Michael reined the horses in. Beside him, Anne asked the groom, “Is everything in readiness, Harold?”
He inclined his head as he took charge of the horses. “All according to plan, m’lady.”
Michael lifted Anne down, and she led him toward the riverbank. Her mood seemed to be restored, as she was tugging his arm to hurry him along. “Are we having a picnic, then?”
She snorted. “A picnic isn’t much of a surprise.”
“I thought since you had that basket, that perhaps…” He trailed off as he caught sight of a white skiff arrayed on the grassy riverbank. “Anne, is this for us?”
“Well, of course.”
“You mean we’re—” He broke off, glancing around. They were right at the point where the Serpentine bent to extend into Kensington Gardens, and this early in the afternoon the waters were deserted, save for a pair of swans.
The gardens were lush and green. There was even a little grey stone summerhouse adorning the verdant sweep of lawn.
Michael was no expert, but he would say the setting was picturesque. Romantic, even.
It was perfect. And Michael decided right then and there that this was where he was going to propose.
“Welcome to the latest installment of Anne and Michael’s Pirate Adventures,” Anne said, sounding pleased with herself.
That was when Michael noticed that someone had hastily painted the word Misery upon the boat’s prow. He threw his head back and laughed. “I see that you managed to get the name right this time.”
“I capitulated just this once, in honor of your return. I still maintain that there is no finer name for a pirate ship than the Queen Anne’s Revenge.”
“That one is already taken. Besides, I’m the captain, and the captain gets to name the ship.”
“Remind me, Captain Cranfield, which is the higher rank—captain or admiral?”
“Admiral Astley. As if you would ever let me forget.”
“Although I’m not Anne Astley anymore. I suppose it should be Admiral Northcote now.”
Michael attempted to disguise his instinctive growl as a mere clearing of his throat. He was never going to refer to Anne using that blackguard’s name. The mere thought of saying it aloud was revolting. “Doesn’t have the same ring to it. I believe I will continue calling you Admiral Astley.”
Anne responded with a sweeping gesture. “So long as you acknowledge my superior rank.”
Michael was laughing as he moved the front end of the skiff into the canal, then offered Anne his hand. Once she was settled, he gave the boat a good push and climbed aboard in one smooth motion, and then they were drifting along in the bright afternoon sunshine.
He couldn’t help but smile as he watched Anne. For all that she’d taken up the white parasol that had been waiting in the boat, she wasn’t making much use of it, instead tipping her head back to enjoy the sunshine upon her face.
After she’d finished basking, Anne smiled at him. “This is just like old times.”
“The only thing missing,” Michael said, giving a pull at the oars, “is the strawberry tarts.”
Anne smiled, her nose crinkling, and Michael knew immediately that something was afoot, because that was Anne’s other signature expression, one he liked to see much better than the eyebrow twitch of doom. Whenever he saw that nose crinkle, it meant that Anne Astley was about to get up to some mischief.
She reached for the basket she’d brought along. “Who said they were missing?”
Michael grinned. “You do not have strawberry tarts in there!”
“I most certainly do,” Anne replied, pulling them out.
They drifted along, enjoying their tarts. Anne tossed a few bites to a pair of ducks, one of whom tried to climb right into the boat before Michael shooed him away with the oar. Strawberry tarts were Anne’s favorite, and she’d brought them on their afternoon adventures literally hundreds of times. Drifting along with Anne in a boat, on this perfect summer afternoon, eating strawberry tarts… Michael’s throat constricted.
This feeling, this contentment, this was precisely how his life was meant to be.
Precisely how it would be from now on.
“Delicious,” Michael declared, licking the last few crumbs from his fingers. He took up the oars again. “Now let’s see, what else did we used to do on our pirate adventures? We’ve argued about the name of the ship, as well as over who holds the superior rank, and we’ve eaten our strawberry tarts. The only thing left to do is to come up with some harebrained scheme, the ultimate result of which will be both of us falling in.”
“I have been pleased to see,” Anne said, “that this vessel is proving to be more seaworthy than the original pirate ship Misery.”
“I have a feeling that our previous difficulties lay less with the ship and more with the crew manning her. I recall one incident in particular—”
Anne rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “You would bring that up.”
“—in which our fearless admiral screamed in a manner unbecoming His Majesty’s Royal Navy.”
“We sail under the black flag, so let us leave His Majesty out of it. And you know very well that there was a spider, a great, black, hairy spider, that had crawled upon my leg!”
Michael shook his head, every bit as unimpressed by this explanation as he had been at age nine. “And that scream was accompanied by the most comedic flailing of arms, to which no description could possibly do justice. Perhaps I should demonstrate.”
“I should very much like to see that,” Anne said, gesturing for him to proceed.
Michael sighed. “And she’s called my bluff.”
