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R ANULF STAYED IN HIS SADDLE by willpower alone as Titan walked along the coast in the dim light of dawn.

He would have preferred to be on foot, as were the men in his patrol who checked the ground carefully, but he dared not dismount.

He feared he’d faint; otherwise, he’d be on his hands and knees if necessary, examining every rock, every pebble, every patch of mud and blade of grass, for any evidence that Bea, Wenna or Myghal had passed that way.

“ Ranulf! ”

He turned to see Kiernan riding toward him at a breakneck pace from farther up the coastal path. “We found her other shoe!” he shouted.

“Where?” Ranulf demanded when Kiernan reached him and pulled his horse to a snorting halt.

“Three miles from here on some rocks near the shore. Your men tell me that no one uses that place to bring in a boat because it’s too rocky for a landing, but it could be done.

And one of the farmers who had his flock near the shore saw the French barque last evening.

It’s probably heading back to France, judging by the direction it was sailing. ”

“My lord!” Gareth called out, waving to get his attention. “There’s something down here on the rocks! It looks like a body, my lord.”

Dear God, don’t let it be Bea! Ranulf fervently prayed as he called for one of his men to help him dismount. He didn’t care if asking for help made him look weak, as long as it wasn’t Bea lying drowned and battered on those rocks.

As he drew near, Gareth and three of his soldiers gingerly made their way out onto the water-soaked rocks. “It’s Myghal, my lord!” Gareth called out. He bent closer to examine him. “And by all the saints and angels, he’s alive!”

“Bring him here!” Ranulf ordered, although they would hardly leave him lying on the rocks. The four men lifted Myghal up, two holding his shoulders, the others his legs, and they carefully made their way back to Ranulf with their sodden burden.

When they laid Myghal at Ranulf’s feet, he went down carefully on one knee, taking in the unconscious man’s pale face and dripping hair and clothes. How long he’d been in the water, Ranulf couldn’t begin to guess.

“Myghal!” he shouted, slapping the face of the former sheriff to bring him to. “Myghal!”

The man’s eyelids fluttered open.

“Where’s Lady Beatrice? And Wenna and her baby?”

Myghal coughed, spitting up seawater, before he moaned and closed his eyes, his hand moving to his stomach and his torn clothes. Ranulf spread open the garments to see a small hole in Myghal’s flesh. Blood trickled out of it, and he didn’t doubt Myghal had lost much more.

He’d been stabbed and thrown into the sea. Whoever had done it had likely believed he was already dead when he went over the side, or would drown. Even so, it was a gruesome end—but perhaps not gruesome enough, if Bea was gone forever because of Myghal’s treachery.

He slapped Myghal again to wake him. “Where is Lady Beatrice?”

Kiernan knelt across from Ranulf and produced a wineskin. “Try this.”

Ranulf opened the stopper and poured some wine down Myghal’s throat. He coughed and spluttered and his eyes slowly opened.

“Where is Lady Beatrice?” Ranulf repeated.

Myghal’s lips moved and Ranulf leaned closer to hear. He didn’t care that it strained the stitches in his side. He didn’t notice his own pain as he listened to Myghal whisper, “On Pierre’s ship.”

A knowing murmur started among the men, until Ranulf held up his hand for silence.

“Forgive me,” Myghal gasped. “I had to take her to him. He had Wenna.” Myghal closed his eyes and a tear slid out of the corner. “He killed Gawan, too. And Hedyn and Gwen…” He drew in a deep, ragged breath.

“Where’s he taken Bea? France?”

“No…” His eyes closed and his head started to loll back like a doll’s.

Ranulf grabbed Myghal’s tunic, lifting him and shaking him in his distress. “ Where? ”

“Tangier… Slave market.”

Oh, God .

Myghal took hold of Ranulf’s tunic and heaved himself up. “He killed Gawan. I paid him to. I wanted Wenna so much. I loved her, but she chose him .” He gasped and started to sink back to the ground. “Forgive me.”

Ranulf knew the pain of rejection, knew it all too well. He could understand the heartache, the rage, the wounded pride, and the desperation that could compel a man to do murder. “I do.”

“God…forgive me.”

“In His mercy, He will,” Ranulf said as Myghal’s eyes rolled back and he let out his last breath in one long sigh.

Ranulf slowly and painfully got to his feet.

He couldn’t think about Myghal now, or his own mistake in trusting him.

He had to save Bea. He must save her. He would, and nothing—no man, no ocean, no fear—was going to stop him.

He would go to the ends of the earth for Bea.

He would brave the surging, restless sea.

“I need a ship,” he said, looking steadily at Gareth.

