He suddenly turned back to his stubborn wife. “Pack a few things. We’re going to be staying on St. Helena for a few days.”
“Why?”
At her sharp question, he gave her a wide, innocent smile and said, “I can’t say.”
The night before when they’d settled in at the Armitage home on the island, Cullen had debated Willa for hours on the folly of delivering the locket to Ariadne’s cousin, Mrs. Towle. But his stubborn wife, predictably, would not be swayed from her purpose.
Major Armitage and his wife resided in a dormer cottage situated along the mountainside path to Longwood House, the imprisoned emperor’s residence on St. Helena. They had kindly provided Cullen and Willa the use of an upper level bedroom during their stay on the island.
Willa fidgeted while he helped her into her stays and buttoned up the back of her dress. “Even though I did find your friend, Ariadne, particularly odious, I gave my word. And, truly, Cullen, what is the danger in giving a homesick Englishwoman a locket with a miniature of her mother?” She crossed her arms in that maddening way she had of signaling an argument had ended, in her favor. “Ships rarely arrive on this island so far away from anywhere. Why shouldn’t I give her a token of comfort from a kinswoman?”
Cullen shook his head and turned away to pace the length of their small quarters. He stopped back in front of her. “Have I not explained, in detail, many times before, just how dangerous this woman, and probably her kin, can be?”
“This island is bristling with the Royal Navy and British Army troops. What could possibly go wrong? For heaven’s sakes, she’s married to a British Army lieutenant.”
“But she’s still one of them.” Cullen raised his forefinger in what he believed should be an end to the discussion.
“One of them?” Willa gave him the withering look that made him feel like a naughty child.
“She’s a French royalist. They’re all in this together, plotting, forever plotting. They’re terrified Boney will escape and destroy their status quo again.” Cullen began to pace. “And don’t doubt for one moment the aristocracy of England isn’t just as nervous as the Frenchies about all the wild plots to loose this madman against the world again.” He stopped his pacing and raised a second finger to make another point in his argument. “Why do you suppose the Admiralty gave two French spies passage on a warship to Gibraltar?”
Willa waved a hand in dismissal. “How much damage could a single, helpless woman do on an island this small and this well guarded?”
“If you do this, Willa MacCloud, you will be defying your husband’s orders.”
The look she gave him at that ridiculous ultimatum made him want to swat her bottom, and give her a reason to stay. But before he could act, she planted a quick kiss on his forehead, grabbed her dark blue woolen cape from a hook, and headed out the door.
He stood in the middle of the room, confused and having an internal debate with his smarting pride. If he followed her, the argument would continue, but he knew she would not be moved from what she considered a mission of caring for a homesick young woman.
He sat down and tried to read a book from one of their host’s shelves. After ten minutes or so, he slammed the book back onto the shelf and grabbed his uniform jacket for the climb up the trail to the Towles’ cottage.
A woman coming down the steep path leading to the governor’s house wore a dark red cape that swept the top of her walking boots. She’d given Cullen a smile in passing and must have been a servant at one of the houses, because she carried a white-feathered hen in her arms. Cullen’s first impression was one of amusement because he couldn’t figure out why the hen was so calm and accommodating, like a pet.
He felt as though a painful cog had twisted inside his head when a sudden view of that fateful, sun-drenched day came back in a sickening flood. His first sight of the woman in the red cape carrying the chicken apparently had stripped away the layers of the part of his broken brain where the memories of Gibraltar hid.
The jolt of remembrance hit him so hard, he had to sit down hard on a rock beside the trail. Ariadne—she’d been there the day he’d been beaten by a band of crazed Spaniards paid to kill him. She’d paid them, and she’d been wearing one of those dark red capes so ubiquitous on Gibraltar.
He’d been up on the top deck taking a break from the fumigation of the lower decks that day. One of the Gibraltar provisioners’ boats had rafted up to the side of the ship with sides of beef for sale. Mr. Baker, the purser, had been negotiating with the seller on the deck when one of the men on the boat hoisting a slab of meat motioned for Cullen to come near. He couldn’t imagine what the butcher wanted, but when he approached, the Gibraltaran pressed a slip of paper smudged with blood from the sides of beef into his hand.
When Cullen opened the message, all he could see was Willa’s name in amongst the bloody smudges. All the other words in the scrawled message were a blur. He’d given the man a coin and rushed below to the surgery to retrieve his glasses to better decipher the words. The meaning had been clear and direct. Ariadne had somehow managed to lure Willa away from the shore party of marines, and the note promised she’d kill her if he didn’t come immediately. Although a hundred questions had buzzed through him, he’d gone straight away to Captain Still and argued with him until he’d agreed to have the coxswain take him by longboat to shore to see for himself that Willa was safe.
When he’d made his way to the address in the northern part of town, which he hadn’t shared with the captain, Ariadne was there, with the small army of ruffians she’d hired to kill him.
Before she’d loosed the devils, she’d explained simply that there could be no witnesses to the delivery of the locket to her cousin on St. Helena. The woman who would take possession of the locket would silence Willa.
“What makes you think she’ll deliver the locket if I’m dead?”
“She loves you too much to allow your name to be destroyed with the Admiralty, even after you’re dead. You should have waited for me,” she said simply. “Then I wouldn’t have had to do this.” With that, she turned and swept away in that damnable hooded cape, leaving him to his fate. She’d assumed the mob of men she’d hired would finish him off.
Even now, with his memories slowly returning, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how Ariadne had planned to ruin his name with the Admiralty, or how she’d convinced Willa.
His wife was so far ahead of him on the steep trail, he couldn’t even glimpse her tall, slim figure swinging up the hill. Damn her long legs—. He began running, clawing his way past the heavy boulders lining the pathway. This was the most exertion he’d attempted since his beating. His head was pounding, his vision blurring. But he had to get to Willa before someone tried to end her life. Not, by damn, if he still had a breath left.
Although the miniature on the locket that had caused so many trials in Willa’s life looked very similar to Ariadne, the woman sitting across from her, handing her a steaming cup of tea, did not. The woman who claimed to be married to the absent First Lieutenant Towle was definitely French, but seemed not to have anything in common with the French Royalist spy.
Suddenly, everything fell into place. Willa understood. She lifted the cup to her lips and then stood, turning her back to the woman. She walked toward a rear window in the neat farmstead and pointed outside before absently setting down the teacup. “Oh, look. Chickens.” Willa pushed briskly through the back door out into the midst of a flock of gabbling hens and two wary roosters. They marched to her side and tilted up their heads, inspecting her gravely. Was she a threat, or merely an odd, new hen?
The dark-haired woman followed her, a look of clear annoyance on her face. “Madame, the weather up here, it is so hot and humid, please come back inside and finish your tea.” She stopped for a moment, seeming confused by the determined look on Willa’s face.
