Her fingers curled around a pencil, willing it to be an anchor. “How?”
Rosie shook her head. She pulled a sheet of paper forward for Gwyneth and patted her shoulder. “Draw it out. And pray. Pray and pray until the Lord grants your pleas just to quiet you up. And know I’ll be praying too.”
All Gwyneth could do was nod and then put her pencil to the paper.
But it wasn’t Emmy’s figure against a backdrop of flowers that took shape. It was Papa’s face in front of bookshelves. It was Thad’s beside it. And it was strange scalloped shadows she couldn’t explain.
Halfway. Captain Yorrick said they were only halfway there, and Arthur felt a keen stab of fear that the ginger would run out before the ocean did. He gripped the rail and took a moment to be grateful for calm seas, a stiff wind in their sails, and a bright noonday sun.
“I look forward to seeing you without that green cast to your skin.” Gates took up position at the spot beside him, looking chipper as a lark as he turned his face into the wind.
Which helped with the queasiness, so Arthur followed suit. “I daresay I shall kiss the ground when we land.”
Gates chuckled. “Ah, but if we find my niece quickly, we will quickly sail home. We could be back on the Falcon within a week of landing.”
Funny how one could at once pray for a thing and dread it. “I hope we do, but I may require more than a few days ashore.”
Still smiling, Gates braced his forearms against the rail. “My father was a ship’s captain before he inherited the earldom from his brother. Perhaps I inherited his sea legs.”
“How fortunate for you.”
The sarcasm seemed to roll right off him. “I, for one, will be quite happy if we can find Gwyneth and hurry home. Maryland is insufferable this time of year.”
Arthur drew in a long, salt-laden breath, and told himself it steadied him. “Did you lose someone in the Revolution?”
The man lifted a brow. “Pardon?”
“It is just that you seem to have such a personal dislike for the Americans.”
“One need not to have suffered the plague oneself to hate it.” Gates motioned westward. “America’s pride is based on nothing but petty rebellion cloaked with words like ‘liberty’ and ‘democracy.’ A deceptive disease, Sir Arthur, is the most dangerous kind.”
Arthur hummed. He had no great fondness for the Colonies, but he had no great hatred of them either. They were, so far as he could tell, little more than capitalistic tradesmen who had won their independence solely because of the incompetency of the generals running the campaign thirty-five years prior. “I would not go so far as to call them a disease, but I doubt they will ever prove a strong force in the world.”
Gates loosed a scoffing laugh. “Nay, never. I have gone several times to keep abreast of their politics, their growth. They are in their very foundation a house divided. If you ask me, it is a kindness to hasten their fall.”
Arthur saw no reason to argue. If England could add the United States back to the empire… “I hate to think of Gwyneth there, though, with this war going on. The troops will not know who she is. They will not know to spare her if she is present during a battle.”
Gates straightened again. “If the army draws near her location, let us pray she has the opportunity to flee to them. I daresay any of the generals would offer her sanctuary.”
Something relaxed inside him, some tension he must have been carrying all along. “Of course they will.”
“And as for my dislike being personal—perhaps it never used to be. But I am quite convinced it was an agent of the United States who killed my brother-in-law.” Gates straightened his waistcoat as his gaze went steely. “That makes it quite personal.”
The tension came back tenfold. It was one thing for the man to suspect it, even to bandy it about in the gossip rags. But to say it privately? That spoke of honest concern, not just a theory that supported one’s politics. “You really think they have had spies in England?”
“More, I think Fairchild knew who they were and had taken action to stop them, and that is why they killed him. I think he sent whatever information he had found away, quite possibly with Gwyneth.”
Arthur had to clamp down on the rising fear and quell it before it could master him. He straightened as well. “Why, then, to America?”
“The least likely of places, Sir Arthur. The least likely of places.” With a small smile upon his lips, Gates sauntered away.
Arthur drew in a slow breath through his nose. And took accounts.
One—if they had such trouble divining where Gwyneth had gone, then any American spy would have as well.
Two—if said intelligencer had known Fairchild were on his tail, he would never think the general would use other Americans to protect her.
Three—in only four more weeks, Arthur would be there, would find her, and would take her in his arms. And may God help anyone who stood between them.