Claire hung the reticule on her wrist.
‘Miss!’ the gentleman cried. ‘We must leave now.’
‘I will be right behind you,’ she called over her shoulder.
Rebecca rushed to Nolan’s cabin. A seaman was at Nolan’s door. He turned to Rebecca. ‘She refuses to come,’ the man shouted. ‘Hurry! We must get above.’
Rebecca pushed past him and ran to her maid. ‘Nolan! Come with me.’
The older woman recoiled, rolling over and huddling against the wall. ‘No. Sick. Leave me alone.’
‘Come, miss!’ the crewman cried. ‘There is no time to waste!’
‘I cannot leave her!’ she cried.
He dragged her away from Nolan’s door, practically carrying her to the steps of the companionway.
On deck, rain poured as if from buckets, obscuring the chaos Rebecca found above. The mast had splintered in two and lay like a fallen tree on the deck, ropes and sails tangled around it.
‘To the boats!’ the seaman shouted, running ahead.
She followed him, catching sight of Claire and the gentleman at the railing. The ship dipped suddenly and a wave washed over the deck. Rebecca had only a second to grab hold of a rope or be carried in its ebb. When the wave passed and she looked up, Miss Tilson and the gentleman had disappeared.
Her escort seized her arm. ‘Come, miss. No time to waste.’
He pulled her along with him to the side of the ship where other passengers and crew were climbing into a rowing boat that had been lowered over the side. Claire was not among them. Rebecca glanced out to sea, but Claire had vanished. Nolan, Claire and the gentleman were lost.
There was no time for emotion. The crew lifted her over the side as the rowing boat bobbed up and down beneath her. Only with luck did her feet connect with the wood of the boat’s bottom.
The boat filled quickly. Rebecca huddled next to a woman clutching her two children. Beneath their feet was at least an inch of water and more pouring from the sky. Somehow the sailors rowed the boat away from the packet. Through the darkness and rain, a shadow of coastline was visible. Rebecca kept her eyes riveted on it, watching it come slowly closer. Almost in reach.
From behind her a woman screamed.
Rebecca swivelled around to see the packet boat crash against the rocks. At that same moment the rowing boat hit something and tipped.
Rebecca plunged into icy water.
Garret Brookmore, the new Viscount Brookmore, received word of the shipwreck off the coast of Moelfre while he waited in an inn in Holyhead. This was the packet he was to meet, the one on which the governess was to arrive. There were survivors of the wreck, he was told, and Garret felt obligated to travel to Moelfre to see if Miss Claire Tilson was one of them.
None of this was remotely within his experience. A year ago he’d been in Brussels with his regiment awaiting what became the Battle of Waterloo. For the past ten years he’d battled the French. Then word came that his brother and his brother’s wife had been killed in a carriage accident and he needed to return to England to inherit his brother’s title and all the new responsibilities that accompanied it, responsibilities over which he had no preparation. His older brother had been groomed from birth to be the Viscount. John was the family’s fair-haired boy, able to do no wrong in their father’s eyes, whereas not much was expected of Garret so he’d always been bound for the army.
Now the son from whom the family expected little had an estate to run, Parliament to attend and two little girls, his orphaned nieces, to tend to. Pamela and Ellen, only nine and seven, had been securely in the care of their governess, a long-time retainer of their mother’s family, but fate had not finished being cruel. That woman, too, died.
How much could two little girls take? Their mother. Their father. Their governess. Left with a strange uncle whose heart remained with his regiment. Garret had witnessed thousands of deaths, but these seemed the cruellest.
When notified that his nieces’ governess had died, Garret had been in London attempting to meet society’s expectations of a viscount. He contacted an agency in town to hire a new governess and left his obligations there to travel back to Westmorland to the family’s principal estate, to see to his nieces and await the new governess. He’d barely arrived at Brookmore when the agency sent word to expect Miss Tilson to arrive in Holyhead from Ireland.
What if Miss Tilson had drowned in this shipwreck, though? What was Garret to tell the little girls? That another person who was supposed to care for them had died?
He rode to Moelfre and enquired where the shipwreck survivors might be found. He was directed to the Pheasant Inn, a place bustling with activity.
The innkeeper greeted him. ‘Welcome. Do you seek a room?’
‘I am looking for a survivor of the shipwreck,’ Garret responded.
The man frowned and shook his head. ‘Such a tragedy. Almost forty people lost, I’m afraid. Only eleven made it through.’
That did not sound hopeful. ‘I am looking for Miss Tilson. Miss Claire Tilson.’
The innkeeper broke into a smile. ‘Ah, Miss Tilson! Yes. Yes. She is here.’
Relief washed through Garret. ‘May I see her?’
‘Of course.’ The innkeeper gestured for him to follow. He followed the man up two sets of stairs. ‘She’s been feverish since the rescue. Some men pulled her from the water, we were told. She seemed better today, our maid said. Might not be awake.’
‘I understand.’
The innkeeper knocked and a maid answered. ‘Someone to see Miss Tilson.’
The woman smiled and opened the door wider. Neither she nor the innkeeper asked who he was.
He approached the bed and gazed down in surprise. He’d expected an elderly woman like the previous governess. Miss Tilson hardly looked old enough to be out of the schoolroom herself. Her skin was smooth and flawless; her features strong, not delicate. Her hair, the colour of Kentish cobnuts, fell loose over the white pillow. Would her face fulfil the promise of character shown in her repose? He was intrigued.
He looked over at the innkeeper. ‘I do need a room.’
‘Yes, sir, I can accommodate you,’ the man answered. ‘Would you like to come with me now? I will show you to the room.’
Now that he’d found Miss Tilson, he was reluctant to leave her. ‘I will stay until she wakes up. So she knows I am here.’
She was bound to experience distress, waking in a strange place, after nearly drowning.
The innkeeper reached for Garret’s valise. ‘I’ll take this to the room and come back with your key, if you like.’
Garret nodded his thanks.
The maid spoke up. ‘May I leave, sir? I am very hungry. May I get food?’
The innkeeper glanced towards Garret.
‘I have no objection.’ Far be it from Garret to deny a hungry girl, so he wound up alone, seated at the bedside of a beauty he did not know, but for whom he was now responsible.
* * *
An hour passed, an hour spent with swirling thoughts of all he must remember to do, of all he’d learned needed his attention at the estate and even more demands in London and how much he wished he were simply marching with his men on some foreign road bound for the next battle. He missed his men. Worried about how they were