AT FIRST SIGHT: A Novella(15)
He was finding this General-at-Sea assignment irksome. He was a man born to command from a desk not a deck. But he had volunteered for this expedition because of the opportunity it presented. If it took searching from Spanish Florida to French Quebec, he would find Evangeline.
Was it possible to both love and hate someone? And did not love also mean suffering? Both his and hers? He could put an end to their suffering if she would but ask him to forgive her.
He had done what he could to prevent the execution of her father and brother. How could he have walked away, when to do so meant to lose her? But it was with swift justice that Sutcliff, as Major General, had marched her father and brother off to their execution.
After she vanished, William had fruitlessly scoured the British Isles and all their ports, verifying the name of every female passenger on each English ship’s manifest.
Then by chance, when traveling through the port of Weymouth last year, he dined with the local governor, who shared over a bounty of wine about the terrible January storm of ’49 that had driven a Finnish merchant ship, bound for the American colonies, into Weymouth’s harbor to replenish supplies.
Until midnight the governor had entertained in his castle the ship’s officers – and a young English noblewoman of considerable beauty who had bought passage that very evening. He distinctly remembered her because, “. . . particular woman was unforgettable, as if the pox scar square between her brows was a star that that singled her out as someone special.”
Surely, that English noblewoman was Evangeline. He felt certain she was among the nearly 25,000 European settlers in the hamlets that that perilously teetered on the rocks along this miserable time-forgotten seaboard. Most likely, since she had sailed aboard a Finnish ship, she was to be found in one of the Finnish settlements that dotted the shoreline.
From the main deck came a commotion, and William turned to see Adam Sutcliff coming aboard the forecastle. Striding among the sailors, he hailed them with easy confidence as they greeted and made way for him. What was he doing back again, so soon?
The man irritated him, taking it for granted that he was an equal to a baron. William awaited the man’s approach that was repeatedly delayed while he exchanged shoulder slaps and gibes with the crew. He amused himself with them as he would with his hounds.
“What?” Sutcliff asked, taking the short flight of stairs to the poop deck two at a time, “An illustrious Sea Dog such as yourself, Craven, has no Hollanders walking the plank?”
William would not let this piss-pot of a mercenary rile his temper. “You have an accounting to do, Sutcliff. The information you passed along resulted in our scouting forays finding only Dutch farmers. Not forts.”
“And finding scythes, not swords, eh?” But his attention had wandered to something behind William. “I’d watch that lead line.”
William half turned to find the coil of rope playing out rapidly, one of its loops dangerously underfoot. Stepping free, he snapped closed his telescope, tucking it under his arm. It irked him that Sutcliff stood a full head taller, and he swung away, heading below for the Great Cabin. Sutcliff fell in behind him.
The cabin spanned the width of the stern with large windows. The bolted-down, oak desk was strewn with charts and nautical instruments. He doffed his peaked hat and plowed fingers through his carefully shorn auburn hair. “What can possibly be your defense, Sutcliff? Your information was abominably erroneous.”
“You wound my pride,” he said reproachfully.
“That would be difficult to do, given your excessive ego. And your mission, you completed it?”
Nudging aside his rapier, the man hunkered a hip on the desk’s edge and reached for a walnut in a teak bowl William kept at hand. “Oh, never you worry about the land purchase. I am meeting with a guide there, at Fort Christina.”
The man was lying through his perfect teeth, but William only remarked, “I see you have burnt yourself.” He was pleased that the man’s handsome visage was, at least, temporarily marred.
Sutcliff cracked the shell with the crush of one palm and glanced idly out the window. “I do believe you are overstepping your orders in these waters. That fort yonder flies the Swedes’ colors, not the Hollanders’. What do you plan on doing, Craven – run through every settlement, ringing a bell, asking if anyone has seen the poor young woman to whom you were once affianced?”
Teeth clenched, he dropped into the chair behind the desk. It was damned annoying how the man went for his Achilles heel. No one liked being known as the rejected suitor. What was worse, Sutcliff had somehow divined William’s intention. Perhaps the lout had knowledge of the warrant he had procured?
“What preposterous thought in that addled head of yours would make you think I am looking for the Lady Evangeline – or even want her back, for that matter?”
Carelessly Sutcliff tossed the crunched hulls on the desk. “From my brief recollection of her in court, she was too good for you, Craven. What’s more, she knew it.”
That was a charge he would not let himself contemplate. Vividly, he remembered as a twelve-year-old, awakening with intense anticipation on New Year’s Day and finding, as part of the Christmas season gifts, a new musket, its metal trimmings gleaming coldly like the Christmas star. As an adult, an even greater anticipation had gripped him as the days had moved closer to his marriage with Evangeline.
“You are such an uncouth scoundrel, Sutcliff. I’ll see you swinging from the yardarm, if I have any say.”