Chapter 5
“Can ye tell me again why we’re just sitting here in the middle of the blasted sea, Bridget?” Rory asked, fighting the warm feeling he got just by saying her name.
He should be feeling quite a bit more than warm, as they’d been sitting ducks for three days now. He should have been burning with rage.
“I just have a feeling, is all,” she said, pointing out to the gentle waves of the dark blue waters that surrounded them.
He’d been living on a ship for the past few years and it had never given him the chills as it did these days. He wasn’t born for the sea, that much was certain, but he’d adapted to it, enjoying the adventure of owning his own ship. And as much as he wanted to get back to the Anchovy, he had a feeling if he ever knew his men were safe he’d be retiring from that life.
Bridget and her feelings were the reason they weren’t moving. He thought it a miracle the Navy or whoever was in charge of hunting her hadn’t found them yet.
“Did ye somehow hide us?” he asked. It was no use staying angry at her. She won every argument anyway.
“Hide us?” she asked.
“Aye, from the people who think ye killed Albert?”
She turned an engaging pink color, indicating she might have actually forgot why they were out there.
“Dinna look at me that way. I didna forget anything,” she pouted. “Maybe I got lulled a bit by how lovely it is out here, though. I do love sailing.”
He counted to ten to keep from lunging at her and wringing her graceful, soft neck. He blushed a bit himself to see a slight bruise from his rough kissing of the evening before on her pale skin. He kept counting because now he wanted to do something other than wring her neck. Blast it, but what was wrong with him?
“Aye, it’s beautiful and peaceful,” he lied. “But ye’re still a wanted criminal. And it’s either sheer luck, the incompetence of the British law enforcement, or a spell that we’ve not been found.”
He was gratified to see the radiant smile on her face when he disparaged the British, but it slipped away the moment he said the word spell.
“How many times have I told ye? I am not a witch.”
To his utter dismay, she burst into tears. Dear God. He’d never seen her do that before. He liked it much better when she looked like he might be next on her “toss overboard” list. What did he do about this new situation? She was so stubborn she might kill him if he tried to comfort her. But he couldn’t keep from moving to her side and wrapping his arms around her shoulders.
Thankfully, she didn’t try to kill him. Instead, she rested her cheek against his chest and within seconds stopped crying. She wiped her face on his shirt and looked up at him.
“I’m not, though,” she said, once again as cool and hard as ice.
God, he loved her.
He froze at that unwanted thought. No. By all that was holy, no. He did not. Did not love her. Attracted? Of course. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. That was all it was. He gently pulled away, as if she might turn into a snake and strike him if he moved too fast. How could he love someone who terrified him so badly?
“Then how do ye explain us being able to sit here for the last three days without so much as a peep from a search party?”
At that moment, one of the crew ran down the stairs at the end of the deck and hurried over to them. He waved a pair of binoculars as he skidded to a halt in front of their deck chair.
Rory jumped up, aware of how close he still was to Bridget. He knew the deck hands must suspect something— might have even seen him kissing her. He had to stop getting towed under by her wicked enchantment. But even as he fought the undertow, he knew how much he enjoyed drowning in her sweet embrace. With a red face, positive he looked as guilty as he was, he asked the man what was the matter.
“A couple ships heading this way,” he said. “Looks to be Royal Navy, my lady.”
“Goodness,” Bridget said, attempting to sound worried. “Go tell the captain to wait for my orders.” As soon as the man ran off, she smirked at Rory. “Ye were saying some nonsense about a spell?” she asked, voice dripping with false sweetness.
“Good God, woman!” he shouted. “Ye seem happy about being arrested if it proves your bloody point.”
“No one’s getting arrested, Rory,” she said.
If he felt a warmth when he said her name, the effect of her uttering his was doubly unnerving. He shook his head, desperate to free himself from his own stupidity.
“What then?” he begged. “Let me in on the plan, if ye have one.”
She slumped a little and patted the deck chair, not about to speak until he sat. So he sat. She took his hand and laced her fingers with his.
“I didna want to go home to Scotland,” she said. He opened his mouth to tell her he already knew that but she silenced him with a glare. “Aye, it was partly because I didna want to face my parents and partly because the castle is like my sworn enemy. But it’s also because that would be the verra place Albert would go to find me.”
