The King's Mercy by Lori Benton

Author:Lori Benton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2019-06-03T16:00:00+00:00

24

The smokehouse was empty, Alex vanished. At the end of an exhaustive search and a flurry of interrogations, Joanna was sequestered with Mister Reeves and Papa, no nearer knowing who had aided his escape, if anyone had; the smokehouse key, along with nearly every other to Severn’s domestic locks, resided in Joanna’s keeping. It was found where it was meant to be, in her room. Suspicion had fallen briefly upon her, but she’d maintained her ignorance of his flight, her distress apparent enough they’d chosen to believe her.

“He’s a Jonah, sir—if you take my meaning. That’s what I make of MacKinnon.”

Staring bleakly at Mister Reeves, Joanna perched at the foot of the bed in Papa’s study. “A Jonah? That’s a foolish superstition.”

Mister Reeves, pacing like a restless panther, halted and cast her a condescending glance. “Do you know what a Jonah signifies, Miss Carey?”

“A person who causes ill luck. But I don’t believe it of Alex. Surely you don’t, Papa. It’s God who ordains…” Her own doubt silenced her. Had the Almighty ordained the tragic events of the past few days? Months? Or allowed them? She no longer knew. She was utterly at sea. Storm-swept, like the prophet, Jonah.

“I’ve seen it in my day,” Papa said. “Still, what is to be done but raise a hunt for the man?”

“Yes sir,” Reeves agreed, then more tentatively added, “Or we might let him go.”

Joanna didn’t know which struck her as the more anguished course, hunting Alex like an animal or this suggestion. Let him go.

“It’s the thing to do with a Jonah,” Mister Reeves maintained. “Put him off the ship—or plantation. Let whatever whale awaits him swallow him whole.”

The man’s unconcern fell across Joanna’s senses like a whiplash, yet for once in their acquaintance, she wished she could be more like him, to care so little about Alex as to shrug at his defection and carry on. They’d yet to make sense of what happened at the mill. Upon Mister Reeves’s return late the previous night, he’d been told of the fire, Demas’s purported actions, and the suspicion fallen upon Alex.

“I can tell you only what was told me,” Mister Reeves had said, paled by the catastrophe. “It was brought to my attention there was need at the mill. I relayed the information to MacKinnon—and Moon. As for Demas, should he not be commended for his actions rather than placed under suspicion? Let us hear what he has to say for himself.”

Demas, with his cavernous island lilt, had made Papa’s study seem small in a way even Alex hadn’t. He’d heard about the need of a smith and, lacking Reeves’s guidance, went to the mill on his own volition in case his strength could be of use. “When I get there the mill was burning. I found MacKinnon in the storeroom, overcome by smoke. I carry him out.”

“What of Jim?” Mister Reeves pressed.

“Him I not see.”

“You say you arrived and at once rescued Alex,” Joanna interjected. “Yet Jemma saw you lurking in the woods, beforehand.

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