Chapter Twenty-five
The devil and the deep-blue sea.
Jack’s emotions raged, at one with the wind and turbulent skies, yet motion felt sluggish, Jowlik’s hooves too slow, no action swift enough.
Dread coursed as he flung himself from the horse, fell to his knees and grasped the lifeless Benjamin into his arms, blood running colder than when he’d read Rakecombe’s dispatch:
You have found a dead man. Captain Lynch killed at Waterloo. Sending assistance at once.
R
And then to find Tamsyn gone…
He pushed matted hair from Ben’s forehead and brushed his ashen face as he fumbled for a pulse.
“Please no,” he murmured in the swirling gale. “Ben, please…”
A meagre groan emerged, and Jack closed his eyes, freed his clutched breath.
He glanced to Oliver, hunched over the bogus Lynch, fingers pressed to his neck. “Alive?”
A shake of the head and terror threaded within, confusion and turmoil lacing and twisting. Where the hell was Tamsyn?
Needles of rain pierced their clothing and Jack cursed, searching for the wound and yelling his anger when his fingers returned blood-drenched. A fierce shiver overcame the lad as Jack shoved his handkerchief to the wound and rubbed Ben’s hands between his own until one vague eye opened.
“I…my head.” Ben licked rain from his lips, struggled to sit. “Miss Penrose!” he managed, before crumpling with a groan.
“Where is she?”
“I heard…maybe a cave. It were some Frenchie; he sounded…mad.”
Jack needed no more. He tucked his coat around the lad and then hurled himself into the saddle, swinging to Oliver.
“Take Ben to the manor and get men out here.” Jowlik danced in the storm, eager for pursuit. “Bring pistols, lanterns, rope. Anything.”
“Go,” his brother yelled, standing firm, no wind daring to buffer his solid frame, and Jack nodded, yanking the reins seaward with only one thought.
Find Tamsyn.
They soon left the estate behind, racing through the fields and vaulting the low stone walls, Jowlik displaying the strength and swiftness of a creature allied to his master’s anguish.
He tasted salt on his lips, heard the roar of the sea as the cliff edge drew near. The land grew treacherous, fat splodges of water whacking like rocks, dry earth refusing entry, causing puddles to form and rivulets to flow.
A gusting wind smacked rain in his face, sight feeble, but Jowlik grasped their destination and pounded on in defiance of the perilous weather.
Jack slackened the pace as the turn emerged in the gloom, but Jowlik had no such qualms with the threadlike path and picked his way down, breath snorting. Nearly there, but hooves now slid and Jowlik whinnied, rocks unsteadying his fragile legs, flanks quivering with effort.
The brave creature had carried him thus far and Jack wouldn’t force him further, so he threw himself from the saddle, grabbed his sword and tore his way to the cove, slipping, slewing on wet shale.
“Tamsyn,” he bawled, words lost to the wind as the path broadened. He strained his eyes over the blackened cliffs and grim sea, waves like gaping mouths, ready to devour and destroy.
Rain blurred his sight but…in the surf, a boat about to be taken, and he stumbled down, pebbles giving way underfoot, the whole land quaking with the force of thunder, deafening and fierce.
He cupped his hands, pulse roaring in his ears. “Tamsyn!”
Two faces turned, both white and stark, hair plastered. A snarling man leaped from the boat and waded out through crashing waves.
Pale and gaunt, those piercing eyes Jack had stared into once before blazed with madness and intellect.
Such a dangerous combination.
“Pathétique,” La Chauve-Souris yelled, drawing his sword. “I kill you for my pleasure.”
Jack rushed, hurtled over the shale toward the whoreson. He noticed Tamsyn attempt to stand, swaying and hesitant, but a wave struck and she fell back, boat sucked further into the tussling vortex.
With a smile curving through the curtain of rain, the Frenchman loped from the shallows – the lone impediment between Jack and the woman he cherished above all others.
This devil incarnate had abducted, killed, caused terror and misery, families torn apart.
But no more.
“I’ll send you to hell.” Jack spat out, freeing his own sword from its scabbard.
“You?” La Chauve-Souris sneered. “We must bow, non? So English, so polite.”
“Do as you wish,” growled Jack, and he straightened his shoulders, spine as iron, blade held firm. “To the death.”
A snarl and the whoreson struck forward, sword stabbing in reckless jabs.