“Ye really didna kill him, then?” Rory asked incredulously.
She snatched her hand away. “How can ye press your lips to mine, all the while thinking I was capable of murdering my husband?”
He almost let it slip that he knew about her bewitching him, but wisely kept it to himself. If she knew he knew, she might strengthen her power over him.
“I dinna know,” he admitted, then held up his hand before she could take a swipe or screech at him. “I mean, I didna know for sure either way, so I gave ye the benefit of the doubt.”
“That says more about ye, Rory Ferguson, than it does about me. But no. For the last time, and I do mean the last time, I didna kill Albert.”
“Then why wouldna ye want to meet with him, if he was in your village? If ye’re so sure he’s alive and more sure he would go there to find ye, why are we not already there?” He couldn’t believe her. Was she that stubborn? Or that daft? “This could be settled once and for all. Ye could prove your innocence and his guilt in one. He’d be arrested for stealing all that money.”
Bridget was silent for so long, he reached to shake her by the shoulder. She looked at him mournfully and sighed.
“It’s not as simple as that.”
“What then?” His voice rose and he took a deep breath to calm himself. “Explain it to me so I can understand.”
If the deck hand had been able to see the ships with his binoculars, they weren’t that far away. With the miraculous engines of this time, it could only be a matter of moments before they were boarded and arrested.
“The reason I dinna want to meet with my husband,” she said slowly, “is because I’m the one who has all that stolen money.”
***
It all comes out in the end, Bridget.
That’s what her governess used to say to her when she was caught in a fib. And now Rory was looking at her with much the same face old Beatrice used to get. Except with more shock, disgust, and horror. She sighed, waiting for the explosion.
“Ye’re the one who stole all those people’s fortunes?” he asked, sounding exactly the way he looked.
“I didna say I stole it,” she said, trying not to get too prickly. After all, she was in the wrong. A bit. Mostly. “I said I have it. It’s different.”
“Not to the people who lost it,” he sputtered. “Ye need to return it at once.”
She laughed at his naivety, which made his dark look turn darker. “And say what? No one will believe I didna take it from them. And with bloody Albert missing, they’ll still think I killed the damned fool.”
She could see Rory was completely lost and she knew she had to start at the beginning. She liked Rory’s company and he would definitely be useful if her original plan ever came to be, but she wondered if she might be better off alone. No one around to judge her the way he clearly did right now. It was plain in those pretty eyes of his.
“Do ye expect me to believe ye didna kill him after ye admitted to stealing the money?” he asked.
“I dinna expect anything from ye,” she told him. She pointed to the life boat that hung off the side of the yacht. “Hurry on your way before the authorities get here.”
They stared at one another, Bridget angrily, Rory incredulous. She wanted him to get in the wee boat and paddle away and at the same time she wanted him to put his arms around her again like when she’d had that moment of weakness and sniveled like the pathetic creature she really was. She’d been trying to hide it but here it was, coming out in the end. She very nearly started tearing up again because she didn’t want it to be the end. But she wouldn’t beg him to stay.
Finally, Rory looked away, shading his eyes with his hand though it wasn’t an overly sunny day. “All right. I know ye said ye wouldna say it again so I willna keep trying to make ye. If ye didna kill your husband— nay, let me finish before ye chew my head off.” He shook his head and began pacing. “So if ye didna kill Albert and ye didna steal the money, how did it come to be in your possession?” He clapped his hands together, looking around as if gold might start raining down on him. “Is it here on the boat?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s safe, that’s all ye need to know. Albert was the one who masterminded it all. I heard him bragging about how he duped all his rich and titled friends to invest in a Moroccan gold mine shortly before we came on this trip. None of the wee idiots ever bothered to look into it so he thought they deserved to lose their money. And it’s not as if any of them earned it. They still have their properties.”
She paused, thinking of the families she’d read about in the papers back in Blackpool. Albert hadn’t said anything about the ones who were truly left destitute, probably trusting him because of his title and standing in London society. Perhaps wanting to be part of that glittering life. She nearly stuck out her tongue there was such a bad taste on it, and continued her story.
“I overheard him speaking to someone on the telephone. That’s a thing that makes it easy to—.”
“Aye, I saw one at the inn. Carry on.”
