Emily Baker Read Free Page B

toward the strangest meeting he’d ever been asked to attend.
    Several minutes later, the admiral paced back toward the appointed spot, his gait uneven from the stiffness he bore in one battle-scarred leg and the walking stick he used to compensate.
    “Halt where you are, sir.” Garrett gave the warning.
    The older man stopped immediately.
    A heavy cape swirled around his mast-straight figure clad in the dress breeches and high boots of a naval officer. Beneath his ancient tricorn hat, he did not appear either surprised by Garrett’s presence or concerned at being alone on a deserted hillside with the man considered by some to be one of Ireland’s most notorious criminals—the man he had spent nearly a year of his retirement trying to catch. After all, he’d summoned the Green Dragon to this spot.
    “If you have assured yourself I am alone as promised, I would prefer speaking to you man to man, not man to shadow.” The crisp command of years spent on a quarterdeck came with unmistakable disdain.
    Not for the first time, Garrett wondered what had forced this old salt to issue his urgent invitation. That much at least he was surely about to discover, along with the cost. There was always a cost where the English were concerned. He stepped away from the well. “Good evening, Admiral Fuller. State your business.”
    For the stretch of several minutes, the admiral remained silent, assessing Garrett as his keenly observant gaze took in his mask, the rural simplicity of his attire, the brace of pistols in his belt, and the knife he held in his right hand. The only reaction Garrett could discern under the muted light and shadows supplied by the moon was a small tick in the admiral’s cheek.
    He fought the urge to squirm under the mariner’s intense scrutiny. The sooner they could get their business concluded the better, but he had no intention of betraying his unease over this whole matter. Finally, the man’s chin raised ever so slightly, then dropped. He’d made up his mind.
    “Why are we meeting, sir? Why here?” Garrett pressed.
    “Why here?” The admiral looked over his shoulder at the church ruins. “Marnock was a sailor, you know. Not much is known about him save that he is rumored to have inspired your Brendan into making his own voyages of discovery. Brendan is supposed to have journeyed over the seas to the New World even before that Spanish fellow—”
    “Italian,” Garrett corrected. He had no patience for delaying tactics.
    “What was that?” The admiral turned back to face him.
    “Columbus was Italian.”
    “Quite right.” The Admiral nodded. “I knew you must possess a superior education. No common criminal could be so elusive based on luck alone.
    Garrett’s impatience grew. “Admiral Fuller, you did not request this meeting to fish for clues regarding my identity, nor to exchange information on my country’s seafaring legends. Pray get to the point and explain your summons.”
    The admiral pressed his lips together. “Right again. Still, this does not come easily to me.”
    He paused, and several more moments passed as he clenched and unclenched his fist on the balled head of his walking stick. “This concerns my daughter.”
    His daughter? Garrett knew of her. Jane Fuller made quite a splash in Dublin’s social circles when her widowed father retired last year and brought her with him to take up the Irish estates he’d been granted as recognition for his valor and long, distinguished career in the king’s navy.
    “You have a daughter?” Garrett forced a casual, almost bored incredulity into his voice despite his heightened senses at the mention of Miss Fuller.
    “Do not feign ignorance.” The admiral fixed him with a hard look. “She is my only child and she is missing. Went berry picking with her maid on my country lands and never returned.”
    Awareness prickled Garrett’s spine. “How long?”
    “Nearly two weeks.”
    Two weeks? He’d been away from Dublin for a little