I love her. I'm going to marry her. I'm going to help her rescue her best friend.

It was true. He didn't know how he was going to do it, only that it was inevitable. They would prevail: they would get Billy off that damned boat, and then they would marry.

"Another one?"

The barkeep's intrusion drew Blackstone out of his reverie. He pulled out his pocket watch. "How long has it been since the gentleman I was with left?"

"About ten minutes, I'd wager."

Something was wrong. He slid a coin across the bar and stood. The barkeep started to make change, but Blackstone shook his head and slid another coin forward as he glanced at the empty stool next to him. "Where is his room?"

The man hesitated only a moment before nodding toward a door at the back of the room, "Third floor, last door on the left."

As Blackstone mounted the stairs, he tried to tell himself there was a logical explanation for the delay. But even as his mind cast around for one, fingers of doubt began to grasp at him. By the time he reached the door, panic had set in, and he didn't bother knocking. Please let her be there. Please.

The room was empty. Empty of people, that is. Clothing was strewn across the bed-he recognized the coat Talbot had been wearing downstairs-and a half-drunk cup of tea sat on the bedside table.

He turned, tamping down panic, and his gaze snagged on a folded piece of paper resting on an otherwise-bare desk.

His own name was scrawled across the front, in an angular, neat hand.

He knew that hand.

I have her. You lose.

He unfolded the paper fully and watched with horror as a cockroach fell out of it.

Chapter Twenty-One.

"He's here!" Mr. Talbot had burst into Emily's room, and after hunching over the desk for a moment, herded her into the corridor and down the inn's back stairway.

Then they had run. When her lungs protested, she pictured Mr. Manning at the inn, missing them by a hairbreadth. So she kept running, propelled by fear as she imagined how violent her ex-guardian's rage would be this time. But she was also driven by excitement. To know that Billy was so close was the fuel she needed to keep moving. As they ran down the pier, time folded in on itself, and she felt like she was running through the forest all those years ago.

Except this time they would escape. They had to. It was all she had left to hold on to. If Billy sailed for America, she couldn't face Sally. She couldn't face life.

"This is for show," Mr. Talbot said as he unsheathed a knife. "If we're caught, I'm going to have to pretend I'm apprehending you, that you're acting alone. If that happens, I'll take you off the boat, and we'll regroup."

And so she walked the gangplank with a knife at her back. The steel pressed against her muslin dress as they made their way down a companionway, but they did not meet anyone else.

It was only after they stepped inside a small cabin that she realized she'd made a horrible mistake.

"Billy!" Her heart leaped with wild joy at seeing him again. She had hoped-prayed-they would find him aboard, but she hadn't been prepared for the visceral blow of seeing him again after so many years. Her hands shook, her stomach churned, and tears began leaking out of her eyes. "Billy," she cried again.

"Emily!" He struggled toward her, but was tied up in one corner.

She lunged for him, but instead of dropping the knife now that there was no chance of anyone seeing them, Mr. Talbot jabbed it harder against her back. "Reunited at last," he sneered.

Reunited. Yes, finally, thankfully. She turned to him, confused. Why did he sound so angry?

"The two of you will have plenty of time to catch up on the journey to America. Assuming you survive it," he continued. In a decidedly French accent.

No. She had been at Sarah's wedding. Watched as the happy couple kissed in a corridor at the wedding breakfast when they thought no one was watching. "No." This time she spoke the word aloud, as if her almost brother could somehow see the wild, impossible thought that had arisen in her mind and assure her she had misunderstood. "No."

"Oui."

"Le Cafard." The truth constricted her throat and made her skin burn.

"Oui," he said. "Mademoiselle is smarter than her lover."

It all made a horrible kind of sense. Le Cafard had indeed come off the boat at Clareford, just as Eric had predicted. "I hate him," he'd said in the coach on the way here. She'd thought he was talking about Manning, but she understood now he'd been speaking of Eric.

Emily's heart wrenched when she thought of Eric, waiting in Essex for the boat, never knowing he'd made his enemy welcome as a guest in his home. Never knowing that she had run off with his tormentor.

