“What?”
“Female,” she repeated, gesturing at the decapitated fish. “It’s females what has eggs, what’s called roe.”
“Oh.” He saw that she had not only removed the head, tail, and fins, opened the great flat body, and shoveled out the guts, but had also reserved a large, solid mass of some dark substance—presumably fish eggs—this oozing oil onto a plate that had been set aside on a shelf, there being no room for it on the scale-encrusted surface where the fish itself was being transformed into dinner. “Quite,” he said. “Might we have some with eggs, do you think?”
“Just what I had in mind, me lord,” she assured him. “Fresh toast soldiers with poached eggs and roe, with a bit o’ melted butter to pour over. What His Grace calls a horsederve.”
“Splendid,” he said, with a smile. “I’ll be home for supper in good time!”
Had it not been for this stark obtrusion of femininity, he might not have gone. But the mention of females had reminded him of Tom’s marked susceptibility to young women—something that had (so far as he knew) been held in strict abeyance during his two marriages. But his last letter from Tom—who wrote infrequently, but well—had told him that Tom’s second wife had recently died, and as his eldest boy was now eighteen, he had it in mind to leave young Barney in charge of the business for a bit and perhaps undertake a journey to Germany, he not having visited there since their early acquaintance with the Graf von Namtzen, and he begged that Lord John would be so kind as to extend his regards to the graf, when Lord John might be in communication with the same.
He supposed it was at least possible that Tom, embarked on a personal voyage of discovery, might have been inspired to leave Europe altogether. And that in doing so, still in the throes of grief, he might well have been drawn to a young woman in obviously dire straits. Tom was a gallant man, and a very kind one.
On the other hand, this letter had a distinct smell of fish, and it wasn’t turbot. He folded it thoughtfully and tucked it into his waistcoat pocket.
“What the hell,” he said aloud, startling Moira in mid-chop. “Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. O’Meara. I meant only that it’s a pleasant day for a walk.”
IT WAS A pleasant day, with a breeze stirring the heavy summer air, and he enjoyed the stroll down to Bay Street, where he stopped to climb down the steps and walk barefoot on the sandy beach for a bit, before resuming a casual peregrination toward the warehouse district.
The produce fleet—fishermen and farmers bringing fruit and vegetables from upriver—consisted mostly of small boats, and thus docks near to Bay Street tended to be narrow and close together. The docks owned by the warehouses, though, were stout, wide affairs down which barrows could be driven, barrels rolled, and crates hauled with minimal danger of falling into the water. The big ships that sailed foreign seas anchored either by the warehouse docks or out in the river, if there was a great deal of ship traffic.
There was a great deal of such traffic at the moment, and Grey stopped to admire it; a beautiful sight, with tall masts swaying and sun glinting off the wings of the seabirds circling the ships. He liked ships of all sorts, though the sight of them always made him think of one James Fraser, who disliked ships to the point of nearly dying of seasickness every time he went aboard one. He smiled, the memory of an eventful Channel crossing with the Scotsman many years ago being now distant enough as to be entertaining.
He’d kept away from the easternmost dock, not being a complete fool. He bought some apples from a seller on one of the smaller docks, taking the opportunity to look over at the larger ships.
“What’s that Indiaman, anchored out in the channel?” he asked the apple seller, gesturing briefly at a large ship clearly capable of crossing the Atlantic. It was flying no flag he recognized, though.
“Oh,” she said, having glanced indifferently over her shoulder. “Castle, it’s called. No, I tell a lie, it’s Palace, that’s it.”
Well, that was one fact noted: a ship named Pallas did exist and was an Atlantic sailor. Whether Tom Byrd was or ever had been aboard her was another question, but—
“Sir? Sir!” The repetition jerked him from his thoughts to see a runty sailor with a rusty beard before him. “There’s summat on your hat, sir,” he said, pointing upward.
Seagulls instantly in mind, Grey clapped a hand over his head, then seized the hat and brought it down for inspection. Suddenly his vision went dark and something light tickled his face. Then something exploded in his head and everything went dark.
HE CAME ROUND with a sharp ache in the back of his head and a strong urge to vomit. He attempted to roll onto his side in order to do so, but discovered that his arms were bound to his sides. There was also a burlap sack over his head, and this decided him not to vomit, even though a dizzy sense of being rocked back and forth made the urge to do so still more urgent.
Shit. It’s a boat. Now he heard the splash of oars and the grunt of whoever was wielding them, and smelled the fecund scent of the distant marshes. It wasn’t a big boat; he’d been doubled up and stuffed into a small space between the seats. His knees were wet.
Before he could congratulate himself on the acuity of his suspicions or berate himself for stupidity in not paying sufficient attention to them, the sound of the oars ceased, and the next moment the boat came to a stop with a thump that jarred his throbbing head. More rocking and strong hands seized him and stood him up. A shout from whoever was holding him, and a rope dropped from above, hitting his shoulder. The kidnapper—was there only one?—wrapped this round his middle and knotted it, then shouted, “Heave away!” and he was jerked into the air and hauled up like a side of beef.
Hands pulled him aboard and stood him up again, but he had no balance with his arms bound and fell to his knees. The sack was jerked off his head, and the stab of sunlight into his eyes was too much. He threw up on the shoes of the man who stood before him, then collapsed gently onto his side and closed his eyes in hopes of finding equilibrium.
There was a certain amount of cursing and colloquy going on above him, but at the moment he didn’t care, as long as none of it resulted in his being obliged to stand up again.
Then he heard a voice he recognized.
“For God’s sake, untie him,” it said impatiently. “What happened to him?”
He cracked one eyelid open. His ears had not betrayed him, but his eyes had their doubts; everything overhead appeared in motion—masts, sails, clouds, sun, faces were all swirling in a dizzying fashion that made him want to vomit again.
“Someone hit me. On the head,” he said, closing one eye in hopes of stopping the maypole dance. Rather surprisingly, it did, and the blandly good-looking face of Ezekiel Richardson wavered into focus.
“My apologies,” Richardson said, and reaching down, pulled him to his feet and held him by the elbows while someone undid the ropes. “I told them to bring you, but I didn’t think to specify the means. Come below and sit down; I imagine you could use a drink.”
HE RINSED HIS mouth with brandy and spat into a bowl, then sat back and sipped a little, cautiously.
They sat in what was plainly the captain’s great cabin, for the stern windows rose in a blaze of scintillant light reflected from the river below. It made him queasy to look at it for more than a few seconds, but he was beginning to feel better.