“Hello, Angus. Are you free for the next hour or so?”
His grin revealed a broken front tooth and a missing incisor. “Are you hiring me, Emma?”
One of seven children, Angus MacPhearson had grown up two blocks away from our house on the Point. He and Brady had gotten up to no end of mischief during their early years, but upon finishing their schooling Angus had joined the navy and gone off island with boastful promises of someday commanding a frigate. Six months later Angus had returned to Newport a civilian and refused to talk about his naval experience. He somehow managed to win his skiff during a night of gambling and had operated his transport service from this same boat slip ever since.
“I most certainly am,” I said in answer to his question as I wrapped Barney’s reins around the dock railing. Angus’s rough calluses scraped my palm as I grasped his offered hand and stepped down into his skiff. His were boatman’s hands, gotten from rowing his passengers through all manner of weather and tides.
“Let me guess . . .” Angus turned away as I settled on the middle seat, facing him. His pale blue eyes searched the harbor, and then his grin returned. “You almost never leave the island, so we’re not rowing to Jamestown.”
“No,” I confirmed, and his relief was palpable in his loud exhalation.
“Good. This swelling in my thumb wouldn’t like a row that far.” He held up the offending appendage, an angry red blister encompassing the skin from the pad of his finger to the knuckle.
“Have you had that looked at?”
He shrugged and placed an oar in its rowlock before bending to lift the other from the deck of the small craft. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
I vowed to tip him well for his services and urge him to see a doctor.
“The Valiant, then?” he asked with his gap-toothed grin.
“How did you know?”
“There’s no other ship a decent young lady like yourself would visit but her uncle’s.” Something in his expression warned that if I’d had other ideas, I’d better be able to justify them or he wouldn’t take me. An old loyalty to Brady? I believed so. And somehow the notion warmed me. Poor Angus might not have fulfilled his dream of becoming a naval officer, but despite his unkempt appearance, something of a gentleman lived inside him.
“To The Valiant,” I said with a flourish, and we set off, easing away from the pier. “I don’t suppose you rowed my cousin Consuelo out yesterday or today,” I asked, as if spurred by mere idle curiosity.
His back to The Valiant, his shoulders bent to his task, Angus replied with a grunt that sounded like a no. I didn’t attempt to press his memory. Though few town locals had actually met her, nearly all of Newport recognized my cousin from catching glimpses of her riding in her parents’ carriages. If Angus had encountered her he’d have known it, and what’s more, he had no reason to lie to me.
Unless, of course, he’d been well-paid for that lie. I shook my head and sighed. I was becoming paranoid, suspecting guilt at every turn.
Soon the lively noises faded to a low hum behind us, and for me at least, the tranquility of the harbor and the salt-tinged breezes filled my lungs and eased my troubled mind.
My respite was short-lived. Upon arriving at The Valiant, a 300-foot steam brigantine that dwarfed all other craft anchored nearby, my nerves began to buzz. What excuse would I give Consuelo’s father, my uncle William Vanderbilt, for intruding upon his afternoon?
I didn’t have long to contemplate my options, for as soon as the skiff gently thumped against the yacht’s hull, the call of my name poured down from the top deck.
“Emmaline, is that you?”
I glanced upward, squinting against the bright sky to make out my uncle’s face peering down at me. He held a pair of binoculars in one hand. He’d obviously been observing the sights and had spotted me on my way here. “Good afternoon, Uncle William. Am I disturbing you?”
I hoped he didn’t have guests, for that would make my task so much more difficult.
“No,” he called down. “Come on up. Do you need help?”
A flight of spindly wooden steps with a rope railing spanned the side of the ship from the waterline upward to the promenade deck, just below the deck upon which my uncle stood. “No, thanks,” I shouted up at him. “I can make it just fine.”
Angus rowed the boat closer to the steps. Reaching out, he grasped the hemp railing and held us steady as I stood and carefully picked my way to the side of the skiff. I slipped a foot onto the lowest step, wrapped a hand around the rope, and swung myself up and over. For a moment the world seemed to spin out from under me. Though I’d grown up on an island and small craft like Angus’s were second nature, boarding a yachting vessel always taxed my equilibrium. My knuckles whitened around the thick twine railing and I stood a moment, feet braced on the step and my legs rigid, until steadiness returned.