Two

 

Lily stood at the bow of the ship, the wind in her hair, the spray on her face. She was clad in black trousers, a loose linen shirt, and black boots that came nearly to her knees. It was the garb she always wore aboard the Chameleon.

They were almost home, and as they approached the island of New Providence she felt her heart lift in eagerness. It was such a beautiful place. Nassau had truly become her haven, and now, after an exhausting run, she had a place she could truly call home. A house in that quaint town, bought with the profits from her second run.

The Chameleon was a successful blockade runner, an iron-hulled screw steamer, painted slate gray and riding low in the water. Slipping past the Union blockaders was a dangerous game, one that always made Lily’s heart beat faster, that always made her feel more alive than before. There was no more triumphant feeling than slipping past the Union ships, the crew silent, the throb of the engines muffled by the dank air and the waves crashing against the rocks as the Chameleon eased at a dead slow speed into the mouth of the Cape Fear River.

But it was more than a game. It was revenge. Revenge for her father’s death.

If Elliot hadn’t been so useless, Lily wouldn’t have felt compelled to act. But it had become a matter of family honor. Honor meant nothing to Elliot. He was perfectly content to wait out the war at the London gaming tables, dining with the elite Englishmen who sympathized with the Southerners’ cause.

So it was left to Lily. Elliot had been true to his word and had presented her with her inheritance once they were in London. She had been at a loss, not knowing what to do with the money. She wouldn’t ensconce herself in London with Elliot and pretend that the war was nothing more than a nuisance. But it would be foolish for her to return home alone.

Tommy had shown her what to do. Actually, they had developed the plan together as they sat at Tommy and Cora’s kitchen table, a pot of tea shared between them as Lily told Tommy of her father’s death. He was as outraged as she, and Lily cried for the first time since she’d left her home. She cried as if her heart were broken, finally finding someone who mourned her father as she did.

Tommy Gibbon was her father’s illegitimate half-brother, a fact that had been kept a deep, dark secret for many years. When James Radford discovered that he had a brother, he had approached the man himself, and James and Tommy had been close ever since. They didn’t see one another often, and of course Elliot had always been embarrassed by Tommy’s humble lifestyle. But Lily loved her uncle and his wife, the warm and pretty Cora. She saw in Tommy a bit of her father, though her uncle was rough around the edges, never having had the advantages his older brother had taken for granted.

It was not a good time for Tommy Gibbon when Lily found him in Liverpool. A sailor for most of his life, Tommy had fallen on hard times. He no longer wanted to stay away from his wife for weeks or even months, and the merchant ships he had served on were often at sea for that length of time. That hadn’t been a problem when he was a bachelor, but once he found Cora, he changed.

So Tommy started his own business, a small mercantile in Liverpool. In spite of his good intentions and hard work, the business failed. Tommy had sorely underestimated the fierceness of his competition and the large amount of funding it would take to sustain his young business.

He was about to join the merchant fleet again and to leave Cora behind. They had no children, much to their dismay, and he hated to leave Cora at home alone. And she hated to be left behind.

It was Tommy’s idea at first, though he quickly dismissed it as impractical. But a seed had been planted in Lily’s brain, and she refused to let it die. Together they had hammered out the details, and the very next day they’d found themselves at the shipyards. Lily’s inheritance was well spent.

When Elliot learned of her venture, he protested weakly, calling her plan insane, impossible, and improper. But in the end he had relented, as Lily had known he would. He couldn’t stop her, so he didn’t even make much of an effort.

Tommy had been a fine teacher, instructing her not only on how to operate her ship, but on how the engines worked and how to navigate using only the night sky as her guide. Lily was a quick study, and her love for the sea enhanced her ability to absorb what Tommy taught.

They’d made nearly a dozen runs since then, most of them uneventful, all of them extremely profitable. One summer night, they had been caught in a storm just hours from Nassau, but had managed to ride it out with no losses or injuries, and once they’d had to outrun a Union blockader off the coast of the Carolinas. A shot had been fired across the bow of the Chameleon before she disappeared into the fog, leaving the slower Union ship behind.

The Chameleon was not equipped with guns. Lily had no illusions about the dangers of her venture and had thought often of the possibility of capture. All of her crew were British, and if captured they would eventually be sent home. The British government would see to that. With no show of force from the Chameleon, she would be treated as the merchant ship she was.

As for Lily herself... there was a plan. A well thought-out plan for such a contingency.

