Page 109 of Go, Rogue

“Are you alright?” he asks, but she only nods.

“Menace?” he tries, more softly this time, practically begging, and points up. They’re standing beneath the mistletoe—or what passes for it here, the Spanish moss—but she only blinks listlessly at him and takes a step back.

“McGann!” a hearty voice booms across the room, and he turns to see Rogers waving. When he turns back, she’s gone.

“Excuse me,” he says, intending to go after Catherine, but Rogers is suddenly there, beside him and laying a hand on his arm.

“Don’t make a scene,” Rogers says quietly. “It won’t help.”

McGann has every intention of doing just that. He’ll burn the damned Yule tree down if he has to, to snap her out of her blue mood and bring her back to his side. But when Sir Cleveland joins them, he knows he’s trapped. He can’t be rude to the man who invited him, especially not when he’ll need Cleveland’s help to enact his plan for seaman’s cards.

“Now then,” Cleveland says to Rogers. “Tell us everything, Hawthorne.”

McGann frowns. He doesn’t want to stand here and listen to Rogers, or Hawthorne, or whatever the hell his bloody name is, tell a story. He can see Catherine again, across the ballroom now, whispering to Elizabeth.

“The case is completed?” Cleveland asks. “Barclay is in custody, or Evans, rather.”

He turns to McGann. “Forgive me,” he says. “It’ll take a moment to get the nomenclature correct.”

McGann doesn’t answer. He just grimaces. He hates being called Barclay.

“It is,” Rogers says. “Lord Evans and James are both in custody, and we have James’s full confession. Apparently, Evans hired him after the East India Company put the pressure on. They needed all of your evidence, Captain, and to be certain of it this time. Evans thought he could use that to his advantage. Find the lockbox himself and then sell its contents to the highest bidder.”

McGann notices that Rogers calls him Captain, not Barclay or Your Grace. He recognizes it for the kindness it is and thinks, perhaps, his former first mate isn’t such an arsehole after all. Or maybe he knows that being called Barclay makes McGann want to put his fist through someone’s face.

“Seems they suspected all along you’d kept something behind,” Rogers says to McGann, “but it wasn’t worth their while to chase you for it until the move in Parliament to disband the Company came about. And then they leaned on Evans to tie up loose ends.”

“How did they know about the lockbox?” McGann asks, keeping an eye on Catherine. “I never told anyone what was in it.”

“From what I can tell,” Rogers says, “it was the diary that tipped them off. You were always scribbling in it, always had it on you, recording names and dates and such. One of the skeleton crew you hired on the East Indiaman saw you slip it into your pocket the morning of the fire. Once Evans knew that, he sent some men around to your grandmother, assuming if you’d left it anywhere in Jamaica, it was with her. She gave them the box.”

“And The Elphame?” he asks. “She’s done for, then?”

The last he’d seen of his ship, she had been wrecked.

“Not as such, no,” Rogers says. “We fixed her up in Bermuda fairly well. She’ll sail again.”

“Did you now? I wouldn’t have reckoned the Crown to be so generous. Shipwrights don’t come cheap.”

McGann notices Rogers’s glance around the room. “It wasn’t the Crown,” he says. “But that’s a conversation you best have with Lady Catherine. Wherever she’s gotten off to.”

McGann looks too, his heart sinking straight back into his gut. She’s disappeared again. Damn it.

“And with that,” Rogers says, “I’ll take my leave. There’s much to do before we sail tomorrow. If you’ve anything left to say to your brother, Captain, we’ll be in port until dawn.”

“Nay,” McGann says, eyes still desperately searching the ballroom for the woman who is not there. “There’s no more that needs saying.”

He never needs to speak to his arsehole of a brother again.