Page 5 of Hooked by a Hero (Tales from the Brotherhood #4)

Three

D espite the suddenness of Elias’s flight from England, the first few days of his journey were actually quite lovely. The weather remained in their favor as they sailed to the mouth of the Thames, and then as they rounded the southeastern corner of England and continued westward along the Channel.

“I never would have imagined seeing the land of my home from such a position,” Lady Adelaide commented to Elias and Caspian on the second day of sailing through the Channel. “Cornwall appears so distant.”

Elias and Caspian, who had been enjoying the view from the stern deck as the Fortune slid easily through grey-blue waters, turned to the young woman in unison, which made Elias smile secretly.

“You would never have imagined leaving England?” Caspian asked, rather boldly, if Elias was honest.

“Well, I….” Lady Adelaide stuttered a bit, her cheeks pinking. “Father insists we must travel to Australia to remake our fortune.” She sent a knowing look to her maid, Emily, who blushed and looked down.

A hundred stories of what might have happened to Lord Dunstable that would require him to need to remake a fortune filled Elias’s thoughts.

It was early days still, but he was delighted by how many mysteries and stories his fellow travelers had.

He looked forward to learning so much more about all of them.

That included the mysteries and stories he knew Caspian had to be carrying.

The beautiful young man spoke very little about himself or his origins, though Elias had determined that he must have been the son of merchants, possibly English, but also possibly Portuguese, who had settled in Hindustan and somehow borne a son of unusual coloring with one of the locals there.

Caspian deflected all of Elias’s questions on the matter, but there were few other explanations.

Truly, it did not matter to Elias where Caspian had originated.

As long as he could spend time with the beautiful man, talking about England and the sea, their fellow travelers and the crew, Elias did not care who Caspian and his people were, whether high or low.

After only two days, Elias was smitten, though he was quick to acknowledge as much and temper his feelings by admitting it was merely an infatuation brought on by Caspian’s alluring appearance and the excitement of the voyage.

The voyage turned far more exciting than any of them would have liked once they left the English Channel and made their way across the Bay of Biscay.

“You can expect rough seas over the next few days, Captain Woodward announced to the more prestigious passengers over supper at the end of the third day.

They had all been invited to take supper in the captain’s study, a rather large room at the ship’s stern.

It contained a single, long table with benches along either side, two chairs at either end, and a lantern hung above the table that swung precariously as Button, the ship’s cook, served them a surprisingly good meal.

“How rough, sir?” Mr. Ferrars asked, already looking a bit green.

Captain Woodward sent him a frown that lacked sympathy, in Elias’s opinion, and said, “Very rough.”

The captain had not exaggerated. By the fifth day of the voyage, Elias was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t made the biggest mistake of his life.

The sea pitched and rolled, some of the waves splashing up as high as the main deck.

The only people who were able to properly keep their footing as the deck rose and fell with each wave the Fortune sliced across were the experienced seamen.

At first, Elias was determined to show his mettle by standing firm with the ship’s crew and keeping his place on the deck, watching the inclement weather fly by.

He had Caspian to impress, after all. Caspian did not seem to be at all bothered by the motion of the ship or the ferocity of the sea.

In fact, Caspian stood at the bow, head tilted up into the sea spray, smiling and breathing in deeply, as though the raging sea were a good friend of his.

In the end, Elias could not stay by his friend’s side.

Caspian was deeply understanding when Elias retreated to his cabin bed and curled himself up there, a bucket on the floor nearby, just in case.

Elias had never been a religious man. Indeed, it was religious people who most cursed him for who and what he was, and who turned their noses up at the very real science of healing he’d spent his life studying.

But he prayed for deliverance from the sea for the four days that it took to cross until they were close to the coast of Spain.

Once they completed their transit of the Bay of Biscay, the seas calmed again, the sun came out, and the weary and shaken passengers deemed it safe to spend time on the decks once more.

“I was certain I was about to die every moment of those days,” Ruby informed Elias as Elias helped her settle Mr. Ferrars into a chair on the forecastle. “But that was mostly because Grandpapa’s suffering and complaints seemed endless,” she whispered once Mr. Ferrars was settled.