“Anyway, he didna know I was in the dressing room at the time so was bragging about it freely. Then he said something about my wee ship here and that he’d tell more when they were together in person. I hid behind my long gowns but he never bothered to check, just merrily went about his business. That night at supper, Albert proposed this romantic vacation. A second honeymoon out on the sea.”
“Ye wee fool,” Rory broke in. “Ye should have reported him the next day. Ye should have— ” he stopped and pressed his lips together.
She ignored his good advice and shrugged. “I did think along those lines. But I feared it would all get turned back on me. I’m the outsider, remember. So I agreed to the trip and then began to secretly follow him, listen in to every conversation he had from that moment on. He’s blustery and confident as someone who’s been born into riches for so long.”
“Says someone who knows nothing about it,” he said sarcastically.
“Aye, my family has more than enough, but it’s mostly tied up in that haunted land and wicked old castle. Albert’s family … look at this grand boat for instance. It was no more to him to buy this for me than it would have been a bauble or a new gown. But it’s not really mine, is it? I pay for it by putting up with the louse. And when I found out he was a thieving scoundrel, I decided I’d had enough. So I took the money from his hiding spot.” She couldn’t help but grin at him. “He’s not verra clever. It was in the wine cellar, behind a crate of his favorite vintage. A big chest full of cash. I couldna lift it, so I took a bit out every day. I went to twelve different banks outside of London and had most of it changed to gold.”
“Of course ye did,” Rory said with a bitter frown. “Then ye came on the trip with him anyway?”
“Aye. At that point I was still skulking around listening in to his conversations so I knew he meant to ditch me or kill me and return to London for the money. After that I dinna know what he was going to do. Nor did I much care.”
She recalled how much she’d hated him when she heard that. She wished she knew who he had been sharing his plans with so she could properly hate that person too.
“How could ye not care?” Rory yelped. “He could have made it seem like ye committed suicide out of guilt. The money would never be found and no one would suspect him.”
Bridget almost laughed, admiring his imagination. But it very well might have been the truth. She sighed deeply, trying not to turn inside out from the pent-up anger at her bastard husband.
“I didna care because by then I had my own plan. We were stop at the coast of Ireland and stay in Wexford. That’s where I thought he’d leave or try to do me in, perhaps poison me and make it look like a sudden illness or even as ye say, a suicide. It’s not as if anyone would care.” She paused and shrugged, thinking her parents might even be relieved to be free of her. “At any rate, I meant to scamper back to The Mer Princess here and abandon him before he had the chance. And put plenty of space between us before he got back to London and found out his money was no longer in his hiding place. But before we got to Ireland, he was just gone.”
Rory gaped at her. “That’s it? He was just gone? That’s all ye have to say?”
“It’s all I know. None of our lifeboats were missing so I honestly have no idea what happened to him.”
“So he could actually be dead, then?”
Bridget shook her head slowly. “Perhaps, aye. It would serve him right. But something tells me he’s still alive. He had too much to live for. Or so he thought. Even if the drunk idiot fell over, he’d have found a way to get back to his precious stolen money.”
“Something?” he asked suspiciously.
She glared at him, wishing he’d stop thinking she had a direct line to Satan himself. “Woman’s intuition. A gut feeling. Why do ye always think the worst?”
“Because ye’ve been nothing but trouble since ye fished me out of the water.”
She once again pointed toward the rail. “Be my guest,” she said. “I’ll not make the same mistake twice.”
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “Let’s not argue, aye? So then ye set up your wee portal. To try and find out what happened to him?”
Ah, here was where things were going to get ugly. She eyed Rory for a long time, wondering why she should tell him anything. Why he needed to know her business. It wasn’t only that he’d be helpful. She was fully capable of taking care of herself, any time, any place. And she had enough money for ten lifetimes. So, why tell him?
“Bridget?” he asked, his voice slightly strangled.
She liked the way he said her name. And she didn’t want to think about it just then for fear of blushing, but she liked the way he did other things as well. She hadn’t been honest in so long she wasn’t sure she knew how to do it anymore. But if she started again, she’d have to admit she rather liked him. She decided that was reason enough for now to tell him.
“I dinna care what happened to Albert,” she said, feeling a pang for dear Fenella but shoving it down. That was madness that didn’t concern her and she had enough that did. “And that isna the reason I set up the portal.”