The profits were made primarily on the luxury items that filled the cargo hold—and on the cotton that was carried out. The rest of the space was reserved for supplies for the Confederacy. Blankets, medicine, shoes, material for uniforms, Enfield rifles, gunpowder, cartridges, percussion caps….

“Cap’n?”

Lily turned and faced the young sailor who approached warily. “Aye?”

“The chief engineer says we’re goin’ to be needin’ coal before much longer.” The youth had a strong cockney accent, one Lily had become familiar with. “’E wants to know if we’re goin’ straight on to Cuba, or if…. ”

“There’s enough coal to get us to Nassau to unload this cotton first, before the Lady Anne sails for England, and to sail to Cuba to take on coal tomorrow.” Lily suppressed the urge to smile. She was always somewhat reserved around her crew, but had come to know them all well. Reggie Smythe was a damn fine engineer, but he always became testy toward the end of a run. And Lily couldn’t blame him. The engine room was an unbearably hot and uncomfortable place to spend the better part of a week.

“Aye, Cap’n.” The young sailor bowed slightly and turned away. It had taken him a while, as it had all of them, to accept Lily as their captain. She knew that very well. But they did accept her, each for his own reason. Every one of the crew helped to perpetuate the myth of the mysterious Captain Robert Sherwood as well. It had even become an enjoyable game for them.

Captain Sherwood had been Lily’s own invention, a fictional captain for the Chameleon. She was certain the idea of a woman captain would be too much for most people to accept, and too tempting to the Union blockaders. It was one thing to be bested by a legendary British captain, but quite another to be beaten by a woman. Lily was certain that the knowledge that she was captain of her own ship would cause the Union to single her out for capture, and she couldn’t do that to her crew.

But she looked forward to the day when she could let her adversaries know that it was she who had slipped past them in the night.

It was amazing how many residents and visitors to Nassau now claimed to know Captain Sherwood. When Lily went shopping, the merchants often asked her to give the Captain their best, and they would swear to anyone who asked that they had met the man. It was difficult at times to keep a straight face when confronted with this phenomenon, but Lily managed. She was becoming quite an actress.

“Captain.” Tommy’s deep voice startled her. “You should be resting.” Tommy always expressed concern at how little Lily slept during their voyages. A couple of hours a night were all she could manage, between taking the wheel and setting the course, seeing that the cargo was properly secured and that the crew functioned well. Many of the tasks she took on could have been handled by others, but that was not Lily’s way.

“I’ll sleep for two days once we get home.” She allowed herself a small smile for her uncle. Tommy would have made a wonderful captain, and she sometimes wondered if he might not decide to buy his own steamer someday and strike out on his own. He had offered to captain her ship, while she stayed at home and collected most of the profits. That didn’t seem fair to Lily, and she had a deeply ingrained sense of what was fair. Her crew received a better share of the profits than did most blockade runners’ crews. It was a dangerous business, and Lily was well aware of that. She made certain that her crew was aware of that also. Her own profits were still outrageous, but that wasn’t what compelled her. It was the vision of her father that drove her, the vision of him standing there holding his pipe, wondering what had gone wrong.

 

Tommy watched his niece as she turned to once again stare at the sea before her. James had once said that Lily had salt water in her veins, and that he had never met another woman who loved the sea as she did. She seemed to gain life from the salt air itself, from the spray that rose and rained on her. Lily turned her face upward to the sun and grasped the polished rail with strong hands—hands that were capable of taking the wheel of the steamer and guiding her through the narrow channels or holding her steady through a summer squall.

“Another good run,” he said to her back.

“Aye, that it was,” she agreed, her thoughts evidently elsewhere. Probably on the next run, if Tommy knew her as well as he thought he did.

“You’re beginning to sound like a Liverpool dock rat,” he said with affection. If he and Cora had been able to have children, he couldn’t imagine that he would have loved them any more than he loved his niece Lily. With a smile, his thoughts turned to his wife. Cora awaited their arrival in Nassau. His voyages now kept him away from her for days, not months, and the profits were much grander. It was a good life they were living, thanks to Lily.

He knew that what they were doing was perilous, and that for a woman to dress in trousers and take command of a ship was unheard of—especially in the society Lily had been raised in, a courtly society where the pirate Anne Bonny was probably dismissed as a legend. If he could have convinced Lily to stay home and let him take the risks for her, he would have.

But he couldn’t, so he became her right-hand man, her first mate, and this was where he would stay. Until the war was over. Until her mission was done.

