Prince of Ravenscar (Sherbrooke Brides 11)

After lunch, the three ladies were settled into the Ravenscar carriage, along with Tansy, who’d had tears in her eyes at the joyous thought of visiting Plymouth, Julian and Devlin riding beside them, leaving their respective valets to kick up their heels at Ravenscar and try to avoid Richard and Leah.

45

Plymouth Docks

Julian stood on the deck of the Blue Star, a sturdy brigantine he’d purchased five years before from Thomas Malcombe, the Earl of Lancaster, a man he admired and trusted. It was indeed a small world, he thought, what with Meggie, Malcombe’s countess, being a Sherbrooke, and that surely made him shake his head. He remembered well the dinner in the Malcombes’ lovely pink stucco house in Genoa, Meggie telling him about racing cats. Thomas told him how his own racer, Keevil, a black tube of a cat with a chewed-up ear, was the current champion, and did that ever burn his wife to her heels. He thought of James and Corrie Sherbrooke, Meggie Malcombe’s cousins. Sometimes the world really was too small, dishing up so many lives that overlapped. He wondered if Keevil was still the racing-cat champion of all Ireland.

The Blue Star captain, Cowan Cleaves, ruddy-faced from a lifetime spent on the sea, not a humorous bone in his big body, and steady as a rock, raced along the dock, up the gangplank, out of breath. “My lord, you are here, thank the heavens. I sent you a messenger.”

“What happened, Cowan?”

“Everything is all right, but it was close, my lord. A man I hired on at Gibraltar—his name is Orvald Manners—he set a fire in the cargo hold as we were docking. My cabin boy, Ira, managed to put out the fire before there was any damage, but Manners was gone. None have seen him. I’ve sent out my first mate, Abel Rowe, to try to locate him. You know Abel, if he finds him, he’ll break his head.”

The first thing Julian did was to go into the cargo hold. The timbers were charred but cooling. Ira had come to smoke a pipe, Cowan told him, something he was forbidden to do, and saw Manners set the fire. Ira was a smart boy; he waited until Manners had left the hold, then put out the fire.

“Give the lad a sovereign, Cowan.”

“Perhaps, my lord, I won’t tan his hide for trying to smoke, the little blighter.”

Julian had to laugh, easy now that his ship was safe and the valuable goods safe as well.

“Tell me about this Orvald Manners.”

“Abel hired him on as a new man at Gibraltar because one of our sailors simply disappeared. I think now Manners is responsible.”

“Oh, yes,” Julian said.

“Manners didn’t have any friends, not really, kept to himself. According to Abel, though, he was always willing to do whatever was needed, always had a nice word for the galley cook, Old Tubbs. Still, it was as plain as a pikestaff the fellow didn’t have much experience.”

Julian knew to his bones none of the sailors would know anything about Manners, particularly where he’d hared off to. He got Manners’s description. His name—Orvald Manners—mayhap that was the key to tracking him down. But, of course, it was likely a fiction as surely as Manners had signed on the Blue Star in good faith.

Manners couldn’t have conjured up the storm, and that must have frightened the man to death, Julian thought. But he’d tried to burn the Blue Star right here at the dock, in Plymouth. How much had Richard paid him?

He set a half-dozen sailors to the task of finding Manners, but he had little hope. The man had failed. There wasn’t any way he would stay around. No, he would go report his failure to Richard.

Julian wanted to join the sailors in the search, but first he toured his ship, saw the repairs to the damage caused by the storm were nearly complete. Within a sennight, thank the good Lord, Indian tea, materials of all kinds made in Manchester mills, farm equipment, and myriad household items gathered by Harlan and warehoused over the past three months in Plymouth would be loaded aboard the Blue Star, and she would make her way to Boston. Without storms. Without sabotage in Boston Harbor. The return trip would bring dozens of barrels of whale oil.

When he was finished checking the repairs, Julian shook Captain Cleaves’s hand and wandered around the dock area, stopping various men, giving them Manners’s description. He had no luck. He paid out coin for information on Manners. He wanted him badly. He was his only connection to Richard Langworth.

When he saw Devlin standing in front of a milliner’s shop on High Street, Parisian Feathers, all three ladies clustered around him, Julian grinned. He’d been so intent on sabotage and mayhem, finding Manners, and kicking both him and Richard into the channel. But now here was Devlin, his hat brim pulled down to protect him from the bright sun overhead, laughing, quite enjoying himself, looking at bonnets.

“That one,” Julian heard him say, and saw him point to a high-brimmed straw bonnet with at least a dozen pieces of fruit decorating its high poke, nests of ribbons holding them, and a thick, long red ribbon to tie beneath a lady’s chin. “Roxanne, you would look a treat with those peaches all over your head. If I ever was hungry, I could simply pluck one off. You would be my private orchard.”

Roxanne poked him in the belly. “All those peaches, that bonnet must weigh a stone, Devlin. I would have a bowed back by the end of morning wearing that bushel of fruit.” As for the bonnet Roxanne was wearing, Devlin found it very charming, only two small finches perched beside the crown, the bonnet as wide-brimmed as Devlin’s black hat. Should he offer to provide her birdseed?

“Ah, dearest, there you are,” Julian’s mother called to him. “Do come here, I require your opinion. Devlin simply will not be serious. Tell me what you think of these bonnets. They are newly arrived from Paris, and I am in need.”

Julian obligingly looked more closely and surveyed the bonnets in the window, each of them decorated with bows, ribbons, and flowers, and occasional fauna. “That one,” he said, pointing to a pink straw that was in the corner of the window. “That one would look splendid on you, Mother.”

“Do you not think it very plain?”

“Not at all. It is perfect for you.”

A half-hour later, they all emerged from Parisian Feathers, the pale pink leghorn hat, with a line of braided darker pink ribbons encircling the crown, set atop her grace’s head, tied rakishly beneath her chin.

Roxanne said, “Do you know, Devlin, even with your hat, your nose is becoming red. I think it best we go into the Golden Goose Inn and plant you in a dim corner.”

He quickly pulled his hat down farther over his eyes. He looked at her closely, lightly touched his fingertips to her nose. “I believe I see some freckles coming out to march over your lovely white self.”