Chapter Thirty-Three
THE WIND COMING OFF the water threatened to blow Brooke’s bonnet off her head. She was glad she’d tied the ribbons tightly beneath her chin. “You have no cabin?” she said to Dominic as he helped her onto his boat.
“It’s a sailboat.”
“But—”
“It’s designed for short trips along the coast, though I’ve taken her to London more’n a few times, sailing by the stars.”
She had hoped the boat would have a cabin where she could get out of the wind for a while or maybe take another nap, since she didn’t get much sleep last night, as excited as she’d been. She’d dozed off on a sofa at Dominic’s house in Scarborough for about an hour, just long enough for him to get the boat cleaned, arrange for the horses to be taken back to Rothdale, and have bedding and food prepared for their trip. She supposed she could sleep on a sailboat if she’d slept on the floor of a castle’s ruins.
He had a full staff in the Scarborough house, which was lovely. The sitting room had large windows that overlooked the North Sea. It had been her first sight of a huge body of water. She’d be thrilled by this impromptu journey to London if she weren’t so concerned about Dominic’s preoccupied mood. He was worried about his mother. But Brooke didn’t know what exactly was wrong with his mother aside from her running a high fever, so she couldn’t reassure him.
The sailboat was at least twenty feet long, so Alfreda had been wrong in assuming it would be tiny. It had only one mainsail and one smaller sail at the front, both attached to a tall single pole. The floor space was ample, and benches were built into the sides of the boat. She sat down as they left the harbor. It was quite windy. She marveled at the speed they got up to as the boat cut through the blue-green water that sparkled with sunlight. The coast was receding behind them and she began to feel uneasy. She’d never been in a boat before and had never been so far away from land. She wished she knew how to swim. But then she laughed when a gust caught her bonnet and tossed it into the sea behind the boat.
She didn’t mention it to Dominic, who was adjusting the mainsail. She braided her hair instead, though it was quite a challenge in that strong wind. With the boat sailing south, she saw the thin green line of the coast to her right and the empty blue sea to her left, though she imagined ships were out there just beyond the horizon.
“D’you think we’ll see the English armada?” she wondered aloud.
“It controls these waters. We’ve already passed several English patrol ships.”
He tossed her his spyglass, but when she looked through it, she still saw nothing but sea and sky. “Are they fighting battles out there?”
“No, just guarding against blockade runners. They will fire on boats that try to break through the blockade. That strategy has worked. Since the war began, our fleet has doubled while the French fleet has shrunk in half. The blockade prevents Napoléon from getting the materials he needs to build more ships. He wouldn’t dare risk the ships he has left by waging a battle in these waters. Besides, his strength is on land, not on the sea.”
“Then who exactly is our armada firing on?”
He shrugged. “Ships trying to sneak in French spies, smugglers. The English are simply too fond of French brandy, even at exorbitant prices, for bold sailors, both French and English, not to be tempted to make a great deal of money by smuggling it in. But smugglers work at night, not in broad daylight. However, we’re hugging the coast to steer clear of any altercations between our navy and any blockade runners.”
A while later, she took a sandwich out of the picnic basket and devoured it. All this fresh air was making her hungry! Then she made her way unsteadily toward Dominic and put the basket by his feet so he could eat. He didn’t even look down at it, which made her wonder if it wouldn’t be safe for him to take his hands off the wheel.
She’d offer to help him, but she had a feeling he’d decline if not outright laugh at the suggestion. Yet she knew from Ella’s diary that he’d taught his sister to sail. Maybe it wasn’t that hard. Maybe he wouldn’t laugh.
“I could relieve you for a bit. Would it take long to give me a few lessons?”
“Have you ever been in a boat this size before?”
“Well, no, no boat of any size actually.”
“Sailing is rather complicated. You’d have to spend weeks out on the water to learn—”
“But you taught your sister—”
He glanced at her sharply. “How do you know that?”
