Page 48 of Dawnlands

“Better now, than we get taken by surprise.”

“Not today! I don’t have to go today!”

He pulled her down to sit on his cape beside him. “I won’t be harsh with you, Rowan, but I can’t keep you with me. Sooner or later there’ll be a battle, and you should be in safety.”

She bit her lip. “I’m safe with you.”

“Not if we come under fire. I couldn’t protect you, and besides, I should be thinking of my troop.”

“But who will get your food, if not me?”

“I’ll survive.”

“Sannup,” she whispered. “Don’t make me leave you.”

“Ah, for the Lord’s sake, girl! Don’t call me that!”

“Don’t you call me ‘girl,’?” she said resentfully, rubbing her face dry.

He choked on his laugh. “What then? Young lady?”

“I am not your girl or your young lady,” she said angrily.

“I know well enough you’re not mine,” he said, his voice very low. “I know that well enough. And that’s why you should go away. That’s why I am trying to send you away.”

“If I were your wife, could I stay with you?”

Ned folded his mouth on the sudden pounding of his heart. After a few moments he spoke very quietly. “I’m old enough to be your father. And I bought you to set you free, not to mew you up in marriage with an old man.”

For one long moment of silence he thought she might contradict him; but she did not. “If you order me, I will go,” she said unhappily.

“Very well then,” he said. “It’s an order. You’ll have to go.”

REEKIE WHARF, LONDON, SUMMER 1685

Captain Shore jogged in his seaboots from the coffeehouse to the wharf, where theSweet Hope’s crew were stowing their own goods and rigging the sails ready for their departure. He went in the backyard gate and into the kitchen. “Where’s the missis?” he demanded.

“Sitting upstairs with Mrs. Reekie,” Tabs told him. “Those passengers are still in the parlor.”

“I have to speak with her. I’ll go up,” he said. “Tell Susie to send Matthew up too.”

Consumed with curiosity, Tabs watched him climb the wooden stairs from the narrow hall. “Go on,” she said irritably to the maid. “Go and find Master Matthew. He’s standing out front looking at the quay as if he was a soldier on guard. Lord alone knows what’s going on and what that Italian woman is doing here again. I thought we’d seen the back of her and her tricksy ways.”

Captain Shore tapped on Alinor’s bedroom door and went into the room. His wife and her mother were seated on either side of the table by the glazed balcony, both of them sewing tea bags for herbal tea as if today were the most ordinary of days. As soon as he saw them, busy as they always were, quiet as they always were, he felt his own alarm subside.

“There you are, God bless you,” he said.

“What’s happened now?” Alys demanded.

Alinor gave him her steady smile, and he waited for Matthew to come up the stairs and into the room before he replied. “It’s good news for the ladies. I was in the coffeehouse settling my slate before sailing, and Jim McDonald came in—he’s a Scots trader—full of news. Said that the Earl of Argyll is run away and disappeared somewhere. He says the rebellion is all over for Argyll.”

Alinor looked towards the young man. “You’d better tell your mother at once,” she said. “It may make a difference to their plans.”

“I’d be glad not to be the man that ships them out,” Captain Shore confessed.

“Go with Matthew,” Alinor suggested. “Tell Her Majesty directly, just as you told us.”

“Shouldn’t the Nobildonna speak?” Captain Shore hesitated. “She’s the lady-in-waiting?”