Sloppy. And Jack parried, thrusting back with deftness, but the rain hindered his efforts, boots struggling for grip on the shifting pebbles.
A far-off scream carried on the wind and his eyes flickered to the sound but the Frenchman lunged, a whistle of blade compelling Jack’s retreat.
Focus.
Once, he would have hammered forward with blind ferociousness, but Rainham had been teaching him to bridle his temper in a swordfight, to consider and strategise.
Their blades sped through the air, clashed and skimmed, weapons evenly matched for weight and length. La Chauve-Souris fought well with keen balance and a vigour, driven by insanity, but his style remained chaotic, strokes forceful yet careless. A gutter fighter without finesse.
Jack could be both.
Whipping his wrist around as the man shot forward, he parried a stab to the vitals and caught the blade with his own, steel grating, until they were breath to breath, edge to edge.
Lightning sparked the cove, illuminating the whoreson’s waxen face scored by four bleached scars to the cheek.
“You’ll never take her,” Jack rasped through clenched teeth, feeling the devil’s breath on his skin.
A wicked grin lit the Frenchman’s features. “She is mine, mon ami. My name is upon her.”
Jack roared above the racketing thunder, hurling him away, caught sight of the boat from the corner of his eye, sea flinging it back and forth like driftwood. He drove forward, blade hissing through the air but the Frenchman spun, eluded the strike, and off-balance, Jack’s knee struck the pebbles.
Control it, Winterbourne, he heard Rainham yell and he hauled himself up. Turned.
“Is Sewell your puppet also?”
La Chauve-Souris sneered.
Swords clattered once more, fleeter than the ragged flashes above. La Chauve-Souris lunged but Jack tore his blade through the rain to parry the blow, arm numbed by the ferocious clash.
His opponent dipped, stumbled, and Jack shifted stance, slashing the Frenchman’s shirt to draw blood.
“Fils de pute.”
Time slowed and they circled, spines curled like scorpions’ tails. Jack hauled breath to his overwrought lungs, forced his hands to steady, until he faced that black-mouthed cave where this whoreson had tortured an innocent Cornish girl.
Ire coursed. Controlled ire.
Moving his grip from hilt to blunted base, Jack hurled the sword as a spear.
Seized by surprise, the Frenchman swung to deflect and Jack threw himself forward. They tumbled and grappled in the wet shale, bruising limbs and grazing skin. Fingers stabbed at his eyes and Jack twisted, felt the graze of blade to his arm as he grabbed the man’s wrist and slammed it to the shale. Punching out with his other hand, fist crashed into jaw and the sword released.
Jack rolled off, reaching down for his boot knife as La Chauve-Souris scrabbled on his knees to the fallen weapon. Before it could rip across, Jack dived forward, plunging his slick dagger through cloth and flesh.
A wild howl and the Frenchman swayed on his knees, sword tumbling again as both hands fell to his gut and the protruding hilt. Jack lurched to his feet, breath heaving and hands trembling beneath the malevolent sky.
Tamsyn.
Turning his eyes to the raging sea, he scanned the waves, blundered toward the shore.
“La petite is mine,” came a roar. “I made her.”
Jack whirled to witness the Frenchman stand, yank the knife from his gut and lunge in frenzy – death bestowing vigour.
Defenceless, Jack prepared to parry with a forearm, but a pistol crack ruptured the air, ricocheted from the towering cliffs and La Chauve-Souris slammed to the Cornish cove.
To one side, a shadowed figure flung back his sodden hood.
“I’m indebted, Sewell,” Jack yelled, head whipping back to the open sea.
“The name’s Mason, my lord.”
Jack reeled on the shale. “Bloody hell, your sister–”
“He strangled her,” Mason snarled, face tormented. “I’ve waited years for this day.”
Another scream carried on the wind and Jack spun, stumbled forward, shale becoming sand. Beyond the rocks to the left, the small boat brutally pitched, wholly at the sea’s mercy, a figure of grey floundering at its bow.
Without thought, Jack yanked off his boots, threw them aside and ran to the water’s frothing edge.
“No, Winterbourne,” shouted Mason. “Help is coming. You’ll drown.” But Jack took no heed, wading into the merciless waves.
No one would drown this day.
