When he pulls back, he looks alarmed.
“It is Mr. Jenkins,” he says.
“Emily’s father?”
He nods. “He is sneaking along the corridor. He can hear Emily in the captain’s quarters, and now he is heading that way.”
I curse under my breath.
We have a decision to make here. Emily’s father has come to her rescue. We should let him do that, should we not?
An easy choice if Mr. Jenkins knows what exactly is happening. If he knows his brother-in-law is behind the abduction. If he is prepared to fight for his daughter.
“Is he armed?” I whisper.
“He has a sword but...” Nicolas makes a face. “I do not wish to be insulting, but I have always presumed it is merely an affectation of fashion.”
Nicolas carries one because he was a privateer and he is a fugitive; he knows how to use it. It could be a holdover from when doctors carried swords as a sign of status, but for him, it is mostly a weapon.
I’ve noticed men in the area wearing them, more than I would expect. Is that another holdover, this one in a more rural part of the country? Is it because Norrington—being a former admiral—wears one? All I know is that it seems to be part of the local couture. For men like Mr. Jenkins—a middle-aged clerk—it might not even be a usable weapon.
Sword or not, I suspect Jenkins is ill-equipped to fight for his daughter. From the look on Nicolas’s face, he agrees.
“Do we... leave him to it?” I ask hesitantly.
“In good conscience, I cannot.”
I exhale. “Nor I. It is agreed, then.” I clasp my gladius. “We must at least warn him.”
While I watch Nicolas’s back, he eases open the door. There’s an intake of breath from the hall, and I wince, but it isn’t loud enough to alarm the guard, who seems to be still dealing with his difficult prisoner.
Nicolas waves Jenkins into the room with us. On seeing me, the man stops short, his brow furrowed in confusion. I do the same, with a momentary fear that Nicolas has somehow mistaken one of Norrington’s men for Emily’s father. That, of course, is impossible, as Nicolas knows Jenkins. However, I still pause in my own momentary confusion.
Two days ago, on spotting Lord Thomas’s ghost near Emily, I’d thought he might be her father, keeping watch on her. Nicolas said Jenkins was his primary contact, and from that, I had the impression of a man not unlike Lord Thomas. Aging, gray-haired and stout, in need of a young man like Nicolas to do the running and hiding and fighting for the cause, while he handled communication and management. He is a clerk, after all.
The man who walks in could not be less like Lord Thomas. He might even be younger than William Thorne and August, both on the cusp of their fourth decade. I think surely this cannot be Emily’s father. Then I calculate and realize he might be only in his late—or even mid—thirties. He met Lord Thomas’s daughter when she was a girl and he was a “young clerk.” They ran off together and had a baby, who is now nineteen.
I can see why Emily’s mother ran off with Mr. Jenkins. He is a handsome man, compact in size but well formed, with sharp gray eyes. Those eyes light on me and then turn to Nicolas in confusion.
“This is my companion,” Nicolas says as Jenkins enters the room.
“Norrington said you’d taken up with a young nobleman’s son. The Kestrel, he called him.” Jenkins jerks his chin at me. “Not a nobleman’sson, I presume.”
Nicolas’s lips twitch. “Non. But yes, we shall call her the Kestrel. She knows your daughter, and she has come to help me free her.”
Jenkins’s shoulders sag. “Thank the saints. There is nothing I would not do for my Emily, but...” A rueful smile down at his sword. “The only dueling I do is with numbers and computations.”
“Tell me what happened.”
Jenkins throws up his hands. “I hardly know. When Emily did not return last night, I presumed she’d stayed at her uncle’s estate, where she still has quarters. I wanted to get an early start for York today to sell”—he glances at me and clears his throat—“the goods.”
Sell the items from the ship, he means. The goods that help support the people of Hood’s Bay.
Jenkins continues, “I was off before dawn, and I did not get a chance yesterday to inform Emily of my plans, so I stopped at Norrington Hall to tell her I would not be home until the morrow. She was not there, and I thought that odd, so I asked to speak to Norrington. He refused an audience, and as I was walking about the house, I overheard one of his men say they had Emily on theTemerity. Of course, I thought I must have misheard. Perhaps he meant that Emily had left early toseetheTemerity? To meet with you there? I came, and it did not seem right, so I borrowed a rowboat, crept onboard and heard her. She is truly Norrington’s captive?”
Nicolas nods. “It is punishment for her aiding me last evening. She made the mistake of confronting her uncle about it.”
Jenkins winces. “She has always seen the best in him. It has put us at odds many a time, and I feared if I pushed the matter too hard, it would drive a wedge between us. At least now she will see him for the man he truly is.”