Page 27 of Hooked by a Hero (Tales from the Brotherhood #4)
Fourteen
B eing caught with legs had never bothered Caspian before.
Being caught by Elias carried entirely different consequences, however.
Elias was already suspicious of him. In fact, Caspian was convinced that if the truth of who he was had not been the stuff of fairy stories and ancient legends for land-dwellers, Elias would have pieced things together by now.
He sighed and let the sponge he used to bathe drop back into the washbasin.
Today would have to be the day he told Elias the full truth.
He’d managed to avoid confessing for a fortnight.
It had been a simple thing to do, since there was so much that needed to be done to build an encampment for the survivors.
Caspian had spent much of that time with the crew salvaging useful things from the Fortune , which also enabled him to swim as much as he needed to without raising more questions, but today would have to be different.
He dried and dressed, then tidied the hut a bit before working up the courage to step out into the open and find Elias.
It came as a bit of a surprise that Elias was nowhere in the camp at first. Instead of filling Caspian with relief, it itched and poked at him, making him feel like he was delaying pulling an urchin’s sting out of his foot because he knew it would hurt.
“Apologies if there was a bit of, er, noise this morning,” Hunt said in a low voice, his face flushing, as he approached Caspian near one of the communal water barrels.
“Noise?” Caspian asked, unable to hide his teasing smile. “What noise?”
Hunt cleared his throat and said, “Ruby has a curious way of expressing grief.”
Caspian clapped a hand on Hunt’s shoulder. “You make a lovely pairing,” he said. “And as I understand it, Ruby is her own woman now and capable of making her own decisions as to whom she might spend the rest of her life with. She has chosen well.”
“Yes, well, she does have relatives back in England who may object to an heiress such as herself taking up with a lowly ship’s surgeon,” Hunt said.
Caspian blinked, not understanding why anyone would object to a good woman choosing a good man. “Is it her wealth that makes the difference?” he asked. “I never did understand the ways of Englishmen when it comes to love and intimacy, but it does seem as though money plays a part.”
Hunt laughed out loud. “You do have strange ways, Caspian,” he said. “Where do your people hail from again?”
“Somewhere far away from England,” Caspian answered, pretending to joke.
Fortunately, Hunt laughed, and the two of them moved on to join the others who were already up and about at the long table that had been thrown together with bits and pieces from the ship and the island.
“What I would not give for eggs and sausages,” Miss Winters sighed in complaint as Caspian sat next to her, reaching for a mango from the bowl of fruit placed near him.
“I still do not see why we could not search the jungle for the nests of wild birds and take their eggs so that I might have just one ordinary breakfast.”
“Because it is not the season for eggs,” Caspian said, amused by her English insistence on routine and the familiar. “And if you took all the eggs now, there would be no hatchlings and no birds who might lay more eggs.”
“It is a pity that all of the Fortune’s chickens perished in the storm, then,” Miss Winters sighed, picking at the roasted fish on one of the ship’s plates in front of her.
“Here,” Woburn said, taking the hard, stale flatbread that had been salvaged from the ship and putting it on her plate. “You can have my bread. I only wish I had butter for you as well so that you could pretend it was toast.”
Caspian had to hide his grinning mouth behind his hand.
Even though the survivors had had their lives upended, they were still behaving as ordinary ladies and gentlemen did.
Caspian found it quite charming, and when he glanced up a short time later to find Elias striding back into the clearing in conversation with Brunning, Lady Adelaide following behind them, he smiled broadly, forgetting that today could be a difficult day for the two of them.
Elias seemed to sense his smile and looked straight at Caspian.
Whatever he was discussing with Brunning must have been serious, but Elias’s face softened a bit when he met Caspian’s gaze.
Brunning peeled off to approach Hunt, who was still near the water barrel, and Elias walked over to the table and took a seat beside Caspian.
“You are a sight for sore eyes,” Elias said.
Despite the compliment, Caspian’s smile dropped into a confused frown. “You haven’t been gone more than half an hour,” he said.
