Page 4 of Devil of the High Seas
When lightning flashed a second time, she gasped as a figure loomed out of the darkness behind her, briefly reflected in the window glass. She whirled around, but no one was there. The hall was empty, save for a painting that hung on the paneled wall opposite her and the window.
It was a large portrait, but despite its size, there was an intimacy to the subject and how he had been painted. She recognized the man immediately. It was her future husband.
Then Josephine silently corrected herself. No, that was not him. There were minute differences in the features. It would have been easy to assume the painter had simply failed to paint the subject exactly, but when she read the name beneath, she knew her suspicions were correct.
The small gold plaque under the portrait read:Gavin Castleton, 1735.Gavin, not Griffin. This was Castleton’s brother. They must have been twins, just like her and Adrian, only Griffin and Gavin must be identical.
Gavin...The name caused the hairs on her arms to rise. This was Castleton’s brother. Given the year on the plaque, she guessed he had to have been around nineteen when it was painted. A year older than she was now...
“He’s a handsome fellow, isn’t he?” a deep voice said, and Josephine jumped.
Her brother Dominic stood a few feet away, studying the portrait with her. “I knew Gavin when we were younger. He was a good sort of fellow, but a bit wild... like me.” Dominic smiled at some old memory, and Josephine’s heart ached. She hated being so young sometimes. Dominic had had an entire life while she’d been a child on leading strings. It was the same with Lord Castleton. He was twenty-six, though that wasn’t terribly far from her in age given that many women her age married men in their forties. Yet when she was around Lord Castleton, there seemed to be an ancient pain inside him that put a century between him and her.
“What happened to him?” she asked.
“No one is quite sure. He and Griffin quarreled one night during a ball much like tonight, and Gavin left. He simply vanished.”
She scowled at her older brother. “You’re trying to frighten me.” Dominic gave her a curious look that she couldn’t quite read, and she had the strangest sense that he wasn’t telling her everything.
“I would never want to frighten you, little butterfly,” Dominic said quite seriously, using his brotherly pet name for her. “It’s true. Gavin was never seen in this house again. Some think he drowned in floodwaters, others think he was murdered by footpads, but...”
“But what?” She took hold of her brother’s arm. “What, Dom?”
“I thinkhe went to the sea, like me,” Dominic said quietly, as if thinking deeply on the matter. The way he saidI thinksounded strange, though, as if he was more certain than uncertain.
“But he never came back. He must be gone.” She didn’t saydead. Somehow she could not put that word to the man in the painting. Even the oil on the canvas seemed to breathe in that quiet candlelit corridor while the storm continued to rage outside.
“Not all men lost at sea are dead... some are simply lost,” Dominic said. For the first time since her older brother had miraculously returned, she saw some of the darkness he must have faced in those fourteen years he’d been away from home.
“Then he might return someday?” she asked, her tone as quiet as her brother’s now.
“That depends,” Dominic said.
“On what?”
“Sometimes all a man needs is light to find his way to shore, but not everyone is looking for that light. Some men stay trapped in the dark.”
She and Dominic stared up at Gavin Castleton’s portrait until a crash of thunder shook the house.
Dominic put an arm around her shoulders. “Come, Josie, let’s go return to dinner.”
She let her brother lead her to the dining room, but she had the strangest feeling that the eyes in Gavin’s portrait followed her. Her brother’s words echoed over and over in her head.
Not all men lost at sea are dead... some are simply lost...
* * *
Off the coastof Cornwall
“Cap’n!” Ronald Phelps bellowed through the storm. “Look out!”
Gavin Castleton leapt out of the way as a member of his own crew tried to slice him with a scimitar. The quarterdeck of his ship, theLady Siren, was overflowing with battling pirates. Gavin swung his own blade, catching the nearest man in the arm and slicing through his biceps. The man’s howl of pain was swallowed by the raging sea and a clap of thunder overhead.
Beauchamp and his men had been fools to start their mutiny in the middle of a storm. Men were being tossed over the sides every few seconds as grayish-black waves of furious water surged over the decks. TheLady Sirenwas a strong ship, a fast ship, but in such a squall, unmanned like this, she would break her masts and founder on the distant rocks.
“Ronnie!” he bellowed at his quartermaster. The red-haired man waved a blade before stabbing a man in the stomach and kicking him over the side.
“Cap’n?” he called back.
