CHAPTER 29

The air is even denser now; thick as soup it boils and broods. Terns skim low over the water, letting out long metallic cries. From out at sea, rollers storm onto the beach and collapse into froth.

“It happened one night a couple of months back,” says Thomas coldly. “On the foreshore, by the boat sheds. Someone saw us, evidently.”

She frowns and tries to meet his gaze. His face is tight. He looks away from her.

“We had to meet there whenever her husband was in town. She’d always said if he ever found out he’d have both our necks slit.”

Eliza shakes her head. His words swill about the air, ungraspable.

“Men wet their cocks in Bannin’s brothels without so much as a raised eyebrow. Or else they take what they feel they deserve by force. But there can be no greater crime than interfering with the wife of the most powerful man in town.” He says it with the mock authority of an officer but his voice cracks.

“Thomas, no.”

“Inclined to disown me? It wouldn’t surprise me. Purity, monogamy, Christianity. That’s what they say at the Circle. Am I wrong?”

“Thomas, I—I don’t understand. Not Parker’s wife, surely?” She pictures the round, lumpish woman from the sergeant’s pendant.

“Stanson,” he says plainly, blinking. “Septimus Stanson; we’ve had to hide it from him for months.”

The words fall into place, pieces of a puzzle fitting silently together in her mind. “The woman is Iris Stanson? Good God.” Eliza’s heart plummets. Septimus Stanson is not a man to be toyed with. She remembers Min’s words about the pearlers: Undermine them and they’ll lash out like snakes. She wonders how long her brother has been involved with the man’s wife. She’s older, certainly, but undeniably beautiful. She’d always appeared so out of place next to her small, cruel husband. Then the memory comes, of Iris Stanson watching her so intently at the dinner party. Had she been wondering then exactly how much Eliza knew?

“But how can that have anything to do with Father being gone? Where is he?”

Thomas sighs, takes a long sip of liquor, sets his jaw tight. “We were always careful. We didn’t know we’d been seen until Father received a letter. It was from an anonymous sender, of course; the watermark had been torn off and they must have disguised the hand; it wasn’t one we recognized.” He runs his palm across his mouth. “It said they had seen Thomas Brightwell attack Iris Stanson at the packing sheds. They had the precise date and the precise time that the crime had been witnessed. Said they’d tell her husband, as well as the constables, the whole bay, unless Father abandoned his fleet and left Bannin immediately.”

She cannot fight the sensation of falling.

“I was to go too. If I stayed, people would expect me to take on the fleet. They wanted both of us out; with Father gone from the shelling game there would be beds to plunder. Huge sums of money to be made, just plugging that gap.”

“But… you didn’t accost her,” Eliza says. “Did you?”

“Who do you think I am, Eliza? For Christ’s sake,” he hisses. She nods quickly, trying to ignore the fact that he only recently had his arm around her throat.

“We’ve been… meeting for a while. I am in love with her. It’s pathetic, really.”

“Then she would explain that to her husband, would she not? You’ve done nothing wrong in the eyes of the law, they cannot jail you for adultery…”

Thomas sends the air though his nose at a shunt. “Your naivete is maddening, Eliza. Truly it is.” He turns sharply to her. “Do you think Stanson would rather appear a cuckolded coward or a husband out for blood from the man who defiled his wife?” Something hot creeps slowly up her neck. “He has a reputation to uphold, and the ear of every officer and magistrate for miles. What Septimus Stanson says, goes.” That’s right, she thinks. It does. He’d had that other man cast out of the Association for merely leering at his wife.

“I’d be jailed and Father would be shunned from the Association. It would ruin the family. Everything. Every single thing we’ve built here, after all that’s happened.”

“But she would support you, surely.” Eliza’s words are tumbling out. “She would say that no attack took place.”

“You would think that.” He draws on the drink. “But it seems that’s not the case. She cut things off as soon as I told her about the letter. Said she’d side with her husband if anything came out. She has a reputation to maintain too, apparently.”

