His grin was brash and bright. “Aw, they’re too busy to notice. Sides. Barnaby says he’s a magician. Says they won’t notice.”
She gave him another quick hug. Then, because she knew Beau would never forgive her if she didn’t at least look, she walked up to the very well-hidden door Robbie had slipped through to see if there was some kind of locking mechanism, and by St. Thomas’s Thumbnails, there it was, a tongue of sturdy wood that slid right into a recess in the stone wall. Tucking the gun into her apron pocket, she slid the lock home and took hold of Robbie’s arm.
“Let’s get out of here, Rob.”
Just as they were walking by the wine rack, she finally heard a beloved voice up in the kitchen. “Is my wife here?”
All she could think to do was grab a couple of bottles of wine. She needed to get upstairs to Beau. She needed to tell him what she saw. Or whom she’d seen.
“Barnaby said not to tell nobody he’s there,” Robbie said.
She paused for a moment, a bottle in her hand. No, she thought, Robbie was right. She wouldn’t tell anybody. It would be far too embarrassing to admit her obvious mistake. Especially to Beau.
Grabbing one more bottle for good luck, she laid that one in Robbie’s arms. “Here,” she said. “I believe we’re going to need this.”
She would keep silent. If she didn’t, people would think she had lost her mind. After all, how could she possibly think that the person she saw in the second cellar edging Robbie to freedom was Theo Drummond?
12
Pip wanted nothing more than to throw herself into Beau’s arms. She didn’t, of course, not with the kitchen full of people and her arms full of wine bottles as she guided Robbie up the stairs. Especially not when she was still fighting the surprise of seeing that man in the basement. The last thing she or Beau needed was for her to blurt out her brief suspicion.
Of course she knew the man she saw wasn’t Theo. It hadn’t been any other time she’d sworn to have seen or heard him over the last year either. She had so badly wanted him not to be dead she kept imagining him alive.
But he had never been there. He never would be. So just like always, she would swallow that brief joy and subsequent grief and move on.
“I found something I think we misplaced,” she greeted everyone brightly as she topped the stairs behind Robbie.
“Crikey,” Sam whispered, eyes huge.
Billings just strode forward and gave the boy a convulsive hug. “You all right, then, lad?”
Robbie nodded with a huge grin. “Yes’r. They was all too busy with those big boxes to bother with me.”
“How many big boxes?” Beau asked quietly from his spot near the back door, surreptitiously setting his own pistol on a counter behind him.
“Dozen or so, milord,” Robbie was saying. “Long ones and short ones.”
“Do you know about how many men?”
“’Bout seven or so. More gone back to the ship, they said. C’n I see me mum now?”
Beau laid a hand on his shoulder. “Good lad. I wish we could let you go home right now, Robbie, but I think it’s better nobody but us knows you’re safe. Do we have some chocolate for a brave lad, wife?”
Pip looked up to see a storm brewing in his eyes. Now what was he going to accuse her of?
“Of course, we do,” she said, setting her wine bottles on the table with barely a tremble. “And could somebody open the wine for the brave adults?”
That was when she noticed that in the time she’d been in the cellar the sun had
gone down. At this time of year, darkness had dropped like a curtain. It would have made the kitchen cozier if Beau hadn’t still been glaring at her.
He might not have looked so fierce if he had been wearing his regular attire. But he looked like a fisherman just walking off the wharf in homespun pants and a ragged gray sweater.
“I’ll get the chocolate,” Joyful offered, pointing young Robbie to the bench.
“I’ll get the wine,” Billings said, stepping into his pantry.
Beau turned to Pip. “Can I speak with you in the parlor, wife?”
