Seward wasn’t hard to follow, just hard to catch up with. Rhys dogged him all the way from Wishbone to New York harbor, always a few days behind the retreating Englishman. Now, weeks after he had ridden out after the red-haired killer, Rhys stood on the docks in a driving rain canvassing the legion of ships, many of which would soon depart for England. A storm had held all vessels in the harbor for the past three days, foul weather to seafaring men, but the first good fortune Rhys had experienced since he’d set out after Seward.
With the chill rain seeping down his collar and the icy wind of a northeaster cutting through his clothes, Rhys vowed he would make the best of his turn of luck. Seward could not have sailed. He was bound to have booked passage on one of the vessels waiting for the waters to calm. He had to find the man. Had to get a confession from him. He had to clear his name. He owed that to Teddy. And to his child.
By midnight he feared he had failed. The weather had begun to break, ships would be sailing from the harbor in a matter of hours, and he had not found Seward on any passenger list nor had he found a seaman who had seen a man of Seward’s description.
In need of a drink and a warming fire, Rhys made his way to a dockside tavern and by chance found himself sharing the hearthside heat of a roaring fire with the captain of a frigate destined for London. “Abner Bale is the name.” The gravelly-voiced captain turned up his mug of beer and guzzled it down. He had a face that was worn and battered as an old sail. The lines etched in his leathery skin had been cut by the wind and weather of many crossings of the Atlantic’s rough waters. Like many a sea captain, Bale could be treacherous as the barnacles on a ship’s hull if need be, but there was the look of an honest man in the depths of his brown eyes. “Aye, I’ve seen a man like you’re tellin’ about,” the Gloriana’s captain reported. “Came to my mate the day before this seeking passage.”
Rhys expressed his need to see the man and confirm that it was, indeed, Seward. He hoped the captain knew of the man’s whereabouts. “He owes me a debt,” Rhys said. “And lives hang on it being paid.”
Having gained Bale’s ear, Rhys told him a small part of why he sought Seward, carefully omitting the fact that it was his life that rested in the red-haired man’s malevolent hands.
Bale shrugged, though he was not indifferent to the story Rhys had told. “I’ve no place in another man’s business,” he said. Bale put down his empty mug and rubbed his callused palms before the fire. “But if you’ve a just claim you can see this Seward, if that be his name, when he boards the Gloriana. You’d best be there before dawn,” he added. “We’re a week off our sailin’ date as is an’ if the clouds break we sail at first light.” He turned his backside to the fire and, having offered what he thought any fair man would, cast a steely glance at Rhys. “Mind you make no trouble aboard my ship,” he warned.
Bale left the tavern a short while later. Rhys stayed by the fire a while longer, getting the chill out of his bones and hoping Seward and the man Bale expected aboard his ship were one and the same.
***
Surmising he had been right to leave Wishbone, Derby Seward readied his small traveling trunk and had the innkeeper summon a carriage to take him to the docks. He had done all he safely could to rid the world of Rhys Delmar. Knox would have to be content with it. True, Delmar was not dead, but he was now branded a murdering criminal on two continents. With good representation, Knox should be able to convince the authorities that Delmar had failed to meet the terms of the inheritance and that Knox was the rightful heir to his uncle’s fortune.
If not, no one would be sorrier than Derby Seward. But no amount of money was worth his life, and the moment he’d heard Delmar was free he’d feared that the Frenchman would come looking for him. He still had the feeling. Sheriff Blalock had taken pains to let him know the Frenchman suspected him of killing his former valet. Seward had no idea what the sheriff’s purpose had been, since Blalock and others involved in the case acted on Adams’s behalf. But Blalock had relayed every word of Delmar’s ranting that his accuser had more to hide than he did.
No dimwit when it came to his own welfare, Seward had fled Wishbone immediately upon learning Delmar was on the loose. As yet he had not slowed down. A dozen times a day, as he’d traveled from the Arizona territory to the New York harbor, he’d felt the hairs rising on the back of his neck. Each time he’d looked around expecting Delmar to be there demanding retribution. Each time he’d found he was reacting to no more than his shadow. But he had kept running and kept looking back.
He would continue to do so until he boarded the Gloriana and felt the wind catch her sails. There on the sea, at last, he would not feel the need to look over his shoulder. And so it was, haggard from the journey, that Derby Seward cast his trunk to a waiting seaman, doled out a few coins to the driver of the carriage, and prepared to board the Gloriana.
He sighed out in relief as the horses’s clopping hooves carried the driver and conveyance away and his own thudding footsteps took him toward the waiting frigate.