Then she thought of Sarah and had to concentrate so as not to cast up her accounts. "Your wife?"

"Ah, yes, the lovely Miss Manning. You will appreciate how convenient it was to have a bride whose father sails between England and France with impunity. Do you know that I've made seven crossings on his boats? It used to be such a problem before I married her." He barked a triumphant laugh. "And to think that Mr. Manning believes silk and champagne is all that's making the journey with me. The man is a snake, I'm sure you'll agree, but I'm certain that even he would not agree to be the agent of death I have made him."

Emily put her hands over her ears. She didn't want to hear any more. But of course that didn't stop Le Cafard. "You will remember Corunna? Your General Moore's epic retreat?" He grinned. "One of my proudest moments." He paused and cocked his head, smiling. "Though, I think perhaps it will pale against the time I finally destroyed the Earl of Blackstone."

"Let her go." Billy spoke quietly from the corner. "Let her go, and you can have me. You can kill me right now."

"No!" protested Emily.

"Now, now, my friends, be calm. I thought about killing you, I must admit. They would find your bodies together. There would be a scandal." He turned to Emily. "It would break his heart. But now that I've met him, now that I know how he feels about you, I see that ambiguity is worse-much, much worse. Did you know that when we send slaves to America, many of them don't arrive alive? And America is such a big place! Wide, endless prairies, mountains so high a man can't begin to think of crossing them. A man could spend his life searching America for a missing person. Sending someone he loves to America with nary a clue left behind?"

"It will kill him," Emily whispered.

"Exactly," said Le Cafard. "But slowly."

Blackstone ran into the mayor on the way back to the pier. The boy had been doing as told, running to fetch Blackstone with the news that a lady had boarded the ship.

"Was she in distress?"

"I can't rightly say. The man escorting her was holding her arm something fierce, but she wasn't crying or calling out."

"I need to get onto that ship without anyone seeing me."

The boy hesitated and Blackstone flipped him another coin.

The mayor did not reach out to catch the coin, instead let it clatter to the wooden planks beneath their feet. "What's on that ship that's worth such a risk?"

Blackstone stared at the ragged, dirty boy, who could have been no more than ten. "A woman."

"Who is she?"

Blackstone considered the question. She is an abolitionist. She is loyal to a fault. She is an excellent swimmer. She reads too many books. She has the most amazing blue eyes-sometimes they look almost violet. She has been disappointed by so many people, yet she persists in seeing the best in those around her.

In the end, he settled for the only thing he could think of to summarize the sea of emotion churning in his chest. "I love her."

The mayor pocketed the coin and produced a coarse sack. "Take off your coat and boots and stuff them in here."

Blackstone obeyed, then followed the boy to the edge of the pier. There was a ladder inset against it-no one would notice it if they hadn't already known it was there.

"We're going to have to swim," said the mayor.

Blackstone would have laughed, except at this moment it all seemed so inevitable. She had appeared at his lake, his absolving angel, and she had kissed him until he could let his brother go. She had taught him to swim again. And now he would swim to her.

The mayor was already halfway down the ladder when Blackstone stepped over the edge. No one expected to see swimmers here, and so they made their way through the murky water unnoticed. The swim was difficult because Blackstone held two oilcloth-wrapped pistols above his head, using only his legs and injured arm to propel himself. The boy led Blackstone to a rope ladder that was almost impossible to see, so well did it blend in with the side of the ship.

"The sailors are stealing from the man who owns this boat," said the mayor, answering Blackstone's unasked question. "They lower goods down this ladder and onto a rowboat. I figure, if they can come down it, we can go up it."

"We?"

"I'm guessing a gent like you'd pay extra for a little help?"

"You guessed right."

The boy glanced at Blackstone's missing hand. "I can take that package up. Add it to my bag."

He handed over the package, praying the pistols had stayed dry enough, and started up.

Although this time he was confident he looked the part of a common sailor, he hadn't counted on coming aboard drenched. They did the best they could to dry off, and he redonned the coat and boots the mayor had cleverly thought to keep out of the water. It would have to do. He kept his eyes down and they began to walk, passing holds filled with bolts of fabric. They needed to figure out where Billy would be. Probably he was being held near the crew's quarters, so he could be watched.

