Nan went out with a candle to light them to the bottom of the stairs and Amber waited a minute or two. “Oh!” she cried then. “I’ve got her Ladyship’s fan!” And before Rex, who had gone into the dining-room to pick up a cold biscuit, could offer to take it down for her she had run out of the room. She reached them when they had just gotten to the bottom of the stairs, for Emily had to move with care, and all of them laughed politely as they made the exchange.
But as she turned to go back up again she gave a swift glance around, and then whispered to Bruce, “I’ll come to Almsbury House tomorrow morning at eight,” and before he could reply or object she had picked up her skirts and was running up the stairs once more.
Bruce was busy most of the time.
The days he spent down at the wharves overseeing the cleaning and repairing and supplying of his ships, signing new men, and talking to the merchants from whom he ordered provisions, for many of them had a monetary share in his ships. Privateering was the greatest speculative business of the nation, and not only the King and courtiers but most of the great merchants and many of the lesser ones were engaged in it, usually through money invested in a venture such as his. At night he went to Whitehall, saw the plays there, gambled in the Groom Porter’s Lodge, attended the never-ending succession of balls and supper-parties.
Consequently Amber saw him for only an hour or two in the morning when she visited his apartments at Almsbury House, and she did not go every day because, when he could, Rex waited until she was ready to start for the Theatre before he left. But as far as she knew he had no slightest suspicion that she had seen Lord Carlton either before or since that one night. And she intended to make sure that he never would suspect it.
But contending against her determination to be cautious and clever, to keep Rex Morgan’s confidence and his love, was the violent infatuation which made her reckless in spite of herself. She had begged Bruce again to take her with him when he went and again he had refused, nor would any amount of tears and imploring change his mind. She was accustomed to Rex, who could usually be coaxed, and his obdurate refusal filled her with frantic, impotent fury.
“I’ll stow away on your ship then!” she told him one day, half-joking, but thinking nevertheless that if she did there would be nothing he could do about it. She would be there and he couldn’t very well throw her overboard.
“And I’ll send you back again when I find you, no matter how far out we are.” His eyes had a warning glitter as he looked at her. “Privateering’s no game of handy-dandy.”
Amber worried because she knew that soon he would be gone and she would not see him at all—perhaps for years—but she worried even more because now, while he was here, the days were getting away from them one by one and they were able to be together only for a snatched hour or two at a time. She longed to spend whole days and nights with him, uninterrupted by either his obligations or hers. And at last she discovered the solution—a plan so simple and obvious it seemed incredible she had not thought of it weeks ago. They would go away together into the country.
“And what about Captain Morgan?” Bruce wanted to know. “Is he going along too?”
Amber laughed. “Of course he isn’t! Don’t you trouble yourself about Rex. I’ll take care of him, I warrant you. I know just what I’m going to tell him—and he’ll never suspect a thing. Oh, please, Bruce! You will go, won’t you?”
“My dear—I’d like to, of course. But I think you’d be taking a very great risk for a very small reward. Suppose that he—”
But she interrupted him swiftly. “Oh, Bruce, he won’t! I know Rex better than you do—he’ll believe anything I tell ’im!”
He gave her a slow smile. “Darling, men aren’t always as gullible as women think they are.”
He finally agreed, though, to go away with her for five or six days, after he had settled his business. A Spanish merchant-fleet was known to be returning from Peru, heavily laden with gold and silver, and he hoped to intercept it sometime at the end of May, which meant that he must leave London in the middle of the month.
And, as when he had agreed to bring her to London, Amber thought that she had persuaded him. She still did not realize that selfishness and cynicism made him indifferent to what might happen to her. He had warned her, but he did not believe that he either could or should protect her from the risks of living and of her own headstrong temper.
