Page 41 of Hooked By a Hero
“Perhaps we should return to the encampment to share our morning repast with the others and to alert them to what you have seen,” Elias said.
“Yes,” Lady Adelaide said with an uncertain frown. “I know I saw something.”
“I’ve no doubt you did,” Elias said, offering his arm to escort her back as if they were in London.
Lady Adelaide declined his arm, choosing to walk ahead of them so that she might return to the camp and her friends as swiftly as possible. Brunning reached out to tug Elias’s sleeve indicating that he should hang back a bit.
“I’ve no doubt Lady Adelaide saw something,” he murmured to Elias as they walked. “I fear what that something might be.”
Elias frowned, wondering if Brunning shared the same suspicions. “Tumbrill, Dick, and the others?” he suggested.
“Could be,” Brunning said with a nod. “There’s no guarantee their lot all perished in the wreck. You’ve noticed that not a one of the men loyal to Tumbrill found their way into our camp. Surely, if Tumbrill had all merely perished, one or two of his followers would be groveling at our feet and begging us to take them in.”
“I have noticed,” Elias said.
“They must be out there,” Brunning said. “They’ve got the other two lifeboats. They could be making trips out to theFortuneat night, when our lot aren’t there.”
“It’s possible,” Elias said, rubbing the bottom half of his face with a frown. “We need to find out for certain.”
“We need to find them,” Brunning agreed, “before they find us.”
Fourteen
Being caught with legs had never bothered Caspian before. Being caught by Elias carried entirely different consequences, however. Elias was already suspicious of him. In fact, Caspian was convinced that if the truth of who he was had not been the stuff of fairy stories and ancient legends for land-dwellers, Elias would have pieced things together by now.
He sighed and let the sponge he used to bathe drop back into the washbasin. Today would have to be the day he told Elias the full truth. He’d managed to avoid confessing for a fortnight. It had been a simple thing to do, since there was so much that needed to be done to build an encampment for the survivors. Caspian had spent much of that time with the crew salvaging useful things from theFortune, which also enabled him to swim as much as he needed to without raising more questions, but today would have to be different.
He dried and dressed, then tidied the hut a bit before working up the courage to step out into the open and find Elias. It came as a bit of a surprise that Elias was nowhere in the camp at first. Instead of filling Caspian with relief, it itched and poked at him, making him feel like he was delaying pulling an urchin’s sting out of his foot because he knew it would hurt.
“Apologies if there was a bit of, er, noise this morning,” Hunt said in a low voice, his face flushing, as he approached Caspian near one of the communal water barrels.
“Noise?” Caspian asked, unable to hide his teasing smile. “What noise?”
Hunt cleared his throat and said, “Ruby has a curious way of expressing grief.”
Caspian clapped a hand on Hunt’s shoulder. “You make a lovely pairing,” he said. “And as I understand it, Ruby is her own woman now and capable of making her own decisions as to whom she might spend the rest of her life with. She has chosen well.”
“Yes, well, she does have relatives back in England who may object to an heiress such as herself taking up with a lowly ship’s surgeon,” Hunt said.
Caspian blinked, not understanding why anyone would object to a good woman choosing a good man. “Is it her wealth that makes the difference?” he asked. “I never did understand the ways of Englishmen when it comes to love and intimacy, but it does seem as though money plays a part.”
Hunt laughed out loud. “You do have strange ways, Caspian,” he said. “Where do your people hail from again?”
“Somewhere far away from England,” Caspian answered, pretending to joke.
Fortunately, Hunt laughed, and the two of them moved on to join the others who were already up and about at the long table that had been thrown together with bits and pieces from the ship and the island.
“What I would not give for eggs and sausages,” Miss Winters sighed in complaint as Caspian sat next to her, reaching for a mango from the bowl of fruit placed near him. “I still do not see why we could not search the jungle for the nests of wildbirds and take their eggs so that I might have just one ordinary breakfast.”
“Because it is not the season for eggs,” Caspian said, amused by her English insistence on routine and the familiar. “And if you took all the eggs now, there would be no hatchlings and no birds who might lay more eggs.”
“It is a pity that all of theFortune’schickens perished in the storm, then,” Miss Winters sighed, picking at the roasted fish on one of the ship’s plates in front of her.
“Here,” Woburn said, taking the hard, stale flatbread that had been salvaged from the ship and putting it on her plate. “You can have my bread. I only wish I had butter for you as well so that you could pretend it was toast.”
Caspian had to hide his grinning mouth behind his hand. Even though the survivors had had their lives upended, they were still behaving as ordinary ladies and gentlemen did. Caspian found it quite charming, and when he glanced up a short time later to find Elias striding back into the clearing in conversation with Brunning, Lady Adelaide following behind them, he smiled broadly, forgetting that today could be a difficult day for the two of them.
Elias seemed to sense his smile and looked straight at Caspian. Whatever he was discussing with Brunning must have been serious, but Elias’s face softened a bit when he met Caspian’s gaze. Brunning peeled off to approach Hunt, who was still near the water barrel, and Elias walked over to the table and took a seat beside Caspian.
