1st October, 1822
My cabin aboard the Mary Alice
Dear Diary,
The answer to my last question is: quite amazingly fast when all sail is risked. My being extra charming to the captain and challenging him to demonstrate how fast his ship can go has paid a handsome dividend. We passed the Egret, the sloop carrying the major and his household, sometime last night. With luck and continuing fair winds, I will disembark in Aden before him, and he will have no reason to suspect I set out on this journey to follow him.
E.
October 2, 1822
Aden
What the…?” Gareth Hamilton stood in the bow of the Egret and stared incredulously at the pale pink parasol bobbing through the crowd on the wharf alongside.
They’d followed another of the company sloops into the harbor, and had had to wait for that vessel, the Mary Alice, to be unloaded first.
His bags, along with the minimal luggage carried by his small but efficient household-his batman, Bister, his houseman, Mooktu, an ex-sepoy, and Mooktu’s wife, Arnia-were being stacked that very minute on the wooden wharf, but that wasn’t the cause of the consternation-to put it mildly-that had seized him.
He’d noticed the parasol bobbing down the gangway of the Mary Alice, tied up almost at the end of the long wharf. He’d watched the bearer, a lady in matching pale pink skirts, tack and weave through the crowd. She and the contingent of staff following at her heels, with one heavily muscled man clearing a path through the noisy, jostling throng ahead of her, had to pass along the wharf beside the Egret in order to enter the town.
Until a moment ago, he hadn’t been able to see the parasol holder’s face. But passing the Egret, she’d tipped the parasol aside and glanced up-and he’d glimpsed…a face he hadn’t expected to see again.