She wasn’t about to get Gabriel in trouble for letting her into Ella’s locked room, so she said defensively, “You wouldn’t tell me anything about her, not even how she died, so I asked the servants. They didn’t want to talk about her either, but someone mentioned that she loved to sail by herself after you taught her how.”
He was no longer looking at Brooke. His gaze was directed straight ahead. She didn’t think he was going to reply, but then she heard, “She was only eighteen when she died nearly two years ago. She’d had a thrilling first Season in London but hadn’t accepted a proposal. She had so many suitors my mother couldn’t keep track of them all. I was with them in London for the first few weeks, enjoyed seeing my sister so exhilarated by the social whirl, but my work for the military intervened. The army sent me an urgent request for more horses than I could supply, and a long list of horse farms where I could obtain them, most of them in Ireland. The number they needed for a high-priority mission was staggering. I suspected it would take me months to round up the herd, and it did, so I missed the rest of Ella’s Season. I even missed her funeral!”
Brooke drew in her breath. His anger was back. She heard it, saw it, and guessed he wouldn’t say any more now. Yet he hadn’t told her what she wanted to know.
She tried to encourage him to continue by asking, “Couldn’t anyone else have bought those horses so you wouldn’t have had to leave your sister at such an important time in her life?”
“I suppose so, but my contact in the army was used to working with me and trusted me to get them the fastest mounts available. I wasn’t told why, but I guessed the animals were for an important new network of spies or scouts on the Continent. In any case, it was stressed that nothing else could take precedence over that mission.”
Brooke cringed slightly as she summoned up her courage. “How did your sister die that year?”
“It was early fall. Two of Ella’s suitors had followed her to Rothdale after the Season to continue courting her, but Ella didn’t favor them and asked Mother to take her to Scarborough for a few weeks before the weather turned nippy, hoping the young lords would leave before she and my mother returned to Rothdale.
“But while they were in Scarborough, she recklessly went sailing by herself on a day that suddenly turned stormy. My mother was frantic with worry when she didn’t return after a few hours, the whole town was, nearly every ship and boat in the harbor was sent out to look for her.”
“Was she—ever found?”
“Yes. Two days later her body washed up on the shore, miles down the coast. It was so disfigured and battered by the surf by then that my mother couldn’t bear to look at it. But there was a locket that was handed to her that confirmed it was Ella. I’d given it to her on her sixteenth birthday and had inscribed on the back, ‘Wild one.’ It made her laugh and she always wore it with her day dresses. As you can imagine, my mother was grief stricken, and not knowing how to contact me, she had no choice but to hold the funeral a week later.
“When I returned to Yorkshire and learned the devastating news that Ella had died, my mother and I lamented her reckless nature and her bad luck to have been caught in a sudden storm. I blamed myself for not curbing that recklessness. My mother blamed herself for taking Ella to Scarborough. She cried the entire time she told me about the funeral. Some of Ella’s girlfriends were there and mentioned they were looking forward to seeing Ella before Christmas at a house party Ella said she planned to attend. A few of her suitors were there and appeared heartbroken. All of the servants from both households were present. Everyone loved Ella. The only odd occurrence on the day Ella died at sea was the hasty departure of her personal maid from the Scarborough house. Later my mother discovered that most of Ella’s jewelry was missing. Mother believed the young maid had taken advantage of the worried, distracted atmosphere in the house when Ella didn’t return after the storm started to steal a king’s ransom of jewelry. The local authorities looked for the girl but she was never found.”
Brooke didn’t see how any of that series of heartbreaking events related to her brother. In addition to feeling sad, she felt more confused than ever. She didn’t dare mention the diary she had secretly read or the damning words she’d found on the last page.
But she could say what she felt in her heart. “I’m sorry your sister didn’t make it out of that storm.”
“She could have,” he said tonelessly. “She didn’t want to. But I didn’t know that right away. It wasn’t until six months after the yearlong mourning period that I thought one night that I could enter her favorite place, her old playroom in the west tower, without dwelling on her death. I picked up her old diary. It was filled with her childhood experiences, some of which included me. But I was stunned to find more recent entries that dated from her Season in London and her return to Yorkshire afterward.”
