She raised her brows, reluctantly impressed. “Oh.”
“Drovetti will probably have gone to find something to eat. I’ll distract the captain with my sarcophagus while you go and look for the necklace.”
“He won’t have left it unattended,” Hester said crossly. “He’ll keep it on his person.”
“That’s probably true, but we need to be certain. If it’s not there, we’ll just wait for him to return and overpower him. I’ll hold him down while you search him. But let’s make sure it’s not in his cabin first, all right?”
Since Hester couldn’t think of a better plan, she gave a resigned shrug, but as they reached the docks, they stopped and stared. Drovetti’s ship was no longer moored at the water’s edge. It was heading toward the horizon.
“Bugger,” Harry breathed.
Chapter 14
Tremayne squinted toward the disappearing ship. “We’ll just have to follow him over to France, then, I suppose.”
Hester gasped. “You can’t be serious.”
“Of course I’m serious. We can’t let him get the necklace to Bonaparte. What if there’s some truth to that curse? The future of Europe could be at stake.” His face creased into a boyish grin of anticipation. “We need to keep Drovetti’s vessel in our sights. Come along.” He strode off.
“If I didn’t know better, Tremayne,” Hester scowled, hurrying after him, “I’d think this was some elaborate ruse to get me closer to England so you can claim that five thousand pounds.”
He sent her a look over his shoulder. “You wound me. Retrieving that necklace is our patriotic duty.”
“You don’t think the necklace will grant Napoleon any powers at all. You just love the idea of a treasure hunt!”
He didn’t deny it. His eyes sparkled with merriment.
“How long will it take to get to France, anyway?” Hester grumbled. “My clothes are—”
He waved an impatient hand. “Four or five days, I should imagine, with a good wind. And we haven’t got time to get you any more clothes. We have to leave this minute.”
Hester sighed. She could hardly refuse to go with him. She didn’t want to be stranded alone in Alexandria, penniless, without even Suleiman to protect her. And she wanted to retrieve the necklace as much as he did.
Unlike Harry, she wasn’t ready to dismiss the possibly of it having extraordinary properties. She’d felt the strange, heady power of it when she’d put it around her neck, and the thought that she might have been cursed by it, even now, was impossible to forget.
Hadn’t disaster followed in its wake as the old man had predicted? She’d been robbed by Drovetti, almost drowned, and then stung by that scorpion. Mere coincidence? Or something more?
If therewassomething more sinister about the necklace, then allowing Napoleon to get his hands on it could indeed have disastrous consequences. The man had already shown himself determined to conquer as much of the world as he could. His hubris and ambition were limitless. With the power of an angry Egyptian goddess behind him, he could well prove unstoppable.
Still, five days of forced proximity on a ship with Harry was enough to make Hester’s heart pound. She would just have to do her best to ignore the alarming effect he had on her, that was all.
With Harry’s letter of commendation, it didn’t take long to find a captain willing to make the crossing to France, and within a surprisingly short time, they had been ushered aboard a tidy brig and shown to separate, adjacent cabins. Not wanting to leave his purchases behind, Harry directed the two boys carrying the sarcophagus up the steep gangplank and onto the deck. Hester watched in amusement as the hapless young men tried to angle it through the hatch that led below. The sarcophagus was over eight feet long and the ladder was both steep and narrow. It took a great deal of gesticulating and remonstrating before the thing was stowed away.
That done, Harry insisted on bringing Makeen, the Arabian, aboard too.
“I’m not leaving such a magnificent creature behind. Just think of the stir he’ll make back in England! I can make a fortune putting him out to stud.”
Hester rolled her eyes as he persuaded the skittish animal to embark, even as she marveled at the confident way he dealt with the animal.
With the beast finally tethered safely, they set sail. Hester stood at the rail and watched as the haphazard outline of Alexandria’s skyline disappeared in a wavering heat haze like a mirage. Would she ever return to Egypt? And what disasters awaited them in France?
Harry stepped up to stand at her shoulder. He leaned easily on the wooden rail and stared out over the water. “No pushing me overboard like you did in Venice,” he warned softly.
Hester snorted. “Then don’t do anything to annoy me.”
She was accustomed to travel by sea. She’d sailed from England with Uncle Jasper. The ship they’d commandeered was a brig, a trading ship with two square-rigged masts. The captain, Jacopo Cavalli, proved to be a portly Italian merchant with a gold tooth and a faintly piratical air. Hester quickly deduced that he was a loveable rogue; he entertained them with tales of his bossy, bustling wife in Livorno and his seven noisy children. He joked that he put to sea to escape their incessant squabbling but then admitted that he missed them as soon as he left port and couldn’t wait to return from trading glassware and Egyptian linens for Italian wine and silk.
Signor Cavalli’s tales of a loving, boisterous brood made Hester a little envious. She’d always wanted a family of her own. The way the Italian’s wrinkled face softened as he recounted some anecdote, the gleam of paternal pride in his eyes as he told of some child’s misdemeanor, was evidence of his boundless love.