“There’s a merchant’s vessel in Penterwell harbor that ought to be fast enough to catch a French barque,” his garrison commander replied.

With a nod, Ranulf started toward Titan.

“A storm’s blowing in,” Gareth warned.

Ranulf glanced at the man over his shoulder and the look on his face said everything.

“I’m coming with you,” Kiernan said, following.

“And storm or no storm, me and your men,” Gareth declared.

R ANULF’S STOMACH HEAVED with every plunge of the ship through the six-foot waves. He clung to the rigging on the foredeck of the merchant’s ship with desperate strength, his face and body lashed by rain, wind and water. The waves frothed and surged, and the deck bucked beneath his unsteady feet.

This was the stuff of nightmares. To be out at sea in a storm, on a ship that seemed no more than a child’s fragile toy, at the mercy of the sea and wind, while below the water waited to swallow him up like a malicious god.

Kiernan made his way along the shifting deck to join Ranulf. “The captain said only a smuggler, or a madmen bent on catching one, would be out in this gale.”

Ranulf didn’t answer as he fought his fear and the sickness roiling in his belly.

Kiernan regarded him with sympathy. “At least we’re running before the wind, or I think the captain would have refused your request, despite what the owner of this vessel had to say.”

“If he had, neither he nor his master would have been welcome in Penterwell again, or any port Lord Merrick commands.”

Fortunately, it hadn’t come to threats. It would have taken more bravery than most men possessed to refuse Ranulf when he came seeking aid that day, so the merchant who owned the vessel had swiftly acquiesced.

“How long before we reach them?” he asked.

Kiernan grabbed for the gunwale as the ship dipped and rose again. “I don’t know, but the captain’s doing his best and this is a fine ship.”

And then, as if God Himself had heard his question, a cry went up from one of the men on lookout up in the rigging. “There! Off the port bow!”

His heart soaring with hope, Ranulf peered through the rain. “I’m coming, Bea,” he whispered as new vitality and strength filled him. “I’m coming.”

“M ORE SAIL !” Pierre shouted to the men up on the yards as he stood at the wheel of his ship. “Let the sails out full!”

“They’ll be torn from the masts!” Barrabas bellowed over the howling wind. “Reef them or we’ll lose them! Bring us closer to shore.”

“And let that ship catch us?” Pierre demanded, looking once more over his shoulder at the vessel nearing them. “We are already too close to the shore. There could be rocks.”

“I told you those women would bring us bad luck!” Barrabas shouted, the rain running down his fiercely angry face. “You’re going to kill us all, you bastard!”

Pierre gripped the wheel more tightly as he swayed with the motion of the ship. “I’m still captain here!”

Above the moan of the wailing wind, a shriek pierced the air and Gustaf fell from the shrouds into the heaving sea.

“You see, damn it?” Barrabas roared as he swiped the water from his face. “We’re cursed! Cursed, you bastard! Give me the wheel!”

“Do as I say or go below!”

Barrabus shoved Pierre away from the wheel and turned the ship toward land. “I’m not letting you kill us and all for a woman!”

“Fool, you don’t know this coast the way I do. There are rocks—”

“There’s a cove, isn’t there?” Barrabas called to one of the men clinging to the rain-soaked rigging.

With his arm wrapped around the yard, the man pointed up the coast.

“We can’t put in there,” Pierre protested as he swayed with the bucking deck. “They’ll find us, and then they’ll hang us.”

“Not if we kill them first,” Barrabas said, his eyes on the sea ahead and the coast beyond.

He didn’t see the flash of the dagger that killed him, slitting his throat so that the only sound he made when he died was that of his body falling on the deck.

Nor did he hear the terrible crunch of splintering wood, nor feel the lurch of the ship as it struck a rock lurking below the surface of the ruthless, surging sea.

B EA AND W ENNA HEARD the cracking wood and the rush of water as the ship shuddered to a halt, throwing them to their hands and knees.

“We’ve run aground,” Wenna cried as the ship rocked with the slap of the waves.

Like Bea, she was still clutching one leg of the chair Bea had smashed against the table and she held tight to it as she crawled to check Gawan in the nest she’d made for him in the cot.

“Pierre and the others will have even more to worry about now,” Bea said. “They won’t be thinking about us.”

She struggled to her feet and, with renewed determination as well as all her might, threw her shoulder against the door.

“T HEY’VE RUN AGROUND !” Kiernan cried.

Knowing what that meant, Ranulf stared at the wrecked craft. The smugglers’ ship had hit a rock or reef. Yet although it had stopped moving forward, if help didn’t reach the damaged vessel soon, it would be dashed to pieces by the waves, and everyone in it hurled into the sea to drown.