Page 128 of Terms of Trade (Trade Wind 4)

Vassilis looked around the carriage grumpily but said nothing further. Helen was relieved he gave up. If nothing else, making a purchase would have meant further delay, for Vassilis would have had to slurp from the vendor’s cup and pass it back to be refilled for the next customer.

For the rest of the interminable journey, Helen clutched Pen’s and Sirena’s hands, and often met Nicholas’s gaze across the carriage. It was a most welcome cacophony when the carriage’s metal rims rattled on the brick, signaling they were, at last, on the bridge that would take them over the perimeter ditch. Nicholas slipped out of the carriage at Hibbert Gate to speak with the guards and arrange their entry.

After the guards glanced in the carriage, Nicholas returned to his seat, and they completed the last leg of their ride. Nicholas exited first, then Helen, and she let go of him only long enough for him to assist his sister and mother out.

“Make way! Make way!” Vassilis shouted as he cut a path through the crowd for them.

Helen, holding tightly onto Nicholas’s arm, followed behind as Vassilis parted the sea of dockworkers gathering to watch the Thames forAlacrity. Some of the ordinary port noises continued, but work had slowed considerably as most stared out at the river, scanning for any masts that towered above the others.

When they made their way through and reached the edge of the quay, Helen’s eyes widened at what they found. The six Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty stood in a row, several holding telescopes. They must have been alerted to her arrival, for they stood facing her, their faces solemn. For an absurd moment, Helen imagined them all turning around as one, dropping their trousers and bending in an asinine and retaliatory salute. But they only nodded respectfully before facing the waterway once more.

At her ragged intake of breath, Nicholas turned to her, taken aback at finding her laughing instead of crying. After she explained the image that made her laugh, he smiled and squeezed her hand.

“I hope and pray we see Elijah today. I do. But if, instead, he’s truly dead, remember you’ll always carry him with you. Whether he’s in the afterlife or aboardAlacrityon his way here, you feel his spirit with you this very moment, don’t you?”

“I do,” she whispered, glancing again at the stiff stances of the Lords Commissioners. As if Elijah stood next to her, she giggled—then teared up again.

Leave it to my brother to have me laughing and crying at the same time!

Blinking away the tears, she searched as far as her eye could see down the Thames, hoping for three tall masts to appear around the bend. She joined thousands of eyes watching forAlacrity, knowing some were praying along with her for the ship and her crew to appear, some were nothing more than curious, and yet others had literally bet against it and were hoping that the ship had sunk in treacherous waters.

Just as Nicholas had done seven months earlier on this brick quayside, he stood with his body close to hers, supporting her physically and morally.Thank you. She sent the thought floating skyward, even as she kept her eyes focused on the most distant visible portion of the river.

When Adam Macalester arrived a short time later, she thanked him for his best wishes. An hour later, she took a brief but true respite from her vigil to greet James and Clara Robertson.

“I’m praying your brother returns to you,” Clara said as she embraced Helen.

Squeezing her gratefully, Helen couldn’t speak past the lump in her throat. When the couple introduced her to Isaac Chavers, Robertson’s man of business, the two of them nodded to each other respectfully, then he moved over to shake Mr. Hughes’s hand, whom he appeared to know.

Helen caught sight of Lord…David and couldn’t suppress a smile when she spied him standing with a constable, who had a bloodhound on a lead. The earl patted the dog’s neck, and when the beast pushed his snout against David’s hand for more, he held his top hat in place with one hand and bent down to scratch around the dog’s ears with the other.

Now that’s one good thing that will come of today, no matter what, she thought warmly.

Nicholas’s arm tightened around her waist a second before the crowd came alive with shouts and cheers. Heart racing, Helen searched the horizon, her gaze finding and dismissing a two-masted sailing ship, a steamer—

There she was! Three tall masts, a hull that sat sleek and low in the water, acres of sails, and ostentatious signal flags, strung stem to stern!

Helen scarcely dared to breathe; if this were a hallucination, she didn’t want to do anything that would make it disappear.

Relief crumpled her knees, but Nicholas’s arms held her up. “It’sAlacrity,” he said intently near her ear. “It has to be!”

She nodded, starting to believe she wasn’t seeing things. Even after the initial shouts from the crowds, a constant buzz sounded in her ears, and she looked around at everyone, pointing and staring down the river.

By the time the ship was close enough for her to make out Elijah standing on the quarterdeck, Helen had moved as close to the edge of the waterline of the quay as safety permitted, waving her arms in the air.

“It’s him!” Sirena exclaimed from behind her.

Jumping up and down, Helen launched into Nicholas’s arms, then accepted congratulatory embraces and kisses from Pen and Sirena. After his turn, Vassilis added a pat to her shoulder. “Tea profits, after all!”

“A more dramatic return, Elijah could not have made,” Mr. Hughes said with a smile, his eyes sparkling with tears.

She laughed, knowing a degree of happiness she’d never before experienced. Not only was Elijah alive, but she was surrounded by more love than she could have imagined.

Alacritymaneuvered close enough for the crowd to make out the sunburn on Elijah’s cheeks and for his voice to carry to her ears as he shouted orders to his men. When the dockworkers cast the mooring lines to the crew aboard, Elijah was already launching himself over the gunwales to the quay, landing in a low crouch, instead of waiting for the gangway to be placed. He no sooner rose than a crate flew into his arms, thrown by a sailor with a gap-toothed grin.

Ignoring the crowds and everyone else but Helen, Elijah sauntered up to her, the wooden chest printed with Chinese characters balanced atop one shoulder. He raised an eyebrow. “You ordered some tea, madam?”

Laughing, he set down the cargo and pulled Helen in close.

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