The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(38)
Lorelai’s muscles seized, and Veronica’s fingers became talons on her wrist.
A plaintive bleat both astounded and bemused Lorelai, but it became readily apparent the voice didn’t address her or Veronica.
“If you kick me in the head, you stubborn old goat, I’ll return the favor. Now give over!” The man’s demands rose in decibel to the tune of his frustration.
“Barnaby?” Lorelai whispered. What was her gamekeeper doing aboard the ship? And to whom did he speak? The poor old man was seventy, if he was a day. She’d hired him not quite a year ago to help her with her growing menagerie. He’d been guarded and gruff at first, as though he’d almost resented her for employing him, for having to take orders from a woman. But he’d stubbornly insisted he stay, and was a fair hand with the animals. Eventually, they’d found their stride, and lately, they’d become great friends. Lorelai’s fondness for the old cantankerous septuagenarian knew no bounds.
Lorelai drifted toward his voice, and Veronica jerked her back toward the ladder. “What are you doing? We have to go.”
“That’s Barnaby.” Lorelai tugged out of her grip. “They’ve taken him, too. We have to help him. He’s so feeble, they might make him … walk the plank, or something equally frightful.” Did pirates still do that? she wondered. “I’d never forgive myself.”
Veronica cautiously surveyed the mist, now becoming thinner as the sun threatened the horizon. “Very well, but we haven’t much time.”
“Oi,” Barnaby called again. “Whoever’s lurking out there in this soup, come help me wrestle this stubborn bitch to the ground so’s I can have at her tit—” His rheumy amber gaze widened as Lorelai broke through the mist frantically trundling toward him. Had she had any doubt the voice belonged to him, they’d have been crushed the moment she’d spied his ever-present red cap. Lorelai flattened him to her in a desperate hug.
“My lady, what the fu—er, what the devil you doing?” He gave her shoulders a few hesitant pats. “I—I didn’t know you were about or I wouldn’t have spoke like that … It inn’t safe for you … for us … out here.” He carefully extracted himself from her embrace, looking around with wild, worried eyes.
“Barnaby!” She gasped, clutching his thin shoulders. “I’m so sorry you were dragged into this. Did they take anyone else from the household?”
Rubbing a hand on his work trousers, he refused to meet her eyes. “Just me, m’lady. It be me job to look after the animals, inn’t it?”
“The animals?” Lorelai breathed.
“Brought the motherless little mites with us so’s they di’nt starve. Which meant Grace O’Malley had to come along, di’nt she? But beggared if she’ll let me milk her on the ship, the slag.”
Had the fog not been so thick, Lorelai’d have seen the makeshift pen behind the galley sooner. Inside, her milk goat, Grace O’Malley—ironically named for a fearsome Irish pirate—bleated her complaints at them from beneath perpetually angry brows. Next to her, the basket of eight kittens she’d only five days hence rescued from drowning in a burlap sack mewled at the familiar sight of her.
“Goodness,” Lorelai marveled. “How’d you talk them into taking animals with you?”
“Funny story, that—” Barnaby shifted about diffidently, but was cut off when Veronica hissed for them to hurry from across the deck.
“Coming,” Lorelai whispered back to her before she limped over to the pen and wrangled it open as quietly as she could. “We’re going to escape on the lifeboat,” she explained as she hefted the basket of kittens, to their noisy dismay. “Here.” She shoved the pistol into Barnaby’s hands, thinking he’d know how to use it better than she. “Take this for protection and follow me.”
“Right behind you, m’lady.” Barnaby gaped at the pistol for a moment, then held the pen door open for her and shuffled about in the fog. “I’ll … just get old Grace, here, and meet you by the ladder in a tick.”
“Good thinking, Barnaby. I’m glad I found you before we escaped. I’d never leave you behind.” Lorelai kissed next to the tufts of silver hair at his temple, and plunged back into the mist using an outstretched hand as her eye until she found the railing and Veronica again.
“What’s this?” Veronica’s dark brows drew together as she peered into the basket.
“The kittens.”
Veronica blinked twice. “The … the kittens? Your kittens? What on earth would pirates want with them?”
“I don’t know,” Lorelai rushed. “Maybe they wanted to eat them. Do you think you can climb into the lifeboat and I can somehow lower the basket down to you? Barnaby’s bringing Grace O’Malley and hopefully a rope. Perhaps we can lever her weight—”
“Grace?” Panic flared brighter and brighter in Veronica’s jade eyes. “Grace. The goat? Oh, Lorelai. We can’t take them. There isn’t time. We’re going to have to leave them behind if we have any chance.”
“I’m not leaving them behind!” Lorelai insisted. “These are heartless pirates, Veronica. They tear entire armadas apart without shedding a tear and then sleep like babies. What do you think they’ll do to these helpless little things?” She held up the basket, forcing Veronica to face identically tiny aspects of three orange tabbies, a gray tabby, two calicos, one white, and a strange little silver, blue-eyed ball of fluff that didn’t at all seem to belong in the sleek-coated orphan family. “These villains will probably drown them again, and that’s if they’re feeling merciful.”