Page 142 of Dark Tides
“Nothing to do with me,” Captain Shore said sternly. “Look, signor, we’ve worked together in the past. I’ve shipped some valuables for you and never questioned you on the source of them, or the license to export. I’ve shipped what you’ve loaded, accepted the description on the docket, and never opened a case to check it. Neither of us have been overly fussy about the paperwork.”
“We have always worked well together,” Felipe conceded.
“I’d rather not draw attention to myself.”
“No more would I,” Felipe agreed. “But it’s not as if we were smuggling—”
“Ssh! Sssh!” Captain Shore cast an anguished glance at thequayside where idle men could be loitering and listening. “Not I! Never out of this port! The closest I’ve ever got has been your business! Your own business! When you dispatch huge boxes, and tell me it’s the private property of an ambassador. When you wrap a ton of statues and tell me it’s the lady’s private furniture. Again! She has a lot of furniture, I must say. And all of it in crates as heavy as stone! And this is the second time I’ve shipped her poor widow’s mite to London. And do you know what she does with it there?”
Felipe shrugged. “Sits on it? Dines off it? Since it is her furniture?”
“You know very well what she does with it.”
“You have nothing to fear. I assure you. I am an agent of the state myself. I will change the registration of this lady—”
“Just a milliner, really,” Sarah added.
“I will go with her into the Doge’s Palace and she will make a deposition.”
“So why are you so right and tight and aboveboard all of a sudden?” Captain Shore growled.
“This lady has convinced me,” Felipe said, smiling down at Sarah. “I am persuaded.”
“Is this what you want?” Captain Shore asked Sarah with desperate honesty. “Because if it’s a Banbury game, say so now.” He was gambling that the elegant Italian would not understand the London slang words for “a lie.”
Felipe looked from one to the other. “Speak alone,” he said, waving them for’ard. “You need not speak in your barbaric language to elude me. Speak freely.”
Captain Shore took two paces with Sarah. “What’s going on?”
“He is who he says he is,” she said breathlessly. “A state spy. He put my uncle in prison, and he can get him out again.”
“Lord!” the older man said miserably. “But why would he?”
“He’s on my side now,” she claimed. “I’m going to change my name on the ship’s papers and go as myself, into the Doge’s Palace and set my uncle free.”
“Child,” the Captain said to her. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You go in there, you’ll never get out again, and your grandmother will mourn for the two of you dead, and your mother willnever forgive me. You’ll breathe your last in the icy air under thepiombias so many good men and women have done before you.”
Captain Shore thought she was like her mother: brave and determined, her jaw set square, looking as her mother did when she received a bill she could not manage. “No, I won’t. For I’m going to free my uncle and get him home.”
“Why would he help you? A cutthroat like him?”
Her whole face lit up, as she leaned forward to whisper to him. “He’s sweet on me.”
“Lord!” he moaned. “There’s no safety in that!”
“I have to take the chance on it,” she said, her eyes still bright. “He’s the only chance I’ve got.”
“Look,” he said. “If you go in there, with or without him, sweet or not, I won’t be able to get you out. I’ll have to sail without you. Don’t think I’ll be any help because I won’t be, I can’t be. Your uncle is almost certainly dead already, God rest his soul. And I can’t take that news back to your mother and tell her you’re gone too.”
She gritted her teeth. “I’m doing it,” she said. “I’m going in there.”
The fight went out of him in a muttered curse and he turned back to the Italian who was waiting at the head of the gangplank, watching the quay below where a load of carpets was being noisily valued and crated for export.
“I hear you’re a reformed character,” the Captain said bluntly to him. “Transformed by love. Sweet on her?”
“Is that what you think?” Felipe asked Sarah, a laugh in his voice.
She met his gaze. “Yes, I do. Is it not true?”
