The Elusive Bride Read Free Page B

Mary Alice
    Dear Diary,
    The answer to my last question is: quite amazingly fast when all sail is risked. My being extra charming to the captain and challenging him to demonstrate how fast his ship can go has paid a handsome dividend. We passed the Egret, the sloop carrying the major and his household, sometime last night. With luck and continuing fair winds, I will disembark in Aden before him, and he will have no reason to suspect I set out on this journey to follow him.
    E.
    October 2, 1822
Aden
    W hat the…?” Gareth Hamilton stood in the bow of the Egret and stared incredulously at the pale pink parasol bobbing through the crowd on the wharf alongside.
    They’d followed another of the company sloops into theharbor, and had had to wait for that vessel, the Mary Alice , to be unloaded first.
    His bags, along with the minimal luggage carried by his small but efficient household—his batman, Bister, his houseman, Mooktu, an ex-sepoy, and Mooktu’s wife, Arnia—were being stacked that very minute on the wooden wharf, but that wasn’t the cause of the consternation—to put it mildly—that had seized him.
    He’d noticed the parasol bobbing down the gangway of the Mary Alice , tied up almost at the end of the long wharf. He’d watched the bearer, a lady in matching pale pink skirts, tack and weave through the crowd. She and the contingent of staff following at her heels, with one heavily muscled man clearing a path through the noisy, jostling throng ahead of her, had to pass along the wharf beside the Egret in order to enter the town.
    Until a moment ago, he hadn’t been able to see the parasol holder’s face. But passing the Egret , she’d tipped the parasol aside and glanced up—and he’d glimpsed…a face he hadn’t expected to see again.
    A face that, for the last few weeks, had haunted his dreams.
    Yet all but immediately, the damn parasol had come up and re-obscured his view.
    “ Damn! ” One part of his mind was telling him, calmly, that it couldn’t possibly be she, that he was seeing things he wanted to see…Some other part, a more visceral part, was already sure.
    He hesitated, waiting to see again—to know for sure.
    Movement in the crowd behind the parasol caught his eye.
    Cultists.
    His blood literally ran cold. He’d known they’d be waiting for him—he and his people were expecting a welcome.
    But Emily Ensworth and her people weren’t.
    He’d vaulted the railing on the thought. He landed on the wharf, his gaze locked on her.
    He came up from his crouch with considerable momentum, cleaving his way bodily through the crowd. He came up with her just in time to grab her and haul her away from the blade a cultist thrust at her.
    Her gasp was drowned beneath a cacophony of sound—exclamations, shrieks, shouts. Others had seen the menacing sword, but even as the crowd turned and garrulously searched, the cultists melted away. Taller than most, Gareth saw them pull back. Over the heads, one cultist—an older, black-bearded man—met his eye. Even across the distance, Gareth felt the malevolence in the man’s gaze. Then the man turned and was swallowed by the crowd.
    Mooktu appeared by Gareth’s shoulder. “Should we follow?”
    Bister was already further afield, scouting.
    Gareth’s instincts screamed follow , to pursue and deal appropriately with any cultist he could find. But…he glanced down at the woman he still held, his hands locked about her upper arms.
    With her parasol now askew, he looked down into wide, moss-hazel eyes. Into a face that was as perfect as he recalled, but pale. She was stunned.
    At least she wasn’t screaming.
    “No.” He glanced at Mooktu. “We have to get away from here—off the docks—quickly.”
    Mooktu nodded. “I’ll get the others.”
    He was gone on the word, leaving Gareth to set Miss Ensworth back on her feet.
    Gently, as if she were porcelain and might shatter at any instant.
    “Are you all right?”
    As the warmth—the heat—of his hard