My hand was frozen in midair. The game suddenly didn’t seem to matter anymore. “Did you tell Montgomery? He won’t let the captain get away with that.” I shifted on the rough floorboards. “Just the same, it’s lucky about your relatives.”
He gave me a guarded look, though something like amusement peeked through. “I don’t know anyone in Australia. I just made that up. I sought passage on the first ship I could from London, regardless of its destination. The Viola just happened to be it.”
“So what happens when you get to Australia and he finds out there are no wealthy relatives?” Once we were gone, without Balthazar and bribery and guns, Edward Prince would be on his own.
His fingers drummed on the wooden board. The last ray of sun slipped below the horizon, casting half of his bruised face in shadows. “I don’t know.”
A cry from the crow’s nest made me drop the token in my hand. The castaway and I exchanged a breathless glance.
“Land ho!” the watchman called.
NIGHT FELL QUICKLY THAT day, obscuring the land the scout had spotted. The sailors sent Edward back to the galley and me to my quarters and told us to stay there. But obedience wasn’t one of my virtues. I found Montgomery on the quarterdeck speaking in hushed voices with Balthazar below the glowing mast light. The captain and first mate stood by the gunwale with a lantern held above the sea charts.
I leaned over the rail and studied the black horizon. Moonlight reflected on the waves like scales of some dark dragon. I couldn’t tell where the night ended and the sea began. Between them, somewhere, was my father.
Montgomery caught sight of me and rushed over, a spark of energy to his movements. I’d forgotten that this place was his home. He pointed to the horizon. “It’s volcanic. Do you see the plume?”
My mind scanned the horizon for dark shapes, but my eyes found nothing to settle on. Then I discerned a faint line, like a column of smoke, rising to the stars.
“I see it. It looks so far away.”
“A league and a half maybe. There’s a sandbar around the harbor, so we’re here for the night. We’ll dock in the morning.”
“What about Edward?”
The boyish excitement on Montgomery’s face faded. He studied the cold sea. “What about him?”
The edge in his voice made me hesitate. “We can’t just leave him here. You said yourself—”
“He can’t come with us.” He cursed under his breath and leaned on the rail. “I shouldn’t have said anything before. It’s impossible.”
“But why? It isn’t safe here. There’s no doctor, and the only reason the captain hasn’t thrown him overboard is because he thinks he can ransom him once they reach Brisbane, which is a lie.”
“You don’t understand. It isn’t safe on the island either.”
I looked back at the island. The plume of volcanic smoke snaked toward the dark sky like tendrils escaping a gentleman’s pipe. My eyes found a single light, halfway up the hill, the only sign of civilization.
“Not safe?”
Montgomery took my shoulder and turned me away from the island. His face softened. “There’s no room, I mean. We’ve one extra bedroom, which you’ll have. He’ll have no place to stay, and there are wild animals in the jungle. Besides, your father is a very private man. He’d be furious if I brought a stranger.”
I traced the wood grain on the rail. Would Father consider me a stranger? No, of course not. I was his only family, the little girl who used to crawl onto his lap with a dusty volume and beg him to read theories of how birds were once great, lumbering lizards. But then why had he never once sent a letter? Why did I have to learn he was alive from a bloodstained diagram at a late-night vivisection?
“He’s my father,” I said. “He’ll listen to me. He’ll understand it’s safer for Edward to stay on the island. It’s just until the next ship comes.”
“It crosses his wishes, Juliet.”
I leaned against the rail, studying his worn clothes, his scuffed boots. “You keep saying you’re no longer his servant, but you don’t act like it. You can think for yourself, you know.”
Montgomery’s jaw tensed, but he didn’t argue. I knew I’d hurt him, but I didn’t know how to take it back, because it was true. He strode away, bristling. The sudden solitude made the thoughts in my head louder. I wanted to go back to that moment when Montgomery and I stood on the deck, hands interlaced, as he told me he’d thought about me often. But a shift had occurred, slight but significant enough that things weren’t exactly the same between us. I leaned on the rail and measured the moonlit distance between me and the island.