Eliza is surprised to feel a coil of anger take light in her stomach.

“How could you do something that puts so many people in danger, including yourself? How could you be so reckless?”

Thomas glares at her. Eyes ready to do battle. “Well, you wouldn’t know, would you, Eliza, because you have never suffered the inconvenience of desire.”

The words sting and she recoils slightly. Neither says anything for a while. In front of them, a hermit crab makes its slow way over tiny dunes.

“So Father just left?” She prises the silence open.

“He was in anguish,” Thomas says quietly after a while. “He fought it, hard. He didn’t want to leave you. But he knew that if he didn’t, at least for a while, they would make true on their threat. I told him it didn’t matter, that I would face the punishment even though I wasn’t guilty. We argued, every night on the lugger. But you know him, Eliza. He had to protect his family and go.”

Her mind goes to Parker’s cruel face. The sergeant’s brow so heavy it almost demands holding up. She pictures the newspaper clipping she found in her father’s study. Parker would take whatever opportunity he had to get one up on Charles Brightwell; throwing his son in jail would be a fine victory.

After a long pause she asks the question that has been slowly taking form.

“Why did you lie to me then?” Thomas’s eyes close. The wind buffets the shearwaters above. “You could have told me. I would have helped you. Both of you, but you chose to lie.”

“You know why.” His tone is sharp. “It’s not exactly something I’d sing through the streets, Eliza. The fewer people that knew, the lesser the risk of word getting out. You’re included in that. I’m sorry, but you are.” The words singe. “And Father, he wanted to protect you from all of this mess.” He shifts position as his voice becomes more urgent. “Knowing it would have made you vulnerable. You might have done something rash. Gone to the constables about the blackmail. Tried to save the day, like you always do.”

She winces at the betrayal. “How could you let me think that he was dead, then? And what about Balarri? He’ll be hanged if Parker finds him.”

Thomas takes a long breath in. When he speaks, the weight has vanished from his words. “We had a plan.” He shakes his head as if trying to dislodge something. “He was going to return to Bannin eventually.”

She whips her head to him, frowns.

“If we could make it look like Father had been injured or that he’d fallen overboard while drunk, no one would be blamed; it would simply be a terrible accident, right? And he’d be out of Bannin Bay, so we would have done what they wanted.” Eliza’s heart is a drum, beaten out of time. “We needed someone to help get him off the ship unnoticed, to meet him with a dinghy; we couldn’t use the Starling’s. Winters agreed to do it.” His eyes drop to the sand.

“Winters,” Eliza whispers. That’s how Hardcastle’s missing deckhand fits into all of this.

“The boy… looks up to me.” Eliza remembers her father’s diary. The poor chap appears to follow Thomas around like a lovesick puppy. “I shared the details of the letter with him, in the strictest confidence. He said he would help however he could. He truly wanted to help, really.” She feels a flood of shame for the boy, embroiled in something that was not at all of his making.

“They had lanterns,” Thomas continues. “There were no other luggers for miles, no wind forecast. It was supposed to be a good night to be out in a dinghy.” Shuzo’s words ring in her ears; how he had seen “two lights on the water, glowing like the eyes of a demon.”

“We’d agreed they’d go straight to the Rosellas. They’re a small set of islands, not too far from the Lucettes, just a few hours in the boat if they stuck in the right direction. He knew there was water there to sustain them both for a while. They could fish for barra with a line, lure crabs from the mud, build a shelter. I only needed a week—two at the most—and then I would go and retrieve them in the Starling.”

“A week? You thought a week would be long enough to keep them happy? When they wanted you and Father gone for good?” Her frustration is getting the better of her. “And what on earth were you going to do here? Just wait around and give your liver a hiding?”

