“Albert Franks,” Franks said without hesitation.
McCoy didn’t acknowledge his answer. Instead, he continued flicking through the papers, as if unaware or uncaring of the tension his continued silence was generating. Or, more likely, he was the kind of man who fed on the misery of his captives.
“And what about you?” McCoy asked a long moment later, without lifting his eyes from the list.
“Hugo Buckingham.”
Clark made a soft hmmph and for a moment Hugo wondered if the other man would bring up the fact that he’d given the islanders a different surname. But one look at Clark’s smug smirk told him that the other man was so certain that Hugo was a criminal that no other evidence would be needed.
McCoy continued studying the names for a good ten or fifteen centuries before he finally looked up. “Not surprisingly, neither of those names is on the ship’s manifest.”
Franks heaved a sigh and looked ready to faint. “Thank—”
“But that hardly means anything, does it?” McCoy asked. With an authority figure’s unerring nose for a troublemaker, he directed this question at Hugo.
Hugo smiled. “I daresay a clever person might invent a name to evade transportation.”
His words drew a few chuckles from the crowd.
But not from Martha Pringle.
She stood alone at the forefront of the crowd, her hands clenched into fists, and her mouth compressed as if she were in pain. Bloody hell! The woman’s heart was in her eyes and she was all but bleedingfor them—for him. When had another person ever been so anguished on his behalf?
That was easy to answer: never.
Hugo wished that he could tell her not to waste all that emotion on him or his eternal soul; he wasn’t worth worrying about and certainly couldn’t be saved.
McCoy raised the list and gave the sheets a shake, the gesture pulling all eyes back in his direction.“In addition to a host of criminal charges—including smuggling and engaging in fraudulent impressment in the name of His Majesty’s Navy, to name but a few—the captain of Fortune’s Lady”—he paused to enjoy the snickers at the unfortunate name of the now splintered vessel—“was also a casualty of his mutinying crew.”
McCoy paced in front of his enrapt listeners like a hawker working a crowd. “It seems the good captain was concerned about confusing his legal and illegal human cargo and gaining the wrong kind of attention when he reached New South Wales, so he had the King’s prisoners strip and made additional notations to the original manifest.” His piggy little eyes flickered over the convicts, again coming to rest on Hugo. “Or maybe he just wanted to see all you lads get your kit off.”
There were gasps mixed in with the laughter this time.
“Mister McCoy,” Clark chided, his face taut with anger. “There are women and children present.”
Hugo glanced at the woman Clark was concerned about, but Martha was staring at him so fixedly that he knew she’d not heard the chivalry the other man had exhibited on her behalf. Hugo gave her a quick smile and a wink, which woke her from her daze. Even now—when they both knew he’d be on a boat bound for the other side of the world by the time the sun set—Hugo had the power to make her blush with just a look.
Poor girl. She’d probably end up with only Clark to teach her about her sweet body and all the wonderful sensations it could both give and receive; it was a bloody shame.
Hugo pulled his gaze away from hers and looked at the man in question.
Clark had placed his meaty fists on his hips and was staring down the vulgar lawman. Hugo felt a grudging respect for him in that moment, no matter that he was a moralizing, tedious pillock. At least he stood up for Miss Pringle and behaved as a gentleman should behave when it came to the woman he loved. Not that Hugo knew much about such things.
Hugo’s fecund imagination was suddenly assaulted by an unwanted vision of Martha and Clark in a darkened room, Clark lifting Martha’s flannel nightgown only as far as her waist before covering her small body with his larger one and rutting into her with all the finesse of a boar.
Any respect Hugo had for the other man dissipated like a fart in high wind, blown away by the sudden fury that surged through him at the imaginary vision.
Or perhaps that is jealousy you’re feeling, Hugo.
Jealousy? Jealousy!
Ha! He’d never been jealous in his life—and certainly never when it came to sex, which represented nothing other than money in his mind.
“All right, all right, step back,” McCoy said to Clark with a dismissive wave.
Once Clark had backed away, McCoy jabbed a thick finger at Albert Franks, “The only ginger-haired convict on this official manifest is in his forties—a wee bit older than you, I’d say. If you’re not on my list, then I won’t get paid for you. That means I don’t want you.” He held up a hand when Franks opened his mouth. “And before you ask, no—I won’t bring you to the mainland. I’m not a ferryman.”
He turned away from Franks, his muddy brown gaze settling on Hugo.
Hugo recognized the glint in McCoy’s eyes: it was the look of a man who enjoyed inflicting pain for the sake of it. Their interaction, Hugo knew, would end either with him in chains or publicly humiliated, or likely both.
“Now you, Mr. Buckingham, well, you’re a bit more difficult to discard—dark hair, dark eyes, on the tallish side”—he shrugged—“all around you’re nothin’ of any note.”
Hugo hated himself for feeling insulted at the oaf’s casual dismissal of his appearance—all the more so because he believed it was accurate: he really wasn’t anything special.
At least not until he took off his clothing.
“You don’t match any of the descriptions…exactly, but