 

Quint limped down the walkway, the picturesque shops he passed becoming familiar to him after four days in Nassau. He paid them little mind. It was a bad day as far as his leg was concerned, the pain shooting through his thigh with each step. The surgeon had said it would take some time—though how much time he’d refused to guess—and that for the rest of his life Quint would have days when his leg pained him. Damn it all! Months had passed, and he still felt like an invalid. Quint leaned on the hated cane, the sleek black cane with the gold handle—a serpent’s head—grasped in his right hand.

At last he came to the house he was looking for. His contact’s home. There was nothing about the cottage to set it apart from the surrounding houses. They were all tidy and well tended, and everyone had attempted to fight the native foliage that sought to encroach on their homes.

For the past four days, Quint had done nothing but establish himself in the best hotel in town and seek out the readily available games of chance. He had lost on one night as much as he had won the night before, and had readily identified the Confederate partisans he was expected to befriend.

The whole damn island was coursing with Southern sympathizers. Quint fit right in, with his cultured accent and the well-cut gentleman’s clothes the colonel had provided for him. It was hard not to fit in, on an island populated almost entirely with Southerners, an island that had become a sanctuary for the blockade runners and their crews.

A uniformed servant opened the door quickly after Quint’s knock, and he wondered if he was expected. Colonel Fairfax had only told him to make contact when he felt it was safe to do so.

“Quintin Tyler to see Mrs. Slocum.” He presented himself to the woman, distancing himself with the scowl that had become a natural part of his countenance, a look that warned others to leave him alone. He had to work to remove that grimace from his face when he sat across from the Rebel sympathizers and the blockade runners who supplied the South. He didn’t think he had the makings of a very successful spy.

The maid ushered him into a well-stocked library, a semi-dark room where every wall was lined with books and the furnishings were dark and masculine. He noted that there was not a single cut flower, not a speck of lace in the room to show that the house was inhabited by a woman.

Mrs. Slocum rose to meet him, and he was surprised once again. He had been expecting an older woman. Colonel Fairfax had told him that Eleanor Slocum was a widow, and Quint had pictured a gray-haired old lady dabbling in the spy game. But the lovely dark-haired woman who greeted him couldn’t be much older than he was. He really didn’t want to know how many young widows the war had produced.

“Thank you, Naomi.” She dismissed the servant with an even smile and in an accent much like his own, deep and slow. She never took her eyes from him, never glanced at the servant who left silently, or dropped her gaze to the desk. She was studying him critically, and with a satisfied smile on her handsome face.

Quint didn’t attempt to hide his impatience from her, and he didn’t return her smile.

“Mr. Tyler,” she said, circling around the desk, holding the voluminous skirt of her black silk dress in both hands. “Lieutenant Tyler,” she corrected herself softly. “Welcome to Nassau.”

Quint bowed at the waist, a curt and almost insolent greeting. “Mrs. Slocum. I suppose you know why I’m here. Shall we get on with it?”

She didn’t seem at all put out by his attitude, but remained placid. “Please call me Eleanor, Quintin.”

She sighed with what might have been resignation and returned to her desk. “We will be spending quite a bit of time together in the next several weeks. All information you collect is to be delivered to me.” She was suddenly curt, businesslike, and she offered Quint a chair with a wave of her slender hand. “Have you met any of our colorful blockade runners yet?” Her tone was sardonic, and she gave Quint a half-smile. “The heroes of the South?”

“I met a Captain Dennison, and a bull of a man named John Wright.” Quint took the chair, grateful to be able to take the weight off of his bad leg. He extended it before him gingerly. “I lost a bit of money to them both.”

“Good. Lose a bit more. I can replenish your funds when you deliver your information.” She placed her elbows on the desk in little-girl fashion and rested her chin in her hands. “Have you heard of a Captain Robert Sherwood?”

“I heard his name mentioned once or twice, but I haven’t met him.”

“His ship has been out for eight days, so you wouldn’t have had the opportunity. Not yet. He might be difficult to get close to. Captain Sherwood doesn’t show himself around town like the other captains do. He... keeps to himself, he and his woman.”

“His woman?”

“Yes. I’ve heard rumors that he has a wife in England, but he lives on this island with a Southern woman. Miss Lily Radford.”

There was pure dislike in her voice, almost venomous, and Quint wasn’t certain if it was for Miss Radford or for Southern females in general. Odd, since Eleanor Slocum was so obviously of Southern heritage herself.

“Miss Radford comes to town on occasion, and the Captain apparently makes an appearance now and again, but I have never seen him.”

Quint leaned back in his chair, for a moment able to forget the pain in his leg. “That seems strange. He doesn’t have to hide. No one on this island bothers to conceal their involvement with the blockade-running enterprise. On the contrary. They’re local icons who feed the economy.”

