The Forgiven Duke (A Forgotten Castles Novel) Read Free Page B

question. “I saw her on board the ship. She was with a man. Baylor, who is Lord John Lemon?”

Chapter Three
    T he chill southwesterly winds pushed against the larboard side of the Achilles , flattening the square sails and moving them through the choppy gray water at a brisk twelve knots. The water stretched out toward the horizon, unending in every direction, making the huge brigantine appear more a toy, a mere wooden box with sails made of scraps found in a sewing basket. Great billowy clouds rolled across the sky, lighter gray with puffs of swirling white, pregnant with rain that had yet to spill. And all around them was the eerie sound of a moaning wind that seemed afraid and haunted, aching for relief from some terrible thing it had seen or heard.
    Alex stood at the rail soaking in the lonely scene despite her body’s shivering inside her red cape. They had been at sea a little over a week now, seen the land and the birds slip away into unending wind and water, salt-laden air scented by fish of all shapes and sizes. They traveled northwest toward Iceland’s shore, a journey that could take as much as three weeks, but according to Captain O’Mally would take closer to two if they didn’t run into any trouble.
    Thinking of trouble at sea brought a memory to mind. She had been around twelve years old and her parents had been gone for a very long time. Every day she went to the ruins of the monastery, knelt where she imagined the altar had been, and prayed for their safe return. One day a small ship appeared on the horizon. Alex watched it come closer and closer and then, seeing her parents on board, she ran to meet them.
    But her mother was gravely ill and her father barely said a word to Alex, so worried about his wife. Alex remembered how he’d picked up her mother and carried her across the beach toward the castle. She’d looked so thin and pale that Alex just stood and stared, more afraid than she’d ever been.
    “Alexandria, run ahead and open the door. Mother needs to lie down and then I’m going to need you to run and fetch the doctor.”
    Alex shook herself out of her trance, running barefoot and terrified across the pebbled beach to obey. She followed her father inside. “What happened? Is she sick?”
    Her father walked up the narrow stairs, turning sideways to make the turn. “Get the doctor, Alexandria. I will tell you what happened after we have done everything we can for your mother.”
    The sharp words were so uncommon from her father, and the hollow look in her mother’s eyes so unnatural that tears burned from behind Alex’s eyes.
    With a pounding heart, she ran back outside and into the village. They hadn’t a real doctor on the island; he was across the causeway in Beal, and the causeway was only traversable twice a day when the tide went out. She didn’t want to wait that long, so she ran as fast as her bare feet could take her to Margaret Henry’s house, a midwife and known for her herbal remedies. It turned out to be a very good thing as her mother was suffering from a severe inflammation of the lungs. The midwife made an awful-smelling herbal plaster of camphor and stinkweed, then instructed them to keep it on her mother’s chest day and night until her wheezing eased and color came back.
    Alex hadn’t known such depths of relief as she felt when her mother slowly recovered. Her father finally told her the story of the shipwreck they’d had coming back from South America where they had been hired to find an ancient Incan silver mine. They’d been rescued at sea by another ship but not before her mother had nearly drowned.
    Alex shivered now as she looked at the cold, harsh sea. She would not want to be floating in its icy depths, clinging to a stick of wood and hoping the sharks and all sorts of sea creatures wouldn’t think her toes worthy to nibble on. But her mother hadn’t let the fear of it happening again take hold of her as Alex half hoped she would. No, Katherine and