“Someone you work with?” I ask.
“I have, in the past, though mostly he sails with Felicity now.”
“Who’s Felicity?” I ask.
Monty stills, like a rabbit that’s heard the snap of a twig beneath a hunter’s boot. “What?”
“You said your captain sails with Felicity. Who’s she?”
“I don’t know. No one.” He looks like he’s going to snatch the pie and make a run for it. I take a step toward the door without meaning to, ready to head him off.
“Well, which is it? Who’s Felicity?”
“She’s . . .” He tilts his head upward and blows out an exasperated breath. “Damn it, whyyyyy? She’s your sister. That’s the last one of us, I swear,” he adds quickly. I must look stunned, though the news of also having a sister after discovering I have a brother hits less hard. What’s one more? It’s the same logic as finishing off a tin of biscuits when you’ve already eaten half of them, but I try not to dwell on that.
I settle on the most practical question in the wake of this new revelation, and ask, “Does she work for your business as well?”
“No. Yes. Sort of.” He breaks off a piece of the pie crust. “Sometimes. It’s complicated. But she could get us a ship. Get you a ship,” he corrects himself quickly.
“Oh. All right, brilliant. Where is she?”
“You won’t like it.” Does he sound gleeful about this or am I imagining it? “She’s in Morocco.”
“Morocco,” I repeat. “As in . . . Africa?”
“No, Cornwall.”
“Oh, thank God,” I start, but Monty interrupts me.
“Of course Africa, you goose. Rabat, specifically.”
My chest compresses again. “Why is she in Africa?”
“It’s so complicated.”
“Well, try to explain it,” I snap, my voice rising in spite of myself. “Whether you do or not, I’m going to find Veronica.”
“Felicity.”
“Right.”
“We’re definitely calling her Veronica, though, starting now.” He sucks in his cheeks, the flickering lanternlight and its shadows conspiring to highlight the fine bones of his face. “What do you think this will achieve, exactly?”
The question drips through the sieve of my anxiety. What are you chasing? I chide myself. A spyglass? A memory? A sister you’ve never met and a brother who pretended you didn’t exist? A family that fell apart before you were born and doesn’t want to be put back together? A mother who was losing her mind? You think that’s worth following halfway around the world when, more than likely, there isn’t even anything to find?
But there is something about this that pulls me. It feels like following a figure down a hallway, seeing the shadow of a skirt disappear around every corner, just out of reach. I can’t stop now or I’ll always wonder.
She had two other children I never knew of. She was seeing a doctor for madness.
Something made her sick. Something killed her. Something to do with a shipwreck and a spyglass.
“I want to know how she died,” I say, then correct myself. “Why she died. I have to know what happened to her.”
And if it’s going to happen to me.
“You cannot go to Morocco,” Monty says, “for purely practical reasons.” I open my mouth to protest, but he interrupts. “Have you ever traveled alone? And to be clear, by alone, I do mean with no valet or footmen or someone to read a map for you. Have you ever had to carry your own bags or purchase a ticket for a stagecoach or reserve a room at an inn? Have you ever done it in a country where you don’t speak the most common language? Have you ever had to cook a meal for yourself? Or boil water? Let’s start there—do you know how to boil water?”
Oh God, he’s right. He’s so right that my palms start to itch. I’ve left England once, and it was only to go as far as the coast of France for a summer holiday in a house of servants my father hired. Even London flattens me. I speak French well, but I don’t know what the language of Morocco is, or if that language even uses the same characters as ours. And while I’m certain that, if pressed, I could work out how to boil water, the process is currently escaping me.
And then it occurs to me. “You have.”
Monty glances up from mashing a bite of pie between his fingers. “I have what?”
“You’ve traveled, haven’t you? And boiled water.”
“Now, let’s not get carried away—”
“You could come with me.”
He laughs again, more pointedly this time. “As jolly as it sounds to spend weeks trapped on the open sea with you, I have responsibilities here.”
“What about Mr. Newton?”
His mouth goes taut. “What about him?”
“He could handle things while you’re gone,” I say. “You two seem to be good partners.” Monty opens his mouth, then closes it again, like he was about to correct me but thought better of it. “Please,” I press on. “I’ll pay for everything.”
He flicks the piece of pie back into the tin, then wipes his fingers on his trousers. “I can’t. For at least a dozen reasons.”
“Such as?”
“Such as I don’t want to. And such as if your father found out it was me who secreted you away from his home—”
“I won’t tell him. No one will know. Please come.”
Monty rubs his temples, the same way Father does, and I can feel him doing some sort of arithmetic in his head, weighing how guilty he’d feel if I died from lack of boiled water off the coast of Portugal versus how much of a hassle it would be to be the one boiling the water for me. It’s obvious which side comes up wanting.
He looks me up and down, and I pray that, for the first time in my life, my general wretchedness and pitiable demeanor work in my favor. “Let’s say this,” he finally concedes. “You find a ship, and you book passage for us both—and I’d like to travel first-class, please, none of this steerage nonsense—and you send a card to our office with the departure details and another pie and also prove that you’ve learned how to boil water, I will”—he pauses, and my heart stutters against the silence—“consider it.”
“All right. That’s . . . that’s fine.” It’s not fine—a definitive yes or no would really be preferable. Not having to go to Morocco at all would be most preferable. But it’s fine. It’s better. Better than nothing. Better than what I had this morning.
It’s going to get better.
It has to.
8
The Hotspur is ten minutes from departure, and Monty is nowhere to be seen.
Meanwhile, I am waiting for him at the dock, about to have a nervous collapse.
I have never been on any extended sea voyages, beyond the Channel crossings to our holiday house in France, and the two weeks that have elapsed since Monty and I met and I proposed this mad journey have hardly been adequate time to prepare myself. The size of the harbor at Woolwich alone is terrifying. I haven’t even begun to consider the ocean beyond it. There are too many people. Too many noises. Too many smells and so few of them pleasant. There are so many ships of all sizes, their masts foresting the horizon and the muddy water of the Thames bubbling and frothing like a boiling kettle against their hulls. Green passenger boats dart between them, followed by tiny fishing vessels, weighted with a catch to be delivered to Billingsgate. Along the surface of the water, the dark silhouettes of eels flutter. The crowd gathering to see off the Hotspur alone seems to be the equivalent to the population of the entirety of my county. There are passengers, crew, cargo, livestock, all in various states of being loaded aboard.