Twelve people stood between him and answers.
A man lunged at the lieutenant. “Someone will pay,” he said before sailors dragged him away.
Someone would pay. Daniel.
He always did, but this time, it was his fault.
Hadn’t his desperation to be with Phoebe made him insist she come to England now during the island’s wet season? The British were to impose a blockade. Once in place, the Royal Navy wouldn’t allow any crossings. They did this to halt American aggressions in this War of 1812.
An old woman stumbled into Daniel.
He stooped and helped her up. Tears flooded her sunken cheeks. “My daughter, sir. My poor girl is lost.”
He reached into his coat and handed her his handkerchief, one of his treasures with initials embroidered in silver thread.
She shook her head. “Thank you, but it’s too fancy for me.” She started to walk away but turned back. “There’s two survivors, sir. Just two. Hope you’re lucky. My daughter . . . she’s at the bottom of the sea. I can’t get to her.”
Those bottled-up feelings of hopelessness he’d tried to suppress doubled, ripping at his heart, pressing upon his lungs. He took his lignum vitae and handed them to her. “It’s not much, but maybe you can honor your daughter with these flowers.”
Sobbing anew, the old woman took them and walked to the edge of the dock. Her head dipped in prayer. Then she cast his sentimental offering into the water.
Six people ahead, a burly man cussed worse than a sailor. “That was my only son.”
He spit at the officer, then disappeared into the crowd.
The antics didn’t bother Daniel, not as much as the old woman standing alone.
In court, when the judge hammered his dark judgments, the wailing of spectators in the gallery of the Old Bailey became riotous. Daniel was immune to the sound.
But not to the look of a woman in pain.
His hand stung. The pin this time drew blood.
Three in line.
Daniel wrapped his handkerchief about his palm. He fretted smearing the ink on the marriage license displaying his whole hideous name, Peregrine Daniel Thackery, and that of Phoebe Monroe Dunn.
Lord in heaven this can’t be all he’ll have of her. He couldn’t be a widower, without memories of being married.
“Step forward,” the lieutenant said.
Daniel’s turn.
He braced like he waited for the jurymen’s verdict.
The lieutenant, with his rumpled bicorne, a half-moon-shaped hat, stared at him with a frown hinting of disgust. “Who are you here for?”
“Phoebe Dunn.” His voice warbled a little but boomed upon her surname.
“Unaccounted for, but—” The man harrumphed. “Well, with the boat coming from Jamaica, I reckon we found her.”
“Reckon?”
“Well, she’s not in the capacity to say.”
Daniel’s heart pounded a double rhythm—his Phoebe was alive, but hurt?
“Is she injured? Incapacitated? Mute?” Was that Phoebe’s surprise, that he’d be the only one to ramble on about their days?
