This gave the two men pause. They looked at each other and the tiniest spark of hope flared to life in Harold. One shrugged, the other shook his head slowly but then shrugged back. “I s’pose a few more days can’t make any difference but you’re not having a week,” Jackson said. “And if you think to run, to ’ide, I’ll shoot you in the stomach. It’ll be a slow death for you if you set one foot beyond the county line without a lady at your side. Get it?”
“I get it.” Harold nodded, sagging in his chair. It wasn’t relief coursing through his veins though. Sheer terror gripped him. What was he going to do?
Then Tobias spoke again. “We want to know the plan. Were you going to just take her? Carry her off over your shoulder and then what? Gretna? But now your brother has her.”
Jackson nodded. “Against our better judgement, we intervened and tried to stop ’is men but we got there too late and ’e took her.”
Harold squeezed the bridge of his nose. He had to find something his brother wanted. Something he wanted bad enough to swap Eliza for it. Then it came to him. “The ship,” he murmured. The tiny spark of hope flared hotter. The bastard wanted the Montrose ship that had delivered the fabrics. Of course he and his father didn’t have it, but Harold had the story. Perhaps even the whereabouts. Wickham would be furious but Harold was at a point where he had to save his own neck before he thought of saving his father’s.
“What ship?” Jackson asked, coming closer still.
Harold hadn’t been aware he’d said it aloud. His brain worked to catch up. “I’ll not have to take her to Gretna if I could get her to a ship. We can be married by ship’s captain and then sail straight to London, straight to the bank if we bloody have to.”
Tobias came closer as well. “But you don’t have a ship.”
Harold looked up into the other man’s eyes. “No. I don’t. But your Mr Smith does.”
Jackson laughed. “Now we’re getting somewhere. And just how are you going to get the girl out?”
He’d have to take her. But how? His brother would watch those children like a hawk does a mouse. The house was surrounded by heavily armed pirates. He didn’t care what anyone said about his brother being a legitimate captain. He saw the pirate in him, knew he had to be capable of murder. How else could he have survived all those years on his own? By his smarts? Harold nearly snorted. “I’ll have to separate her from my brother somehow.”
He was so caught up in his own thoughts, he didn’t see the two men exchange another look, another shrug, another nod. His attention was captured when Tobias pulled a sheaf of papers from beneath his well-tailored coat. “These might help do it all a little quicker.”
“What are they?” Harold asked, snatching the documents. Any chance they could be of any help at all, he’d take it.
“Penfold’s will and, it seems, his suicide note.”
“Where did you get these?”
“Your brother had them.”
The shiver returned. “What have you said to my brother?”
Jackson shook his head. “We didn’t hang about for tea, idiot. We have our methods for appropriating information.”
“You stole them?” What did he care anyway? Harold began scanning the documents but then a meaty hand shoved them back against his chest. Hard.
“Not here.”
Harold nodded as elation filled him. Just one line had shattered his fears to dust and solved the way forward. Eliza wouldn’t like it, but the law was the law. Wickham would arrive to collect his new wards and Harold would have his wife and her dowry. At last, a way out of the quagmire.
He stood and pushed past the henchmen. He had to find his father.
“You have five days to make this happen. Get the girl and bring her to London; we’ll have the ship and a captain to do the marrying,” Tobias called after him. “Or there’ll be a tin of oil with your name on it.”
Harold flew out the door, their maniacal laughter following him a long way down the road.
*
When word reached Darius that the Persecutor would be ready to sail in just three days’ time, the mixture of his emotions ranged from actual rage all the way to sadness and then back to rage with all the variants in between. He was beyond furious that his father would get away with being a blackguard and despicable excuse for a man. He was sad that Eliza and her siblings had to run.
These should have been the best years of their lives. Nathanial should have been away at school. Eliza should have married and be expecting children with a man who was worthy of her. Gabriella would dream of come-out balls and Grace and Ethan could have just simply behaved as children, running about creating trouble and mischief. His father had had too much of a hand in their downfall for his part to be merely let go and forgotten. It grated so badly it hurt.
But Darius couldn’t go after him. Not anymore. Not now. Not with so much at stake.
One of the many problems with this was that they still hadn’t found Deklin’s missing ship. He knew the cargo of brand-new brocades and silks was long gone but whole ships and their hundred-odd sailors did not simply disappear. Not unless they’d been fired upon and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. If that is what happened then it meant the crew of the Persephone handed over the cargo and then sailed away without trading
