Strangers were neither welcomed nor liked in Cornwall, especially not in smugglers’ country. But to wish any of them maimed or killed?
That didn’t make proper sense, either.
Not that any of this made sense.
He glanced back at the pit. What would have happened to Thaddeus—to Pen—if they’d been wandering through the woods alone?
Tothatquestion, at least, he had an answer: The same thing that had happened to Piers. He hooked the trap on his arm and turned to head back toward Emmaus’s cottage. Then, something flashed within the tree.
Penelope had forgotten her knife.
Unsurprisingly, the knife did not dislodge with ease, but he managed. He held it up to the light, seeing Pen in the way it had been lovingly polished, carefully sharpened. She’d never been one to take anything for granted.
Would he have taken the same care with his possessions if he’d been born poor? Or would he have been wasteful, embittered?
No matter what her protestation, he’d always believed he’d rescued her, in a way.
He’d intended to whisk her away from the hardship to which she’d been born, to protect the jewel he’d found by creating a lovely setting just for her. When his father had given him the choice—Navy or exposure, he’d told himself she and their child would be better off where he’d placed them while he ventured off to bring home the prize.
Instead, he’d left her alone in this world. A world with far more ease by many measures, and yet, a world of treachery and deceit.
What if—he hefted the knife—he had trusted her strength? What if he had taken them both to a world even his father’s power could not reach?
And, if he were to trust her strength now, what would that mean?
He slid the knife into his belt.
Before turning back, he scanned the forest one last time.
How could he prevail when he could not answer the enemy within and he could not see the enemy without?
~~~
Penelope passed three days at Thaddeus’s side following the incident in the forest. Threeexcruciatingdays. Thaddeus had collapsed almost as soon as he reached his room and had only just begun to recover.
She hadn’t even noticed the snake bite until Thaddeus had vomited so much that she and Mrs. Renton had to remove his breeches.
She dipped her cloth into the basin at Thaddeus’s bedside, wrung out the excess water, and carefully wiped her son’s brow. Even if the captain had not encouraged her to keep watch, she couldn’t have left her son’s side.
At least Anthony, Thomas, and their guests had left for a few days at Portsmouth, for the expressed purpose of viewing the infamous hulks where the French prisoners were kept, but Pen suspected they were more likely to indulge in gaming and whores.
What kind of men traveled that far to simply to gawk at those less fortunate?
She returned the cloth to the basin.
Before the fever broke, Thaddeus had been flushed, and cranky, and insisting he must get out of bed.
“Why?” she’d asked.
“To find my father,” he’d replied.
“Your father is dead, love.”
“He’s not,” he’d repeatedly insisted. “He’s out there. He’s in trouble.”
She closed her eyes and exhaled, grateful that trial, at least, had passed.
She stood and stretched her back, eyeing the stitching she’d thrice abandoned.
