The Lost Gentleman. Margaret McPhee

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       Chapter Two

      ‘I put her in my cabin. I’ll sleep on the deck with the men—naturally.’ Within Kit’s day cabin Gunner was lounging in a small wooden chair. The priest pulled a silver hip flask of brandy from his pocket, unstopped it and offered it to Kit as a formality. They both knew that Kit would refuse.

      ‘There’s a cot in the corner—you are welcome to sleep there.’ Kit was seated in his own chair behind the plain mahogany desk.

      ‘Are you suggesting I could not manage a hammock?’ Gunner downed a swig of brandy.

      ‘A man does not forget such things,’ said Kit and thought of the past years and all it had entailed for them both.

      ‘He certainly does not.’ Gunner grinned. ‘They will bury us in those damned hammocks.’

      Kit smiled. ‘No doubt.’ He moved to the large rectangular window, looking out over the sea. ‘How is our guest?’

      ‘Resting. She has a remarkable resilience. Most women would be suffering the vapours at the mere suggestion of the ordeal she has endured. But maybe the shock of it has not hit home yet. Delayed emotional response following trauma—we have both seen it.’ Gunner came to stand by his side and met his gaze meaningfully. They both remembered the horrors of the year in that Eastern hellhole.

      ‘Has she any signs of physical hurt?’

      ‘None that I could see. I did explain I was a physician and enquired whether she had need of any assistance, but she declined, saying she was well enough.’

      ‘A lone woman amongst a crew of pirates... How well can she be?’ said Kit.

      Gunner’s mouth twisted with distaste. ‘I am rather glad that you killed La Voile.’

      ‘I am not. They would have taken his life just the same in London.’ And Kit would have welcomed the extra money that would have paid.

      ‘Always the money,’ said Gunner with a smile.

      ‘Always the money,’ agreed Kit, and thought of what this one final job would allow him to do. All the waiting and planning and working, and counting every coin until the target was in sight, and the time was almost nigh. He pushed the thought away, for now. ‘I will have the day cot set up for you and space cleared for your possessions and clothes. If you will excuse me, I have got work to do.’

      ‘And always work,’ said Gunner.

      ‘No rest for the wicked.’ There was a truth in that glib phrase that few realised, Kit thought wryly. No rest indeed. Not ever. ‘La Voile is dead, the job is done. We go back to England and claim our bounty.’

      ‘And Mrs Medhurst? We cannot touch port in America. We’d be running the gauntlet with the flotilla of French privateers and pirates patrolling their coast. Even with all Raven’s advantages, she cannot match such numbers.’

      Kit smiled. ‘We will drop the woman at Antigua when we victual. Fort Berkeley there will organise her return home.’

      ‘A good plan. But it has been so long since we were in the presence of a respectable woman, one cannot help speculate how her presence would have lifted the journey home. It would certainly have kept the men on their best behaviour.’

      ‘You are too long from home, my friend,’ said Kit drily.

      Gunner gave a smile. ‘Perhaps.’ He was still smiling as he left the cabin, closing the door behind him.

      Kit returned to his desk and the navigational charts that lay there. But before he focused his attention on studying their detail he thought once more of Kate Medhurst with her cool grey eyes: proud, appraising, wary and with that slight prickly hostility beneath the surface.

      Disharmony between our two countries. He smiled at that line and wondered how a woman like her had come to be abducted by a shipload of pirates. And even more, how she had fared amongst them. For all the strength of character that emanated from her, she was not a big woman. Physically she would not have stood a chance.

      Maybe Gunner had a point when it came to La Voile. Kit thought of his blade slicing through the villain’s heart. Maybe it was worth the gold guineas that it had cost him, after all.

      He gave a grim smile and finally turned his attention to the charts that waited on the desk.

      * * *

      Kate forced herself to stop pacing within the tiny cabin in which they had housed her. She stopped, sat down at the little desk and stilled the panic roiling in her mind and firing through her body. Stop. Be still. And think.

      Her eyes ranged over СКАЧАТЬ