Rhys drew his breath in and held it until the air grew stale in his lungs. With the dark clouds banked above and a gathering fog on the docks, he could scarcely make out the shape of the man climbing down from a solitary carriage which had ventured far down the wharf. Cautiously, Rhys leaned out from behind the stack of crates and barrels that had shielded him from the man’s view. The latecomer had a beard but he could not determine the color.
Rhys saw but one course. He stepped into the clear. “Seward!” he shouted.
Seward froze, then cursed himself for reacting to the name. He’d taken the precaution of assuming another for the journey to London. Now it seemed the safeguard had been in vain.
Above, the clouds parted and the moon broke though, its silver light catching Seward full in the face and showing his thick red beard in all its glory. Rhys broke into a run. Seward did the same, shouting a warning to any of the crew who were about on the ship to halt the man who pursued him. His hat flew to the choppy water below and his coat waved in the wind as Seward scurried aboard the Gloriana with the desperation of a rat seeking safety in the bowels of the ship. He had been aboard before and knew the way across the deck. He made haste for the companion hood and threw himself down the steps, gasping for breath as he descended to the lower decks and raced past cargo and men.
A few sailors, knowing Seward had paid his passage, sought to give him aid, but stepped aside as, from the quarterdeck, Captain Bale shouted for them to stay at their posts.
Seward raced on. Near a ladder which led to the deep cargo hold he passed a box where the ship’s carpenter had laid his tools. The blade of a small hatchet gleamed out in the lamplight. Seward grabbed the wooden handle and thrust the hatchet beneath his coat. A knife was his weapon of choice but for Rhys Delmar, whom he suspected carried a gun, the hatchet would prove a better defense.
With an angry cry tearing from his throat, Rhys bounded after Seward, flying past the seamen he had expected to block his way but who now stood aside as they had for the man he chased. He gained the upper deck and sprinted across it. Already Seward was out of sight but he had seen the path the man took and followed down the companion hood. Below he could hear the clatter of Seward’s feet and the heavy, gasping breaths of a man not accustomed to exertion. On he ran, gun drawn, not knowing what he would do with Seward when he caught him, but determined he would make the man admit his guilt if he had to beat the life from him to do it.
Rhys paused but once, when he saw that Seward had fled to the hold. There in the tightly packed ship’s belly a man could lie in wait. The thought that Seward might climb out by another exit and leave the ship before he caught up spurred Rhys on. In one bound he leaped to the bottom of the hold, landing in a crouch among the stacked bales and barrels.
Seward stood behind the ladder, ready to chop off the legs of his adversary as he climbed down. With that advantage taken from him he gave a cry of rage and flung himself, hatchet swinging, upon Rhys. His first brutal blow struck the weapon from Rhys’s hand and sent it careening toward a head-high stack of crates lashed to the ship’s sides. The gun landed atop the highest of the wooden boxes just as the ship creaked and listed port side. Rhys’s only weapon slithered over the edge of the box and wedged between two heavy crates and out of reach of either man.
Seward, however, was still armed with the hatchet and raised it for another blow. “You’ve done me a good turn by following, Rhys Delmar,” he cried through clenched teeth. “I’ll cut you to pieces right here and no man will fault me for it!”
He swung. Rhys sprung aside and the blow missed, bringing a vicious curse from Seward. “You have it to do yet!” Rhys challenged and leaped aside as yet another blow stirred the hair on his head.
“I’ll do it!” Seward taunted and pressed on. “You’re worth a bloody fortune to me! Dead!”
With Rhys dancing back and Seward edging forward they moved through the crowded hold. One swing of the hatchet sliced a bag of hemp and sent the fiber spilling to the staves beneath their feet.
Seward plowed through what he had unleashed, wielding his hatchet in ever-widening swings which Rhys continued to duck and dodge. Any one swipe could have rendered him headless had he misjudged by a second the speed of the swing. Needing a moment of respite, he dove behind a barrel, hoping he could keep up the chase long enough to tire Seward so that he dared go on the offensive against the man.
“What was Jenny Perrault worth to you?” he shouted, scrambling behind yet another barrel.
“Not a farthing.” Seward peered into the dark where Rhys had disappeared. Sweat poured from his brow and he had to suck in a breath before he could speak again. “It was what she was about to tell you that got her killed.”
“About Andrew Knox? My father?”
Seward pressed on, honing in on Rhys’s voice. “So you know about that, do you? For all the difference it’ll make!”
For half a second Rhys sat stunned by Seward’s admission that he had murdered Jenny. He recovered quickly when Seward shoved aside the barrel that was his protection and came near to slicing off his arm with a desperate swing of the sharp blade.