And Emily? The mayor had seen a lady being taken aboard, but he had no idea if it was her. Le Cafard could have taken her anywhere. But Billy was on this ship. Once he got Billy, he wouldn't be working alone. And he would have finished the task to which Emily had dedicated the last several years of her life. After that, if need be, he'd spend the rest of his miserable existence searching until he found her.

"What are we looking for?" the boy whispered.

"A lady and a man. The man is African." The boy wasn't startled. He would be accustomed to seeing Africans-free and slave-in this port city. "We need to search the cabins, somehow."

"The man in charge here, what's his name?" the boy asked. "He arrived suddenly a few days ago, without warning."

"Manning."

The boy shrugged. "Whoever he is, they're all afraid of him." Beckoning Blackstone, he took off down the deck, heedless of the need for stealth. Blackstone had just opened his mouth to rein him in when they came upon a pair of sailors leaning against a railing, smoking. The men registered only mild interest-and, to Blackstone's relief, no suspicion-at the sight of them.

"We've a package for the lady," said the mayor.

Blackstone swallowed a curse as the larger of the two men pushed away from the railing.

"Oh, you do, do you, brat?"

Damn. He couldn't afford to waste his fire on these men-or to risk drawing the attention that would inevitably follow.

The boy nodded at the oilcloth-wrapped package he held and jerked his thumb toward Blackstone. "Manning sent him."

At the name of their employer, the men stood a little straighter and exchanged a glance. The younger of the two snubbed out his cheroot on the railing and craned his neck to see the pier. "Manning's back? I thought he'd gone back to London."

"He wants to make one final inspection," Blackstone said, picking up the story. "He'll be here soon. I'm to deliver this to the lady in the meantime." At that, the other man threw his lit cheroot overboard.

The mayor held the package out. "You wanna give it to her?" He tried to give the package to the men, and Blackstone prayed they would not call the boy's bluff.

The larger man nodded at nearby hatch. "Two decks down, last cabin on the left."

The mayor was off-scrambling down the hatch still holding the package-before the sailor had finished the sentence. Blackstone descended at a more sedate pace-no need to alarm them unnecessarily. But once his feet hit the ground two decks down, he began to run. "Wait!" he whispered as he caught up with the boy. "If the man they call Talbot is in there, he'll be armed."

"And so are we, right?" The boy grinned.

"So am I," said Blackstone, taking the package back. As much as the mayor had proven himself invaluable, he couldn't put a child directly in harm's way. Even he wasn't that craven.

"Hey!" the boy protested when Blackstone slipped one pistol into his boot and another into his waistband. "You can't fire those both at once without two hands."

Blackstone silenced him with a look, but the reprieve was only momentary. The boy made one last stand. "I thought you were the sort of gent who would pay extra-"

"I am the sort of gent who will pay you beyond your wildest dreams to stand outside this door-outside-and alert me if anyone comes." When the boy started to protest, Blackstone lifted his eyebrows until the lad kicked the wooden floor and muttered a grudging assent.

Blackstone studied the door. It was the only way in. If he was lucky, he'd find Le Cafard already gone and this would be easy. If he was unlucky, his only hope was surprise.

Another hinge moment-he was about to open the door and everything would change.

He'd faced dozens of these moments in his career. Would all his work come to nothing? It was the question he always asked himself, but it was no longer the right one. Here, now, it fell away in favor of another, infinitely more frightening question: would all his life come to nothing?

With a great, guttural war cry, he retracted his leg and kicked down the door.

And his heart sank.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

The horrifying tableau was so carefully composed it could have been a painting. Le Cafard held a blade to Emily's throat. They looked almost posed, as if they had been waiting for him. He'd often thought of Emily as a muse, come to life from brushstrokes on canvas. This image was equally indelible. She did not struggle as those deep blue eyes locked on his. They seemed to say a thousand things he fought to untangle. He saw apology there, and vehemently shook his head, for none of this was her fault. Regret, fear, anguish-the longer he looked, the more resolute he became that he would banish those ghosts or die trying.

"Ah! Bonjour, monsieur!"