Elias sighed. He peeked at Miss Winters, then must have decided what he wanted to say could be heard by her as well. “Lady Adelaide spotted some sort of shape on the horizon early this morning, while lighting the signal fire.”
“A ship?” Miss Winters gasped, sitting up straighter with a look of hope.
“Was it a ship?” one of the older survivors, Mr. Reubens, perked up on the other side of the table as well.
“We do not know,” Elias said, addressing everyone.
“Neither Mr. Brunning nor I saw what Lady Adelaide saw, though Lady Adelaide is insistent it was something.” Elias turned to Caspian to go on with, “We’ve had reason from the beginning to suspect more of us escaped the wreck of the Fortune in the storm.
Brunning and I think there is a chance what Lady Adelaide saw might be some of the others. ”
“The others might not have perished?” Miss Winters asked, looking delighted at the prospect.
“Perhaps not,” Elias said.
Caspian was less delighted. As hopeful as he was that the few passengers and crewmen who had not made it to the island with the rest of them might have been saved, he thought it was far more likely that men like Tumbrill and Dick had somehow survived and were sharing the island with them.
“Brunning and I think it might be a wise idea for search parties to set out in exploration of the rest of the island sooner than we had planned,” Elias went on.
“I thought we were going to wait to explore the island until our settlement was more firmly established,” Mr. Reubens said.
Elias sent Caspian another pointed look.
He did not need words for Caspian to grasp what he meant or what he intended.
If Tumbrill and Dick truly had survived and were living on another part of the island, it would be in their best interest to find the blackguards as soon as possible, before they organized and mounted any sort of attack that might cause even more death and destruction.
At the same time, the look in Elias’s eyes seemed to say that it was high time the two of them set off together, well away from the others, both to enjoy each other the way they wanted to and to bring every remaining truth to light.
“Brunning has just told me about the possible boat,” Hunt said, joining them at the table, along with Brunning and Ruby. “And about the necessity of exploring the island.”
“I recommend we form a few, small search parties to set out as soon as possible to have a look,” Elias said with a nod.
“I will go with you,” Caspian said, getting a jump on things and letting Elias know that yes, the time for truth had most definitely come.
Hunt seemed to sense the undercurrent between the two of them.
He studied the two of them for a moment before saying, “I recommend you and Dr. Pettigrew head off along the beach in one direction and a second party set off in the other direction. How long it takes for the two of your parties to meet again on the other side will determine how large the island is.”
“What about exploring the jungle?” Ruby asked. “Should parties not be sent deeper into the undergrowth to see what is in the center of the island?”
“At some point, yes,” Hunt replied, his affection for her clear in the way his voice and eyes softened.
“But until Dr. Pettigrew is able to do a more comprehensive study of the flora and fauna of this island and which parts of it might be deadly to us, we should stay to clear areas or areas we already know.”
Caspian could tell from what the man was not saying that they would be more likely to find traces of other survivors on the beaches rather than inland.
Ruby was clever enough to guess at what they were not saying as well, but the other ladies might have been frightened if they suspected the mutineers’ reign of terror wasn’t over.
They finished up the morning meal of fruit, fish, and the dwindling food supplies from the ship, then Hunt gathered the survivors to let them know what was happening in the vaguest possible terms.
“Caspian and Dr. Pettigrew have volunteered to make the journey in one direction, and Mr. Tennis and Mr. Gerlach have just offered to explore in the other direction,” he said as everyone gathered around the table.
“They may be gone for more than one day, so if you could all help in supplying them with packs containing food and whatever implements they might need to fish for or hunt their own food, I am certain they would be appreciative.”
Caspian heard those words as a charge to make certain the best weapons were given to the explorers in case they stumbled across the very people everyone hoped had not survived the storm.
“I hope that if we do come across Tumbrill and Dick and that lot we’re able to keep our distance from them,” Elias said more than an hour later, after all supplies had been gathered and they’d made their way down to the beach to set off.
They’d chosen to travel around the island to the west while the other two had set off to the east. “If we stumbled across each other unprepared, it would be two of us against an unknown number of them. And we do not know what weapons they have.”