“Of course not.” He casts her a barbed glance. “The blackmail letter bore a Cossack postmark. I suppose the fool hadn’t thought well enough to disguise that. So I sailed straight here to make some inquiries, being as careful as I could, of course—there are many secrets to be snatched from the walls of these gambling halls. We’d agreed that I would try to secure a sale for one or two of the luggers under another name, if I could. We hoped that once I’d uncovered the blackmailer’s identity, they would be appeased with that; it’s the sort of money that could set them up for life. We had no other way to get it—Father is still struggling with debts—but if we could, no one in Bannin would ever have to know and we could return.”

Eliza’s mind is reeling. How could they ever have thought that this was a good idea? How foolish they’d been. “Well, what happened?” she asks urgently. “Were you able to find the blackmailer? Where is Father now?”

Thomas’s head sinks. “My inquiries were met with sealed lips and locked doorways.” His cheeks tense. “My efforts to arrange the sales of the luggers were unsuccessful. I was able to build up a sum of money in the gambling halls. But I was followed, late one night, and relieved of my winnings.”

“But you went to get them anyway. Father and Winters, Thomas. Yes? Where are they now?”

“I went, of course I went.” He is talking quickly. “But there was no trace of them. I circled all of the Rosellas, went ashore, scoured every inch of soil. They weren’t there.”

Eliza’s mouth falls open. She leaps up from the sand, appalled. “You didn’t try hard enough,” she hisses. The anger makes her chest shake. “You gave up on them, like you always give up.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Why did you not search farther? Extend your course? What if they’d been thrown off position by the wind?”

“Eliza, don’t be ridiculous. The ocean is vast—if they were thrown off course, they will have drowned. I couldn’t risk it, or risk wrecking the lugger, with the weather coming in.”

“The weather?” She pauses. The realization comes like a heavy weight dropped on the sand. It is a miracle it didn’t arrive sooner.

“You didn’t try because you knew that if he were actually gone then you could take the fleet. Did you do this with her, with Stanson’s wife, deliberately?”

“Eliza. No. That is not true.” His words are slow.

“You’ve always wanted it,” she spits. “You always thought he was too soft.” Disgust sends her back and forth across the sand. “How could you?”

“ELIZA!” He leaps up. His voice a roar now. “That is simply not true. I searched every one of those islands. It wasn’t safe to go farther and would have been fruitless to do so. They are gone. I wish that wasn’t the case, but there is nothing we can do about it now.”

“I’m going to find him, then.” She says it, plain as stone.

“Eliza.”

“If you are not enough of a man to go out there and search for your father, who did all of this just to save you—”

“To save the family business.”

“Because of a reckless mistake that you made.” Her head feels like an ant’s nest; it scritches and jitters. She tries to claw past the mess, to find a way through, to think clearly. “I have no option but to go myself.”

“I will come with you, then.” He sighs.

“I don’t want you there. I cannot trust you.”

“Eliza. Do not be so ridiculous. You cannot sail. You’ll be wrecked. Just… searching for a corpse.”

“He’s. Not. Dead.”

Thomas pauses. Looks to her as if she is touched in the head.

“I was told by someone in Bannin, someone who can see these things. He’s not dead.”

“Who told you that?”

“Someone Min knows; it doesn’t matter.”

“Not that whore psychic.” His face is full of disgust. “You are preposterous, Eliza.”

“She said that he is alive and that he is surrounded by birds. She saw birds everywhere.” She does not care anymore if she sounds ridiculous.

“Good Lord,” Thomas spits. “You’re even more deluded than I thought. Look around you, Eliza,” he shouts, and spreads his arms wide. “There are bloody birds everywhere. Any hackneyed old whore would have said that for coin.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“You are risking your life and risking the ruin of an asset by doing this.”

She stops, folds her arms. “You see,” she says through gritted teeth, “that’s just the problem; you see life merely as a collection of assets. You see those around you as pawns—you used Winters’s affections to send him out into a dangerous situation and now he’s lost too.” She turns to make her way back toward the town. Spirit lamps burn in shadowy porches and the murmur of men spills out from the gambling halls.

“I’m going out there,” she calls back to him. “I’m going to find him.”