“You appeared quite confident in your actions. Have you considered a career with the Bow Street Runners?”
The warmth of the wine spread through her, and she let out a full-throated laugh. “I have a younger brother. Sometimes I was in charge of watching him and his friends, who were not always well-behaved, especially when they started to grow big.” She tilted the cup to her mouth, disappointed there was only a drop left. “And sometimes the men visiting their daughters and sisters at the Academy did not behave themselves as one would wish.”
Zach squeezed his knees together and folded his arms over his lap. Harriet laughed again.
She stood and dusted off her bum. “I have a gift for my mother and brother, but I still want to get something for myself.”
Zach also rose and dusted off his backside. “What has caught your fancy?”
With the hand holding the empty cup, she gestured at the textile booth.
Zach again aborted the move to offer his arm and instead patted her on the shoulder, and they set off, returning the cup to the booth with mulled spirits on the way.
There were shawls, scarves, and colorful capes woven in wool and cotton. They’d be practical for staying warm, but distinctly not an English fashion. When she got home, she wasn’t sure she wanted to stand out as having been abroad.
Brightly colored woven cotton blankets drew her gaze. She ran her hand over a stack of them, feeling the thick strands of soft cotton, remembering the night at the estalagem covered with two of them. Remembered snuggling with Nick under blankets like these.
It was absurd. She was going back to England. If she could figure out how to get enough money from her share of Tesoro for a dowry, she was going to marry Percy.
He was the epitome of a proper English gentleman. Would he appreciate a foreign blanket such as this on their marriage bed?
Was that still in her future?
Did she really still want to marry Percy?
She thought back to her quiet life in Brixham and considered what she could expect her life to be like married to such a man as Percy. She reflected on what her life had been the past few weeks—almost drowning, acting as powder monkey in a battle at sea, pretending to be a ship’s captain. Riding a horse astride, across a foreign countryside. Trying new foods. Getting tied up and freeing Nick. Dancing the vira with abandon after dinner at a winery. Riding Tesoro and remembering how to get up on a tall horse without help.
“I’ll take this one,” she said to the seller, patting a blanket with a similar color scheme as the one at the estalagem. She carefully looked in all directions before she took out her purse again. Transaction complete, she rolled the blanket into a comfortable shape to carry over her shoulder.
“Excellent choice,” Zach said. He glanced at the sky. “We should head back to the ship. It’s getting close to noon and the tide will turn soon.”
When they got aboard the Wind Dancer, a rabelo was tied up alongside, and the crew was hauling crates of wine from the little flat-bottomed boat into the aft hold.
Nick was still nowhere to be found.
When she came back on deck after stowing her purchases, a wagon rolled onto the quay loaded with hay, straw, and bags of grain, with Tesoro and Zach’s stallion tied behind. Jonesy walked the horses around the riverfront while the goods in the wagon were lifted into the center hold. Zach went below to help Big Jim and Jack spread a thick layer of straw underfoot in each stall that had been erected, and otherwise finish turning the hold into a stable.
Once the wagon from the stables was empty, the driver headed back uphill, passing another wagon coming onto the quay. This wagon was loaded with crates of wine, and Nick riding with the driver. He seemed entirely sober when he walked up the gangboard.
Flynn and Chang loaded the cargo net down on the quay, and Harriet helped Smitty and Tucker haul it up and into the forward hold, where Dieter and Luigi waited to unload. As the first full net lowered past her, Harriet almost lost her grip on the line when she recognized the crest stamped on the containers.
Casa de Perseguição.
Nick met her gaze from the quarterdeck and gave her a slow nod.
They were bringing back to England another connection to her father, however tenuous. Tears suddenly blurring her vision, she smiled at Nick and returned to work.
The second wagon emptied and sent on its way, they set about the delicate work of loading the horses into the center hold. Zach oversaw getting the slings under Tesoro’s belly and around his chest and rump just right and connected to the line above, and applied a blindfold so the horse would be less likely to panic. Harriet joined Nick in the hold, to help release and calm the stallion. She was prepared with a pocketful of carrots.
Zach joined them in the hold as soon as his black stallion had been prepped and hoisted up.
The narrow stalls were just wide enough for a horse to stand in, each with a sling on a hook on one side, ready to fasten under the horse’s belly to offer support as soon as the ship put out to sea.
The crew had made a tack room of sorts, separating the horses in the main space from their feed and other supplies with a wall of planks. Nets full of hay and straw were hung as high as possible. Dieter had built a rack on which to store the saddles, and Tucker had sewn canvas dust covers for them.
Nick stood off to one side with his arms folded, hand stroking his chin, as he watched Zach at the head of the stalls, petting both horses and speaking softly to calm them. “Do you need a room?”
Without breaking off his litany of soothing sounds and still petting one of the horses, Zach lobbed a carrot at Nick. It bounced off his chest.
