his services. It looks very grand to me.”
A slow smile spread over his face, and it was obvious he had been as apprehensive as she about their arrangement. She wondered briefly exactly what he had expected. Or, for that matter, what she had. She had tried to guess what a spy might look like. Had he also?
A spy? The prospect had seemed so right in Washington, so … noble when her grief at Larry’s death was new and fresh, when she had no real prospects of her own, when she’d wanted desperately to do something for her country. Once she’d had time to think, she’d silently questioned that reaction, and now that she had met the man she was to trick and betray, she had even more doubts.
It wasn’t that she was attracted to him. He was much too bold and arrogant for her tastes. She detested everything he was, everything he did, yet he had saved her from a humiliating fall, from injury.
She felt Jeremy Case’s hand on her shoulder. “Call me Uncle Jeremy,” he warned. “You are the daughter of my sister, Abigail.”
Lauren nodded. She had been told this earlier, in sessions with the mysterious Mr. Phillips, and she had memorized it all. They had decided on Maryland as her residence, since she knew it well, and the state was filled with Southern sympathizers. The two of them had worked out a story, step by step, that she could use. But now she felt uncomfortable with the deceit.
“We’re here,” her companion said, and she looked with interest, then admiration, at the neat shop with its content of treasures. Inside, a woman turned as they entered, and Lauren warmed at the instant welcome in the woman’s face.
“My poor dear,” the woman said, moving quickly toward her and putting her arms gently around Lauren. She was all pillowy curves—not exactly fat, but comfortably padded. Impressions crowded Lauren’s mind: a clean, flowery scent that pleased the senses, a warmth that had nothing false about it.
Lauren allowed the embrace, although it felt odd from a stranger. She had not known a mother; her own had died in birthing Laurence and herself, and there’d not been any family other than her father.
And now it felt good to be hugged like this, to be swept into someone’s arms in such unwary and unabashed fashion.
The arms fell away, and Mrs. Case studied her in sympathetic concern. “You must be hungry, and want a bath, and perhaps some rest. Jeremy can take care of the store. You must call me Corinne. Now just follow me. I hope you’ll be happy with us.” The words were all jumbled together, requiring no answer, and Lauren was grateful.
She followed Corinne up some steps at the side of the store and into a hallway. Corinne opened one door to a large living area that looked out over the harbor. Opposite that room was a large kitchen dominated by a brick fireplace for cooking and blessed with a number of windows that sent fresh sea breezes through the room.
Lauren continued to trail Corinne down the hall until her hostess opened a door and stepped back, allowing Lauren to enter first.
She stood at the entrance, her gaze moving from the contents of the obviously newly decorated room to the windows through which she could see the harbor. It was a beautiful view, with sailing vessels and the sleek new steamships speckling the clear turquoise of the water. She swallowed painfully. These ships were so beautiful, yet Laurence was dead because of them. She felt the familiar loneliness welling up inside.
“I’ll have Mary bring some water for a bath,” Corinne interrupted her thoughts.
“Mary?”
“Our maid … and friend,” Corinne said. “She takes care of all of us.”
Lauren smiled. “A bath sounds wonderful.” She hadn’t realized how grimy she felt until a bath was mentioned.
Corinne came over and hugged her again. “I’m so glad you’re with us,” she murmured, and then she was gone.
Lauren turned back to the window. She had done everything wrong today. She bit her lip, thinking she made a poor spy indeed. Her mission was to befriend the English captain, not to snub or avoid him, but every time she looked at him, she thought of Larry.
No one would have suspected she and her brother were twins. He had been tall while she was short, merry while she was serious, sweetly teasing while she tended to believe everything. She had been his perfect foil when they were young, but he had never been mean to her, merely mischievous.
Larry had been serious about only one thing: medicine. Her father, from whom she had inherited her own serious nature, had always said that Larry used charm, if traditional methods didn’t work, to heal his patients. And so he did. Everyone had loved Larry as soon as they met him, and both she and her father swore some cures came about because Larry’s patients just wouldn’t disappoint him.
And now he was gone, his body buried at sea rather than in the pleasant wood-shaded cemetery where their mother and father both rested. That fact caused a continuing hurt, an ache that never quite went away.
She had always liked the sea before. But now, when she looked at it, she saw night and fire and shot. She saw her brother’s body slide under the waves. The last male Bradley. Her eyes found the
Specter,
still tied to the wharf for unloading; when completed, it would join the other ships anchored in the harbor until ready to sail.
Ready to sail and deliver more deadly cargo to the South, more guns and more ammunition.
She saw movement around the deck of the ship, although she couldn’t see specific figures. She wondered if the captain had returned, he and his curious and charming little monkey.
Lauren was usually very good at judging people, but the English captain—English lord—confounded her, or perhaps it had been her own reactions to him that clouded her mind.
When Captain Taggert had mentioned a monkey, she had immediately conjured an image of a chained animal, not the seemingly free and curious creature she had encountered. Nor had she missed the obvious affection in the captain’s voice as he introduced Socrates.
Socrates.
It was a whimsical name, and Captain Adrian Cabot appeared anything but a whimsical man. Despite his surface charm, she had immediately sensed something hard and unyielding about him. And certainly there was nothing whimsical about selling guns for profit. She recalled every moment of their conversation, searching for a weakness. “The danger’s part of the attraction,” he had told Jeremy. Words to remember.
And Jeremy Case, the man she was to call uncle. Who was he? She detected the slightest of Southern accents, but she wasn’t sure.
Most of those living in Nassau, Mr. Phillips had said, were Southern sympathizers, many of them descendants of Tories and royalists during the Revolutionary War. They had migrated here mostly from the South after the American victory, and those ties had persisted through generations. And then, she thought bitterly, there was profit. Nassau was obviously flourishing as the base of blockade runners.
Why, then, was Jeremy Case a Northern sympathizer?
There was a knock at the door, and she turned to open it for the maid who was to prepare her bath. She wished she could wash away the misgivings she was suddenly feeling. She was beyond her depth in this mission, and she knew it.
But she had promised, and she had never reneged on a promise.
Yet she couldn’t block the image of the English captain from her mind. She saw him again as he had been on the pier, the breeze ruffling his thick chestnut-colored hair streaked by rich veins of copper, the face strongly featured, and the eyes a piercing blue that seemed to see straight into her soul.
And she knew she was in trouble. Far more than she had ever contemplated.
Adrian strode quickly to the Royal Victoria Hotel, where he maintained a suite of rooms. Socrates rode on his shoulder, scolding about some imagined wrong.
They were greeted every step of the way by fellow runners, each congratulating Adrian on a successful trip and asking about the run into and out of Charleston. How many ships guarded the port? How much trouble did he have? What prices had he obtained for his goods? How much had he paid for cotton?
Nassau would be full of runners for the next few days. The moon was growing fuller and brighter. Few others would risk any but the one trip every twenty days when the moon was only a sliver in the sky. But Adrian always took more risks than the others. He had more reason than most, who spent their money as fast as they earned it. Champagne ran in the streets of Nassau. And he wished he had only a small percentage of the money wasted at gaming tables.