Page 46 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo
“Do you think we could incapacitate the navigator without killing him?” Lorelai pointed to the candelabra.
“If we’re lucky.” Veronica didn’t look hopeful. “Let’s just hope we remain concealed.” They ducked below the windows of the galley and made their way along the deck, feeling for the rails of a ladder that would lower them to the lifeboats.
Veronica stopped so abruptly, Lorelai narrowly avoided bowling her over. Her hand reached back and gripped Lorelai’s, leading it to the cold iron curve of a hang ladder.
“The lifeboats hang two decks above the water,” Veronica breathed against her ear. “Since there’s no one on deck to help, we’ll need to release the ropes at exactly the same time for the boat to land and not dump us into the sea. Do you understand? We… we might be a bit injured in the fall.”
Heart pounding, mouth dry, Lorelai nodded her understanding as she clung to her dearest friend. “It’s the only way. You go first.”
Veronica gathered her skirts and tucked them into her waist. Lorelai reached for her, readying to secure her so she could lift her leg up and over the high rail of the deck.
“Do you think you’ll be able to climb down the ladder with your ankle?” Veronica asked. A worried frown pinched her brow.
In truth, Lorelai didn’t know. “I’ll have to,” she decided.
“Oi! Don’t move, you daft nanny.” A familiar, grizzled voice broke through the mist back toward the overhang of the galley. “If you don’t cooperate, I’ll be forced to hobble you.”
Lorelai’s muscles seized, and Veronica’s fingers became talons on her wrist.
A plaintive bleat both astounded and bemused Lorelai, but it became readily apparent the voice didn’t address her or Veronica.
“If you kick me in the head, you stubborn old goat, I’ll return the favor. Now give over!” The man’s demands rose in decibel to the tune of his frustration.
“Barnaby?” Lorelai whispered. What was her gamekeeper doing aboard the ship? And to whom did he speak? The poor old man was seventy, if he was a day. She’d hired him not quite a year ago to help her with her growing menagerie. He’d been guarded and gruff at first, as though he’d almost resented her for employing him, for having to take orders from a woman. But he’d stubbornly insisted he stay, and was a fair hand with the animals. Eventually, they’d found their stride, and lately, they’d become great friends. Lorelai’s fondness for the old cantankerous septuagenarian knew no bounds.
Lorelai drifted toward his voice, and Veronica jerkedher back toward the ladder. “What are you doing? We have to go.”
“That’s Barnaby.” Lorelai tugged out of her grip. “They’ve taken him, too. We have to help him. He’s so feeble, they might make him… walk the plank, or something equally frightful.”Did pirates still do that?she wondered. “I’d never forgive myself.”
Veronica cautiously surveyed the mist, now becoming thinner as the sun threatened the horizon. “Very well, but we haven’t much time.”
“Oi,” Barnaby called again. “Whoever’s lurking out there in this soup, come help me wrestle this stubborn bitch to the ground so’s I can have at her tit—” His rheumy amber gaze widened as Lorelai broke through the mist frantically trundling toward him. Had she had any doubt the voice belonged to him, they’d have been crushed the moment she’d spied his ever-present red cap. Lorelai flattened him to her in a desperate hug.
“My lady, what the fu—er, what the devil you doing?” He gave her shoulders a few hesitant pats. “I—I didn’t know you were about or I wouldn’t have spoke like that… It inn’t safe for you… for us… out here.” He carefully extracted himself from her embrace, looking around with wild, worried eyes.
“Barnaby!” She gasped, clutching his thin shoulders. “I’m so sorry you were dragged into this. Did they take anyone else from the household?”
Rubbing a hand on his work trousers, he refused to meet her eyes. “Just me, m’lady. It be me job to look after the animals, inn’t it?”
“The animals?” Lorelai breathed.
“Brought the motherless little mites with us so’s they di’nt starve. Which meant Grace O’Malley had to comealong, di’nt she? But beggared if she’ll let me milk her on the ship, the slag.”
Had the fog not been so thick, Lorelai’d have seen the makeshift pen behind the galley sooner. Inside, her milk goat, Grace O’Malley—ironically named for a fearsome Irish pirate—bleated her complaints at them from beneath perpetually angry brows. Next to her, the basket of eight kittens she’d only five days hence rescued from drowning in a burlap sack mewled at the familiar sight of her.
“Goodness,” Lorelai marveled. “How’d you talk them into taking animals with you?”
“Funny story, that—” Barnaby shifted about diffidently, but was cut off when Veronica hissed for them to hurry from across the deck.
“Coming,” Lorelai whispered back to her before she limped over to the pen and wrangled it open as quietly as she could. “We’re going to escape on the lifeboat,” she explained as she hefted the basket of kittens, to their noisy dismay. “Here.” She shoved the pistol into Barnaby’s hands, thinking he’d know how to use it better than she. “Take this for protection and follow me.”
“Right behind you, m’lady.” Barnaby gaped at the pistol for a moment, then held the pen door open for her and shuffled about in the fog. “I’ll… just get old Grace, here, and meet you by the ladder in a tick.”
“Good thinking, Barnaby. I’m glad I found you before we escaped. I’d never leave you behind.” Lorelai kissed next to the tufts of silver hair at his temple, and plunged back into the mist using an outstretched hand as her eye until she found the railing and Veronica again.
“What’s this?” Veronica’s dark brows drew together as she peered into the basket.
“The kittens.”
