I didn’t knock, letting the door swing open to see West and Hamish around the desk with Paj. All three of them looked up at once, falling quiet.
Hamish fidgeted with a stack of papers, his fingers stained with ink. But there was something in his manner that was off. He was angry too.
“Did you find the shipwright?” I asked, watching Hamish open the drawer and slide the parchments inside.
“We did,” Hamish answered, standing up straight. He looked around the room. Everywhere except at me. “I’ll have those figures tonight,” he said, glancing at West.
West answered with a nod. “All right.”
Hamish shuffled past, turning to the side so that he didn’t touch me as he slipped out the door. Paj glared at West for a moment before he stalked out behind him. I watched them both disappear onto the deck, my brow pulled. But in the cabin, West looked at ease. More relaxed than he’d been the night before.
“What was that about?” I asked, studying him.
He looked up from the desk. “Nothing. Just reporting on the ledgers.” But his eyes dropped from mine a little too quickly.
“Paj looked angry.”
West gave an irritated sigh. “Paj is always angry.”
Whatever was going on between them, I could see that West wasn’t going to tell me. Not now, anyway. “I saw Saint,” I said, closing the door.
West’s hands tightened on the edge of the desk as he looked up at me. “Did he get it?”
I pulled the package from my jacket pocket and set it on the desk in front of him. He picked it up and turned it over, letting the merchant’s ring fall into his hand. It was freshly polished, the gemstone shined.
“Now all we need is the Roths,” I breathed.
West reached into his vest, pulling a folded paper from the pocket. He handed it to me. “This came an hour ago. I was waiting for you.”
I took the parchment and opened it, reading the hurried, slanting script. It was a message from Ezra.
Leith Tavern, after the bell.
I looked out the window. The sun had passed the center of the sky and it would set in a few hours. Holland would be expecting me at Wolfe & Engel, so we’d have to be quick if we were going to meet Ezra. “All right. Let’s go.”
West tucked the message back into his vest and grabbed his jacket from the hook, following me out onto the deck. When I came down the ladder, Willa was already working on the repairs, suspended beside the hull from the starboard side. She fit the oakum into an opening along the smaller cracks, pounding it in with the blunt end of her adze.
“We’ll be back after sundown,” West said, jumping down onto the dock beside me.
“Last time you said that you didn’t show for two days,” she muttered, pulling another nail from her bag.
Whatever she wasn’t saying was alight in her eyes. She’d been granted her freedom from the Marigold, but she didn’t like the idea of me working for Holland. Soon we would each take our own paths, and I didn’t know if they would ever come back together again.
We took the main street that led back into Sagsay Holm, finding the tea house at the top of the hill in the eastern part of the village. It looked out over the water, with a view of the rocky coast.
The sign was painted in a glistening gold, hanging out over the street in an ornate, scrolled frame.
WOLFE & ENGEL
I swallowed, the knot in my stomach resurfacing. The windows reflected the buildings behind us, and I was suddenly aware of how out of place I looked among them. Windblown and sun-kissed. Tired.
Beside me, West was the same. He said nothing and I, too, was at a loss for words. By the time I left the tea house, I’d be contracted with Holland, and I had no way of knowing if the Roths would save me.
“I’m going to do this alone,” I said. The last thing I needed was West making himself even more of an enemy to Holland. I felt like I was holding my breath, waiting for the stillness around him to rupture.
To my surprise, he didn’t argue. He looked over me, through the window. “I’ll wait.”
“All right.”
West’s face was still stoic as he watched me take hold of the brass handle and open the door. The scent of bergamot and lavender came rushing out, swirling around me as my eyes adjusted to the low