Hours later, when the door to the cell was opened, Jessica was prepared to meet a hangman.
Instead, standing on deck was Alexander, resplendent in yellow satin, the sunlight hitting his big belly and reflecting into her eyes. She put her hand up against the glare.
She couldn’t see Alexander very well, but she could feel his anger all around her.
“Come!” was all he commanded, in a low, seething voice.
“I—” Jess began, but he shoved her shoulder and pushed her toward the gangplank.
Jess tried to keep her head up as she passed the crowd that had gathered on both sides of the wharf.
Alex climbed onto a wagon seat without so much as looking at Jessica. As she weakly climbed up beside him, he flicked the reins to the horses and they started down the street.
“What are you so mad about?” she shouted over the noise of the wagon, but he didn’t answer her.
He drove her across a dirt road to the back of the forest, then up a hill. She knew there was a spring nearby.
“Get down,” he commanded when he’d stopped.
“Not until you tell me what’s going on,” she answered.
Alex, fighting his way around his belly, walked to her side of the wagon. “I had to bribe your way out of a hangman’s noose, that’s what. You were playing with the English navy when you helped the Raider. That captain planned to use you and George as examples and hang you. He figured that’d stop the Raider.”
“Oh,” Jessica said, getting down. “I thought they might want to do that. Why are we here?”
Alex calmed his voice. “Eleanor sent you clean clothes and there’s soap and towels. You smell worse than you did before you went into that cell.” He put his handkerchief to his nose. “And Eleanor thought you should stay out of sight for a few days.”
“Why didn’t she come with you?” Jess picked up the bundle from the back of the wagon.
“It seems she had a little collision with a bucket of washwater. I think she told Nick something to the effect that he wasn’t too good to do some washing. I believe Nick thought otherwise.”
Jessica gaped at him. “So that overgrown boy tossed dirty water on my sister?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“I’ll give him a piece of my mind,” she said, getting back on the wagon.
Alex caught her arm. “Eleanor has already told him what she thought of him and I’m sure he need not hear anymore. The problem now is you. You badly need a bath.”
Reluctantly, Jessica followed him up the hill to the spring and its little pool.
Alex seated himself, his back to Jessica, while she began to disrobe. She couldn’t see the way the sweat began trickling down his neck or how clammy his palms grew. “Tell me what happened,” he said, managing to make his voice sound somewhat normal.
As unemotionally as she could, Jessica began to tell how she’d spent yesterday shrimping and watching for the Golden Hind. Only part of her mind was on her story, the other part was wondering why Eleanor had sent this man with instructions to take her to bathe. In other circumstances it would have been unthinkable to remove her clothing with a man nearby—but to her, Alexander Montgomery was so far removed from being a man that it seemed quite natural. Now, if instead that awful Raider were here…
“Go on,” Alex prompted, wiping his palms on a relatively dry patch of grass. “What happened after the Raider appeared?”
Jessica soaped her toes. “I hate that man! I hate him! There I was, risking my neck to save his and once again he makes a fool of me.”
“I heard that he kissed you.”
“If you can call it that. He tried to anyway. And after what I’d done for him. My arms are sore from hauling shrimp nets and he treats me like that. I ought to have snatched the mask from his face and shown everyone who he was. He deserved that.”
“But you didn’t,” Alex said quietly. “Instead, you threw a rope and stopped the pursuit of the king’s men. He wouldn’t have escaped if it hadn’t been for you.”
“And look how he repays me. I didn’t do it for him, I can assure you. I did it for Josiah Greene.”
“Did you hear that the Raider gave the money to Josiah? And Josiah left town immediately.”