“Indeed, she has,” Anne said cheerfully. “Besides, you were the one who caused us to capsize, with your ostensible attempt to ‘help’ by charging into my end of the boat.”
“So you’re saying it was my fault? I suppose next time I’ll leave you to the mercy of the great, black, hairy spider.”
She smiled sunnily. “Of course you won’t. To do so would go against every fiber of your nature as a Cranfield. You’re not happy unless you’re bashing some evildoer over the head with your battle-axe.”
He laughed, hauling at the oars. “You have me again.”
“So,” Anne said, “do I finally get to learn what it is you’ve been doing in Canada?”
Michael glanced around. The water was deserted. “I suppose you do.”
Anne leaned forward. “Well?”
Michael let off rowing for a moment, allowing the boat to drift. “You may recall that three years ago, my Uncle Charles was stationed out on the Canadian frontier.”
“I remember it well. That would have been just before his brigade was transferred to the Continent. We had the pleasure of Major-General Cranfield’s company for several months while they resupplied.”
“That transfer was the reason for my mission. You see, a coded message was intercepted indicating that the French knew my uncle’s brigade was to be recalled to the European theater. It further indicated that a traitor within our ranks had been dispatched to Canada to present him with a false set of orders, instructing him to lead his men deep into the Canadian wilderness.”
“Oh, my gracious!” Anne frowned, tilting her head. “But how did any of that involve you, Michael?”
“The traitor bearing the false set of orders was my uncle’s former batman. A man by the name of Jeremiah Derrickson.”
“Ah,” Anne said, her brow unfurling. “Your uncle would have trusted him.”
“My uncle would have trusted him,” Michael confirmed. “There’s no one you can confirm your orders with, out there on the frontier. Given two sets of contradictory orders, and one is coming from your former batman, well, it’s not difficult to imagine which set he would have followed. They needed someone he would trust implicitly.”
“So that’s why they sent you.”
“Indeed.” Michael gave a couple of pulls at the oars, to keep them from drifting into the bank. “I had to depart quite hastily. Father pulled me out of Oxford midterm, and the next day I was on a ship. I was six days behind Derrickson. I’ll tell you the whole story another time, but the long and short of it is that after weeks of hacking my way through the wilderness, I managed to beat him there by six hours.”
“You did it.” Anne’s smile was a touch tremulous. “You had an adventure, a real adventure. A quest, even!”
It struck Michael that Anne understood better than anyone how much that moment had meant to him, the moment he had staggered into his uncle’s camp at one in the morning, more exhausted than he’d ever been in his life, but equally exhilarated to have succeeded.
Anne laughed as she dabbed at her eyes with the back of her glove. “It’s everything you’ve always wanted.”
Michael said nothing as he leaned forward to offer her his handkerchief. It was bittersweet even now, to think about that moment. At the time, it had felt like the culmination of a dream.
But he could not now think of that triumph without immediately recalling what it had cost him: a future with the only woman he had ever loved, the only woman, he felt certain, he would ever love.
At least, he had thought it had cost him that future. It turned out the Fates had seen fit to give him this second chance.
“So,” Anne continued once she’d finished dabbing her eyes, “that accounts for the first few months. How do you explain the following four years?”
Michael cleared his throat. “My father’s holdings near Lake Simcoe have grown to about ten thousand acres. I spent some time there, taking things in hand. Then I started getting requests from all over. If it wasn’t the Royal Navy begging for mast poles, it was the army, desperate for walnut for gunstocks.” He smiled ruefully. “I was everyone’s man in Canada.”
“It sounds as if you were much in demand. But were you truly so busy you couldn’t spare a half hour to pen a letter to your best friend?” Anne asked the question lightly, but Michael could read her well enough to tell that it was no triviality.
He swallowed. The time had come to tell Anne the truth. He wasn’t likely to get a better chance than this, after all.
He laid the oars aside. This chance had come about so unexpectedly, he hadn’t planned out quite what he was going to say.
But he knew one thing: whatever he said, it was going to end in his proposal. And for a proposal, a man was supposed to go down on one knee.
It was just good form.
He rose halfway and inched forward slowly and deliberately. The boat swayed, but not dangerously so. He carefully started to lower himself down.
He glanced up at Anne to find her brow creased. “Michael? Is anything wrong?”
He sought the bottom of the boat with his knee. As he touched down, it slipped on something round. The handle of Anne’s basket. The basket slid out of the way, but the unexpected jolt caused the boat to shudder. Anne flinched.
This caused the rocking to increase—a precarious situation, considering Michael was on one knee. “Don’t move,” he hissed. After a moment he gained some semblance of balance and released his grip on the hull to slowly reach for Anne’s hand.
“What is it?” she whispered. Her gaze dropped down to her lap, following the direction of his hand.
That was when she screamed.