Relieved to see he’d lost only a sleeve and a layer of skin, Rhys shouted a taunt at Seward and kept moving through the tunnels of goods in the hold. He’d gotten his wind back but he had also learned every moment he took to hide and rest gave Seward a moment to recover his strength, too. He tried another tactic as soon as he put another barrel between Seward and himself. While Seward shoved the barrier away, Rhys sprung from the ship’s floor, leaping high in the air where he caught hold of the heavy rope that latticed the cargo to the ship’s walls. Climbing ape-fashion, he managed to land a hard kick to Seward’s skull before the man realized what had happened.
Groaning and with a blood lust in his eye, Seward lunged to his feet and started up the rigging after Rhys. With the axe in one hand his progress was slow, but he was relentless even as his big chest heaved in and out for air and each time he got within striking distance he swung the hatchet at Rhys. Only a few minutes into the overhead chase Seward discovered by accident that if he could not catch Rhys Delmar he might bring him down by hacking through the rope Rhys clung to.
On the first occurrence Rhys came tumbling down, clinging to the severed rope, landing only a few feet from Seward and the razor-sharp hatchet. He had lost the advantage of distance but he still had his endurance. Rather than leap to the floor and have Seward plummet on top of him and hack him to shreds, Rhys emitted a cry of determination and scurried hand over hand away from his pursuer. Seward however, had given up the game of chase. He severed another rope and once again Rhys came tumbling to him, this time landing with a dazing thump against a huge wooden keg and directly in the path of Seward’s weapon.
The darkness in the hold went blacker before Rhys’s eyes. He blinked and groaned and tried to clear his head and amass enough strength to dodge a death blow.
Seward laughed. “Got you now, you bloody devil!” He drew back his arm and swung.
Rhys never quite knew how he managed to hoist himself out of the way of that blow, but it missed him by a hair’s-breadth. Seward’s hatchet split the chime hoop of the giant keg, releasing the entire top of the wooden barrel and bringing a blast of thick molasses spewing from the container. The gush washed Seward from his perch and he came plunging down into the pile of hemp he had unleashed before.
Choking and coughing and cursing Rhys Delmar, Seward scooted around on all fours in the knee-deep mess looking for his hatchet.
Above him Rhys swung on a dangling rope. He’d have laughed at the spectacle had not he known how deadly that molasses-sopped and hemp-strewn man could be should he find the lost hatchet. He couldn’t wait for that to happen. Positioning himself over Seward, Rhys dropped directly on the crawling man’s back, knocking him face down into the thick, oozing molasses.
Filled with rage, Rhys latched his fingers into Seward’s sticky hair and beard and thrust the Englishman’s head deeper into the thick black syrup. “You killed Lucien! You killed Jenny! I ought to drown you in it!”
Seward swallowed a mouthful of molasses and when Rhys relented and let him up for air he was clawing it from his mouth to let in the breath he needed. “Aye!” he shouted as soon as he’d filled his lungs. “I killed them both! The Perrault woman and the bloody cripple Bourget. Stabbed them in the heart. Liked the feel of it too. Aye!” He turned his hate-filled eyes on Rhys. “I killed them but you’ll hang for it! Not me, you bloody bastard!”
Nearly as crazed as Seward, Rhys slammed the Englishman’s head into the syrup again, holding it down a long moment, caring little if he did or did not drown the man. “Then I might as well let you choke to death!” he railed. “It’s of no consequence if you do!”
Seward kicked and grabbed but could not wrest the Frenchman off his back or tear his steel-like fingers from his hair. He had begun to give up the fight when Rhys realized a light shone over his shoulder and had been there for some time.
He rose up and looked anxiously back. Abner Bale and a score of his men stood about the ladder in the hold.
“I see you’ve not kept your promise regarding my ship,” the captain said. His steady voice brought a return of reason to Rhys, but he still held Seward’s head submerged. “Let him go,” Bale said. “My men and I have heard his confession and you’ll have our word where you need it. Now let him go. Don’t let him make of you what he’s claimed you are.”
Rhys jerked Seward’s head from the molasses. It was as if the Englishman had no face. He’d turned black where the syrup clung and was covered with hemp in hundreds of stringy fibers which stuck as if glued wherever they touched. His body was the same, a mound of molasses dotted with bits of hemp that stood out like tentacles. The only bit of Seward that showed he was not some bizarre creature dragged from the deep was the long pink tongue that lolled from his mouth as he gasped from air.
Rhys had not fared much better in the deluge of syrup but his head was clear of it and he could stand without help. “You’re a good man, Captain,” he said wearily. “Now if you’ll help me get this man ashore and to the authorities here, we—”
The captain ordered his men to take Seward above and wash him clean. “Sorry, lad,” he said to Rhys. “The Gloriana has set sail and the next port we see will be an English harbor.”