Chapter One - Excerpt 1
The Honorable Olivia Trevillion lifted the long skirts of her embroidered silk evening gown and stepped cautiously down from her carriage into the grey oppressive darkness of the night. She had come straight from a rout party given by her aunt. Adorned with glittering jewels and festooned in her best finery, Olivia was hardly dressed to visit a sailor’s tavern on such a cold November night, but time was of the essence. She was in need of help and guessed that the gentleman she thought most likely to be of assistance to her was probably to be found amid the thirsty patrons of The Sailors Haven, which was the black-and-white timber-framed watering hole before her.
A thick fog was rolling in on the evening’s tide, and several of the tall ships docked on the quayside were already half concealed by the heavy mist that was falling. The unsettling noise of the inn’s inebriated patrons emanating from the tavern could be heard above the soft sound of the lapping waves as they hit gently against the wooden hulls of ships and the stone walls of the dockside, but she wasn’t deterred. She wasn’t here on a whim. She was on a mission and had a purpose.
“Wait here, Barnet,” she said, impatient to be gone. “I shall not be long.”
Her coachman touched a finger to his forelock and, with a flick of his hand, signaled for the young groom beside him to go to the front of the carriage and take hold of the horses’ heads.
“Aye, miss,” Barnet mumbled. “But I ain’t happy about you having no one with you. You ought not to venture in there alone. Would you like Wicks to accompany you?”
Olivia shook her head. “No, thank you. I’ll be fine.”
Reminded of possible danger, she felt in the folds of her cloak and was reassured by the heavy weight of her pistol.
“It won’t be safe for you, miss,” Barnet warned.
Barnet had worked for her family for many years. He was an old and loyal servant, and Olivia always trusted his judgment. But this was something she had to do, and she had to do it tonight … and alone.
Drawing her cloak tightly about her person and ignoring her coachman’s counsel, she walked with steady determined strides toward the flickering lights of the tavern. Placing her hand against the gnarled wood of the door, she pushed it open and entered the hostelry.
The tavern was dimly lit. A roaring fire burned bright in the hearth, and several men with a tankard of ale in one hand and a pretty wench in the other were making free and merry uncensored by the noisy crowd around them.
“And what can we do for you, my dear?” asked a buxom woman.
The woman’s hands were rested on her well-rounded hips, and her dress, where the neckline had slipped low and deep, showed an ample amount of cleavage. She didn’t look like one of the taverns’ punters, more like the landlady. And there was also an air of authority about her that suggested she might actually own the place.
Olivia peered into the horde of drunken revelers, searching for a familiar face, but she couldn’t see the man she was looking for. “I was told Luke Crowe might be here this evening,” she said. “Perhaps I was misinformed.”
Olivia had just come from her aunt’s rout party where she had overheard mentioned that a ship, The Mattea, had docked in Bristol’s harbor that morning. It was also suggested that Luke Crowe and his unsavory crew would undoubtedly be enjoying some of the worldly pleasures that were to be found in one of the quayside’s many taverns that very night.
“No, my lovely, he’s here all right.” The woman smiled, showing an uneven row of rotten teeth. “You’ve come to the right place. But our Captain Luke ain’t one to sit with the likes of these unruly gentlemen.”
The woman flicked her head in the direction of her customers as if to indicate they were the undesirables.
Olivia sighed her relief. “You mean, he’s here? Captain Crowe is here?”
The fact Luke was to be found at the tavern gave her hope. When entering The Sailors Haven unaccompanied, she had taken a chance and risked her reputation, but it seemed as if her gamble was about to pay off.
“He always asks for our best parlor at the back of the house. And it’s never anything else but the best. Drink, food … women.” The woman winked. “If you’re after him, he’s sitting with some fine fellows he calls friends, but he doesn’t like being disturbed, not when he’s playing a winning hand of cards.”
“But I must see him,” Olivia insisted. “It’s an urgent matter, and I must speak with him privately.”
“As I said, he won’t see anyone, especially if they are a stranger to him.”
“But I do know him. We were once acquaintances, friends, but…”
“Ahh, you’re a lady friend of his, are you?”
Olivia didn’t make an effort to deny the landlady’s wrong assumption. Instead, she dipped her hand deep into her reticule and retrieved several coins. She pressed them into the woman’s palm. “If you would now lead the way…”
With her palm greased, the woman soon changed her tune. “Well, as I’ve never known him to refuse a pretty lady anything before, you’d best come with me, miss.”
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Copyright© 2023 Arabella Sheen
ISBN: 978-0-3695-0785-3
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: Jessica Ruth
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WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this
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This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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