“Father!”
She heard footsteps from the parlor and headed that way. A tall black woman with strong handsome features came hurrying toward her. “Mattie!” she said with pleasure.
“Skye!”
They came together with a fierce hug. “Child, child, child, it is so good to see you! Safe and sound and home at last. Your father was so very worried about you—”
“Where is Father?” Skye asked hopefully, pulling away. Mattie was looking over her shoulder to the parlor door. Roc stood there now, watching them.
“Lord Cameron,” Mattie murmured, bobbing him a small curtsy.
“Mattie,” he acknowledged her. He stepped on in. He was comfortable in her parlor, Skye thought with a touch of resentment. “Where is Lord Kinsdale?” he asked also.
“It’s a terrible thing, Lord Cameron!” Mattie said. She pulled away from Skye and walked to the elegant rosewood liquor cart and poured out something. Skye assumed it was a brandy for her.
Mattie walked straight past her and handed the glass to Roc. He nodded his thanks and drank down the brew. She looked at Skye. “I’ll get tea on right away, and something for you to eat.”
“Mattie!” Skye wailed.
Mattie shook her head miserably. “He’s gone run off and been captured by those louts, he has!”
“What?” Skye gasped, looking quickly to Roc.
“TheSilver Messengercome into the river about a week ago. You know your father, Skye. He went about ranting and raving and saying that he had to come for you himself. Well, he’s so anxious to go off to sea to find you or meet you or just wear off steam, that he decides to hire himself a new captain out of one of the taverns. Turns out he hires himself a pirate! It’s the government down in Carolina, that’s what Spotswood says it is. Those slimy sea creatures go into North Carolina, then slip on up here. When we catch ’em, we hang ’em! It’s just that we don’t catch them all.…”
Skye fell into one of the elegant little Louis XIV chairs before the fireplace. She covered her face with her hands, remembering the carnage when theSilver Messengerhad first been taken by the pirates. A great trembling shook her, and silent tears began to fall down her cheeks. He was all that she had in the world.
No, she had a husband.
A stranger…
She needed her father. She loved him, and she needed him desperately. The old fool! Why had he left?
He had come for her. He had wed her to Roc Cameron, but he hadn’t even trusted in Roc. He had been impulsive—like she was herself. He had cast care and reason to the wind.
“Has there been a ransom demand as yet?” Roc asked.
Skye looked up hopefully.
Mattie shook her head. “A man come back off of theSilver Messenger, a decent man, I assume, for he went to the governor with his tale. The ship is taken, and Lord Kinsdale is prisoner in the hold, and that is all I know for the moment.”
A sob escaped Skye. Mattie sank down by her, taking her into her arms. “Don’t fret, they won’t hurt him, I’m certain. The governor has ships out—”
Skye leaped up. “The governor. Perhaps he knows more!”
She swept past Mattie and Roc Cameron and came out to the street again. She was travel-stained from her night in the woods and tears made dirty tracks down her cheeks, but she didn’t care. She ran down the length of the palace green, near hysteria. She loved Theo; she adored him. Even when they disagreed, he would puff up his cheeks and eventually see things her way. Even if he had cast her into marriage against her will…He had worried about her unduly, all of these years. He had wanted a fine house for her, a bastion against the world. He hadn’t even wanted her to travel to England, but his position had meant that she should be well trained in the fine arts of feminity, and so he had given in.
“Skye!”
She paused, leaning against a tree. She didn’t stop because she had been summoned, she stopped to gasp for breath. Roc was coming behind her.
“Skye, wait!”
She turned around and ran again, approaching the gates to the mansion. Armed guards stood before them. They blocked her way with their brown Besses when she would have burst through the gate. “I have to see the lieutenant governor!” she cried.
“And who might you be, miss?” one asked her skeptically.
Hands fell upon her shoulders. Roc had caught up with her. “Lord and Lady Cameron, and it is most urgent.”