“I heard that, minx,” Mr. Ferrars said with a frown, though there was a deep amount of affection in his voice and expression.

“You have survived the worst of it admirably,” Elias told the old man with a smile. He’d given the gentleman a thorough checking over and used the weight of his medical opinion to reassure the still-queasy man.

“Where is your friend, Caspian?” Ruby asked with a smile once Mr. Ferrars was snoozing away in the sunlight. “I have not seen him at all since the storm broke and the sun came out.”

Elias’s chest tightened at Ruby’s questioning, both because he worried that the enigmatic young woman knew more than she should about his feelings toward Caspian, and because he had not, in fact, spotted Caspian anywhere since emerging from his cabin a few hours before.

“I do not know,” he said, worrying even more for his friend as he spoke.

“You must go and find him and invite him to join us for a bit of basking in the sun,” Ruby charged him.

Elias nodded and headed off at once to find Caspian. The days of inclement weather and upset stomachs had forced them apart for far longer than Elias would have liked. He was eager to find himself in Caspian’s company once again.

The trouble was that he had never bothered to ask which cabin Caspian had been assigned.

Every time that conversation had begun, some other, more interesting topic of conversation had arisen.

Elias searched the finer cabins on the main deck, but none of them belonged to Caspian.

From there, he headed down to the middeck, but his initial search of the tiny cabins fitted along the hull there turned up nothing for him.

Much of the rest of the middeck was taken up with cargo and other things being shipped to the other side of the world, but Elias didn’t see hide nor hair of Caspian there either.

“Can I help you?” Mr. Hunt, the ship’s surgeon, whom Elias had already had a few invigorating medical conversations with since setting out, asked him as Elias came across his path halfway down the middeck.

“Have you seen—” He paused, blinking, and realizing he still had no idea what Caspian’s family name was. “Have you seen Caspian?” he asked.

Hunt shrugged and shook his head. “I’ve been too busy treating seasickness and a few minor injuries sustained by the convicts in that rough weather to notice much of anything.”

Hunt’s words ignited the part of Elias that felt responsible for his fellow men. “Do you require assistance in treating any injuries?” he asked.

Hunt smiled. “If you’ve the stomach for interacting with the convicts, I could certainly use your help.”

“Of course.”

As much as it felt like leaving his heart behind, Elias abandoned his curious search for Caspian and went with Hunt down to the lower deck.

The two dozen convicts that Captain Woodward was apparently taking to Port Arthur as a favor were all being held in a makeshift cell at the very back of the lower deck.

Even before Elias approached them, he could smell them.

The scent of human refuse and sick was ripe in the air.

Perhaps it was wrong for him to feel such sympathy for men who had been convicted of crimes, but anger lashed at Elias as soon as he and Hunt approached the opening to the area where the men were being held.

“Halt!” one of the crewmen standing guard over the men snapped, freezing Elias and Hunt in their tracks. “State your business here.”

“We’ve come to finish treating the injuries sustained by these men during the bad weather,” Hunt explained.

The guard stared at him with narrow-eyed suspicion. “Captain Woodward’s orders are that these men should be kept in their chains, out of the way of the paying passengers, for the duration of the journey.”

“But that’s cruelty,” Elias said. He gestured toward the barred entry to the makeshift cell and went on with, “Can you not see and hear and smell that they need help?”

“They should have helped themselves and not committed the crimes that landed them here,” the second guard said with a sneer.

Elias gaped at the man, shocked that he had no human feeling.

“Allow us to treat those who are most injured at least,” Hunt said. “Bring them out into this cleared area.”

“We are not to let them out of their cell,” the first guard said.

“You heard the man,” one of the prisoners, the large, grizzled man who had growled at Lady Adelaide when he’d been brought aboard, said. “We’re injured and should be let out of our cell.”

He had some sort of tin cup in his hand which he raked across the bars holding him at bay, creating a clanging sound that had the hair standing up on the back of Elias’s neck.

“Settle down, Dick,” the second guard said, slamming the butt of the club he carried into the bars as if he were aiming for Dick’s fingers. “You’ve caused more than enough trouble already.”

“Not by half, I haven’t,” Dick said, laughing viciously.