Brooke wondered if the missing pages had still been in the diary when he read it. Or just those last two lines? But those were damning enough. He probably wouldn’t have needed any more than that to want to kill her brother. And no wonder he burned that tower. His rage must have started that very night.
Brooke had moved quietly to a bench in front of him. She didn’t need to ask what he’d read that night. She didn’t want to question him, but he might think it odd if she didn’t.
“What was in those more recent entries?”
He didn’t glance at her. “She wrote about the wonderful man she fell in love with during her Season. He promised they would marry after he convinced his parents he would have no one but her. She met him secretly so they could be alone together away from our mother’s watchful eye. During one of their trysts he seduced her. Ella was stunned and horrified when he told her he wouldn’t marry her, that he’d never intended to. It wasn’t so much the shame of getting pregnant but the pain of her broken heart and the young man’s betrayal that made her ‘seek peace and solace in the sea.’ She actually wrote that was her intention, that she had no other choice. She even kept his name secret until the final page, when she damned him for ruining her life. No, Ella didn’t try to outrun that storm that day, she let it take her life.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He continued as if he hadn’t heard Brooke. “I’d never felt rage like that before. I threw the lantern I’d brought up to that room on the floor and ripped out those damning pages and tossed them into the flames. I almost left the diary there to burn, too, but there were good memories left in it that I thought I might want to read again someday, or show to my mother eventually, so I put it away in Ella’s room. But I didn’t try to put out that fire. And I rode straight for London to find the man who seduced my innocent sister and left her with child and laughed at her when she told him—your lying brother!”
Brooke flinched. She wished now that she’d never learned the full truth that had been in those missing pages. She could say absolutely nothing in defense of her brother. His cruelty toward Ella was indefensible.
“The wound I gave him wasn’t severe,” Dominic continued. “I thought it would be enough, but it wasn’t. It ate at me that justice hadn’t been served. It didn’t satisfy the debt he owed, not just for her life but also for the life of her child. Two months later I challenged him again and missed completely, as did he. My rage wouldn’t go away. He refused to meet me for this last duel, so I waited a few more months then sent another challenge, which he simply ignored. So I dragged both our seconds with me and tracked him down in London. He couldn’t refuse me in front of witnesses.” Dominic finally glanced at her and added icily, “Our circumstances are an annoyance. That your brother still lives is an abomination.”
“I agree that he’s mean, despicable, even vicious,” she replied carefully. “No one knows that better’n me. And he doesn’t care about anyone except himself, not family, not friends. Someone is going to end up killing him. It’s inevitable. But it can’t be you. Another attempt will land you in prison if not get you hung.”
“Particularly if he becomes family.”
The conversation had just turned dangerous, although it had been emotionally charged from his first words about Ella’s death. But seeing how furious he looked right now reminded her just how alone she was with him on the sailboat. She’d be panicking soon if she couldn’t defuse his rage.
“You know, families don’t always get along. Some fight amongst themselves, even brutally. I doubt anyone would raise a brow if you beat my brother senseless from time to time. I know I would if I had the strength for it. And there’s not much the Regent could say about it, since it would be a ‘family’ matter.”
Dominic gave her a skeptical look. “You’re actually suggesting I beat your brother to a pulp?”
“If he’s family, most definitely—as long as it doesn’t kill him so you don’t get punished for it.”
Dominic looked away. At least the rage left his visage, so she began to breathe easier. Giving him an option to look forward to—
“Bloody hell.”
She blinked and followed his gaze to the large ship heading their way at top speed. Alarmed, she asked, “Is it going to be able to slow down, or will it ram into us?”
“It doesn’t need to get close to kill us.”
She didn’t know what he meant, but suddenly he was steering madly in the wrong direction, straight for shore. But no dock was there!