Eleanor shrugged. “Sherwood’s very successful. It would be a notable distinction for us if we could aid in his capture.”

“He doesn’t live in the hotel, I take it.”

Eleanor smiled. “Lily Radford owns a house just south of here. A lovely two-story white house with a private path to the beach. Sherwood has been seen, on occasion, walking that path draped in a hooded cloak. Depending on who you talk to he’s short, he’s tall, he’s fat, he’s thin. The man is a regular chameleon.” Her smile widened. “That’s the name of his ship. The Chameleon.”

“Should I concentrate on Captain Sherwood?”

Eleanor shrugged her shoulders. “Not necessarily. But keep your eyes open. I’d like to get this one.” She gave Quint a misty-eyed look. “This war won’t be over until we can stop the blockade runners. When the South is starving and they have no ammunition... then this nightmare can end.”

Quint wanted to ask her what had motivated her to become involved. Was she really a widow, or was that simply her cover? If she was a widow, had her husband’s death driven her to become a spy?

“Our story is that you and I are old friends, who are going to become lovers.” Eleanor smiled at Quint’s raised eyebrows and the questioning tilt of his head.

“Don’t worry,” she said quickly. “I don’t plan to carry my dedication to the Union quite that far. But the appearance of our involvement will give you an opportunity to come and go at any time, day or night. Discreetly, of course,” she added wryly. “I have my reputation to think of.”

Eleanor stood, and Quint knew that he was dismissed. Leaving his troops behind and becoming a spy still didn’t sit well with him, but he was beginning to see what he might be capable of. If the blockaders knew when and where to expect the smaller and faster steamers, they could set up an effective trap and make blockade running unprofitable for their captains.

He walked back to the hotel less conscious of the pain in his leg than he had been earlier. His mind was on other concerns. Captain Sherwood. For some reason the man intrigued Quint... a mysterious captain who hid from the rest of the world.

With a new purpose, Quint entered his fine hotel with a reluctant grin on his face. Sherwood wasn’t even on the island, if Eleanor’s information was correct. But she would be—his mistress. The Lily Radford that Eleanor had spoken of with such obvious distaste. She was undoubtedly still on the island. Perhaps that was the way to proceed. Meet the man through his mistress.

Quint spotted James Dennison in the doorway to the dining room and approached with his friendliest smile set in place. “Captain,” he called when he was a few feet from the tall, thin seaman. “Please tell me you’ll give me an opportunity to win back some of the money I lost to you last night.”

Captain Dennison grinned at Quint, flashing straight, white teeth set in a sun-bronzed face as he straightened his royal blue jacket. His joy at the opportunity presented him was evident in twinkling blue eyes.

“Aye, Tyler. I’d be happy to take a bit more o’ your gold.” Dennison sounded like a pirate of old, his accent as strange to Quint as his own well-bred Southern accent most likely was to the Englishman.

“I met an interesting woman this afternoon,” Quint said as they walked to their table together. They’d share a meal and a few glasses of rum before the gambling began. “I was wondering if you might be acquainted with her. A Miss Lily Radford.”

Dennison smiled wickedly. “Ah, so you’ve finally met Miss Lily. She’s a beauty, that one.”

Quint nodded, though he had no idea what Lily Radford might look like.

“I’ll warn you, though,” Dennison continued as he folded his tall frame into a comfortable chair. “She’s Captain Sherwood’s woman, and he’s a right jealous one, he is.”

“Really?” Quint managed to look disappointed. “His woman, you say. Not his wife?”

“Don’t be gettin’ ideas, Tyler,” Dennison warned, his grin fading and the sparkle leaving his pale eyes.

They were silent as a waiter placed, without asking, two full glasses of rum before them. The dining room would soon be full, but at the moment most of the tables were unoccupied. Quint was always more comfortable later in the evening, when the room was full and smoky and he felt almost invisible.

“Is Captain Sherwood a friend of yours?”

Dennison hesitated before answering, but only briefly. “Aye, he is. Take caution, mate. He wouldn’t like you showin’ an interest in Miss Lily. He’ll run you through, cut out your heart, and have it for breakfast.” Dennison lowered his voice as he finished delivering his warning. “Forget about Miss Lily.”

Quint raised his glass in salute to the gregarious captain across from him. “Thank you for the warning, my friend. I’ve never met a woman I’d literally lose my heart for.”

They both laughed heartily and moved on to other subjects of interest, but Quint’s mind was never very far from the mysterious Captain Sherwood and his woman, Lily Radford.