‘Nathan, your back, I’m sorry…’
‘Shh.’ He pulled her back against him and she let him hold her, her hands sliding down to rest at his waist. ‘It will all be well now.’
It seemed, resting her head against his chest, that it might be, because he was alive and here.
‘What were you doing?’ he asked.
‘Picking the lock so I could get out and rescue you,’ she admitted. ‘It sounds very easy in Minerva Press novels.’
‘I see.’ He was shaking somewhat; she had the lowering suspicion that he was laughing, but she had no intention of letting go to find out. ‘And having picked the lock, how did the rest of the plan go?’
‘I wasn’t wasting time planning. I needed to get away from them first, then I could think. Find my maid Eliza, that was the first step.’
‘She’s waiting for you.’
That did bring her out of her daze. ‘Eliza? How?’
‘Let’s get out of here—there’s too much to tell you.’ He hunkered down and studied the lock.
‘But how did you get in here?’ Clemence ran to the balcony. There was a grappling hook biting into the carved stone and a rope dangled down into the darkness. ‘Who is on the other end of that rope?’ she asked, coming back into the room, all too aware of Lewis’s room and his open windows.
‘Street, one bemused midshipman and the crew of the frigate Orion’s jolly boat.’
‘Street!’ He merely nodded, his concentration on the lock. ‘And you are navy? Truly?’
The door clicked open and Nathan got to his feet. ‘Captain Nathan Stanier, at your service, Miss Clemence.’ The relief took the strength out of her legs. Clemence sat down with a bump on the nearest chest. ‘Come on, we haven’t got time for sitting about.’ He snuffed all but one candle and took that to the balcony, shielding it and uncovering it with his hand before blowing it out. ‘Right, now we’ve got to get to that cove quarter of a mile along to the east and I think we can relax.’
Clemence pulled herself together and pushed the questions that were clamouring for answers to the back of her mind. ‘This way. If we go out of the dining-room windows on to the veranda and then along to the kitchen yard, we’ll miss the watchman at the gate.’
Nathan followed her, soft-footed on the wide polished boards as she led him through the rooms, as familiar as the palm of her own hand in the darkness. The loose window latch opened easily and then they were out into the fragrant, sound-filled night.
Old One-Eye gave a soft wuff of greeting as he scented her and came padding across, the links of his chain rattling. ‘Damn,’ Nathan murmured beside her and she saw his hand go to his knife.
‘No!’ she hissed back. ‘And I’m taking him with me; he’s old, I’m not leaving him with them.’
‘We can’t take a geriatric guard dog in a jolly boat,’ Nathan protested as she fumbled for the catch on the dog’s heavy studded collar, but she just tugged One-Eye towards the gate and he followed, muttering. She thought she heard totty-headed woman, but she couldn’t swear to it, and anyway, he sounded amused.
The cove was a favourite picnic spot and Clemence did not need the occasional flash of a shielded lantern ahead to follow the path through the brush and down the cliff path to the beach. One-Eye, who seemed to take this unorthodox walk in his stride, growled low in his throat as figures appeared out of the darkness and the shape of the beached boat became clear.
‘Quiet, One-Eye. Friends,’ Clemence ordered, although as one of the silhouettes turned into the unmistakable bulk of Street, she was not so sure.
‘You all right, Clem?’ he asked, his voice grumbling out of the darkness.
‘Yes, thank you. But what are you doing here?’
‘Joined the navy, haven’t I?’ he said. ‘Mr Stanier said I’d got a choice, that or the gallows, seeing as how I looked after you.’
‘Better get in the boat, sir.’ A young man, she assumed the bemused midshipman of Nathan’s description, was edging them towards the water. ‘Er, are we taking the hound, ma’am?’ What he thought of being sent out with a pirate ship’s cook on a clandestine mission on English soil, to rescue a woman and an elderly dog, she could not imagine.
‘Certainly we are.’
Only one sailor was bitten, and the midshipman drenched, getting the very reluctant animal into the boat, and Nathan’s shoulders against hers were rigid with what she could only assume was suppressed laughter, but they were at sea at last.
‘Where are we going? To the Governor?’
Clemence let herself lean into Nathan’s side and he put his arm around her, no doubt an action harmful to naval discipline, but he did not appear to care.
‘No. I fear his mind is unlikely to be elastic on the subject of young women who run away from their guardians. I’m quite certain we can convince him in time, but tonight I think you rest, then we can assemble our case