Bister, a cockney lad who’d attached himself to Gareth in the last year of the Peninsula campaign and stayed stuck ever since, glanced up. “So are we moving soon?”
Gareth nodded. “Tomorrow evening was the earliest possible.” He glanced at the house. “All quiet here?”
“Seems to be.” Bister went back to his whetstone. “But the lady’s in the parlor-I think she’s waiting for you. Been pacing something fierce.”
Gareth was unsurprised to learn that Miss Ensworth was keen to learn of his arrangements. “I’ll speak with her now, tell her the news. You can spread the word to the others-we’ll be leaving tomorrow on the evening tide.”
Bister nodded.
Rather than use the main door, Gareth crossed to the open doors of the salon. As he paused on the threshold, the sun threw his shadow across the room-making Miss Ensworth, who was indeed pacing, whirl to face him.
“Oh! It’s you!”
“Yes.” He inwardly frowned at her tone, unsure of the emotion beneath it. “I have guards on the gate and in the courtyard-there’s no need to fear the cultists getting in.”
She looked at him. “That hadn’t entered my head.”
Not fear, then. Before he could think of his next leading comment, she stated, “I’ve been waiting to discuss our onward journey.”
“Indeed.” Maybe she was just impatient? There was a crispness in her tone that made him think of folded arms and tapping toes. As she was still standing, he remained standing, too. “We’ll be leaving on the evening tide tomorrow. While I would have preferred an earlier departure and a faster craft, that was the best option.” He met her widening eyes. “I’m afraid it’s a barge, so we’ll be slow going through the straits into the Red Sea, but once we reach Mocha, we should be able to hire a schooner to take us on to Suez.”
He wasn’t sure, but he thought her jaw had dropped.
“You’ve made the arrangements.”
A statement of the obvious, but in an oddly distant voice.
He nodded, increasingly wary, unsure of her thoughts. Unsure of her. “We have to leave as soon as possible, so-”
“I thought we were going to discuss our options.”
He thought back, replayed their conversation of the previous afternoon. “I said I’d assess our options, and tell you once I knew. The barge is our best option for evading the cultists.”
Her chin went up. “What about riding? People ride to Mocha-it’s the usual route for couriers. And surely, being mobile is better than being stuck on a-as I understand it-slow-moving vessel?”
True, but…were they having an argument? “The road to Mocha goes through desert and rocky hills, both inhabited by bandits with whom governments make arrangements to let their couriers through. And that’s the route the cultists will expect us to take-they’ll be on our heels the instant we leave town, or worse, waiting for us up in the passes. You may be an excellent rider, and all my people are, but what about your maid, and Mullins and Watson? Will they be able to keep up in a flat-out chase?”
Her eyes held his, then slowly narrowed. Her lips had compressed to a thin line.
The moment stretched. He wasn’t accustomed to consulting others; he was used to being in command. And if he and she were to journey on together, she was going to have to accept that there could be only one leader.
He was inwardly steeling himself for her challenge when, to his surprise, her expression changed-exactly how he couldn’t have said-and she nodded. Once. “Very well. The barge it is.”
In the distance a bell tinkled, summoning them to luncheon.
To his even greater surprise, and his unease, not to mention his discomfort, she smiled brilliantly. “Excellent! I’m famished. And with the mode of our onward transport settled, we can start reorganizing our bags.”
She whirled and, head high, led the way out of the room.
He followed rather more slowly, his gaze locked on her back, wondering. He should have felt pleased she’d backed down; he told himself he did, but he also felt…
It wasn’t until he was lying in bed that night that the right word to describe how he felt over that exchange fell into his head.
He snorted, rolled over and pulled the sheet up over his shoulder. He wasn’t worried-she would learn.
They returned to the docks with the sun a glowing fireball hanging over the sea. The low angle of light glancing off the waves made recognizing people difficult. Gareth hoped the cultists clung to their black silk head scarves, their only readily identifiable feature.