“Snap, damn you,” Tamsyn shrieked as she drew her bound wrists back and forth, desperate to sever the rope before a wave could steal the boat and upend her into the torrid ocean.
When Jack had hurtled towards them, deliverance had seemed so near, but a savage duel had ensued, and the surf had dragged her small boat further into the hellish sea.
But she’d known this boat.
It belonged to old man Thomas in Treloor; she’d played in it as a child and the wooden seat lifted to reveal his stash of brandy within.
The bottles had smashed to smithereens but she’d buy old man Thomas a whole damn crate if the broken shards cut through the rope and she survived this night.
A stab of glass and she cried out, shifted and sawed again. Wind whipped her sodden hair into writhing snakes, lashing her cheeks and forbidding sight.
With a desperate last wrench, her wrists snapped loose, and she shook off the rope, grabbed the oars from the bottom of the boat and shoved them to their rowlocks. She prayed Jack lived as she bid to cut a swathe, unable to see ought in the gushing rain.
“Damn sea, let me through,” she yelled as a wave tossed her yet further from the cove, an avalanche of saltwater slapping her face for the impudence, and she coughed, spat, cursed.
Her shoulders burned with the tussle, but without oars she was as good as dead, and she clung on, fingers trembling with a deathlike grip.
Watching the sea, she spied a cresting wave and let the boat ride it, using one oar to guide her left and with luck to the safer waters that swirled by Morhogh’s Point. The outcrop appeared treacherous but she knew these seas; behind it, undercurrents eddied and rocks protected causing a pool of easier navigation.
Not far and she dipped an oar but the relentless waves stole any rhythm. Over and over she plunged and drew back her arms, but made no headway, the angry sea stealing all toil. All strength.
The sea snarled, and the boat plummeted into a calmer trough of water but Tamsyn shuddered and closed her eyes, knowing all too well what that meant. She dared to turn, to face the spitting wave consuming all before it, looming, hurtling toward her, unstoppable and–
Bitter water deluged the old boat, wood splitting, oars lost, and Tamsyn screamed loud as she tumbled into the abyss.
Searing cold numbed her legs and hitched her breath. She could swim but not in these petticoats which dragged and tangled, catching in her fingers as she sought to tear them asunder. Another violent wave dragged her below, water filling her mouth and nostrils, and she flung her arms up, kicked out her legs.
She caught the surface, seized a desperate gulp of air, and closed her eyes as a wail of water rolled her beneath once more.
“No!” Jack roared as he fought the swell with all his might, never closer, too far, the rain spitting spines as he ploughed through.
Not Tamsyn. Not like this. Please not like this.
“Tam–” Water flooded his throat and he hurled it out to push ever onward, heart thundering with fright. A lone wave-tossed oar glanced his head, and he heaved breath to dive, refusing to think on the futility. He’d dive until he found her. Until his power and energy was spent and he joined her in the restless depths.
Another wave crashed, submerging him, and he lunged for the surface, felt a clout to his shin. Wood from the shattered boat or–
He plunged deep, lungs seizing, searching blindly with his hands in the Stygian pitch. A tangle of fingers caught in his and he snatched them, held them as a hand scrabbled at his legs, tugging him down. He fought for the surface, never letting go until he gasped air and a sodden walnut crown emerged, choking, spluttering.
Arms looped around his neck to hang limp in the savage sea.
The walnut crown tipped, eyelids lifted. “Jack.”
His terror-stricken heart surged, arms grasped, mouths met despite the turbulence all around.
Water crashed them apart once more and gasping, Jack lashed one arm tight about her waist, another cleaving through the sea. Tamsyn’s legs kicked out in tandem with his own, but the never-ending waves robbed all headway and stupor crept its fingers upon them.
Ahead, endless black greeted his eyes, no shore visible beyond the next towering wave, and stamina ebbed in its wake.
Yet he would not finally have Tamsyn in his embrace only to lose her due to his own failing body, and he forced his feet to thrash, compelled his arm to lunge onward, calling upon every last remnant of his strength.
Still the savage sea craved a prize this night and exhaustion welled, the water’s grip tightening, whispering its sweet siren’s song. He kicked out but to no avail, dipped beneath the waves, would never let Tamsyn go, never be separated.
A sudden wrench and air rushed his lungs.
A strong arm held firm.
“Hold on, brother.” Rope tightened around them. “I’ve got you.”